Second Baptist Church

Second Baptist Church is Michigan’s oldest Black congregation, founded in 1836 by thirteen formerly enslaved people who broke away from Detroit’s First Baptist Church after white members demanded dues from Black parishioners while denying them a vote in church affairs. For nearly three decades, the church’s basement — known as the Croghan Street Station, after the street’s original name — served as one of the last safe houses on the Underground Railroad before freedom seekers crossed the Detroit River into Canada.

Church member George DeBaptiste ran a steamship that ferried escapees across the river, and the church hosted Frederick Douglass and John Brown, who met at member William Webb’s nearby home to help plan the raid on Harpers Ferry. Historians estimate Second Baptist alone helped four to five thousand people reach freedom. The Detroit Underground Railroad Historical Society now leads tours of the church, including a 90-minute “Flight to Freedom” experience that walks visitors through the same basement rooms where escapees once hid, run Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday by reservation.

On our radar as one of the only surviving, documented Underground Railroad stations left standing in Detroit, and still an active congregation nearly 200 years later.