Pueblo’s 150-year-old First AME Church is ready for a new roof
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PUEBLO, Colo. — While the white agents in Brenda B. Hector’s police academy class stayed in hotels during their training in Pearl, Mississippi, Hector, who is Black, “had to go up the street” to a nearby boarding house.
Nearly 50 years later, Hector still remembers these isolating and exclusionary experiences — experiences she takes into her new role as the pastor of Pueblo’s First AME Church.
“The AME Church is about social justice,” said Hector, “and we serve the community, whether it’s food, whether it’s housing or whatever is needed.”
Hector served as a special agent with the Union Pacific Railroad for 32 years, during which she was denied access to restaurants and hotels on a number of occasions across the west throughout the 1970s.
Hector found protection and community in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, a centuries-old Christian denomination founded in response to racial discrimination in places of worship.
Pueblo’s First AME Church formed in 1976 through the merger of the St. Paul AME Church and the St. John AME Church. Hector said that at St. Paul’s peak in the early-to-mid 1900’s, the congregation included more than 500 people.
Now, Hector and other dedicated volunteers are working to figuratively and literally sustain the 150 year-old building First AME Church of Pueblo that recently received a $228,000 grant from the State Historical Fund to preserve the structure.
Video: Chase McCleary, Rocky Mountain PBS
Hector began her pastoral work at an AME church in Salt Lake City in 1999 and shifted to the Pueblo denomination after moving to Colorado in 2023.
Pueblo has a small, yet vibrant Black community, said Hector. About 2.7% of the city’s 111,000 residents identified as “Black alone” (meaning they identified with only one race), according to 2024 U.S. Census estimates. Today, the congregation hovers around 20 regular churchgoers, according to Hector.
The St. Paul AME parsonage (rooms where clergy live) was built in 1909, and the entire church building was constructed in 1915. St. Paul’s congregation began even earlier. Founders worshipped in the Fuel & Iron Company Store, which was located only a few blocks from where the church stands today.
The First AME Church in Pueblo was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2023 for its connection to the Civil Rights Movement and its role as a community center for Black Americans.
Last month, History Colorado awarded First AME a $228,850 grant through the State Historical Grant Fund, which delivered about $5.6 million in grant funding to 36 different preservation projects across the state.
“It is the oldest Black denomination… and it was not formed to segregate members from others. It’s a connectional church,” said Hector of the AME Church, which dates to 1787 when a formerly enslaved pastor, Richard Allen, founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia.
The AME Church was used as an Underground Railroad transportation route and expanded nationwide following the Civil War.
The Church played a role in founding a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including Wilberforce University in Ohio, which still exist today.
Today, there are about 7,000 AME congregations across 39 countries with anywhere from 2.5 to 3.5 million members, according to the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.
Hector said her experience within the AME community in Utah inspired her to take on the role and help people in an active capacity.
In addition to her experiences with racism, Hector lost three husbands, all of which she said helps her inspire and motivate others who may be dealing with difficult issues in their own lives.
“[The experiences] gave me a feeling of being able to say, ‘Hey, I’ve been there, done that. You will survive,’” said Hector.
She sees the First AME Church, and the historic building where it is now located, as essential resources not only for members of the Black community in Pueblo, but for anyone in need of shelter or support.
The church building is located in a quiet suburb south of downtown Pueblo. It was built by Black Puebloans in 1915, and still features its original brick walls, roof and chimney.
However, much of the exterior is worn and fading. The shingled-roof has a couple of bald spots and the chimney is missing more than a few bricks.
Inside, the pulpit and pews are nicely preserved, yet a walk into the back meeting room — which once served as the pastor’s residence — reveals a leaky roof slowly dripping rusty residue onto a glass case displaying some of the church’s oldest and most-treasured bibles.
“The building is a safe haven. It’s a place to go for prayer, food, for assistance, for wealth and even if you just need a hug,” said Hector. “So it’s very important that we preserve this building.”
The church's grant will go towards fixing the roof and chimney as well as help “create comprehensive construction documents that will guide additional phases of restoration for the building’s defining features,” according to History Colorado.
Mary Anne Lemon, who is in her 80s and has attended services at the church her entire life, now serves as the steward of the First AME Church building.
“We help people,” said Lemon, who believes the building and church are central to the Pueblo community.
“Not just members in this community, but anyone who needs something, we see that they get what they need.”
In her role as the steward, Lemon is Hector’s back-up pastor and helps with events hosted at the church. The church’s history includes meetings of the Colorado Women’s Clubs of Colorado in 1917, of the Negro Business and Civic League in 1919 and local NAACP meetings.
The church was also listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide first published in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green, a Black postman who included the names of businesses that Black travelers could visit safely without fear of racism or violence.
In the Church’s basement community space, rows of tables are lined up before a small stage where schools have gathered for lessons and educational performances, according to Lemon and Hector.
Lining the walls are images cut-out of what Lemon referred to as “Black calendars,” which date back to the 1990s.
Each image depicts a Black individual working in one of several different capacities, ranging from “Cowboy” to “Miner” to “Freight Driver.” Below each are descriptions detailing the role Black men and women played in the industry, all of which were handwritten by a local schoolteacher, according to Lemon.
Lemon and Hector said images like these help educate and inspire younger generations, and along with the building renovations, they hope that the building will offer a safe space for the Pueblo community for years to come.
“This here is a shelter for people, for our children and our grandchildren when they can say, ‘Oh, my dad been here. My dad was here when the Church was built. My grandparents were here and my grandparents brought pews,” said Hector.
“So we’re trying to just beautify the Church so they’ll be proud of it and they’ll have something to come back to.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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