Published On: 06.18.19 | 

By: 14236

On this day in Alabama history: Sixth Avenue Baptist Church was founded in Titusville

June 18 feature

Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, 1972. (National Archives, photograph by LeRoy Woodson, Wikipedia).

June 18, 1881

Sixth Avenue Baptist Church was founded June 18, 1881, in Birmingham. Located at 1101 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in south Titusville, the church is Birmingham’s largest black church, with more than 5,000 members. The first church building was located at 16th Street and Sixth Avenue South. The church hosted the 23rd session of the Colored Baptist Convention of Alabama in November 1890. In 1910, the original frame building of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church was replaced with a masonry edifice designed by African-American architect Wallace Rayfield. The building cost $35,000. The church hosted many large meetings during the civil rights movement. In 1968, the church sold its property and temporarily held services at Ullman High School until moving to its new building on Montevallo Road, which was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the 1980s.

Read more at Bhamwiki.

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