The “for sale” sign outside St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church belies the electricity that crackles inside the 97-year-old San Bernardino church. Take a seat on one of the church’s 18 wooden pews, covered in plush, blood-red velvet, and you’re likely to count at least a handful of fascinators, jeweled brooches, and crisp pairs of gloves in the congregation. During more sedate stretches of the service, you might see paper hand fans wave lazily, rhythmically — that is, until the time comes to stand and sing and clap.

St. Mark’s was built in 1928, but it’s far from a time capsule. The church’s walls are lined with blown-up photographs of families: men in suits, women in dresses, babies on laps, older children arranged in height order like the bars of a xylophone. These are the Savilles, the Whites, the Overstreets, the Greens, and so many others who populated Valley Truck Farms, a once-thriving, predominantly Black community for which St. Mark’s is one of the last remaining visible vestiges.