Black Heritage Tour: #9, Old Mount Calvary Church

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Gloria Smith's tour guide states:

9. As you pass what is now a vacant lot at 742 N. Tenth Avenue we pass the former residence of one of the first persons who operated the Afro American National Insurance Company. Across the street on the corner at 600 North Tenth Avenue was Old Mount Calvary Church. Also living nearby was Mr. Charles Embers, mining cook camp from Utah or California. His photo is available at the Arizona Heritage Center library.

This one was a lot harder to find than many parts of the tour.

Despite what Smith and others say, this church was not found on 10th!

There's nothing at 600 N. Tenth that looks even remotely like a church.

However, I did notice, just a block away, a private residence which was amazingly churchlike.

The Tucson Weekly ran a story earlier this year on segregated worship which confirmed, photographically, the identity of the old Mount Calvary Church building -- but also identified it as being on "East 10th Street and South Fourth Avenue." The actual location is 9th street.

The Weekly article had this to say about the church's history:

Children in front of the Mount Calvary Church on East 10th Street and South Fourth Avenue in the 1940s.

"Sunday morning was the most segregated time in the United States," recalls retired Tucson Unified School District administrator Dr. Anna Jolivet, talking about the 1940s and earlier. "There was no encouragement or welcoming (by white churches for African-Americans to join them)." Reienforcing this viewpoint, a local report prepared in 1946 stated: "There is no white church (in Tucson) which displays any sign near its front entrance saying: 'Negroes are welcome in this House of God'. ... No white church has any Negro members and few, if any, Negroes ever attend services in white churches."

Responding to similar religious racism decades earlier, two black churches were founded in town around 1900. While the small African Methodist Episcopal congregation met for awhile in the court house, Rev. Bell was leading a local Baptist revival. From this movement, 10 people joined together to form what would later become Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church.

Originally using space downtown near the railroad depot, it initially was called the Second Baptist Church. By 1910, the congregation occupied a building at Fifth Street and Ninth Avenue and had changed its name to Mount Calvary. In 1920, the membership built their own church at the corner of 10th Avenue and Fourth Street.

...which doesn't help much, really, because the picture, outside the 9th street building, is dated "in the 1940s." But, whatever, I did find the building!

From the In The Steps of Esteban site comes this photograph of Sunday worship at Old Mount Calvary (note the window in the background):

I did locate the address "742 N. Tenth Avenue", which Smith reported in 1985 was an empty lot and previous home of the unnamed operator of Afro American National Insurance. I am not convinced that this is indeed the correct address -- given the dubious nature of the Church address -- plus there is someone's home located there now. In any case, here is a picture:

As for Charles Embers, In The Steps of Esteban describes him thusly:

Charley Embers was born in San Bernadeno [sic], California, in 1849. After moving to Tucson in 1866, he began working as a cook at a mining camp at Ajo for $30 per month, plus room and board. In 1876, he changed jobs and began unloading freight at Maricopa Wells, northwest of Tucson for $40 per month, exclusive of room and board. In later years he worked as an assistant to a surveyor and was employed at various times with the San Xavier Hotel, the Eagle Mills and with private families. Mr. Embers married a Mexican woman from Sonora with whom he had one daughter and at the time the Yancy thesis was written [1933] was "the oldest living person in Tucson."

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