Bethel Baptist Church, Birmingham
Near Birmingham, Alabama
Bethel Baptist Church in the Collegeville neighborhood of Birmingham was the home church of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, the most fearless leader of the Birmingham civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights here in nineteen fifty-six, after the state outlawed the NAACP. The church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan on Christmas night, nineteen fifty-six, destroying the parsonage while Shuttlesworth was inside.
He walked out unharmed and told onlookers that God had saved him to carry on. The church was bombed again in nineteen fifty-eight. Shuttlesworth refused to leave Birmingham or soften his demands, and his persistent pressure was a central reason Martin Luther King brought the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's nineteen sixty-three campaign to the city.
Bethel Baptist is a National Historic Landmark.
