CLEARWATER, Fla. — Freedom Missionary Baptist Church was once a place of worship for the people who lived in the area.
But in recent years it has gone through several owners and is now for sale again, leaving its future hanging in the balance. The church is located on the corner of South Madison Avenue and Gould Street in Clearwater.
If Barbara Sorey-Love squints her eyes, she can still see her old neighborhood. She still has old pictures of her house.
“Our home was right where the retention pond is, 1161 Gould Street,” she said.
But now her house is gone, like pretty much every other home in what was once the historic Clearwater Heights neighborhood.
“That was originally founded as the Mack Dixon Subdivision. One of the first African American settlements founded in Clearwater in 1909,” she said.
Over the years, that changed with zoning and businesses replacing homes.
“I’m sure a lot of it was done at a council meeting, city council meeting where we didn’t have any representation. We, meaning people from the community. The African Americans from this community didn’t have any representation and this is what’s left of it,” Sorey-Love said.
More than a hundred years after this community was formed, Freedom Missionary Baptist church is all that’s left.
“This is the last church or the last building that isn’t sold that represents the community where I grew up,” she said
According to Sorey-Love, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church was built in 1939. Over the years it has changed ownership. And with a for sale sign mounted in front of it, now she wants to take advantage of preserving its history.
“The goal is to have the church purchased through the Clearwater CRA and maintained as a historic monument. A museum where people who lived in the community can come here and remember where we came from,” Sorey-Love.
Sorey-Love says she’s still in talks with the city. In the meantime, she said a group of Clearwater residents are working to get the church officially designated as a historic structure.
“We asked for an additional $2 million so that we can upgrade it to historic status and do what we need to do to make it part of Clearwater’s landscape," she said.
It’s a landscape that she says isn’t complete without historic sites like Freedom Missionary Baptist Church that tell the full story of the city.
Friendship Baptist Church is located across the street from the site of the St. Matthews Baptist Church Cemetery. Records indicate hundreds of graves are covered up and built over in that location. It’s just another reason natives say it’s so important to preserve this church and its history.