Historically, Black churches had to be a safe space because of racism and everything happening.

It had to be the one place where you could just come and not have to worry about what you're saying, what you're doing.

Living in a segregated area means you're always on pins and needles, making sure what you say and what you do fits safety.

So being able to come worship needed to not be that.

[fiddle music] [water flowing] [birds chirping] [engine sputtering] [crickets singing] [bird cawing] [blade spinning] [engine revving] [steam whistling] One of Springfield's oldest African-American churches is the Pitts Chapel United Methodist Church.

Founded by enslaved people in 1847, the church continues to hold services in the same chapel built by the congregation in 1911.

My guests today are Reverend Tracey Wolff, current pastor at Pitts Chapel, and Shirley Thomas, who has been attending this church since the 1940s.

Join us as we talk about the history of the chapel, their ongoing community support, and recent restoration efforts.

[fiddle music] NARRATOR: Ozarks Public television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Well, thanks for joining me today.

And I have two very, very special guests.

And I'm really excited to be here to talk about Pitts Chapel and all the things that are going on.

And I'd like to have each of you kind of talk a little bit about yourself and give the viewers kind of an overview of what you're doing.

OK, well, I'm Pastor Tracey Wolff.

And I'm originally from the St. Louis area.

If you're familiar with St. Louis at all, Webster Groves, specifically, where my family has deep roots and generations of time.

I'm a graduate of Parkway West High School, though.

So we moved, eventually, out to the county.

And then I'm also a Missouri State alum.

I like to say Southwest Missouri State, though.

That's what it was when I went here back in the '80s.

I'm a very proud Lady Bear, a former Lady Bear basketball player.

My first year here-- or no, my senior year here was Cheryl Burnett's first year as the head coach.

But she was an assistant when I got here.

So, really proud of that history here.

I've lived in-- moved to Wisconsin after finishing playing basketball here and living in Springfield during college.

So I moved up to Milwaukee and played-- not, didn't play.

Coached basketball at Marquette University for about 10 years up there as an assistant coach.

Then I went into ministry part-time-- not part-time, full-time with Campus Crusade for Christ-- and moved to Ohio.

Then I got married and moved back to St. Louis.

And now I'm here.

Yeah, so it's a long way to get back to Springfield, but we're happy to have you back, for sure.

It's very good.

So you also do some work with the other ministry as well, the-- Yes.

Part of my job is to be the pastor here at Pitts, which I absolutely love.

And the other part of my job is to run campus ministry for the United Methodist Church here in Springfield.

So that's not for one church.

That is for the area.

So we're working on kind of getting a campus ministry up and running on behalf of the United Methodist churches here in Springfield.

Very nice.

And this young lady has a short history in Springfield.

But tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born here in Springfield.

My parents are the ones that came from Mount Vernon, Missouri.

And I had two brothers.

And we all went here to Pitts Chapel, ever since 1942.

Awesome.

And there was times I had got married, been married twice.

And the first marriage was, we raised 10 children.

And I came up on Summit Street right below Drury College.

And I worked with my mom.

She would clean houses and take in laundry.

And I helped her with that.

I helped my grandmother when she was a stewardess here in Pitts Chapel.

And I did all of her covers that went over the vestibule upstairs.

It had to be starched with the wine stains off of it.

And I did that for her.

And finally, she decided she wasn't going to do it no more.

But she felt guilty, not being the one doing it.

And I went to the Lincoln High School.

It was elementary, junior high, and high school.

And still going here.

And was a Girl Scout Brownie, first Girl Scout.

And we would intercede with Grace United Methodist Church as Girl Scouts coming up.

And we'd go on Saturdays, but then they stopped.

On Wednesday-- they went on Wednesday.

And then they moved it to Saturday.

And the Girl Scout leader, she changed it to Saturday.

And I couldn't go on Saturday because my mom would go out of town with an attorney that she worked for, and wanted me to be at home.

And she was nice enough to let me go for two months and, you know-- I'm still thinking about the 10 kids.

I know.

That just kind of stopped me in my tracks.

I thought oh, my gosh.

Shirley, where do you fall in the 10 kids?

Huh?

I'm not interviewing, but-- No, well, you go right ahead.

That's all right.

Where do you fall in the 10 kids in your family?

Or, you had 10 kids?

I had 10.

She had 10 kids.

That's what I was sitting here thinking-- You had 10 kids.

Yeah, I was raised with two boys, between two boys.

That's right.

Yes.

I was trying to figure out how you had enough time to do anything with 10 kids.

Yeah.

And then, that kept me busy.

