In 1866, newly freed people in Selma, Alabama, came together for a prayer movement. For some time, they met in each other’s homes. During a meeting in the basement of the Hotel Albert, they formed an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) and one year later, they were admitted into the A.M.E. Connection, making them an official congregation of the global network of A.M.E. churches. In 1869, they constructed a frame structure at the current location of the church. The congregation used that building until 1908, when they hired A.J. Farley, a local African American architect, to build the new church. This is the only surviving structure that Farley built.
The church grew steadily through the first 50 years of the 20th Century. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, Governor George Wallace used a newly enacted state law that banned churches from participating in and supporting Black voter registration drives. That ban halted voter registration work, led by the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL), in Selma and surrounding Dallas County for some time. In March 1965, local activists led by the Courageous Eight—the small but mighty group of the DCVL willing to publicly announce their membership—persuaded national figures including future Congressman John Lewis and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leader Dr. Martin Luther King to come to Selma, making the local campaign nationally famous, most notably for the beating of civil rights marchers who attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.
While the national spotlight was on the voter registration drive in Selma, Reverend P.H. Lewis and Bishop L.H. Bonner agreed that Brown Chapel should be used by SCLC and all the civil rights protesters demanding their right to vote. They opened Brown Chapel for important mass meetings, defying local ordinances and state laws by arguing that churches could still hold religious services, and since there was no legal definition of what a sermon could be, local and national civil rights leaders spoke from the Brown Chapel pulpit. Soon, nationally prominent leaders including Dr. King, his wife, Coretta Scott King and even Black Nationalist spokesman Malcolm X, all spoke from the Brown Chapel pulpit as the church became one of the centers for organizing the civil rights campaign in Central Alabama. In fact, John Lewis, led 600 civil rights and voter rights activists from Brown Chaple on their famous March 7 confrontation with Alabama State Troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what would be known as Bloody Sunday.
When nationally televised attack on the 50 marchers including one who died and almost all of the others suffering injuries and one died, Dr King, John Lewis and other civil rights leaders felt compelled to lead a second, larger march again from Brown Chapel, to the first intended designation, the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. This second internationally televised march on March 21st, 1965 attracted 25,000 participants and led the U.S. Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Brown Chapel was crucial to the success of the campaign for voting rights in Central Alabama. The decision of church leaders to open their doors to local and eventually national civil rights activists changed the course of history for Alabama and the entire nation. Brown Chapel continues to be a pivotal force in the religious and social community of Selma, Alabama.
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