…stands near the head of Dexter Avenue, only one block from the State Capitol. Its design is simplified Victorian Gothic, and it was built in 1899 amidst much controversy over the placement of a “Colored Church” on the city’s main street. Today it is widely heralded as Montgomery’s most famous structure.  It was from here that Martin Luther King Jr joined other Black leaders and officially launched the 1955 bus boycott that up-ended Southern traditions. In the picture, the church is framed against the ominous looking Southern Poverty Law Center, which leers over Dexter and its environs.

-Charles Humphries