Just before the new year, Chase Wright got a call: A church was on fire.
He wasn’t surprised — not altogether.
Wright knew there’d been unhoused people sleeping in the vacant sanctuary, where he’d effectively taken over as a caretaker. He knew they’d set fires to stay warm amid a late December freeze. He knew developers would come calling, again, to try and scoop up the land, and he knew what the answer was going to be, again: no.
For Wright and others, the now-scorched post-war, red-brick church on Blessing Avenue is worth more than whatever they’d inevitably offer.
Wright is in the midst of restoring the building for the St. John Regular Baptist District Association, a collective of Black Baptist churches that once owned all of the Northeast Austin neighborhood that bears its name.
Wright and his nonprofit, the Hungry Hill Foundation, have started a campaign to revive the long-vacant site and make it a resource center that will include tiny homes for people experiencing homelessness, while preserving the mission that's been a cornerstone of the church since 1867.
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Wright didn't grow up in St. Johns. He grew up in Hungry Hill, another historically underserved Black neighborhood near Springdale Road. When Wright was young, he said, everyone from his church helped their neighbors, whether it was to provide day care meals or a couch.
"Back then, I couldn't name more than three people that actually was considered homeless," he said.
But as the pandemic took hold, things changed and more people were living on the streets.
In response, Wright started what's now Hungry Hill, which connects people with resources to get jobs and get off the streets. By his estimation, the organization has helped 187 people get employed and into stable situations.
As a native Austinite, Wright knew St. Johns was a historically Black neighborhood — way up north by his standards. He'd been there a few times, but it was kind of foreign to him.
But in 2021, he ventured north to help folks camping illegally at the St. Johns property during the freeze that crippled Austin.
Outside the weathered red-brick tabernacle he saw a stout, unsuspecting monument that has stood, tall as it can, since 1906. It's dedicated to an orphanage for Austin's Black orphans, who, at the time, were legally banned from receiving state services. Carved in the stone were names Wright didn't know: L.L. Campbell, M. Hurd, M. Russell.
Wright got curious. He started looking into the history.
A history 'depleted'
The roots of the St. John Regular Baptist District Association stretch back to 1867, when four Black clergymen gathered under an oak tree near Austin's famed Treaty Oak.
They divined a plan to unite Black churches, focusing on a mission to uplift and educate newly freed Black Texans. The history of the four founding fathers, as Wright sees it, hasn't been highlighted among Black Austinites.
Jacob Fontaine founded six Baptist churches and one of the first Black newspapers in the South. The Rev. Calvin Allen founded the St. John Colony in Caldwell County, a thriving Black community where Azie Taylor Morton, the first Black U.S. Treasury secretary grew up. An Austin elementary school bears another founder's: name, John Winn.
Wright, who went to that elementary school, said he had no idea who it was named after. Discovering the founders' history, he said, was "insane."
"These people were businessmen. These people were educators," he said. "I went to Winn! This history is depleted. ... I'm 34, and I never heard these stories until I decided to go research them."
The association of Black Baptist churches in Travis County eventually bought the 303-acre plot of land that would become St. Johns — from Klansmen during Reconstruction, legend has it.
The land became a community for share-croppers, and the association began missionary work on the site that now hosts ACC's Highland Mall campus. In 1906, the leader of the association, L.L. Campbell, expanded the church's mission, establishing the St. Johns Orphanage and Institution.
As Reconstruction gave way to legal segregation, the Rev. A.W.A. Mays, who now leads the Regular Baptist Association, said the school was borne of necessity: the rights Black Austinites enjoyed in the shadow of the Civil War had eroded.
"Those rights ... were suddenly taken away by exclusion and by violence and intimidation," he said. "Organizations like the association were very important to combat that and deal with that as it was a very strong force for a lot of years in America that legal sanctioned discrimination was in place."
The St. Johns Orphanage also hosted a homecoming each summer that attracted thousands of Black Texans from Baptist churches across the state. People would set up tents and camp out for the event, with speakers ranging from Booker T. Washington to former Texas Gov. Edmund Davis. The city commonly called them "encampments."
In 1916, at least 15,000 people attended the homecoming, according to The Austin Statesman. At the time, the city's population was roughly twice that.
Decades later, the property was left in a state of disrepair, the orphanage was closed, considered a haunt for local teenagers. In 1956, developers began circling the property after a suspicious fire.
"Subdividers have hungrily eyed the tract since Austin's homebuilding boom began after World War II," The Austin Statesman wrote. "Negotiations reportedly have been difficult because [of] many members of the [Baptist Association]."
In the years that followed, the association sold more and more parcels of its 303 acres, as the neighborhood itself was starved of city resources, but it kept the Blessing Avenue property, building the church in 1958.
That, too, fell into disrepair after the association's membership dwindled.
'Not stopping the show'
With the St. Johns revitalization project, Wright wants to revive the association's legacy of mass gatherings — encampments, as they were called back then. Now, that word has a different connotation.
"That's what my organization does. We go into encampments," he joked. "We go into places where people need opportunity, people need resources, and we bring them to them."
Wright partnered with the association on an ambitious, $6-million plan.
So far he's received pledges for about half of that, and he expects it could take another year to get things going again. The fire is a setback, but Wright hopes it'll push folks to pitch in.
"It's kind of unfortunate, but at the same time, it's not stopping the show now," he said. "And if anything, I would hope that people start to help contribute. Two heads are better than one, five heads are better than two, 10 heads are better than that. So, if people can come in with resources, we can get this place back to serving and changing lives."
Wright wants to set up tiny homes, similar to those at the Esperanza Community. He also plans to open a kitchen, staffed by people transitioning out of homelessness, to help feed the homeless population near St. Johns and across the City of Austin as it expands its shelter space. There would be a food pantry and a so-called confidence closet, where people could get haircuts and fresh clothes. He also wants to partner with local health organizations to set up a clinic.
The Rev. Mays said he believes the effort is in keeping with the legacy of the association and can serve as a reclamation for Black Austin history, too.
"We have continued for these 150-plus years, so it's very much something we treasure and value," he said, "and we'd like to see it revitalized."
