New Brown Memorial Baptist Church has been in place for 65 years. It is the first black Protestant Church in Red Hook.
New Brown was organized by Rev. Andrew Dennis McBride and his wife Ruth McBride in December 1954. The first services were held at their residence at 811 Hicks Street (Apt 5A) in the Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn, New York. The church was named after the Reverend W. Abner Brown of Metropolitan Baptist Church of Harlem, at the time one of the largest African American churches in the world and today a registered New York City Landmark. Reverend McBride and his wife Ruth were members of Metropolitan – he was a Deacon and she was the church secretary. Rev. Brown married them in his office in 1941.
The first services of New Brown were held in the McBride’s apartment, with a white tablecloth tossed over the kitchen table, which served as pulpit. Sunday School and other services were held in the homes of the six founding Red Hook member families: the Ingrams, McNairs, Floods, Bonners, Jacksons and Taylors. Many of those founding families stayed with New Brown faithfully until they passed on to reward.
Through prayer and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, the church moved to its first official building at 177 Richards Street in Red Hook in 1955. At the time, the white landlord of the building refused to rent to blacks. The McBrides were a mixed race couple – Ruth was white and Rev. McBride was black, so Ruth went alone and signed
the lease. When the landlord saw Brother Thomas McNair walking into the doorway of 177 Richards with a paint bucket and tools, he wanted his building back. But Rev. McBride talked him out of it. 177 Richards was a dilapidated first floor walk through, unheated and in need of repair. Services were heated by a fireplace with wood that the congregants brought each Sunday for service.
Reverend McBride was a thoughtful, humorous violinist from High Point, N.C. who attended the same segregated high school as his neighbor, saxophonist John Coltrane. Rev. McBride received a degree from the Shelton Bible College in New York in 1951. His wrote his sermons in longhand and they still exist today. “Never go home,” he wrote. “If you go home again, it will not be the same. The place will seem small and different. Don’t look back. Look forward. The future is here, in Jesus Christ.” In April of 1957 at age 48, Reverend McBride was called from labor to reward.
After his death the church was without a pastor. God blessed the church with Reverend Thomas Davis of Harlem’s Crossroads Baptist Church, whose wife was a famous theatrical actress, and whose Harlem church stood right next door to the famous Mosque No. 7 of Harlem’s Nation of Islam — and also Reverend Fred Braxton of Metropolitan Baptist. Both carried out the services of pastorship until a new pastor was appointed. Brother Thomas McNair, who later became New Brown’s Associate Pastor, and his wife Sister Rachel McNair provided crucial support to carry New Brown forward during this difficult period, and the church moved from 177 Richards Street to 195 Richard Street in June of 1957.
The Reverends Davis and Braxton were instrumental in bringing the Reverend John T. Truitte to New Brown Memorial, who was installed in September of 1957. Through the grace of God and with the aid of prayer, Reverend Truitt and his wife Jesse Truitt would power New Brown through the next 31 years and skillfully guide the church through many difficult periods.
Reverend John T. Truitte was a community minister, known and liked by all in Red Hook and wider spiritual community. He accepted people as they are, without judgment, always willing to help them better themselves. Rev. Truitte and his wife Jesse brought aboard crucial new members who would carry New Brown through the turbulent 60’s as the Red Hook projects neighborhood began its long disintegration. Most notable among those was church pianist and organist Helen Lee, whose half- century of superb musicianship established New Brown as a place of musical and cultural richness. Her deep knowledge of African American traditional and spiritual music from her southern roots in Tennessee and Kentucky was a hallmark of New Brown’s worship service, and admired by many larger churches. She turned down many offers to play at larger churches, serving New Brown faithfully until her death in 2008.
While Red Hook deteriorated, New Brown under Pastor Truitt maintained and flourished, a beacon of hope for the community. The church established a board of Trustees and gained 501c status. In 1968 it bought its current site at 609 Clinton Street, a former soap factory. Renovations were done with fundraising by parishioners, who sometimes simply paid for the renovations themselves. The church had no baptism pool. Baptism ceremonies were done in Rev. Truitt’s kitchen sink and later at Metropolitan Baptist. Eventually New Brown was able to build a baptism pool and later pay off its mortgage. The beloved Rev. Truitt was called home in 1988.
In 1989, Reverend Martin Reid and his Delores were called to service. A thunderous preacher from Harlem and son of a minister, Rev. Reid had a great fondness for quoting Bible verses with joyful mirth. Rev. Reid served the Lord faithfully with full faith and effort until he was called to reward in September 2009. His wife Minister Delores Reid continues to serve New Brown as Associate Minister and organizer of the church youth programs and services. From April 2010 to Aug. 2011 Rev. Andre Mosely served as pastor. In Feb. 2012, when our current pastor AR Jamal and his lovely wife Marsha were installed, New Brown once again swung into the future with renewed vigor.
Pastor Jamal, with the help of his wife and partner Marsha, is the face of a new awakening of New Brown, bringing the church up to speed in the new world, presiding over the renovation of the sanctuary, installing a free piano training music program for children from the Red Hook Projects, reinvigorating the Sunday School, undertaking prison ministry and counseling, and taking a leading pastoral in the Black Lives Matter movement. He is new breed of Christian minister, knowledgeable of the old ways and wise to the new, emphasizing bringing the young back into the fold of Jesus Christ, evident in the growing numbers of young finding the church. He is ably assisted by Associate Pastor Mark Ross, a respected voice among the young in Red Hook. New Brown is proud to celebrate the rebirth of it’s great musical legacy with proud addition of the organist and vocalist Debra Ashe, whose musical roots were tendered at a young age at New York City’s Music and Arts High School of Performing Arts, and further tendered at Pace University.
We are grateful to each and everyone that hasstruggled to make New Brown what it is today. Some ofour members gave the best part of their lives to our church, working for decades seeking neither thanks noracknowledgment. We want to acknowledge you now.
Wethank you here.Youhave inspired us to make this church a great place. Whenyour tour of duty on this earth is done and you sit at the right hand of God, know that your memory and hard work will continue to sew seeds of righteousness for as long as this church exists.
We pray the Lord will continue to bless us today and in the future, with hope that one day this church will one day be one of the greatest holy ghost headquarters in the world.
