The Black Church Program is a community outreach-centered rights education, research, and law reform project operated in partnership with civic and faith-based groups, nonprofit corporations, and neighborhood associations in South Florida, particularly in the historically segregated neighborhood of Coconut Grove Village West (“Village West”). The program includes the Good Government Project and the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church Summer Freedom School.
Program highlights include community-based advocacy and organizing in support of the West Grove Trolley Garage Campaign, halting the discriminatory placement of a City of Coral Gables municipal bus depot in the historically segregated neighborhood of Coconut Grove Village West; the East Gables Trolley Access Campaign, obtaining municipal trolley service for residents of the historically segregated MacFarlane Homestead Subdivision and the Golden Gates District of East Coral Gables; the Old Smokey Steering Committee-Community Stakeholder Organization, sparking the investigation and cleanup of nearly a dozen contaminated municipal parks and the class action litigation in Styles v. City of Miami; the Coconut Grove Village West Housing and Community Development Task Force Campaign, mobilizing a fair-and-affordable housing coalition of Black churches, civic associations, and tenant and homeowner organizations now operating under the auspices of Grove Rights and Community Equity, Inc.; Grace, Inc. v. City of Miami, facilitating federal voting rights litigation challenging city-wide racial gerrymandering; the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church Summer Freedom School youth education project in development with the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance and other Village West stakeholders; the Good Government Project voter education resources to promote government transparency and accountability.
"Our intent is to create an archive for all interested churches so that they have a resource to teach the next generation and preserve their history."
