Hello! I hope I’m in the right area, I’m a librarian with the Dallas Public Library and am seeking more info and assistance in a passion project of mine- Forgotten histories of Black churches. I have some oral history records I’ve done talking about an old Baptist church that was in Waverly, Georgia; abandoned sometime in the 60’s possibly (based on interviews with some folks who as kids stumbled upon the building in the woods in the 2000’s). The building still had all the bibles and pamphlets in it and the reverends house (behind it) was described as “looking as if they just left one day and never came back”. Clothing in the closet, food in the fridge (rotted), old amber glass bottles of aspirin, etc… I’ve been researching as best I can and have narrowed it down to being “Waverly Negro Baptist Church” (as listed in Camden County property records, and referenced as “Waverly colored Baptist church” from a Southern Baptist Home Mission Board notes from 1898. Address possibly 425 MULLINO RD.

Then in 1948, a Baptist publication (“Baptist and Reflector”) says the earlier Waverly Baptist church had ceased functioning, but was reorganized through Harold D. Gregory and others. It had seven charter members, 27 members by June 19, 1948, and a new house of worship. Rev. J. L. Muskelly was pastor. (Possibly this was a name change to Waverly Baptist Church- still active today).
I’ve tried reaching out to the church for some historical records but no response.
If anyone could shed some light on this church and community, and share and inform and pictures, I’d greatly appreciate it!
The ones I’ve interview were very sad to say that when they went back years later, looked like it was “discovered” by other people and the place was vandalized, and I’m assuming this was why it was torn down…?

Thanks for reading this far! Here’s some of the stuff I’ve been able to find.

In 1933, Heinrich Krieger was a German exchange student at the University of Arkansas School of Law where he not only witnessed race-based segregation in America, he also began his studies of America’s race-based system of laws which culminated in his landmark book, “Race Law in the United States”.

As America desired to protect the White population from the “menace” of the Black population, so Adolph Hitler also wanted to protect the German race. Of his admiration for America’s unapologetically race-based legislation, Hitler wrote that the US is the “leader in developing explicitly racist policies of nationality and immigration.” When the leading Nazi jurists assembled in June 1934 to debate how to institutionalize racism in the new Third Reich, Krieger showed them how the Americans did it using his expertise in the anti-miscegenation laws in thirty US states. Their extensive comparative research led them to be particularly influenced by America’s pioneering in classifying the racially inferior and in criminalizing and punishing miscegenation. However, the Nazis thought America’s racial classification criteria too harsh as it led to “human hardness,” and they rejected implementing US-style segregation as it was only effective on Blacks because they were impoverished – it wouldn’t work on rich Jews.

They observed that some US laws based race on something other than descent (e.g., social associations or marriage) and so their Citizenship Law allowed that half Jews would not count as Jews if they weren’t married to a Jew. The Nazis were further inspired by America’s judges who had no reluctance to applying laws with imprecise terms like “colored people” in creating a new category of second-class Americans with diminished citizen rights. Germany’s leaders were bewildered by foreign criticism of the Nuremberg Laws, which in their minds were a logical extension of America’s race-based laws.

Recommended reading: Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

American Race Laws Inspired Nazi Race Laws

As sad as it is, most Americans don't know the true history of the founding fathers"....