Deacon Philip W. Ravenel knows the history of the church he attended since childhood.he knows Lovely Mountain Baptist Church He is 135 years old, and his great-grandfather, who helped build the church, was part of the congregation that first formed in a small tent.
Although church members have many stories and memories to share, along with physical mementos, the small black church in North Charleston doesn’t have a system in place to record and archive its history.
“No one thought of putting them in a safe place so that generations later we could look back and say, ‘This is how the church started and these are the people who joined it,'” Ravenel said. said.
Lovely Mountain Baptist Church is just one of several black churches in the Charleston area without a formal documentation system in place.
This is why Minister Lisa Robinson and Minister Anna Montgomery will be there. Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church We hosted a conference in North Charleston to help Black churches begin the archiving process.
At the Nov. 4 virtual conference, nearly 20 church leaders and members heard from archivists and preservation experts about best practices for documenting church history.
“We want each church to record its own history, and when you put it together, it creates a story that hasn’t been told before,” said Robinson, who works on the Mount Moriah archives. Told.
Some of the best items to collect and preserve include documents, manuscripts, newspaper clippings, paintings, photographs, maps and blueprints, said Aisha Haikal, manager of archival services at the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston. Includes published materials and artifacts. she said at a press conference.
Heikal added that oral history is a way to capture the “atmosphere of the church” by interviewing longtime members about their time in the church. Mount Moriah is what started this process.