Many African-American families along with the families of servants and railroad workers who lived in the area formed the first African-American Baptist church in Pacific Grove, This was the first black church on the Monterey Peninsula. It was founded in Pacific Grove in 1909...” The church allowed African-Americans to feel a sense of culture and pride. There was a time when the church was about the only thing that blacks really owned, the only thing blacks could say was really theirs,” says Reverend Richard Nance, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pacific Grove since 1956. What began as Bethel Mission on Lighthouse Avenue eventually became the first Baptist Church of Pacific Grove at Fourth and Laurel which is still attended by many African-American families from throughout the area. Mrs. Smith states, that at least half a dozen or so of the families in the church belonged to men, who like her husband’s brothers, had come to the Presidio of Monterey with the Ninth Cavalry.” Some of the church members were cooks, maids and butlers who worked for wealthy whites in Pebble Beach and Carmel and others worked in the canneries. Thursday was a traditional day off, says Mrs. Smith, and a lot of the church members would drive their cars to Monterey and Pacific Grove to socialize with others in the black community.

- Sharon Randall, Black history of Monterey County
The Monterey Herald, February 24, 1991