Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Civil rights church in Montgomery, United States

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is a red brick building with a steep gabled front and a white square tower topped by a dark pointed roof and slender spire, at Dexter Avenue and Decatur Street near the Alabama State Capitol. Inside, pale blue walls and a flat white paneled ceiling frame an archway over a recessed baptistry with a wooden pulpit and circular pool; wooden pews face a red carpet, and four lantern-shaped pendant lights hang on chains.

The building was completed in 1889 and was renamed several times before receiving its current name in 1978. Between 1954 and 1960 it became a center of the early civil rights movement when the bus boycott was organized from here.

The congregation was founded in 1877 as the Second Colored Baptist Church by freedmen and free people of color, with Charles Octavius Boothe as founding pastor. It took the name Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1885. On October 3, 1887, the church hosted the first registration of students for Alabama State University, a historically black college.

The church stands at the corner of Dexter Avenue and Decatur Street, steps from the Alabama State Capitol. The former Dexter Parsonage, home to twelve pastors between 1920 and 1992, is nearby and now runs as the Dexter Parsonage Museum. Behind the church, at 455 Washington Avenue, the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Legacy Center has a courtyard with a statue of Dr. King.

The congregation was organized in 1877 by freedmen and free people of color as the Second Colored Baptist Church, with Charles Octavius Boothe as founding pastor. Trustees paid $270 on January 30, 1879, for the corner lot at Dexter Avenue and Decatur Street, where a small wood-frame building first stood. The brick building begun in 1883 was not completed until 1889.