409 Dunstan Ave. – Kyles Temple Ame Zion Church

A photograph of Kyles Temple AME Zion Church (unknown) - April 8, 2012.

Kyles Temple AME Zion Church has been an important community institution in the Fayetteville Street Corridor for generations. The church was founded in 1929, after St. Mark A.M.E. Zion Church, another local historic Durham church, needed to expand. With the help of Edgar Barnes, a church contractor, and Bishop Lynwood Westinghouse Kyles, the namesake of the church, they created Kyles Temple A.M.E Zion Church. Bishop Kyles was the 34th Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and worked across the United States to establish AMEZ churches. When he was elected Bishop in 1916, he received the highest vote to elect a Bishop up until that time. The original congregation was completely made up of St. Mark A.M.E. Zion Church congregants, demonstrating the imperative link between the two churches. Throughout the years of the church, the A.M.E. Zion churches in the area often worked together to host training sessions, revivals, and other events, emphasizing their connection through their denomination. 

Since 1929, the congregation has worshipped at 409 Dunstan Avenue (originally listed at 415 Dunstan Ave), where members fostered relationships and held numerous events, including professional programs featuring doctors and business professionals, picnics, and contests. The church has also historically been a meeting place for the Durham NAACP.

Interestingly, Kyles Temple hosted Reverend Calvin Dixon, widely regarded as one of the first Black ministers to broadcast a sermon, for a two-week revival service in 1943. Moreover, Kyles Temple hosted numerous women preachers, such as the Jacksonville-based Reverend Helen T. Thomas, whom the Carolina Times described as “one of the greatest and inspiring ministers of today.” Some of the early pastors at Kyles Temple AME Zion Church included Reverend DL Conyers, Reverend GF Madkins, Reverend W.D. Drake, and Reverend S.P. Cooke.

Sources:

Carolina Times

Herald-Sun

J. Gordon Melton, et al., Encyclopedia of African American Religions (Garland Publishing, Inc, 1993), 436-437.

Oliver Paul, Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 140.

From the 2018 National Register of Historic Places application for College Heights:

This large, front-gabled church has a square tower at the front east corner, and a one-story, shed-roofed ell across the rear. The church is of brick construction with a brick water table and an exterior chimney at the west rear. The façade is dominated by an arched, recessed entrance with replacement aluminum and glass doors. Windows are placed symmetrically with a round stained glass window centered under the gable, two square stained glass windows at the second-floor level, and two teardrop windows on either side of the arched entrance. The tower at the southeast corner projects slightly from the façade and contains teardrop windows on the front and east elevations; it has a rectangular vinyl vent near the top. The sanctuary itself is four bays deep with a stained glass window in each bay and the bays separated by brick pilasters. The site slopes to the rear to reveal an exposed basement with six-over-six, double-hung wood sash windows and four-over-four, double-hung windows on the shed-roofed rear ell.