- [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by... (residents chattering) (residents chattering) (light music) (light music) (light music) (light music) (band music) (band music) (band music) - You knew something was coming 'cause in the distance, you could hear that band, but you could hear them drums, you could hear those horns.

And then if you really, really look, you could see those flags waving in the sky.

(band music) - [Announcer] Crossing over City Avenue going west on Lancaster Avenue, you leave Philadelphia and enter the suburbs, what becomes known as the Main Line.

These are mainly wealthy white communities.

Five minutes out of the city, you reach the town of Ardmore which has been home to black folks since the mid-1880s when many migrated from the South to work for wealthy Main Line families in their homes, caring for children, cooking, cleaning and chauffeuring.

Black neighborhoods like this grew nearby.

Close, but not too close to the wealthy white communities where black people created a sense of community pride as they raised their children and built their own churches, their own businesses and their own cultural institutions.

- It's very important that the history of the black section of Lower Merion Township be seen and heard because we are those who have been unseen while we're being looked at all at the same time.

And so it's time for our history to be known because we have a wealth of stories and things that lent to the wellbeing of Lower Merion Township.

- Marching, being involved in the drill team, it was phenomenal.

And we were a bad band and we were precision.

We didn't just get out there and march, we were disciplined, left flank, right flank, to the rear.

- I could see my dad them shoulders just start to go back and soon as he gets to Simpson Road and that band's playing, and they had to make that little pivot turn, and he just made his turn and, oh my God, it's a turn, I don't think nobody can duplicate that turn.

He just had that dip in that turn and he just knew his stuff was good.

- I was blessed to be able to march in the parade with my grandfather, I believe it was a year or so or it was a couple years right before he passed away.

But most of the veterans they get to ride in the van and they get to wave and be a part of the crowd and I got to march right behind him.

- Learning our steps, getting our uniforms 'cause you know the big parade's coming and that was the highlight.

I think it is the highlight of Ardmore, the parade.

I mean, you have people coming that used to live here that moved away.

Memorial Day, you start seeing them come back and it's such a joy to see so many faces you haven't seen in a long time.

- Boss Persuaders was a drill team in Ardmore who won accolades and awards from all over the country and I was actually a member of that team until I graduated from high school.

The first time I put my boots on and I went over the road for my first parade, I'm telling you there's no feeling like it because you have joined a family that a lot of people didn't get to join.

- The parade was just phenomenal, kids would decorate their bikes, they act in the parade.

One of the biggest things was the American Legion had hot dogs and sodas.

And people would line up all the way up Simpson Road to get to those hot dogs and sodas that they were giving away at the American Legion.

- [Announcer] Ardmore's Memorial Day parade starts and ends at the Leon Spencer Reid American Legion Post 547.

The Legion as it is known to locals has been an important part of the Lower Merion Township Memorial Day parade since the 1940s.

The parade honors veterans who have served and died.

The Legion showcases their own bands, marching units and the scouting programs.

It has had an important impact on the community for nine decades.

- The American Legion is one of our shining lights.

I mean, it's one of our beacons.

It's where we come to.

It's part of Ardmore, it's a major part.

- Leon Spencer Reid was a World War I veteran.

He was from Brynmar actually, but there was no post in Brynmar and the post became because of people in Ardmore at that time even it became Leon Spencer Reid as a result of his being a military man from the area, too.

- The oldest black social organization on the Main Line was created back in 1950 and was created at the American Legion.

Back in the '50s, banks weren't called banks, they weren't called savings and loans, they were called thrift organizations.

Though you were able to save in those thrift organizations, many of those men for various reasons could not borrow or get loans from those thrift organizations.

These men decided that if they gathered together and they collected $5 a month from the 20 of them that were a part of this group that they would have money and to be able to loan that out to those guys that had specific needs.

It gave them an outlet to get money from club thrifty that they couldn't get from the thrift organizations or the banks.

- [Announcer] The Playground remains a place of gathering, socializing and recreation.

Its summer camp started in the 1970s and still exists today.

It is the centerpiece of the neighborhood, an athletic and social hub where communitywide events continue to survive and thrive.

- There was a need in the community and for me it was a summer job from college and I was hired at this center.

It was called the Soul Shack at the time and we developed a camp called Soul Shack Day Camp and it's still running today to strengthen their skills, but it was just a place of unity, it was a place where the east people from the east side saw the people from the west side, very good experiences.

- Well, that was a safe haven, the Playground.

You just met everybody over there.

All your cousins, all your friends.

- I remember Mr. Young, God bless his heart.

"Get off that bike.

"Sit down in that swing.

"No running."

- He was the second father of so many kids in Ardmore.

He, wow, he was the type of man that watched over everybody.

He was father, friend, mentor, whatever you needed him to be.

- My fondest memories is just the playing basketball, being part of the summer league.

There were programs during the year, the tutoring programs.

Again, because it was so instrumental in my upbringing and I know a lot of people can likely say the same thing, it was a big part of our lives.

- And again, just shows you the connectivity of places like the Playground and the American Legion.

They were tied together.

- We're still here.

