Located in the northwestern trust/civic block of Greene Square, at 123 Houston Street, the church was founded on December 26, 1802,[2] twenty-five years after the city's First African Baptist Church, as the First Colored Church.

[3] In 1864, United States Army general William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders No.

A short time later, general Rufus Saxton publicly spoke to members of this church on the provisions of Sherman's offer, which became known as "forty acres and a mule.

"[2] Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Sherman were guests in the church following the surrender of Savannah on December 21, 1864.

Just under a century later, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" sermon here, an address he repeated in Washington, D.C., later in the year.