Revisions to Tentative List Application

# Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama 

Submitted by Ellen Mertins, Alabama Historical Commission, June 29,2007

# Section 3a Criteria ii

ii exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time
or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture
or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church occupies a critical point in
the spread of nonviolent protest as a powerful means of social
transformation **This interchange of human values during the 20th
century is clearly exhibited in the adoption and adaptation of Gandhi's
theories by The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of
the American Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century**. **This
movement used non-violent protest to end legally sanctioned racial
segregation that enforced racial separation in public and commercial
buildings, neighborhoods and public spaces thereby changing
architectural practices, town planning and landscape design in the
American South.**

Although King was familiar with Gandhi's work and ideas, it was during
the Montgomery Bus Boycott that he came to fully embrace and understand
them through the tutoring of Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley, who joined
King early in the boycott and had been associated with the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. International mass media coverage of the boycott and the
subsequent successful efforts to end racial segregation in the American
South conveyed and continues to convey to millions of people worldwide a
pivotal example of the effectiveness and power of nonviolent resistance
to change both custom and law.

**Section 3b Proposed statement of Outstanding Universal Value**

**Historical Context Summary:**

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is of Outstanding Universal Significance
for its associations with the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the
spread during the 20th century of nonviolent protest as an effective
means of achieving democratic ideals and practices.

The 20th century witnessed a major transfer of power from kings,
emperors, generals, and tyrants to democratic governments. By the end of
the century, the great majority of leaders on the United National
General Assembly were democratically elected presidents and prime
ministers. Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall argue persuasively that this
most important political change of the 20th century " would not have
come to pass without the actions of ordinary people... \[using\]
nonviolent power rather than ...force of arms." According to historian
David Chappell, "the Montgomery boycott was one of the two greatest
demonstrations of the power of nonviolent protest to take place in the
20th century. Since Indian independence created the world's largest
democracy, people had been waiting to see if the Gandhian example could
be replicated elsewhere. The equally dramatic events in Montgomery in
1955-6 proved that nonviolence could work under very different
circumstances than those in India."

Further, according to historian J. Mills Thornton, Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church is a central site in the transformation of American race
relations. The American Civil Rights Movement not only remade America,
but also initiated currents in world affairs that are still shaping
human history. America's struggle to come to terms with its own
difficulties through nonviolent means initiated an intellectual
awakening that freed Africa and Asia from colonialism and increased
consciousness of ethnic populations to achieve full partnership with
their governments.

Many of these movements explicitly identified themselves with the
struggle of African Americans in the Deep South and adopted or adapted
techniques pioneered by Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence
and disseminated by the success of the American Civil Rights Movement in
ending racial segregation in the Deep South states.

**The Period of International Significance is 1955-present**. The model
provided to the world by the use of nonviolence in transforming U.S.
race relations in the mid-20th century continues to influence human
events.

**The Internationally Significant Dates are 1955-56**, This is the
period during which thousands of ordinary Montgomerians walked rather
than rode city buses, their main source of transportation, in order to
end racially restrictive seating.

**Historic Context:**

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church served as the epicenter of the modern civil
rights movement in the United States, which ultimately continues to
impact human and civil rights struggles throughout the world. The
significance of the Montgomery bus boycott cannot be understated when
evaluating events that launched the organized civil rights efforts in
the American South during the 1950s. While there were earlier efforts,
the civil rights movement coalesced as a result of the Montgomery bus
boycott; the boycott also launched Dr. Martin Luther King as an
international figure and conveyed his guiding principle of non-violent
resistance to the world.

# The Significance of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and Its Congregation

During the early years of the struggle in Montgomery, King was most
intimately associated with Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he was
serving as a young pastor at the time of the boycott. In addition to
continuing his ministerial duties there, where he promulgated the need
for equality gained through non-violent methods, the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church building functioned as a meeting place for the Montgomery
Improvement Association, a protest committee that African-American
leaders founded and which King helmed to organize the bus boycott. The
church is directly and closely involved with the seminal civil rights
efforts that started in Montgomery in 1955; Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
was essentially the center of the Montgomery bus boycott, launching King
to the forefront of the civil rights movement, where he remained until
his untimely death.

