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Central Presbyterian Church · 260 Jefferson Avenue
Central Presbyterian Church
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[Central Presbyterian Church]

View of Central Presbyterian Church located at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Marcy Avenue.

1909

Central Presbyterian Church

[Central Presbyterian Church]

View of Central Presbyterian Church located at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Marcy Avenue.

IMAGE DATE1909
FromBrooklyn Public Library logoBrooklyn Public Library

Central Presbyterian Church, 1909. This site is now the Siloam Presbyterian Church.

The structure photographed here is the Central Presbyterian Church. The church was lost in a fire in the 1930s and was rebuilt in 1936, though shortly after the congregation moved to 1200 Dean Street to merge with the Bedford Presbyterian Church.

The building sat empty for some years until another congregation moved in. Siloam Presbyterian, a historically Black church, was originally looking to build a new structure in the place of their original worship hall at the intersection of Fulton and Cranberry Streets. However, the construction of the Manhattan Bridge Approach encroached on a portion of the land they were looking to develop. After years of meeting in various congregation halls and community spaces, Siloam Presbyterian Church moved to the former Central Church in 1944.

At 260 Jefferson Street, Siloam Presbyterian continued its legacy as a site that pioneered activism and social reform. Its Reverend, Milton Galamison, was a member of the Brooklyn Branch of the NAACP and an outspoken community activist. He founded the Parents' Workshop for Equality in New York Schools, which strived to end racial discrimination and offer all children equal opportunities, namely Black and Puerto Rican students who had been disenfranchised by the New York Public School System.

In 1959, Siloam hosted the "Moslem Dinner and Surprise Program," a program run by Malcolm X, a member of the Nation of Islam at the time. Galamison, of Siloam, was the leader of one of the largest Presbyterian congregations in the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Bed-Stuy. By opening his doors to another religious group, Rev. Galamison "situated the Muslims...in a place encoded by a tradition that shared the NOI’s commitment to anti-racist work," according to Zaheer Ali in the African American Intellectual Society's "Black Perspectives." This move united the two leaders and was exemplary of how "local conditions placed different activists and their communities into shared spaces that offered the potential for the exchange and critique of ideas." In later years, Galamison organized two school boycotts: the first in 1964, called "Freedom Day," to pressure the Board of Education to integrate schools, and the second just a month later.

In 2019, Siloam Presbyterian Church celebrated its 170th year anniversary.

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