Kay Colleton will never forget the time she first laid eyes on Moving Star Hall, a tiny white clapboard building with a leaning chimney, a crooked roof and a storied history.
The hall is a rare surviving example of a praise house — humble one-room structures used as places of worship by enslaved people on coastal plantations throughout the Carolinas and Georgia.
They have been providing spiritual sustenance for generations of African Americans ever since.
“There were no keys, so we just came right in,” Pastor Kay recalled of that day in 1989.
Alive and hopping, Moving Star Hall is an outlier among the handfuls of praise houses still standing in varying states of repair, most tucked away on rural roads through dark tunnels of oaks laden with Spanish moss.
Persons:
Kay Colleton, ” Pastor Kay, I’ll, ‘ You’ve, ’ ” Pastor Kay, —
Organizations:
Star
Locations:
Carolinas, Georgia, barrenness, Johns, Africa