(dramatic music) - [Narrator] A recent discovery in Colonial Williamsburg uncovered the foundations of one of the country's oldest African American churches.

Founded in 1776, by free and enslaved Blacks, First Baptist Church would meet in the brush arbors of the Green Springs Plantation.

- We're not called by King George.

We're not called by the Bishop of Canterbury.

We are called by God.

- [Narrator] Displaced by the Revolutionary War, the congregation would settle at this location on Nassau Street.

- We started looking for artifacts, had no idea that there were intact burials there.

- [Narrator] For decades, the church's rich beginnings were hidden by asphalt to provide parking for tourists, but have now been uncovered by archeologists and devices like ground penetrating radar.

- The radar typically sees down about maybe a meter, a meter and a half or so.

It's here in space, which is right about where the wall is.

- [Narrator] Technology has aided in finding two brick foundations, the first belonging to a small wood frame church believed to have been built in the early 1700s.

Historic accounts say that structure was destroyed by a tornado in 1834.

On top of that foundation, a larger one that matches the brick building built in 1856.

The second church stood near the corner of Nassau and Francis Streets for 100 years before it was torn down and paved over in 1957.

- I've uncovered a multitude of different types of artifacts.

For me personally, it's been a very humbling experience just to actually kind of be a part of something that's going to tell a bigger history here in Colonial Williamsburg.

- [Narrator] Part of that bigger story lies just a few feet away, where archeologists discovered more than a dozen graves.

- So I see one that comes out here and turns a corner and runs back this direction and then into the wall.

We'd love to know whether the graves line up with the first church or whether they are associated with the second church.

- [Narrator] They were soon looking at 23 graves, then 40, and by the time the dig was complete, there were 62 graves identified on the site.

- To stand in that space and to realize that for so many years that asphalt covered what should have been a burial ground.

- [Narrator] They worked with historical biologists who analyzed remains and confirmed that those buried at the site were of African descent.

- We can go back and study bone fragments.

We know from historical research, including people's own genealogical stories, and put together really complete individualized life histories.

And then together, of course, those become a collective.

- [Speaker] 1858.

This is amazing.

This is the record, your family's record of marriages.

- Marriages and deaths.

Yes.

- [Speaker] Wow.

- I am so excited, you know, to go out and be on the grounds and actually be there where your ancestors were and where they worshiped.

I get emotional when I think about it.

- [Narrator] The process resulted in the creation of 62 markers to acknowledge this once forgotten resting place.

- We're hoping that this story will lead the nation to do the right thing, to look around the country and to do what we call historic justice.

You can't just tell history from one perspective.

We were all here and we all contributed, and the story needs to be told.

- Our ancestors, whose graves we mark today, were more than victims of history.

They represent warriors of spirit and they represent the battle of dignity for human rights.

They endured the unendurable, they survived the unspeakable, and yet even in death, they speak to us now.

They empower us now, their descendants, to stand free and to stand proud.

To honor them is to remember that we are the sum of their hopes and dreams.

- Amen.

(audience applauds) - [Narrator] A once untold piece of Williamsburg history is remembered as historic justice as the ancestors of First Baptist Church Williamsburg take their rightful place in the American history narrative.

- [Announcer] This has been "Revolution 250: Stories from the First Shore."

To learn more about this and other events of the Revolutionary Age of America, visit whro.org/usa250.