The Rev. Bill Collins preaches from the pulpit at Trinity Baptist, a historically white church on Norfolk's Ballentine Boulevard. He might be the perfect person to help ease Trinity into the future, figured the Rev. Charles Riggs, Trinity's part-time pastor. But Riggs knew change would take patience. Few other local churches had managed to integrate. Of the 1,000 in Hampton Roads, all but a handful are dominated by a single race.
Trinity belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded by supporters of slavery.
The church began in the days when Ballentine Boulevard was a white neighborhood. The congregation had remained almost exclusively white even as its members fled to the suburbs and black families moved in, Riggs said. As the years wore on, white suburbanites adopted churches closer to their new homes. Blacks passed Trinity by. Trinity had tried to integrate before, said the Rev. Walker Stockburger, a former pastor.