The Choir That Sang Over Bare Concrete

In 1958, the congregation of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem gathered not in their grand sanctuary but in the basement of a half-finished building on West 138th Street. The old church had been demolished. The new one existed only as steel beams, raw concrete, and blueprints rolled out on sawhorses. Pastor Adam Clayton Powell Sr. had died before seeing the project through.…