CHURCH HISTORY
The beginning quote from the historical page of the 100th Anniversary booklet of the Union Baptist Church reads, “Surely, they must have had a burning desire to build this church”. Indeed that desire was great. Cambridge, Massachusetts in the last quarter of the 19th century was a bustling city for African Americans. The end of slavery and the Civil War brought many opportunities for work for southern blacks, and with the rise of industrialization, work was aplenty in the city. A steady stream of former slaves and sharecroppers, particularly from the Tidewater area of Virginia, came to the Boston area to fill the many domestic and service labor jobs vacated by Irish and Italian immigrants as they headed to the factories in New England. They joined with the population of free blacks already living here to bolster the economy in Cambridge with their sweat and toil. Into this mileau, Union Baptist Church was born.
The following is a list of clergy who held the post of Pastor:
- Rev. J. Horatio Carter – 1879 – 1886
- Rev. Dr. Jesse Harrell – 1886 – 1915
- Rev. James W. Brooks – 1916 – 1917
- Rev. Charles D. Douglass – 1917 – 1923
- Rev. Dr. Clanton Clay (C.C.) Somerville – 1924 – 1928
- Rev. Dr. F. Havis Davis – 1928 – 1947
- Rev. W. Marvin Gibson – 1948 – 1957
- Rev. Herbert O. Edwards – 1958 – 1961
- Rev. William J. McKissick – 1962 – 1966
- Rev. Rev. Robert Clark – 1967-70
- Rev. Dr. Herbert O. Edwards – 1970 – 1972
- Rev. Dr. Melvin G. Brown – 1975 – 1985
- Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown – 1988 – 2009
- Rev. Paul R. Ford – 2011 – 2017
THE REVEREND JARON S. GREEN