I mean, I grew up in a town where it was just a bustling town of African Americans.

We don't have all that we used to have, we don't have the businesses we used to have, but we still have the American Legion post, we still have the community center, we still have the Playground.

- I have grave concern for the gentrification and the way that we're basically being pushed out right in front of our eyes.

We're being pushed out, we're being priced out, we're being bulldozed over, literally bulldozed over.

- [Announcer] The beauty and power of our community will be seen and we are not giving up.

(band music) (band music) - I've lived in Ardmore all of my life.

My whole upbringing is focused and centered around Ardmore, what it was to me, how it helped me to become the person that I am, how it is now and how it's changing 'cause I've lived here all my life.

- I live in Ardmore.

I've been there for about eight years now and I moved my kids here from the west coast and chose Ardmore specifically because of its diversity and have made a lot of connections with community members, Carol being one of them.

- For me as an Ardmore resident and seeing how Ardmore is changing in the name of progress and that the black community, the Ardmore that I knew is starting to shrink.

I thought it was important one, and this was echoed by several of the people in the video, that we needed to let our young people know what Ardmore was, what it had offered and what it still could be.

It was also important to let the larger Lower Merion community know about Ardmore from our perspective.

There are some people who didn't who lived in Ardmore a long time and had no idea that there was a black population in Ardmore.

And we'd been there since the 1880s.

- These stories are really, really important to generations of people and also as Carol mentioned, the younger generation doesn't know and because the younger generation has less of the opportunity to afford to stay in the neighborhood, we think it's important that they know this story.

- Gentrification is still happening.

There are still places that are proposed to have big apartment buildings right in Ardmore.

The Ardmore community, the black community is still working to keep the institutions that we have viable and active and growing, like our community center and our senior center, the Playground, the Memorial Day Parade, the American Legion, they're still working to keep things going.

I'm just hoping that maybe seeing this film might encourage people to say that we have to work harder, we have to... More people have to be a part of keeping what so many of us loved.

We're not going to give up.

We're going to keep fighting to make sure that many aspects of Ardmore aren't erased and more importantly that they are seen by the whole community.

(upbeat music) (light music) - Mt.

Zion AME Church, Devon is the oldest recorded African American church of any denomination on the entire Main Line.

The cornerstone was laid October 1861.

Well, my name is Bertha Jackmon and I'm the church historian here at Mt.

Zion AME Church, Devon.

- My name is Bhelly Bagbonon, I am the eldest son of Ms. Bertha Jackmon and I am a high school history teacher and supporter of Mt.

Zion AME Church, Devon.

- Oh my goodness, it's been close to 55, 50, 55 years since I've been in here.

- Oh beautiful.

- Dear God, I don't wanna cry.

- You can if you want.

- Oh, look at Mt.

Zion, it's just like I remember.

They would have your Christmas and Easter programs and I was always very proud to be able to get the piece, an Easter piece that you would learn and recite in front of the congregation.

- The black churches played a big role in the social life of black people in the Tradifrin Township and all of them actually up and down the Main Line really.

It gave us a stability, somewhere to go, a place of belonging.

- If something happened to someone in the community where there was some form of discrimination, the adults would come and they'd meet at the church and try to find ways to resolve the issue, to support the person.

- [Bhelly] The school fight was a organized, strategic and pragmatic boycott by dozens of black families whose children attended schools in the Tradifrin East Town School District.

- Mt.

Zion was the meeting place.

That's why Mt.

Zion is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It turned out to be a stepping stone, a training ground for the civil rights that happened in the '50s.

- Not only was the Byrwin School Fight 22 years before the passing of Brown v. Board legislation, but it was also 16 years before the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

It resonates not only regionally, not only nationally, but I would even argue globally to a certain extent.

(piano music) Encore.

(Edith laughs) - Bless your heart.

- It's just the fact that you're standing here after 50-some years in this little church where you learned and started your music career.

And you up here playing the piano.

- [Edith] God is good.

- God is great.

- We're on what they call the Main Line which is about 15, 17-mile stretch depending on how you count it from Overbrook, let's say Overbrook Train Station in Philadelphia out to Paoria.

- We're leaving the old church right now and the cemetery that's connected right next to it.

And where we're headed is we're going into the new church, which is what we actually use today.

The congregation and many of the people who come to visit Mt.

Zion AME Church in Devon have been using this building since 1990.

(organ music) The old church, we're trying to preserve it and restore it so that maybe one day we can continue to use the building.

- Reverend Martin, Loraine Barbara Calhoun and yours truly visited the Messianic design studio to see the process of their restoration of our stained glass windows.

They are working on those windows, they're restoring them for us to reinstall the windows once we get the roof done.

What I understand in my research, these windows, the stain glass went in somewhere around early 1920s and that they all did not go in at the same time.

- I'm quite sure when these windows were placed, they were not expecting that new church to be built.

This would've been it forever until Jesus came back.

It was just something people wanted to leave so that their family member would remember for decades to come.

Their heritage, their legacy was here in Mt.

Zion in one of these windows.

(organ music) - You know black folks have been in Tradifin Township.

