African American members separated from Charlottesville Baptist Church in 1863 and formed the city’s first African American church. The 831 members met with a white minister, as law required, in the parent church basement on East Jefferson, but soon moved to the old Delevan Hotel on West Main and became Delevan Baptist. Their first Black pastor was Rev. William Gibbons, a man of “dynamic force and zeal.” Noted pastor Rev. B. F. Bunn founded the local NAACP in 1947. Renamed First Colored Baptist when today’s building was completed in 1884, the church is now known as First Baptist Church.