Moving to A Higher Ground
A Narrative History of Mt. Zion Baptist Church
by William F. Sims, Church Historian
In 1869, African-Americans who lived in Fletcher Bottom about eight miles southwest of
Indianapolis usually worshiped at the White Lick Colored Baptist Church near
Bridgeport.or at the Lick Creek Baptist Church near Beech Grove. Sometimes during the
year, seven or eights persons who represented the two congregations met on Fletcher's
Farm to organize a new church. It is not know whether this group were ex-slaves or freed
men, but most of them apparently lived on Fletcher's Farm. It had been only seven years
since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1866 that conferred citizenship upon Black Americans.
