Lizzie Robinson House

Edward and Lizzie Robinson founded the Church of God in Christ in Omaha in 1916, the first church of that denomination in the state of Nebraska. Together with their daughter, the couple lived in this North Omaha home (built circa 1910) from 1916 to 1924. The vast majority of Church of God in Christ members lived in the Deep South, but some, like the Robinsons, moved to northern and western cities during the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. Edward Robinson was a pastor while Lizzie Robinson, who was born into slavery at the start of the Civil War, established the church's Women's Departments.

The Pentecostal movement, which has ties to nearly 300 denominations, has roots that trace back to the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. The Church of God in Christ, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, was founded as a Pentecostal denomination in 1907 by Charles H. Mason. Until 1914, the Church of God in Christ was interracial. Indeed, from 1909 to 1914, there were as many White Churches of God in Christ as Black churches. However, the White faction broke away to form its own church in 1914. 

Around 1910, Mason organized the Church of God in Christ Women's Department and, in 1911, approved Lizzie Robinson to serve as National Supervisor of the Women's Departments of the Church of God in Christ; she served from 1911 through 1945. Lizzie Robinson's mother, a widow with five children, died with Lizzie was fifteen years old. In 1892 she joined the Baptist church at Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1901, at age forty-one, Lizzie attended the Baptist Academy in Dermott, Arkansas, to finish her education, where she became acquainted with the Church of God in Christ and Charles Mason. Lizzie then left the Baptist church and worked for the Church of God in Christ in Trenton and Jackson, Tennessee. During this time, she met and later married Edward Robinson, a minister. 

Edward and Lizzie Robinson were evangelists in the western United States until they settled in Omaha and founded a church there in 1916, Nebraska's first Church of God in Christ. After organizing informal meetings and services for roughly a year, the Bishop formally approved the Church of God in Christ in Omaha in 1917. The congregation's growth pushed the congregation to purchase a new church site to provide more space in 1920, which led to the church's formal incorporation in 1925. Edward Robinson acted as the church's first pastor, Lizzie continued to head National Supervisor of the Women's Departments of the Church of God in Christ and worked locally with women in such things as sewing groups and bible studies, and their son-in-law, Archie Baker, served as one the first members of the Board of Trustees.

Under Lizzie's direction, the women's work proliferated so that Lizzie formed state organizations, and the women who had accompanied her became the first State Mothers. Also, Lizzie traveled with women on evangelical trips, including Edward and Lizzie's daughter, Ida, who became Lizzie's assistant and, eventually, Secretary-Treasurer of the Home and Foreign Mission Department. Rev. Edward D. Robinson died in 1937 at age seventy-seven, but Lizzie continued in her role until she died in 1945. Lizzie proved instrumental in building the National Headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and she organized National Drives to raise funds; the church named the assembly hall in the new building after her. 

Edward and Lizzie, along with Ida, lived in the historic house until 1924, when the Bakers purchased the house (although they lived there before the official sale). The Bakers remained in the home until the 1960s. While the Robinsons resided in the house, they hosted numerous early pioneers of the new branch of the Church of God in Christ they started.

Hill, Elijah. "Registration Form: Lizzie Robinson House." Edited by Dawn Landholm. National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. 1993. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/799ce0fb-38be-4a1b-9707-3cd7d9df8bc4. 

"Mother Lizzie Robinson." Church of the God in Christ (COGIC). Accessed February 21, 2023. http://www.cogic.org/womensdepartment/about-us/former-general-supervisors/mother-lizzie-robinson/.