Second Baptist Church is the oldest Black congregation in the Midwest. Second Baptist Church was founded in 1836 by thirteen formerly enslaved people who broke away from a white church that segregated them. From its basement, the congregation ran a station on the Underground Railroad known by the code name Croghan Street Station, the street out front was called Croghan then, now Monroe, hiding and sheltering thousands of freedom seekers in the final stretch before they crossed the river to Canada.
The church also founded the city's first school for Black children and hosted abolitionist gatherings; Frederick Douglass and John Brown both met with activists in Detroit in these circles. The present brick building dates to the 1850s and 1910s, but the basement safe house survives and can still be visited. You are in the middle of Greektown now, but pause at this brick facade and remember that beneath it lies one of the only documented Underground Railroad shelters left standing in the city.