The Second Bethel Bombing

In June 1958, as terrorist violence against the ACMHR's movement intensified during what Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth called “a year of harassment,” Bethel Baptist Deacon James Revis offered his home near the new parsonage as a guardhouse, and other men from the church and the Collegeville community armed themselves and stood watch in two night shifts at the guardhouse and behind the parsonage to protect Shuttlesworth and the church. Around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 29, 1958, the guards found a smoking bomb in a bucket next to the church and ran to move it into the street, where it exploded, blasting a deep hole in the street and knocking out some windows in the church and nearby homes, but causing no structural damage to the church or the new parsonage.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States