First African Baptist Church played a central role in the fight for civil rights in Tuscaloosa as the home church of Rev. T. Y. Rogers, Jr., the most important local leader in the movement, and the primary site for mass protest meetings. The most violent local incident, known as "Bloody Tuesday," occurred there on June 9, 1964. The church was established in 1866 by blacks who rejected the discriminatory practices of the predominantly white First Baptist Church, and its founding pastor was a one-time enslaved person, Rev. Prince Murrell. Members first met in private homes before securing a building at 4th Street and 24th Avenue in the black neighborhood of Riverhill. In 1900, they built the current structure at a cost of $25,000, with architecture inspired by the work of Robert Taylor, a Tuskegee faculty member and the first black person professionally trained and licensed as an architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After Rev. T. Y. Rogers, Jr., became pastor, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered the installation sermon in March 1964. Rogers had studied and served as assistant minister with King when King was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, and Rogers led the campaign to overturn segregation in Tuscaloosa. When a new Tuscaloosa County courthouse opened in spring 1964, "white" and "colored" signs separated bathroom facilities and drinking fountains despite an earlier promise that the building would be fully integrated. The Tuscaloosa Citizens for Action Committee, with Rogers as executive secretary, then organized the local community to demand an end to segregated facilities, including a planned peaceful march from the church to the courthouse. On June 9, 1964, more than 600 protesters were beaten and tear gassed by the Tuscaloosa Police Department and white extremists; 34 protesters were hospitalized, and 94 blacks were arrested and jailed. The violence led to a lawsuit by the local black community seeking a courthouse free of segregation, and on June 26, 1964, Federal Judge Seybourn Lynne, citing the 14th Amendment, ordered Tuscaloosa County to remove the discriminatory courthouse signs.