Founded in 1864 in New Bern, North Carolina by James Walker Hood, St. Andrews Chapel was the first church in the state and in the South to join the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In 1879 the congregation changed its name to St. Peter’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and built a new frame. After the church burned down in 1922, it was rebuilt in stages from 1923 until 1940, and in 1997, St. Peter’s was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Peter’s had been a center of civil rights since its founding, often serving as a meeting place for civil right efforts. On Sunday, January 24, 1965, the church was the scene of a five-county National Association for the Advancement Colored People (NAACP) rally on school integration. The main speaker at the January 24th rally was Julius LeVonne Chambers. A Civil Rights activist, Chambers (1936-2013), was best known for his work with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF).
Two cars parked outside St. Peter’s the night of the integration meeting, one belonging to Jones county NAACP president Carolina Beacher Chadwick, Jr. (1928-2021) and the other to Chamber’s were bombed with dynamite placed under each car. About an hour later, dynamite was also placed at Oscar’s Mortuary that same day ripping up the driveway and breaking the windows in an ambulance shed. After the racially motivated bombings, it was noted in an FBI report, that The Black Panthers came to New Bern to provide protection.
Three members of the Ku Klux Klan, Raymond Mills, Laurie Fillingame, and Edward Fillingame targeted and bombed the two cars outside of St. Peter’s and Oscar’s Mortuary. The three were arrested for the three bombings. According to the enclosed court documents from June 2, 1965, Raymond Mills and Laurie Fillingame received five-year jail sentences that were reduced to three years probation; Edward Fillingame received a two-year jail sentence that was also reduced to three years probation. Raymond Mills also had to pay restitution to Julius Chambers and Carolina B. Chadwick in the amounts of $379.64 and $152.24, respectively.
Adapted from an essay submitted with historical marker application by Rosanne Wilson.
Image: St. Peter's AME Zion Church. Courtesy of African American Heritage and Culture Center of New Bern.
Citations
“Blasts Rip Negro Funeral Home, Cars Near Church”. Tuscan Daily Citizen, Tuscan, Arizona, January 25, 1965, p 40
“Close Kin Go Bond For Three Held in New Bern Bombings: Real Estate is Surety For Appearance at Hearing”. The Sun Journal, New Bern, January 30, 1965, p.1
“50 years ago, New Bern Church targeted by the KKK”. Star News Online, January 24, 2015
“FBI Offers Assistance in Bombings”, High Point Enterprise, January 25, 1965, p 2
“FBI Seizes 3 Carolina whites In bombings Near Negro Rally”. Times Machine: January 30, 1965 - NYTimes.com, p.10
“Ku Klux Klan Official Arrested For Bombing”. Madera Tribune, Madera, CA, Volume 73, Number 183, 29 January 1965 p. 1
“Moore Condemns New Bern Violence”. Burlington Daily News, Burlington, NC, January 26, 1965, p 3
“Mortuary, Two Cars Damaged as Racists Bomb New Bern”. The Carolinian Raleigh, N.C., January 30, 1965, p 1
“New Bern Blasts are Probed”. Twin City Sentinel, Winston Salem, NC, January 25, 1965, p 1
“New Bern Shocked by Three Blasts in Negro Section: Two Cars and Mortuary are Damaged By Explosions”. The Sun Journal, New Bern, January 25, 1965, p.1
“SBI Aids New Bern Blasts Probe”, Raleigh News Observer, Raleigh, NC, January 26, 1965, p.1
“Sound Sleuthing Fingers Three as Sunday Bombers”. Sun Journal, New Bern, January 29, 1965 p 1
“Three Held In New Bern Blasts”. The Daily Record, Dunn, NC, January 29, 1965, p 1
“Three Men Arrested in Bombing”, The San Antonio Express and News, San Antonio, TX, January 30, 1965 p. 3
“Two Explosions Damage Negro Funeral Home, Cars”. Greensboro Daily News, Greensboro, NC, Morning Edition, January 25, 1965, p 1.
Federal Bureau of Investigation report, February 9,1965, RE: Edward Earl Fillingame, Laurie Latham Fillingame, Raymond Duguid Mills, New Bern Bombing, Dan Killian Moore, Governors Papers, State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, hereinafter cited as FBI, New Bern bombing report.
Giannettino, Alexis, “St. Peter’s AME Zion Church.” Clio: Your Guide to History. September 23, 2018.
Hawkins, Karen Medlin, Coastal Progress: Eastern North Carolina’s War on Poverty, 1963-1972, Dissertation, UNC-Greensboro, August, 2012 p156-157
Hawkins, Karen Medlin, Everybody’s Problem: The War on Poverty in Eastern North Carolina (Southern Dissent) University Press of Florida, Gainesville 2017 p. 63-64
Medlin, Karen E. Reclaiming First-Class Citizenship: The African- American Struggle and Mobilization for Political Rights in New Bern, North Carolina (1948-1979), University Press, Raleigh, NC 2007 p 66-67, p 78
Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America: A Chronology, Hewitt, Christopher, Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut-London 2005 p.18.
Rosen, Richard A., Mosnier, Joseph, Julius Chambers: A Life in the Legal Struggle for Civil Rights, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, October 18, 2016 pgs. 77-82.
The North Carolina Historical Review, October 2008, Vol. 85, No. 4, pp. 379-415.
United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Jan 1976 · U.S. Government Printing Office, Volume 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, November/December, 1975, Jan 1976 · U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, Page 521
Wilson, Emily Herring, Memories of New Bern: An Oral History Based on Interviews of New Bernians by New Bernians (New Bern: New Bern Historical Society, 1995).