But it was a privilege, you know, to be a mother of 10 kids.

And I helped raise over 36.

And my family said it was more than that.

And I imagine it was, taking the neighbors to school with them because I was driving to keep the mothers from walking to school.

And that was at Boyd Central, Barrie Elementary, Pipkin.

So obviously, Pitts Chapel has been a very important part of your life, because it's kind of the center.

Yes.

Yes, it has.

I've lived around in the same area just about all my life.

And the area that we're sitting in right now is the South Church Square.

On the African-American Heritage Trail.

I want to talk a little bit about that later before the show is over.

But there was four churches in this area-- the AME Church, Pitts, Gibson, and Washington Avenue.

And we were talking.

And I think I learned more in 10 minutes about the history of African-Americans in Springfield than I ever knew, just from listening to her talk about the neighborhoods that surrounded the churches.

What role did those churches play as far as just keeping the neighborhood stable and really being there as a support for people that, a lot of times, had hard times and had to face discrimination, had to face a lot of issues?

But how did that all-- I'll let Mother Shirley here do the majority of the talking on that.

But I would just say this, that the churches, all of us, served as a place for people to have a safe place.

That was really a huge role for the Black church for a long time, whether you're talking about the four churches right here in Springfield or in general.

Historically, Black churches had to be safe space because of racism and everything happening.

It had to be the one place where you could just come and not have to worry about what you're saying, what you're doing.

Living in a segregated area means you're always on pins and needles, making sure what you say and what you do fits safety.

So being able to come worship needed to not be that.

It needed to be a place where you just let your hair down and you're yourself, so your whole self.

There's no part of you you have to set aside to be accepted or anything like that.

So that's what I would say generally to begin with, that Black churches, all four of us, were just safe places for the community.

And all four churches worked together.

If one was having Bible study or one was having a special event or one was having Vacation Bible School, all the kids went to all of them.

Half your family went to one church.

And then the other-- your mom's side of the family went to Gibson, your dad's side of the family went to Pitts.

So you traveled around both.

That's the stories I've heard from a lot of the older members.

And that was interesting, as the churches were of different denominations.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And so, but they still had that one thing in common, that was to try to help the African-American community and all that.

So what was most of your memories about the churches and the different churches?

And they're mostly located around the Drury campus and the Ozarks Technical Community College.

There was Lincoln School.

But there was a very large African-American neighborhood in this area.

And also, they brought-- the community brought Lincoln School into the activities like the choir, when they sang.

We would go to Stone Chapel at times and sang Christmas carols.

And like I said before, even our church had Girl Scouts and those activities going on.

And we'd go to Grace United Church.

And then Sunday schools would have Easter egg hunts.

And the children would go to the different churches' Easter egg hunt and their activities that they had with the choir.

The choirs would go to invite them to come to their church and sing.

And we would invite them here and have dinners and friendship day at the different churches and worship together and come down here to the hall and have dinner later and programs.

They would have people coming from all the towns.

And we'd always give the other churches the support.

And then we also were associated with Mount Carmel Church over on Nashville and had the same preacher.

And we did a lot of dinners over there.

They'd come here and have dinner.

And they would have church there.

And we'd go have church there.

And they'd come here.

And it's been exciting for me to grow up in church.

And that's been my life.

And that's been glorious for me to raise my children here.

And my grandchildren were all baptized, a lot of them baptized here in church.

And it's been different with them as they have grown up now, that they have-- they still come when they can, even my daughters.

And you got to get my sons here.

But they have been here.

We're working on it.

They sung.

They were-- I had two that were ushers and one that sung with the young adult choir and grew up here in church.

So is your family-- I assume they've spread out to different places now and gone off to-- And if I can get them, I'll say, hey, we're having this.

You need to come.

And it's not like it used to be, because we used to think, you know, we got to get all dressed up and come to church.

And they say, well, Mom.

I'll say, what?

I'd say, leave the-- when they were growing up-- just leave your Sunday clothes there for Sunday and special things at school or something.

Have something nice to wear, you know?

And so they grew up thinking, well, we got to go to church in our best.

And then when they got older and started having their families, I said, you need to come on back to church now.

We don't have no Sunday clothes.

So I had-- That's got to be the oldest excuse in the world.

And as you can see, I'm not there.

I'm pretty casual.

So what I was-- I was teaching Sunday School.

And I taught all the children, you come as you are.

That's right.

As long as you clean, don't worry about it, because everybody was doing it by this time, you know?

Wearing their jeans and shirts and shorts and, you know?

TRACEY: Just come.

Just come as you are.

Just come as you are.

And be happy in the Lord.

