Macedonia Baptist Church (Bethesda, Maryland)

About

Macedonia Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church at 5119 River Road in Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1920, it is the last surviving institution of River Road (also known as Graysville), the freedom colony established by freedpeople in the Westbard area of Bethesda after the American Civil War, and it is documented as an anchor institution of that historic settlement in a 2022 National Park Service historic resources study.

Since the mid-2010s the church has been the institutional center of the movement to protect and memorialize the River Road Moses Cemetery (Moses African Cemetery), the community's burial ground now lying beneath the parking lot of the Westwood Tower apartment complex. The Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC) grew out of the church's Social Justice Ministry, led by its First Lady, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo; and the church's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Olusegun Adebayo, was a petitioner in Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition v. Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, decided by the Supreme Court of Maryland in 2024.