The African American Experience in Louisiana

significance (Figures 27-29). St. Peter AME Church of 1890,
in New Orleans was nominated for significance in the areas of
architecture, social history, and ethnic heritage, and St. John
Baptist Church, in Dorseyville was nominated for significance
in ethnic heritage and exploration and settlement (Figures 30
and 31). The history of St. James AME as outlined in the
background history (page 21) would clearly contribute to this
building’s significance in the areas of social history and ethnic
heritage as well. Likewise Antioch Baptist Church which
evolved from a congregation formed in 1866 by seventy-three
freed people bears significance for social history and ethnic
heritage as well as its grand design by architect Nathaniel
Sykes Allen. These examples demonstrate that most African
American churches eligible for the National Register for their
architecture are also likely to eligible for their associations with
this context.
Figure 29: St. Mary Congregational
Church, Abbevillle, Vermillion Parish.
On the other hand there are many African American
churches that would not be considered eligible for the
National Register under the area of architecture because
of the loss of integrity through changes like new brick
facades, but are potentially eligible for their associations
with this historic context. In the past, such profound
alterations as brick veneers were looked upon as
destroying the integrity and thus the National Register
eligibility of a historic resource. However as our
temporal distance from mid-twentieth-century alterations
has grown, a new perspective on such changes and
potential National Register eligibility has developed. It is
now recognized that many alterations themselves reflect
the broad historical patterns that are a part of a given
resource’s significance. The social and economic
repression of African Americans in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was often reflected in their
buildings of these periods. Modest frame buildings were
the standard for African American churches in rural areas
during the Jim Crow era. Later, as the Multiple Property
Documentation Form (MPDF) “Historic Rural African-
American Churches in Tennessee, 1850-1970”
summarizes,
. . . when new opportunities and freedoms
presented themselves in the civil rights years,
rural African Americans often moved quickly to
add attractive porticoes with columns, to install
central air-conditioning and heating, and to add
indoor restrooms. This "delayed reaction" to
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Figure 30: St. Peter AME Church, New
Orleans, Orleans Parish.
Figure 31: St. John Baptist Church,
Dorseyville, Iberville Parish