[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19133]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MT. SINAI BAPTIST CHURCH

  (Mr. GINGREY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to pay tribute to Mt. 
Sinai Baptist Church of Marietta, Georgia, celebrating 143 years of 
spiritual service to our community.
  The history of Mt. Sinai reaches back nearly as far as the history of 
Marietta itself. In 1864, 1 year before the Civil War ended, a group of 
black slaves gathered in the backwoods of Georgia and they began their 
own worship service, and by 1873 the now freed slaves built Mt. Sinai 
Baptist Church on a plot of land south of Marietta.
  They were not content to merely be a house of worship. Mt. Sinai 
created a school to educate the children of former slaves and became a 
central gathering place for the whole community.
  Mr. Speaker, today Mt. Sinai Baptist Church carries on that tradition 
as a spiritual and communal leader in Marietta. Currently under the 
guidance of Pastor Albert Johnson, the church is upholding its legacy 
of education and outreach, the same commitment that it has displayed 
for nearly 1\1/2\ centuries.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues to join me today in 
congratulating the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church on 143 years of service and 
request that they have at least 143 more.

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