Members and guests of the Holly

Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church participated in its Black History

Month celebration recently.

History of the AME church was

explored and it was learned that the sect was organized in 1816. It developed

from a congregation formed by a group of Philadelphia-area slaves and

former slaves who withdrew from St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church

because of discrimination.

The church that was built is

now known as Mother Bethel and had as its first ordained minister one

Richard Allen. He was ordained by Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist

Episcopal Church in 1799 and in 1816, he was consecrated as bishop by

Asbury.

After the Civil War, the church

spread rapidly in the South and currently has about 1.2 million members.

Holly Grove was begun in what

is now Peachtree City in the last of the 1890s and is enjoying its 105 th

year.

The celebration included a

plaque to Gerri Holt, who has given much of her time to the church and

has donated a display in the Family Center depicting the black history

of Fayette County as well as recognizing historic black figures in the

past.

One of the historic figures

was Martin R. Delany, who was born a slave in Virginia in 1812. His father

purchased John's freedom and he then attended the Bethel Church School

in Pittsburgh. A doctor in town employed him as an assistant. He attended

Harvard Medical School from 1849 to 1852. During the Civil War he recruited

soldiers for the Union Army. He was the first African-American to receive

a regular army commission, that of major. He died in Ohio in 1885.

Speaker for the occasion was

Sam Matchett. Reared on a farm in Valdosta, he was the seventh of 11 children.

While attending Lowndes County High School, he became the first African-American

to play on the school tennis team.

He later graduated from Morehouse

College with a BA

degree in history, graduating magna cum laude. He obtained his law degree

from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1984 and is currently

a partner in the King and Spalding law firm.

He related that there is nothing

more precious than freedom and one way it can be obtained is by education.

"A good education provides

options," he said, "and options allow you to choose whatever

path you wish to pursue. If we give our children a good education, God

will take care of the rest."

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