A church in Odessa receives grant money for restoration.
The Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church is among 30 historically Black Churches in the country to receive a share of an $8.5 million grant for restoration work.
The church needs a lot of work after shutting down in 2015, and that work has started.
Work includes restoring the stained-glass windows, and the plan is to make it a community and cultural center.
Steven Johnson is the treasurer for Friends of Zoar – the grassroots advocacy group that secured the grant – and he says this building is linked to history.
"The legacy of the building is that it was quite possibly an Underground Railroad stop. It's always difficult for historians to say, absolutely, for fact, that it happened, but we believe, or we've been led to believe that it was a stop. Of course prior to the start of the Civil War, the church was formed by a group of freed and enslaved Black parishioners who decided that they wanted their own place of worship," said Johnson.
Johnson hopes the project is completed in two years or so.
He explains plans for the church once restoration work is completed.
"We hope it would become a community center, a cultural center celebrating the history of the building and that congregation,” said Johnson. “We would expect to hold celebrations during, for example, Black History Month, Martin Luther King's birthday, Juneteenth celebration."
The Zoar Church was established in 1845.
