St. Philip's Lutheran Church / St. Philip's Lutheran Church

St. Philip’s Lutheran Church, founded in 1934, was the first black Lutheran church in Michigan. The Reverend H. J. Storm came to Detroit from his Windsor parish to lead the St. Philip’s congregation each week until 1936, when the Reverend Raymond R. Pollatz became the church’s first resident pastor. The parish soon moved from its one-room apartment to a school and later to a remodeled synagogue on King Street. The parish dedicated the building at this location on May 20, 1951. As the only black Lutheran church in Michigan in the 1930s, St. Philip’s expanded quickly. Berea Lutheran, St. Titus, and St. Matthias churches all grew from the original congregation. St. Philip’s chose quality education for blacks as one of its missions. In 1944 it opened St. Philip’s Day School in the basement of the church on King Street. The school was the first Lutheran school in Michigan open to black students, and many of Michigan’s black leaders attended it.