Building For Tomorrow: E.C. Morris, Centennial Church and the Black Baptists During Jim Crow

This extraordinary new exhibition explores the role of the Baptist Church in the lives of African Americans during the turbulent period of Jim Crow, as they navigated the difficulties and hardships of a segregated country.  Visitors, as they enter the South Gallery of the Delta Cultural Center, will first notice the large replica stain glass window that symbolizes the church. It is if they have been reborn in the past and are looking into this window to see what is happening in a church of that era. From that point, guests will be able to read and study numerous historical panels that depict the expansion of the Baptist Church throughout the Arkansas Delta and into the lives of African Americans. 

Activists such as Booker T. Washington and others used this religious awakening to further the cause of reform, but it was through the tireless labor of one Arkansan that the church rose to new levels of importance. That Arkansan was the Reverend Elias Camp Morris, who rose to national prominence through his work with the National Baptist Convention. In addition to his work in politics, Morris was the pastor at Centennial Baptist Church in Helena, Arkansas from 1879 to his death in 1922. Centennial was an example of an early megachurch with nearly a thousand members and was a beacon of light for all African Americans in the area. E.C. Morris was also president of the Black Arkansas Baptist State Convention for 35 years and helped start a seminary in Little Rock that eventually became Arkansas Baptist College.  There is a life size replica of Morris at his podium and interactive displays which feature a number of his speeches that visitors may listen to. In addition to the church, there are also displays and information panels dealing with the role of fraternal organizations like the Knights of Pythias and the Masons.

Where the Waters Meet: Relic Boundaries in the Arkansas Delta

Artist: Andrea A. Gluckman

Phillips County, Arkansas is a place of confluence- of waters, of stories, of communities. Where The Waters Meet presents five years of sustained photographic research into relic boundaries in Phillips County, examining how history is inscribed onto landscape through geography and community stories. Focusing on waterways and transitional terrains, the work traces sites where natural features express multitudes of histories, seen and unseen.

Where the Waters Meet refers to moments of confluence-physical, temporal, and symbolic. In the alluvial plain of Phillips County, water operates as both subject and metaphor: shaping boundaries while simultaneously eroding them, carrying memory across time, and complicating fixed narratives. In these zones of overlap, past and present intersect, revealing how landscapes hold multiple histories and collective memories.

Using a combination of photographic styles and tools, the work of this exhibit depicts landscapes both universal and focusing on the durational but also hinting at what lies beneath. This exhibition invites viewers to reconsider familiar environments as active historical sites rather than passive backdrops. It proposes confluence as an experience, and where attention to place becomes a means of ethical and historical engagement. By positioning beauty within complexity, Where the Waters Meet asks how we might see, remember, and inhabit landscapes where the waters meet.

Artist Andrea A. Gluckman is a photographer, educator, and experimental designer. Although originally from Arkansas, she currently lives in Rochester, New York. She uses photography, drone work, and site-specific installations in service of narrative work. Through her photographs, she weaves a story. In this case, it is the story of Phillips County, Arkansas.

This fascinating exhibition will run from January 9 to February 28, 2026. It is located in the central gallery of the Delta Cultural Center at 141 Cherry Street in Helena, Arkansas.