The physical building of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was important as a
meeting place for these early civil rights efforts and as a place where
King could weekly share his thoughts on civil disobedience as an
extension of God's will for all men and women to be equal. However,
according to historian J. Mills Thornton, the important role of the
church and its leaders in African-American society is also significant
in the success of the boycott. Dexter's congregants during the boycott
included powerful and articulate leaders of the African-American
community, most notably those associated with Alabama State University
who used their classrooms to discuss King's methods and disseminate
information about the boycott and its progress.

# Dexter Avenue Baptist Church before Dr. Martin Luther King

While Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is intrinsically linked with the
Montgomery bus boycott and Dr. Martin Luther King, Reverend Vernon Johns
held the pastorate of the congregation from 1947-1952, when King assumed
the position. In his militancy in speech, action, and writings, he
promulgated the need for racial equality for all men. Johns invigorated
the Montgomery community and his actions and words had far-reaching
impacts. "Through his teachings and his precepts, he . . . emphasized
the concept of human fellowship that would know no narrow racial,
religious, of national boundaries. He kindled a strong flame of thoughts
of the importance that every individual should have in the affairs of
the world. And this importance would have implications for every phase
of human existence: the political, the industrial, and the intellectual;
but most important of all, it would establish a new basis for the way in
which the peoples of the world will deal with each other. A blaze of
self-esteem was kindled in the community by Dr. Johns but awaited the
necessary fuel to start the conflagration."[^1] In 1946, the church was
also the location where the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People decided to unite local branches into a singular and more
powerful and structured statewide branch that was prepared to craft
legal challenges to segregation.

# Importance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

"The Montgomery bus boycott looms as a formative turning point of the
twentieth century: harbinger of the African American freedom movement,
which in turn inspired movements for freedom around the globe . . ."
stated historian Stewart Burns in *Daybreak of Freedom*, an assessment
of the significance of the bus boycott.[^2] Burns, a former Stanford
University resident fellow and former editor of the Martin Luther King,
Jr., papers, continued by stating that "the bus boycott stands for all
times as one of humankind's supreme democratic moments . . ." and he
ranked it in importance with the signing of the Declaration of
Independence in Philadelphia and the delivery of the Gettysburg Address
as significant milestones in American freedom. The initial meeting to
organize the boycott was held at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Although
King was relatively new to Montgomery in 1955 at the onset of the
boycott, he quickly gained national and international attention as the
leader of the boycott and the voice of African Americans who supported
non-violent means to achieve their goal of equality. Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church was strongly associated with King and the bus boycott
from the earliest days of the civil rights movement. During the boycott,
the support of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church congregants was critical to
the success of the boycott and also to bolstering support for King and
his young family as he embarked on what was to become his life's work.
Even when his home in Montgomery was bombed while his wife and baby
daughter were inside, King promulgated his message of non-violence,
setting a personal example in the face of personal risk and danger.

During his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr., came to view the
Montgomery bus boycott and the movement that it spawned as part of a
worldwide struggle of people of color against white supremacy and/or
colonialism. Historian and activist C.L.R. James wrote that the bus
boycott was as "revolutionary . . . profoundly so" as Ghana's successful
campaign for independence and the Hungarian anticommunist revolt. "Here
is something new, one of the most astonishing events in the history of
the human struggle."

While African-American citizens in Baton Rouge organized a brief bus
boycott in June 1953, prior to the one in Montgomery, it was not
continued for a long period of time. Bayard Rustin stated that
"Montgomery followed and because of its long and sustained nature, its
world wide publicity and the mass arrests of its leaders, it \[the bus
boycott\] has become the symbol of the struggle. For Negroes, it must
succeed. For defenders of segregation it must fail."[^3] Succinctly
stated, the world was literally watching and such was the importance of
the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. Motivated by the dedication
of King and the commitment of the citizens of Montgomery that he
inspired, African-American citizens in other Southern cities, including
Birmingham, Atlanta, and Tallahassee, embarked on boycotts of their own.