Yep.

And they were.

I seen kids that started here.

And you could just see the change that came over them.

And I just thanked God they would be so-- they just glowed, you know?

Kind of like you do right now.

You glow.

They glowed.

She's a walking billboard.

She's a billboard, yep.

Absolutely.

I did want to ask you about-- how long?

You've been here eight months, now?

TRACEY: Roughly, yeah.

So that has been quite a change from Webster Groves to St. Louis back to-- Yes and no.

So when I moved down here, my mom also moved with me.

My mom is in her 80s.

And she was looking for a church home.

Well, I said, I know where you'll fit right in and you'll like it, because it's just like your home church in Webster.

And I brought her to Pitts.

And she joined within a couple of weeks.

So I wasn't even a member or anything.

I would worship here periodically.

But my mom joined right away because it felt like home.

So when I was saying that earlier about what the Black church kind of is to a community, that's true in pretty much any community that has that same history.

So Mom felt right at home here.

She walked in the doors.

And she said, this feels like being at Unity, United Methodist Church back in Webster Groves.

Well, you entered at a time that's interesting.

We'll talk a little bit about the history.

I think the church actually first started at 1847.

I just went back and looked at some of this.

And it was a group of people that, I guess they were enslaved at the time, which is an interesting kind of a-- had to be very brave on their part, to come up and say, hey, we want to start a church.

Right.

And do you have a little bit of the history of that?

I know it was around Jordan Creek and it was in the 1840s.

Right.

But-- You got the date right.

So that's when it started.

And yes, a group of slaves went to their owner and asked to start a church.

And that person said yes, which is great.

That's just a weird thing, right?

It's a weird thing to talk about.

You've got to ask permission.

It's strange.

It's kind of strange.

And I-- Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But so they did.

They started worshipping however they could and whatever space they could, eventually built there, eventually moved here after a fire, if I remember right.

Yeah.

There was a fire that burned down the original building.

So this building got built in 1911.

And they've been worshiping here since.

Which takes us up to the current thing we were talking about and walking around looking at some of the construction.

This is an older building.

Yes.

And older buildings need repairs and all that.

And I guess when I first came down here, I thought you were just doing some small renovations.

But when we went upstairs and looked, it's a major, major construction zone.

The only person brave enough to go in there it was Shirley.

She didn't care.

She just went in and looked around.

So how's all that going?

And what's the plans for the future?

And how do you plan on trying to keep the church alive?

One of the problems with smaller churches, whether it's African-American or white or whatever, is keeping up enough membership and keeping the church active.

What's your-- So here's my take on it.

It's been a really interesting time to get to walk into the story of Pitts.

All of our pastors come and go.

That's how our system works.

Methodist churches don't run pastors out of town or anything like that.

We get moved by the bishop.

So we really don't have a whole lot of say.

We just get moved.

So the previous pastor got moved.

And they asked me to step in here.

And I was absolutely ecstatic to do so.

And so I walked in to a moment in their history where they're renovating.

They had started a capital campaign in 2019, I believe.

The goal was to raise $250,000, roughly, to get started on some infrastructure like heating and cooling and some of those things, and then also to repair the ceiling.

So the ceiling was falling apart, basically.

And there came a day when a large piece of plaster fell from the ceiling.

It didn't hit anyone because service wasn't happening.

But where it fell is right where some people sit.

So at that point, they made the decision to move worship to the back of the sanctuary.

There's a little alcove.

They moved back there and started worshipping from there.

And then it just got to the point where it was too dangerous to be upstairs at all.

And they came downstairs and realized we're at a point of decision.

We're either going to stay alive and figure out what to do, or we need to let it go.

And I think through a lot of prayer and a lot of encouragement from the previous pastor, and with the board at the time, they made a bold decision to go for it and decided to try to raise $250,000.

We're at the brink of that now.

I think we've raised close to $220,000, $230,000, somewhere in there.

So we're on the verge of meeting our goal.

As you saw, the ceiling has been repaired.

There's a lot of work still to do.

You can't just fix a ceiling and not paint the rest of the room or replace carpet and do some other infrastructure like lighting, kind of bringing the building more up-to-date.

We're going to always be a traditional space.

Our pews are staying.

But there may be an addition of some screens and some other things to modernize the worship.

But we're coming along.

And we're doing those things to stay alive.

But I think also, there's a spirit at Pitts that is unlike any other-- I want to say unlike any other church in Springfield.

I don't know every church in Springfield.

I just know that there's something about a church that close to death, really.

They were down to, I think, 8 to 15 members.

So to say, we're gonna go for it, means something.

