New Mount Olivet A.M.E. Zion Church

Front inscription

This church, organized in 1873, held its first services in private homes and then under a brush arbor on Pond St., near the railroad tracks. First called Mt. Olivet Methodist Zion Church, it bought this tract in 1896 and built its first permanent church, a frame building, in 1898. Renamed Mt. Olivet A.M.E. Zion Church ca. 1900, it built this brick church 1923-27, under Revs. J.D. Virgil and C.L. Flowers.

Reverse inscription

The church was renamed New Mount Olivet A.M.E. Zion Church in 1937. In May 1961, when an interracial group sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the first Freedom Rides from Washington to New Orleans, the first violent opposition in the South occurred in the bus station in Rock Hill. That night this church held a mass meeting to honor and support the Freedom Riders.