Greater St. James A.M.E. Church was founded in 1883 by Rev. Hill and twenty-five charter members. Early services were held in a member’s house on E. Main Street. The congregation purchased a lot at the corner of Lake and N. Church Streets in 1885 and built its first sanctuary, a frame building, that year. The church was renovated and enlarged in 1917, and it was further renovated, with a steeple added, in 1948-50. In 1951 Rev. J.A. DeLaine, who had been transferred from Pine Grove A.M.E. Church in Summerton after playing a leading role in Briggs v. Elliott, the Clarendon County school desegregation case that led to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, came here. Unknown persons burned the church in October 1955. Rev. G. Lee Baylor was the pastor when a new sanctuary, named Greater St. James, was dedicated here in 1957.