Qualla: 16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Riveting40, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two years after Birmingham, Alabama, was incorporated in 1871, a group of Black congregants organized the First Colored Baptist Church of Birmingham. It was the first Black church in a city that was barely a city at all -- a raw industrial settlement in Jones Valley, surrounded by the iron ore and coal seams that would define its future. The congregation met in a small building at 12th Street and Fourth Avenue North, then moved to 3rd Avenue North, then in 1880 purchased the lot at 16th Street and 6th Avenue North where the church stands today. That address would become one of the most consequential in American history -- not because anyone planned it that way, but because a church built to serve a community became the place where that community fought for its rights, buried its children, and refused to close its doors.

Image: Riveting40 | CC BY-SA 4.0

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: Brick by Brick

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0. Under pastor William R. Pettiford, who led the congregation from 1883 to 1904, the church completed its first permanent brick building on the 16th Street site in 1884. Pettiford was a formidable figure -- an educator, banker, and organizer who co-founded the Alabama Penny Savings...

Image: DXR | CC BY-SA 4.0

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: The Gathering Place

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Riis2602, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the early 1960s, the 16th Street Baptist Church had become the organizational nerve center of Birmingham's civil rights movement. Its basement auditorium -- designed decades earlier for lectures -- became the staging ground for mass meetings, strategy sessions, and nonviolence...

Image: Riis2602 | CC BY-SA 4.0

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: September 15, 1963

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain. On a Sunday morning, Ku Klux Klan members Thomas Blanton, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Robert Edward Chambliss planted nineteen sticks of dynamite beneath the church's east steps. The explosion at 10:22 a.m. killed four girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and...

Image: AnonymousUnknown author | Public domain

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: Resurrection in Glass and Stone

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0. The church reopened on June 7, 1964, rebuilt with more than $300,000 in unsolicited gifts from around the world. Among them was a stained-glass window from Wales -- designed by artist John Petts and funded by ordinary Welsh citizens through a newspaper campaign. The window depict...

Image: Chris Pruitt | CC BY-SA 3.0

16th Street Baptist Church: From First Congregation to National Landmark: Still Standing, Still Open

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kinu Panda (Kinu at en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the 16th Street Baptist Church receives more than 200,000 visitors annually. Its membership hovers around 500, but weekly attendance approaches 2,000 -- a testament to the pull of a place that carries the weight of history while still functioning as a living congregation. T...

Image: Kinu Panda (Kinu at en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0