St. Mark's United Methodist Church has long been a focal point of the Grove, where residents gathered for community meetings, prayer, and activities including the Emancipation Proclamation Celebration established in 1902, one of Laurel's longest-running community events. Founded in 1890 as St. Marks Methodist Episcopal Church, the congregation built the present church in 1923. In 1939, it became St. Mark's Methodist Church after the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church, and in 1968 it became St. Mark's United Methodist Church after the merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical Union Brethren. The church took part in civil rights advocacy, including organizing buses to the March on Washington in 1963. Its importance to Laurel's Black community also made it a target of the local Ku Klux Klan. Over Easter weekend in 1967, a Klan member burned three crosses in Laurel and left a fourth unlit outside St. Mark's. On July 10, 1967, a group of KKK initiates tried to set St. Mark's on fire, and when the cement block church would not readily burn, they tried to ignite a nearby residence, which was quickly extinguished. Nine days later, Rev. John E. Evans and Grove community leaders met with Mayor Merrill Harrison in the church's community hall, where residents requested improvements to the Grove and the integration of Laurel's pool, which was eventually integrated in 1968.