STATE STREET CHURCH

Stories of Modern-Day Firsts in the Black Church: The First Four Women Reverends at State Street Baptist Church 

This two-part podcast series, published on the Kentucky Folklife Magazine site, tells the “Amazing Stories of Modern Day Firsts in the Black Church” as they relate to State Street Baptist Church. Reverend Freddie Brown, State Street’s last head reverend, was the first spiritual authority within the Kentucky Baptist church to ordain, license, and certify women reverends, many of whom already held prominent positions within the clergy. This is the story of these women, what they endured, and how the traditions of the Black Church vary throughout different denominations and regions. 

The project started as an ethnographic interview of separate Bowling Green residents who attended State Street Church when, during my research and reading the transcriptions of the initial two interviews of Marilyn and James Hockersmith and Rev. Nerica Bowie, I noticed a similar narrative of the two women being of the first four women of our region being ordained and or mentored by Reverend Freddie Brown. That culminated in folkloristic interviews about the system of the black belt Baptist church and their practices with women of authority in the church.

For Part One, For Part Two