On any given week, the Rev. Dr. Charles A. Harper III can be found moving through Atlanta’s civic and community spaces with purpose. One day, he’s at a city council meeting, listening intently to debates about zoning and development. On another day, he might be at a neighborhood gathering, speaking with longtime residents. Later that same week, you could catch him at a school board meeting or sitting down with a local journalist for an interview. For Harper, who has led Paradise Baptist Church for 21 years, this steady rhythm of engagement is what he likes to call “good busy.”
This season, that “good busy” has taken on a deeper meaning. Paradise Baptist Church, located in Atlanta’s historic Grove Park neighborhood, is preparing to celebrate a milestone — its 160th anniversary. Alongside various celebrations and an upcoming exhibit at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, Rev. Harper is eager to share the remarkable journey of the church he shepherds, a story that stretches back to the end of the Civil War and begins with a young girl named Dinah Watts Pace.
Dinah was born enslaved, her family owned by the Alexander family of Athens, Georgia. In 1865, as the Civil War ended, Dinah, just 12 years old at the time, began gathering other children together for Sunday school. These lessons weren’t only about faith; they were also about reading and writing, tools of liberation for newly freed children. Her family would later move to Atlanta, settling in the Summerhill neighborhood.
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