February 20, 2006
The U.S. Department of the Interior designated Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham a National Historic Landmark. The city’s first house of worship for African-Americans, the church was first established in 1873 as the first Colored Baptist Church. It moved to its present location in 1880 and, in 1911, the church’s current building was constructed. The church gained national attention during the civil rights movement as the staging ground for African-American activism in the city and as the target of a racially motivated bombing by the Ku Klux Klan that killed four black girls in 1963. In January 2017, President Barack Obama signed legislation creating the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, which includes the church.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Choir on the steps of the church, ca. 1917. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan on Sept. 15, 1963, killing four African-American girls. The tragedy incited local riots and national outrage and was a central moment leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Birmingham Public Library Archives)
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham. (Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Stained-glass window at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. (Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.