Our history continues ...
A century ago, people of different races were separated by a system of ungodly laws and Blacks in St. Petersburg were barred from white places of worship. St. Augustine’s was conceived following months of planning, when the Vicar of Tampa’s St. James Episcopal Church set out across Tampa Bay on a mission to those denied the Lord’s table
Looking south down 4th St, at the intersection with 1st Ave. N in 1927 State Archives of FL
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That August of 1927, Father John E. Culmer brought the radical inclusion of Christ’s love into the homes of a few Black Episcopalians living south of Central Avenue, the dividing line in this then rigidly segregated city. From this first “preaching station,” the celebration of the Eucharist grew. Services moved into Davis Elementary school at the city’s first Black public housing complex, Jordan Park.
Father Culmer moved away in 1928 and was replaced by the Reverend Eugene Avery—our first Black priest. Soon a committee of parishioners from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (now Cathedral) approached Father Avery and lay leader Joseph Albury, Sr., to sponsor a new mission church and to help secure an appropriate building for it. The committee obtained ten signatures from Black parishioners worshipping at Davis Elementary, and a petition was submitted to Bishop Wing of what was then the Diocese of South Florida. St. Augustine’s received mission status in 1946.
Father Avery and the ten charter members drew plans for our first church home, a one-room building at Prescott Street and 6th Avenue South. The first service was held there on February 27, 1949. The building would remain home to St. Augustine’s until August 1968, throughout the period of seismic local, regional and national civil rights turmoil.
Over the following years, as St. Augustine’s flourished under devoted and widely known clergy from across the country, it began to outgrow the church building on Prescott St.
In 1966, through the combined leadership of Father Vincent Flemmings and devoted parishioner Charles Ford, an educator and expert draftsman, the Diocese approved a loan which enabled St. Augustine’s to purchase a four-acre tract on 26th Ave. South. Construction commenced that same year based upon plans drawn by Ford, who largely built the church himself. The first service was celebrated on August 25, 1968. With Mrs. (Inez) Ford leading our Altar Guild and often faithfully preparing our altar for worship to this very day.
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