KNOXVILLE, Tenn. ( WATE ) — Greater Warner Tabernacle A.M.E. Zion Church was the first Black church in Knoxville and continues to serve its community today.
For Pastor Cleo A. Brooks Jr., the history at Greater Warner makes his role even more special.
“It brings on another dimension of responsibility as far as feeling like holding up that banner, of being not only a church but being a beacon in the community and having such a long and rich history,” he said.
Brooks said that throughout history, the church has been a place of refuge for the Black community, especially when they weren’t welcomed elsewhere.
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“In the Black community as a whole, the church has always been that grounding place, that whenever the community, the Black people in the community, if they didn’t have anywhere else they could go, they knew that they could turn to the church,” he said.
Greater Warner was established in 1845 and was originally called Community Church. As the chairman of the trustee board for the church, Keira Wyatt wants to continue that sense of community through a new project.