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When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference needed a room in Atlanta to make its decisions in the early 1960s, it often used a stone church on Hunter Street. The pastor there was Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.'s close friend and fellow leader. But the church's part in the movement did not begin with him: West Hunter Street Baptist had been organising for civil rights for three decades before he arrived.
A congregation that organised
| Years | What happened at West Hunter Street |
|---|---|
| 1881 | founded as Mount Calvary Baptist Church |
| 1906 | buys land and builds a new sanctuary on Hunter Street, and takes the street's name |
| 1930s | voting-rights rallies; exchanges with white churches and synagogues |
| 1940s | a forum of white and Black leaders meets there |
| 1950s | under Rev. Dr. A. Franklin Frazier, home to the Westside Voters League, the local NAACP branch and the Atlanta Negro Chamber of Commerce |
| 1960 | after Frazier's death, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy becomes senior pastor |
| early 1960s–early 1970s | a regular meeting place of the SCLC, and host to trainings and the Poor People's Campaign |
| 1973 | the congregation moves to a larger building |
| late 1970s | the old church is sold |
| 2023 | joins the African American Civil Rights Network |
Frazier's pastorate is the one most easily forgotten, and it mattered. Frazier helped organise the campaign that desegregated Atlanta's public transportation and advised members of the Atlanta Student Movement — so when Abernathy took the pulpit, he inherited a congregation that already knew how to hold a meeting that could change a city.
Abernathy's church
Abernathy came to Atlanta as one of the movement's best-known leaders. He had been an integral leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and later of the SCLC, and after his arrival the church became one of the places the SCLC met regularly and made significant organising decisions. It also gave space to trainings, to the Poor People's Campaign and to other civil rights and political work, through the early 1970s.
When the congregation outgrew the building and moved in 1973, political and civil rights groups kept meeting in the old sanctuary on Hunter Street until it was sold at the end of the decade.
The network it belongs to
In 2023 the historic church became part of the African American Civil Rights Network, created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and coordinated by the National Park Service. The network links public and private places, facilities and programmes that tell the story of the civil rights movement — and of the people who made its sacrifices — in the places where it happened.
Sources
Written from the National Park Service's African American Civil Rights Network entry for Historic West Hunter Street Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Lizenz: CC0 1.0 (gemeinfrei) · Bearbeitet nach www.nps.gov
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