It Began at Bethel

Birmingham's rise to national prominence in the modern American Civil Rights Movement began several years after Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth arrived in March 1953 to pastor Bethel Baptist Church, founded in 1904. Although the church's prior pastors were influential in the Birmingham community, none matched Shuttlesworth's zeal as he joined spiritual teachings with practical action against rigid racial inequality in Birmingham. From mid-1956 to 1961, Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham's Collegeville neighborhood served as headquarters for the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, founded by Shuttlesworth and other like-minded church leaders who directly challenged racial segregation and the humiliation of second-class citizenship for African Americans. The churches gave these clergymen an economic base and an organized body of people able to fund the movement and mobilize large numbers, and together they committed themselves to the struggle to win racial equality in Birmingham and in American society.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States