Reverend
Robert Grant
1872 - 1876

Zion Hill Baptist Church is one of nine churches that grew out of Friendship Baptist Church of Atlanta Georgia, which was established in 1862.

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Ten years later, in 1872, seven members of Friendship and Reverend Robert Grant, all former slaves, stepped out in faith and organized Zion Hill in a brush harbor on the corner of Glenn and Humphries Streets, closer to their homes.  The newly formed congregation worshiped in the brush harbor until a more substantial dwelling was donated to them so long as it was used for public worship. Reverend Grant selected four members of the founding group, Ben Thrasher, Henry Gunn, Dick Jones and Darby, as deacons.  In addition to the Deacon Board, Reverend Grant later organized the Mothers Board, Choir and Sunday School.  

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The published history of Zion Hill has indicated that Reverend Grant only served either “a short while” or for one year.”  A document, recently consulted in the Terrill Collection (papers of eighth pastor, L. M. Terrill) in the Archives Research Center at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, indicates that Reverend Grant served from 1872 to 1876 and that he and the three other lay members founded and organized Zion Hill.   The papers also comment that even though there was a national panic and depression in 1873, God prepared these men spiritually, numerically and financially, and near the year 1876, Reverend Grant resigned after a successful pastorate.  Reverend Grant passed in 1896 and was buried in the famed South-View Cemetery.

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As a testament to Reverend Grant’s business foresight and entrepreneurial spirit, D.L Henderson, author of South-View:  An African American City of the Dead, reports that he purchased three shares of stock in South-View Cemetery with five other businessmen to provide, according to the charter, “a burial place… a fit resting place for the dead.”  On February 20, 1886, the Atlanta Constitution reported that “the colored people of the city” were buying a new cemetery.  South-View’s charter application was submitted by six African American men:  Jacob McKinley, George W. Graham, Robert Grant, Charles H. Morgan, Albert Watts and John Render. Since its charter of April 21, 1886, to the present, the South-View Cemetery Association has a rich history, providing more than 100 acres of manicured grounds and crypts, where notables like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Benjamin Mays were originally buried before being moved to the King Center and Morehouse College, respectively. 

 

In addition to Grant, three ministers served at Glenn and Humphries Streets: Reverend Jesse Davis (1876-1880), Reverend Cyrus Wilkins (1880-1885), and Reverend Crawford G. Holmes (1888-1897).