Born a slave, the Reverend Charles Octavius Boothe was one of the Freedmen who established the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church after the Civil War. The church served the African American community of Montgomery for over one hundred years and gained notoriety in the 1950s as a focal point of the Civil Rights movement.

In the early 1950s Dexter Avenue's pastor was Vernon Johns, a vocal advocate for Civil Rights. Johns continued a legacy that would include the activism of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The church's involvement in the Civil Rights movement peaked on December 1, 1955 with the arrest of Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus. Parishioner Jo Ann Robinson was the driving force behind the thirteen month Montgomery bus boycott.

Burdened with frustration from personal experience, Robinson seized the opportunity. On the evening of Parks' arrest, she stayed up all night and made thousands of flyers that called for a boycott of Montgomery busses.

At the time of Parks' arrest, the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist church was a young Martin Luther King, Jr. on his first assignment. From the pulpit, King told parishoners "God's love is too broad to be limited to a particular race."

Using the church, the black community of Montgomery organized a grass roots campaign to right the discrimination practiced against them on the busses. The bus boycott lasted until the United States Supreme Court ruled against segregation on public transportation.

Despite his arrest for conspiracy, despite the bombing of his home, King continued to preach non-violence.

The charismatic preacher carried on the tradition formed by the leaders of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, pioneered and extolled the virtue of peaceful protest and helped elevate the cause of Civil Rights for all Americans to a national level.

Researched by Cynthia Catellier

University of West Florida

Public History