Needwood Baptist Church and School

Needwood Baptist Church was organized in 1866 on nearby Broadfield Plantation as Broadfield Baptist Church of the Zion Baptist Association. This structure, built in the 1870s, was redesigned in 1885 when the church moved its congregation here. Its formation and history are representative of religious development in the context of plantation rice culture. The church was founded by freed people from the Gullah Geechee tradition who were former slaves from the Broadfield and Needwood Plantations. The nearby one-room Needwood School provided elementary education for this community from 1907 until desegregation in the 1960s. Both structures are examples of early African American vernacular architecture following the Civil War. This site is in the National Register of Historic Places (1998).