W. Lee.

According to a recent report rendered by the clerk and treasurer, the
congregation has during the pastorate of Dr. Willis raised more than
$68,000 for general expenses and $1,850 for their Old Folk's Home.
This does not by any means account for the amount raised for
charitable purposes, which include home and foreign missions. The
support given needy members and institutions of learning, traveling
ministers, and the like, has amounted approximately to $35,000 or
$40,000. The church, moreover, has been very generous in the support
of home missions, a duty decidedly emphasized by Dr. Willis in
contradistinction to the inclination of Dr. Lee, who emphasized
foreign missions.[36a]

Baptists in another part of the city were planning an additional
organization. The First Baptist Church of South Washington was
organized on Sixth Street between G and H Streets, Southwest, in 1866.
Alfred Bolden was the first pastor. Two buildings have been erected on
the present site. One Mr. Lee afterward served as the pastor until the
coming of Henry C. Robinson, who exhibited energy that promised a
bright future. Early in the history of the church, as an outcome of an
internal agitation, however, 54 excluded members organized the
Virginia Avenue Baptist Church and were afterward joined by others,
thus weakening the parent organization; but in 1891 the property was
valued at $25,000 and the church had a membership of 500.[37]

Another Baptist church soon resulted from a secession. In 1873 William
Shanklin, Peter Gray, Abraham Blackmore, Edward Montague, and
Catherine Wilson left the Fifth Baptist Church, now the Vermont Avenue
Baptist Church, and formed, with their friends, Mt. Jezreel. Since
then it has grown to be the largest Negro Baptist church in Southeast
Washington, though it is also the youngest. The church, when first
formed, was located on Van Street. It grew rapidly, and soon was able
to buy desirable property on the southeast corner of Fifth and E
Streets and begin the erection of its present handsome church edifice.
In 1888 the building was finished and it was dedicated the first
Sunday in November of that year, when Dr. Robert Johnson, of the
Metropolitan Baptist Church, preached the dedicatory sermon. Its
membership numbers about 300 people, and the church is in a very
prosperous condition.[38]

The organization of another Baptist church soon followed. In
September, 1876, there was organized on Nichol's Avenue, H