Actor Malcolm Jamal Warnerencourages people to ring the bell.
To ring the bell, Click Here:
letfreedomringchallenge.org
Against a contemporary backdrop of racial tension, Colonial Williamsburg restored a church bell that has been silent since segregation and now will let it ring for freedom for all of Black History Month. I n 1776, the year of America’s independence, a group of slaves secretly founded the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. The church, which celebrates its 240th anniversary in 2016, is today one of the country’s oldest African-American houses of Baptist worship, and a symbol of the faith, struggle, and perseverance that marks the black experience in America.
The First Baptist Church — whose first members met under thatched arbors in the woods — later moved to a church building and acquired a bell in the late 19th century. Since the days of segregation and Jim Crow, the bell has been inoperable…unheard throughout the tumult and progress of the civil rights movement and in the presence of famed worshipers including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which has played a key role in building the church at the current site, has pledged to restore the bell to working condition and to challenge the nation to ring it throughout the day — every day — for Black History Month in February 2016.
