Henry Bailey,[1] with ten original members, founded the Fourth Baptist Church in 1864.

[2] The Metropolitan Baptist Church was located across the street from Camp Barker, which housed a Quaker-run Civil War "contraband" barracks in the Shaw community of Washington, D.C. (then called "Hell's Bottom).

It was here, within "Hell's Bottom, that Reverend Bailey and the founders of the Metropolitan Baptist Church began to minister to some 4,000 newly freed slaves.

Metropolitan's pastor-emeritus, H. Beecher Hicks, Jr., was named one of America's greatest black preachers by Ebony magazine in 1993.

Maurice Watson was installed as the sixth pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church on April 12, 2015.