Dexter Parsonage Museum – Dr. Martin Luther King home, Montgomery, Alabama, USA
The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, was founded in 1877 in a slave trader’s pen, located on Dexter Avenue (formerly Market Street) in Montgomery, Alabama.
Formed by a breakaway segment of the congregation from the “Brick-a-Day” First Baptist Church, on January 30, 1879 the Church’s trustees purchased a 50′ by 110′ lot for $270.00 on the corner of Dexter Avenue and Decatur Street near the Capitol building, as the permanent location of their church. A small wood frame structure located on the lot was used for worship service and educational purposes; the current red brick building was constructed between 1883 and 1889.
The Church has history of community service that spans well over a century. On October 3, 1887, the first registration of students for Alabama State University (then the Normal School for Colored Students) was held in the lower unit of the church. Over the years, it has served the community through the use of its facilities as meeting place for many civic, educational and religious groups,and through its human resources. Much of Montgomery’s early civil rights activity – most famously the 1956 Bus Boycott – was directed by Dr. King from his office in the lower unit of the church.
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