Clayton is commemorating a Black Baptist church that was forced to move by city officials in the early 1960s.

First Baptist Church of Clayton will be honored with a ceremony April 30. The church was located on South Brentwood Boulevard where the Park Tower condominiums now stand. City officials will install a historic marker near the site.

The property was purchased by church leaders in 1894 for about $20, historian and retired Clayton teacher Donna Rogers-Beard said. The church was central to what was once a large Black population in the city.

“Everything seems to have been done there, the funerals, the weddings, fundraisers, fish fries that involved seemingly the whole Clayton community,” Rogers-Beard said.

At its peak, the church held baptisms attended by more than 1,000 people. Within two years, the congregation grew from 67 members to 600 members, and it had to build a new church on the same property, Rogers-Beard said. She credited the Rev. Willis Louis Rhodes, who joined in its early days, for helping to grow the church.

In the mid-20th century, Clayton officials started urban renewal efforts and rezoned parts of the city to grow its commercial businesses.

“Taxes go up, and many people who owned them could not afford the taxes,” Rogers-Beard said. “[Clayton] paid people really a little bit more than their property was worth, but meanwhile it decimates the Black community.”

The church was part of the rezoned area and found its new home on Union Boulevard in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood where it has remained since and, there, was renamed Clayton Missionary Baptist Church.

“I often wondered why a church in the city of St. Louis was named Clayton,” Pastor L. James Tate said. “When I learned the history of the church, and that it was once First Baptist of Clayton in the city of Clayton, Missouri, I began to do research on it and I learned a lot of things in regards to that.”

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Clayton Missionary Baptist Church

Tate said most of the current congregants were either members of the original church or descendants of its original members. The church has remained on Union Boulevard since the 1960s but is in the process of moving to Clara Avenue. Tate said the recognition is a step forward and means a lot to the members.

“The fact of the matter is, there are many people who are very, very emotional about this whole entire ceremony,” Tate said. “It’s almost [like] ‘we apologize and from this point on’ we’re going to move forward. And they’re happy about it.”

The remembrance is the latest effort by Clayton officials to recognize its once-sprawling Black community through markers, monuments and ceremonies. In 2024, city leaders installed a marker on Carondelet Avenue in downtown Clayton dedicated to displaced residents. A plaque was also installed at the former Attucks School, the city’s second school to teach Black children.

Clayton leaders recently honored the Philippine community in the DeMun neighborhood that was displaced after the 1904 World’s Fair. They will also remember the Osage Nation with a plaque at Oak Knoll Park later this year.

“It’s certainly just a part of just this need that we all felt to begin recognizing and just telling a fuller story of our past,” Mayor Clayton Bridget McAndrew said. “So it’s just kind of one step in doing that.”