On this day in Alabama history: Charles Octavius Boothe was born

 June 13, 1845

Charles Octavius Boothe, a native of Mobile County, was born as the legal property of planter Nathan Howard Sr. Boothe became an influential African-American Baptist preacher, educator and author who worked with white leaders and philanthropists to assist African-Americans in post-Civil War Alabama. He helped found Selma University, the Dexter Avenue-King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, and the Colored Baptist Missionary Convention for the State of Alabama, the first statewide African-American Baptist denominational organization. In 1901, he joined Booker T. Washington in public opposition to calls to rewrite Alabama’s constitution.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Charles O. Boothe’s Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptists of Alabama was published in 1895, a memoir of his life as an African-American Christian during the late 1800s. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. (Erin Harney/Alabama NewsCenter)

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist from 1954 until 1060. (Erin Harney/Alabama NewsCenter)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.