Global Impact of Dr. Martin Luther King

Although Dr, Martin Luther King is best known as a civil rights leader,
his impact on global democracy is often marginalized at the expense of
the significance his activities in the American South. King\'s legacy is
present in worldwide movements for democracy and individual rights.
Civil rights leader Andrew Young believes King\'s \"I Have a Dream"
speech \"made the history not only of the civil rights movement . . .
\[but\] helped get Nelson Mandela out of jail. It helped bring down the
Berlin Wall. . The shipyard workers in Poland. Everywhere in the world
people saw that, and were inspired, and everybody in the world to this
day identifies with . . . Martin Luther King\'s expression of the
American dream.\"[^4]

King, influenced by the writings and protests of Mahatma Gandhi, used
the ideals of nonviolent confrontation as a way to peacefully yet
forcefully produce change that he believed reflected fairness, equality,
and humanity. While Gandhi's efforts resulted in the freedom of India
from Great Britain, King was the first Westerner to apply these methods
in the years immediately following Gandhi assassination. And while
Gandhi was well-known, King lived in a time of increasing media growth
with the advent of television, so his efforts benefited from the
dissemination of information in a new format. King, a strong and
impassioned orator, had a greater impact when being heard, rather than
his words simply being read in the newspaper. The culmination of King's
success was not only his civil rights achievements, but in the awakening
that he caused in other oppressed groups throughout the world who
witnessed his efforts and subsequently applied his principles, advancing
King's ultimate goal of free governments throughout the world.
African-American writer Nick Charles noted that "Along the Berlin Wall
you were hearing \[the civil rights anthem\] "We Shall Overcome." In
Prague, Czechoslovakia, when people were looking for liberty and
freedom, they tapped into those speeches and the ethos of the civil
rights movement led by him \[King\]."[^5]

Historian Taylor Branch credited King's success with spawning
movements---some more successful than others---for democracy in the
Soviet Union, East Germany and Prague. Historian Stewart Burns
attributed the bus boycott with setting standards for the black freedom
movement and also for international "struggles for liberation"."[^6]
Indeed, had he lived, King would likely have been at the forefront of
some of these movements, as witnessed by his statement ". . . we have to
institutionalize nonviolence and take it international," uttered only
hours before his death.[^7]

In an essay completed in 2006, Branch exhorted America to "restore
King's role in the continuing story of freedom to its rightful
prominence" before his critical role in promoting nonviolence as a way
to democracy is marginalized.[^8]

Other international struggles for democracy and freedom that were
influenced by nonviolent resistance and King's success with these
methods include demonstrations by citizens to non-violently resist
colonial rule, foreign domination, racial discrimination, and tyrannical
regimes. Throughout the world, unarmed men and women who were inspired
by King collectively defied their governments to gain human and civil
rights. In Poland, Lech Walesa, the leader of the \"Solidarity\"
movement, skillfully alternated disciplined and peaceful strikes with
negotiations, while appealing to his countrymen to refrain from
violence. By 1989, Poland became the first country in Eastern Europe to
free itself from Soviet domination. In Czechoslovakia, a massive
non-violent protest in 1968 dwindled, but twenty-one years later, on
November 17, 1989, a spontaneous upsurge against Soviet occupation
turned into the largest demonstration in the history of the country.
More than 100,000 marchers gathered in Wenceslas Square in Prague, sat
down on the road, held candles, and waved flags. Their leader Vaclav
Havel exhorted them to refrain from violence. The Prague demonstration
had a chain reaction across the country. Protests and participants grew
daily. Truncheon-wielding police beat peaceful crowds. According to Mary
E. King, the author of *Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.*, the people
of Czechoslovakia enacted the power of truth, as Gandhi had defined it
and King promulgated it.[^9] By the end of December 1989, the
Soviet-dominated regime had surrendered and the Federal Assembly had
elected Havel, as the president of Czechoslovakia.

