Tamara Cedré and the Live from the Frontline Team
In the heart of San Bernardino, just west of Waterman Avenue, stands St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church. Nestled in the once fertile, picturesque Black farming community of Valley Truck Farms, it is now surrounded by warehouse developments and a dwindling congregation that reflects the displacement of families from the neighborhood.
In its early days, the Valley Truck Farms was a refuge for Black families fleeing the Jim Crow south and seeking more land than they could buy in LA, where racial restrictions confined them to a small part of the city.
Through the years, the St. Mark’s church building served many purposes in the community. It was a sanctuary to residents displaced by the historic 1938 flood. Later, it became an overflow space for the growing Mill School, which educated generations of accomplished Black residents prior to its closure in 1968.
Like so many other communities of color in the Inland Empire, Valley Truck Farms was a casualty in the shift from a rural to industrial landscape due to the long histories of the logistics industry and its recent boom. By the 1980’s, the neighborhood was beginning to be rezoned for a truck waste transfer station and other industrial uses. Now surrounded by warehouses, St. Mark’s has decided to sell the historic property and eventually move after 95 years as an important congregational space.
Lifelong church member Myrna Overstreet Spear, whose family came to settle in Valley Truck Farms in the 1930’s, reflected on what the neighborhood was like when she was a child.
“Everything was green. Mostly what I remember is the animals. I raised pigs, goats, tended horses.… We were a sharing community. Everyone in the Valley, every family, looked out for one another,” Overstreet Spear recalled.
While many have sold their homes that were once near the church, Vera White Saville is one of the last to keep her family’s home on Central Avenue. She saw the changes escalate during the pandemic when a warehouse was erected just across the street and the sounds of trucks were heard into the evening.
“I remember all of this was fields. We’d have family gatherings. We built a treehouse in the yard and would look at the stars,” Saville shared.
“As children, we could go to any of these houses, play in any of these backyards, and we would be met with the love and discipline of an adult who treated us like their own,” Pastor Harper said. As older families moved away and others continue to struggle with stagnant wages, he has noticed that dynamic change in recent years.
While the future location of St. Mark’s remains unknown, Pastor Harper explained that the church will live on outside of its walls.
“The church is not just a building. It is God’s people. We will continue to carry out our mission wherever we go. But, it is bittersweet. I have been so blessed to be a part of this community and look forward with hope,” he said.
This special segment is part of the project Live from the Frontline, a participatory memory project that brings artists into the archives and the landscapes of logistics to explore the roots of environmental racism in the Inland Empire. Explore additional artworks, including portraits of community members by San Bernardino-based photographer Jonathan Arthurs, here.
The Live from the Frontline team welcomes the public to join them as they celebrate and uplift the voices of this historic community and congregation at St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church, 259 E Central Ave, San Bernardino, CA, on Sunday, July 28th. The church service will begin at 11 a.m. and there will be a special exhibition and screening from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.