Bristol native Dr. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, son of the pastor of Lee Street Baptist Church, attended Virginia Union University and became a sociologist, author and, in 1946, the first Black president of Fisk University.
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State historic markers honor Black church, civil rights leader
When Rev. Charles Henry Johnson moved in 1890 from Richmond to Bristol, which served as a railroad town, he became the minister of a little wooden church started by 39 freed slaves. A few pastors had come through Lee Street Baptist Church, which was organized 25 years earlier in 1865, but Rev. Johnson stuck, according to a Dec. 17, 2017, article in the Bristol Herald Courier.