Another striking victory of non-violence occurred in the Philippines,
resulting in an overthrow of the despotic and corrupt regime of
President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1977, Marcos threw into prison Senator
Benigno Aquino, a proponent of democracy and his chief rival. In prison,
Aquino studied the non-violent protest methods and philosophy. When he
returned to the Philippines after three years of self-exile, he was
assassinated. His death galvanized the country and paved the way for a
non-violent struggle. The crisis culminated in 1986, when a four-day
confrontation between armed forces and unarmed people lasted until the
Marcos regime crumbled.

These are only a subset of the international civil and human rights
struggles that have credited King's non-violent methods with inspiring
their efforts; there are simply too many to describe in detail in the
current documentation. However, King's non-violent example---centered at
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church---is remarkable for its success, but also
for its commitment to avoiding violent confrontation, which succeeded
through the duration of the Montgomery bus boycott

*Context prepared by Stephanie Foell, historic preservation consultant,*

*June 27, 2007.*

**Sources:**

Ackerman, Peter and Duvall, Jack. *A Force More Powerful: A Century of
Nonviolent Conflict*, Palgrave. New York and Hampshire. 2000

Branch. Taylor "Globalizing Martin Luther King's Legacy*." International
Herald Tribune*. January 17, 2006.

Burns, Stewart. *Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.*
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and
London. 1997.

Chappell, David. Interview with Jim Carrier, March 27, 2007

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church website,
[www.dexterkingmemorial.org](http://www.dexterkingmemorial.org/),
accessed June 16, 2007.

Foell, Stephanie. "Historic Context" correspondence to the Alabama
Historical Commission. June 27, 2007.

King, Mary E. Gandhi and Martin Luther King. UNESCO, 1999.

Lewis, Kim. **"**Analyst Notes Martin Luther King Message Resonates Far
Beyond US Borders," *Voice of America*, January 16, 2006.

Nobel Prize website. http://nobelprize.org. Accessed March 29, 2007

PBS website. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_bible.html>.
Accessed on June 26, 2007.

Rustin, Bayard. "Working Paper #3: Unified Planning for Bus
Integration." Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Thornton, J. Mills III. "Montgomery Bus Boycott" Ronald Gottesman,
editor. Violence in American: An Encyclopedia, Scribners, NY 1999 vol. 2
pp. 405-407

# Section 8a Contact Information

Please include along with Pastor Thurman

**Name**: Ellen Mertins,

**Title:** Preparer

Alabama Historical Commission

468 S. Perry Street

Montgomery, Alabama 36130-0900

**Telephone**: 334 230-2657

**Cellular Phone**: 334 430-6723

**Preferred Contact**: 8am-5pm CST, Monday --Friday

**Fax:** 334 230-2664

# Email and or/website

<ellen.mertins@preserveala.org>; www.preserveala.org

[^1]: Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church website,
    [www.dexterkingmemorial.org](http://www.dexterkingmemorial.org/),
    accessed June 16, 2007.

[^2]: Stewart Burns. *Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.*
    University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and
    London. 1997 xi

[^3]: "Working Paper #3: Unified Planning for Bus Integration." Bayard
    Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[^4]: <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_bible.html>.
    Accessed on June 26, 2007.

[^5]: Kim Lewis, **"**Analyst Notes Martin Luther King Message Resonates
    Far Beyond US Borders," *Voice of America*, January 16, 2006.

[^6]: Stewart Burns. *Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott*.
    University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and
    London. 1997 xii

[^7]: Taylor Branch. "Globalizing Martin Luther King's Legacy*."
    International Herald Tribune*. January 17, 2006.

[^8]: Taylor Branch. "Globalizing Martin Luther King's Legacy*."
    International Herald Tribune*. January 17, 2006.

[^9]: Mary E. King. *Gandhi and Martin Luther King*, UNESCO, 1999.