We've been here, whether that's free people or enslaved people, we've been here.

Who are these people, what are their stories, how are they related to folks that are living today?

That's my focus, that's what I wanna know.

Do the people that are living today know this?

Do they know about people in their family history how they participated in history?

- [Bhelly] This cemetery is the only African American cemetery of any denomination on the Main Line.

- [Bertha] We don't know how many people are buried here, don't know the very first funeral.

I would love to know that, but we're still investigating and that's ongoing process.

- My name is Tia Manon, my relationship to Tradifin Township is my ancestors who are buried here at Mt.

Zion, Devon.

My grandmother always got angry with me because I didn't listen to their stories.

My father found my grandmother's historical interview from 1984 and suddenly I had a name to look for.

Sophia is an interesting character.

She's one of my heroes.

Sophia came around and raised my grandmother.

I'd seen the pictures on Find A Grave.

I still didn't make the connection.

I still did not make the connection.

I literally stumbled upon the gravestone one day.

Cool, wow, there it is!

There's so much excitement in just going into an archive and be like, you got this record and yeah, I got bit by the history bug.

- [Raheem] Archival research particularly here at Mt.

Zion AME Church in Devon is one critical step in order to fit into the larger tapestry of what African Americans were doing up and down the Main Line.

- Identifying any unmarked graves there, that would be phenomenal.

That would be phenomenal.

- My specialization is in what you call remote sensing.

So one of the first techniques we used was magnetic radiometry.

This is Ms. Jackmon here collecting electrical resistance data.

We did a ground-penetrating radar survey.

The box inside has an antennae that sends a radio signal down, that radio signal bounces off of changes.

So let's say, hey, a grave shaft or the top of a coffin.

We can begin the process of relocating people who are accounted for in the registry for the cemetery that Ms. Jackmon has.

This is a topography so every one of these black splotches is a slight depression.

So combination of that and the radar tells us that there's probably one there, one there, both of those are marked, though.

This one, this one, who knows what this rectangle is.

- [Raheem] Could you contextualize the significance of seeing your ancestors' gravestones and the potential of unmarked graves here in this cemetery?

- Just to know who we came from, what their story was, what did they see, what did they come through, what jobs did they have, how did they live.

- It's so powerful and these are the shoulders we stand on, that's why we need to tell these stories.

- There was a newspaper article talking about this church.

And I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but they said, well, he predicts in a few short years they're gonna be forced out and the church will not exist within a few years and that in the early '70s.

Guess what?

This church, the congregation and black folks on the Main Line are still here.

♪ I don't know how my mother walked her troubles out ♪ ♪ I don't know how my father stood his ground ♪ ♪ I don't know how my people survived slavery ♪ ♪ I do remember that's why I believe ♪ - My connection is that my family has been attending Mt.

Zion AME Church in Devon Tradifin Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania since let me see I'm gonna say the late 1950s.

And my mother and sister and brothers were members there.

And right now, I'm the church historian and I've been the church historian since 2009.

- I am Ms. Bertha Jackmon's eldest son and I remember my first memory of Mt.

Zion AME Church in Devon around 1997, maybe early 1998 in the wintertime and I have been a strong supporter and advocate for church ceremonies and the church's mission particularly as a pillar in the community.

And I'd say that my closest connection to the church is it has become more of a safe haven for me in times of distress and in times of struggle.

- I am the production facilitator for the Precious Places project at historic Mt.

Zion.

The film that we created that Sister Bertha directed and really helmed is called the Cornerstone, Mt.

Zion AME Church, Devon.

- Mt.

Zion has a story to tell and what a wonderful way to be able to get that story out there.

We've been in newspapers and so on, but this is just another elevation to get the church's history and story and the community out there.

So that's why the opportunity arose and we took it.

- This is a story that the history books have glued together.

I feel we all feel that sense that people need to hear this story.

So that is why I followed my mother's lead and helped and did my best to help make this film.

- The Cornerstone reminds people not only of history that's not always there, but it reminds the current people that people are still searching.

In the film, you see a lot of active searching and you see a lot of trying to find something.

So the film represents I think the people of the community that we're still looking, we haven't let it go.

- One of the major, major contributions of Mt.

Zion was the Byrwin School Fight.

The story of the Berwyn School Fight is one of many school segregation stories in the state of Pennsylvania, but this particular school fight was successful.

Not only was it successful, but it also influenced the 1935 Pennsylvania Civil Rights law that passed in the state of Pennsylvania.

Mt.

Zion AME Church and the cemetery has been recognized by the National Register of Historic Places for that school fight.

And so that's another little feather in our cap that there's another national status.

- Learning the story of Raymond Pace Alexander and learning the impact that a small grass roots organization of black families are able to accomplish when they put their mind to it, I can only hope that current communities can learn the same lessons that the Berwyn School Fight is able to teach.

- The magnitude of getting the information out there and being part of something great meaning educating the world about the lives, the communities of black folks here in this area and anywhere, just history.

I can't believe that I'm living long enough to be able to participate in something like that.

It gives me such joy.

(light music) (light music) (light music) (light music) (light music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by...