It says something about their resilience.

That's my favorite word when I talk about Pitts Chapel, because this place is resilient.

You can't come from a history of slavery and not be resilient.

So when it looks like it's the worst thing and when things look like you can't come back from that, people that come from enslaved people say, well, I believe in a God who's bigger and can do absolutely anything.

And so that's what we're witnessing right now.

We're up to-- from that down point of 8 to 15, we're up to about 40 or 50 now in a two, three-year span.

So that's really exciting.

You asked what we're doing to stay alive.

We're not doing anything.

We're just following what God is telling us to do.

We don't have any fancy plan.

We don't have any kind of signature ministry or anything like that.

We just, whatever the Holy Spirit tells us to do, we do it.

And people are coming.

People are coming.

We're reaching out to the community and doing-- it's not that we're not doing anything.

We're doing things.

But there's no-- I'm not doing anything as a pastor that nobody else is doing.

We're not doing anything as a congregation that other people aren't doing, really.

We just pray and follow the lead of the spirit.

And we're growing as a result.

That's it.

The churches that were here-- the Gibson, the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is a mouthful-- that's the reason they call it AME Church, I guess.

Right.

Those churches, the buildings have been repurposed.

One's gone.

I guess Drury's taken the Washington Avenue and made it a diversity center.

So the fact that Pitts has been able to survive is not something to be taken lightly because most of the churches have gone away.

They're no longer there.

And so it's been really impressive that not only you're surviving, you're starting to go on the growth side of everything.

That's pretty impressive.

Yeah.

I think part of that even is knowing that history, knowing that we're the last one standing, I think that was part of the motivation.

Yeah.

JIM: I can see-- yeah, I can see that, because that's really the last dance of it.

Yeah.

Before the end of the show-- we've only got a few minutes left.

It's been very too quick.

But the African-American Heritage Trail, I'm really proud.

Missouri State's been a part of that, and Drury, and other places in the city.

And they've got-- they talk about the church square.

But there's a map that shows-- and I think the plan is to have about 20 sites.

And I don't know how many sites have been done yet, to be honest.

But I think there's a plan for that.

I really hope that people have an opportunity to go around and see those sites, because they're very meaningful.

There's a map on the website-- and we'll put that on our show-- that shows where the sites are.

And every one of those sites has a major story about African-American history in Springfield.

But it also has a story about history in Springfield, period.

People need to know.

And in my conversation with Shirley, I was just-- it was so great to just listen to her describe every street, every neighborhood, where the restaurants were, where everything was at.

And so I hope people get an opportunity to learn more about a very important part of our history in Springfield.

So I'm going to give you a chance to say the last few words because I know you can use up the rest of the show.

I'd love for you to talk about the neighborhood, like what it-- that was really-- I thought that was good, to talk about-- Yeah, and the support of-- the church is obviously part of the center fabric of that whole thing, right?

Yes, they were.

They were the center of the community.

And the community has always been there for the churches, also.

When the choir was singing like I was telling you, we'd go even invited over to the M-A-D, MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

And they would sing Christmas carols there, like the school would sing at Stone Chapel and the activities that all of the churches would have.

Each church would invite the choirs and preachers to come to the different churches and speak at special occasions and share.

They would share picnics with one another.

And the children had their Easter egg hunts together.

And well, you'd go all over the city taking your children to the Easter egg hunts.

They used to say, Shirley, I see you everywhere with your children.

Well, if you had 10 children, you had to do some hunting.

You had to hit them all.

Some serious egg hunting had to go on.

So-- Even the hospitals, they would come in with June Team.

And then our young ladies here at Pitts Chapel would go over to-- they'd have a class, a little-- I wouldn't call it a class, but activities with Pipkin High School for the girls, getting them together and taking them out to eat, and-- I'm sorry.

We're about out of time, but just one quick observation.

I think at the university and other places, we really want to recruit more diverse people to come to Springfield.

And if you do that, you have to have those neighborhoods and you have to have those churches.

And so what you guys are doing is extraordinarily important to try to have people come here and stay here, that they contribute to the city.

And even Drury College, when the children got older from Pipkin, they would have them to come over and stay for two weeks or so in leadership, you know?

In a leadership program, getting them ready to go to college.

And hey, that was really great.

That's very good.

Well, I hate to end the show, because this has been pretty fantastic for me.

But I thank both of you for being my guests.

Thank you.

It's been a privilege.

Yeah.

We'll be back in a moment.

[fiddle music] NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I'd like to thank Reverend Tracey Wolff and Shirley Thomas for joining us today.

And we'll see you again next time on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."