The Presbyterian Historical Society needs your help to document African American lives, work, and witness in our increasingly multicultural Church.

Through the African American Leaders and Congregations initiative, PHS is digitizing African American congregations’ earliest records. African American congregations can have their session minutes and registers imaged at PHS, up to 1200 pages of text, at no cost. We can then either secure the original records in the archives, or return them to the church. 

We are also bringing into the archives the personal records of prominent church workers. In 2020, we processed the personal records of Gayraud Wilmore, putting people in touch with the chief Presbyterian theoretician of Black Liberation theology. In 2021, we’ve begun a partnership with the Center for Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary to unite the personal papers of Katie Geneva Cannon in one digital archive.

Contact David Staniunas at dstaniunas@history.pcusa.org to hear more about our efforts to digitize the records of historically Black PC(USA) congregations at no cost and to help us document Black lives, work, and witness in the church.