On January 25, 2024, Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church and The City of Natchez held a signing ceremony for the official donation of a portion of the church-owned M.L.K. Triangle property to the City for the future development of Hiram Rhodes Revels Plaza, a future city park at the gateway to Historic Downtown Natchez. The Ceremony was help ad Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church.
The City of Natchez, Zion Chapel and the Downtown Natchez Alliance jointly spearhead the creation of Revels Plaza Project, which is one of the 3 key anchors of the City’s Downtown Master Plan that was approved by the Board of Aldermen in May 2018.
The Plaza will be named in honor of Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901) Revels was the first minister of Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church (Natchez), the first African American elected to Congress, and the first president of Alcorn State University, the oldest public historically Black land-grant institution in the United States.