Pikeville Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is a historic

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

church on E. Valley Drive in

Pikeville, Tennessee Pikeville is a city in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,251 at the 2010 census. It is also the county seat of Bledsoe County. History The Sequatchie River valley was part of Cherokee lands until 1805, when the Cher ...

. The church was built in 1870, during

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

. It was used by multiple congregations and also served as the community's

black school Black schools, also referred to as "colored" schools, were racially segregated schools in the United States that originated after the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. The phenomenon began in the late 1860s during Reconstruction era ...

until 1925, when a

Rosenwald school The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early 20th century. The project was the product of the part ...

( Lincoln School) was built. A survey of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

African-American churches conducted in the 1990s identified it as the oldest extant African-American church building in the state. The church still houses an active congregation. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1999.

References

Further reading