First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill
church in Nashville, Tennessee
The First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill is a Baptist church in Nashville, Tennessee. During the Civil Rights Era, many sit-in participants were trained in non-violent civil disobedience there. Formerly known as the First Colored Baptist Church.
History
In 1848, the African American congregation in First Baptist Church on Broadway requested separate space for worship. This faction was named the First Colored Baptist Mission. In 1865, the First Colored Baptist Mission sought to become its own independent entity from the First Baptist Church congregation. Thus the First Colored Baptist Mission formally became known as the First Colored Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee. Thirty years later, another division occurred and the church split into Spruce Street Baptist Church, who would meet on North Spruce Street in East Nashville, and First Colored Baptist Church, who would meet on 8th Avenue North. In 1969, the First Colored Baptist Church renamed themselves as the First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill.
Civil Rights Movement
James Lawson began doing workshops about non-violent civil protest there in 1958.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill” is church in Nashville, Tennessee. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through First, Baptist and Church, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “church in Nashville, Tennessee” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29093564. Authority coordinates are 36.165, -86.788. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1848, 1865, 1969 and 1958.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.