In 1867, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Thomas and Margaret Briggs gave four acres of land to an African Methodist Episcopal church. The present building was completed in 1905 and has been brick veneered. Meetings held there in the 1940s and 1950s led to local court cases that helped bring about the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling desegregating public schools. Nineteen members of the congregation were plaintiffs in the case of Harry Briggs, Jr. vs. R.W. Elliott, heard in U.S. District Court in Charleston in 1952. Although that court refused to abolish racial segregation in South Carolina schools, the case, together with others, led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision desegregating public schools.