In the city of Atlanta, while the Civil War was well underway, two literate African American ex-slaves, James Tate, and Grandison B. Daniels in 1862 established the first school in Atlanta for African American children on the corner of Courtland and Jenkins Streets in an old church building of Friendship Baptist Church the original home of First Baptist Church. Ex-slaves Tate and Daniels along with 25 ex-slave's founded Friendship Baptist Church, the first black Baptist autonomous congregation. They began holding classes in an old church building built in 1848.