Organized in 1836 by free Black Buffalonians and built with their own funds and labor by 1845, Michigan Street Baptist Church is the oldest surviving building in Buffalo continuously owned by the city's Black community. Located near the Niagara River crossing to Canada, the congregation served as one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad, and church members, many of whom had themselves escaped slavery, sheltered and assisted freedom seekers before their final crossing to freedom. In 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois and other founders of the Niagara Movement, precursor to the NAACP, met at the nearby home of church member Mary B. Talbert to draft the movement's founding resolutions.