Butler Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church

Butler Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is the earliest known independent black congregation in Greenville. Unlike Baptist churches which formed on the local level first, the A.M.E. Zion churches were highly organized and received considerable direction and assistance from a General Conference. As a result, the A.M.E. Zion denomination required very little outside missionary or philanthropic aid. During the Reconstruction era, the denomination flourished, targeting the ex-slaves of the South as the ideal audience for the doctrines and disciplines of the A.M.E. Zion Church which promoted freedom, justice and equality.

Local legend holds that the Butler Chapel congregation was organized in 1867. In that same year Bishop J. J. Clinton presided over the first statewide convention of the A.M.E. Zion Church in Alabama at Mobile with 71 ministers representing over 6,000 members across the state. Although little is known about the church prior to the 1890's it is certain that Butler Chapel is the earliest social institution fully controlled by blacks in Greenville. Its wide-ranging influence in the community is most evident in the organization of Butler County's earliest known black high school.

The A.M.E. Zion church's commitment to fostering character-building and scholastic advancement among its Congregants began in 1800 with the first Zion church building in New York which provided accommodations for a school. When a larger building was erected in 1820, a school facility was added to the church building Educational arrangements of this kind continued until the Nat Turner uprising in 1831. Little was accomplished by the denomination until the late 19th century.

In Alabama, there were three A.M.E. Zion school ventures. The first in Tuscaloosa, Jones Institute lasted until 1900 when it was then merged by the General Conference with the second school venture in Greenville. The third school, Zion Institute became a local project, serving primarily the local A.M.E. Zion churches. The Greenville school was organized in 1893 as Greenville High School at Butler Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church. The original building provided classroom space for the school from its inception in 1893 until 1898 when the present site of the school was purchased.

Butler Chapel's original church building burned to the ground April 19, 1911. The reconstruction of this church building reflects another area of self-help fostered by the A.M.E. Zion Church. Beginning in 1872 the General Body of the A.M.E. Zion Church appointed a committee to assess the conditions and needs of the church properties within the general conference and introduce some creative methods of expansion. This interest in safeguarding and expanding local church properties resulted in the establishment of a ministration department in 1892 known as the Church Extension Department and of the Connectional Board. This board, composed of bishops of the church, the General Secretary and General Stewart, was entrusted to hold in trust monies and property for the ministers and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church." The purpose of these holdings was to aid in the erection and improvement of churches and parsonages of the denomination. An account of the number of churches erected or repaired in each district was made and provisions for making loans from the General

Board was then outlined. Support for the program was provided by local congregations in annual public collections. These collections were later supplemented by donations, bequests and appropriations from the general conference funds. Butler Chapel received emergency assistance from the Extension Department, and within two years the new church building was completed on the same site of the original Butler Chapel Church building.

Butler Chapel remains the first and only A.M.E. Zion Church in Greenville, but it is also a local testament of black group's material progress. Its location in Greenville's more affluent early black neighborhood is evidence of the church's wide-ranging role as the neighborhood center of economic and social development.