A New Organization is Born

Rev. Shuttlesworth and fellow ministers created the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights as a replacement organization with a statewide reach and aims broader than the African American community. Including Christian in the name signaled that the organization was not based on communist values. In the ACMHR's Declaration of Principles, they publicly declared their determination to press forward persistently for freedom and democracy and to remove from society all forms of second-class citizenship. After the organizing meeting at the Smith and Gaston Funeral Home on June 5, 1956, Rev. Shuttlesworth called a general meeting at Sardis Baptist Church, where an estimated 1,000 Negroes approved a march to complete freedom and named him president by acclamation. Headquartered at Bethel Baptist Church, which provided meeting space, offices, rent, and utilities free until 1961, the ACMHR held Monday night mass meetings there and at other affiliated churches in the city for more than a decade, helping launch the Birmingham Movement.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States