Juneteenth Black church Colonial Williamsburg Virginia.

A groundbreaking is scheduled in Virginia for the rebuilding of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches. The Juneteenth ceremony will be held Thursday at Colonial Williamsburg, a museum that owns the land where the church stood. First Baptist Church of Williamsburg officially established itself in 1776. Its free and enslaved congregants erected their first meetinghouse around 1805. The wooden building was destroyed by a tornado in 1834. The museum uncovered the brick foundation in 2020. The church will be rebuilt using pine, poplar and oak woods, which were common in the 1800s. The reconstructed church will open next year.