Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1908. A starting point for the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches of 1965. A memorial can be seen on the lawn in the foreground.
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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.) church, 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, as there was no legal definition of what constituted a sermon. 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 Chapel on their famous March 7 confrontation with Alabama State Troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what would be known as Bloody Sunday.
When a nationally televised attack on the 50 marchers, including one who died and almost all of the others suffering injuries, 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 destination, the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. The second internationally televised march, held on March 21, 1965, attracted 25,000 participants and led the U.S. Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Brown Chapel played a crucial role in the success of the voting rights campaign 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 remains a pivotal force in the religious and social community of Selma, Alabama.
Jessica O’Connor (she/hers) is a Cheyenne, Wyoming native. A graduate of Winston-Salem State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Jessica holds a B.A. in History and M.A. in Museum Studies. She also holds certificates in Inclusive Leadership, Project Management, and Cultural Heritage Preservation. Her academic work focuses on the rematriation and re-centering of Black History in the Deep South through the intersection of perceived gender and class. As a public historian, Jessica specializes in curating accessibility-driven, person-first, digital history projects.
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CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:
O’Connor, J. (2025, September 16). Brown Chapel A.M.E Church (1866- ). BlackPast.org. https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/brown-chapel-a-m-e-church-1866/
Taylor Branch, Janina Edwards, and Leon Nixon,. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023.
Bernard LaFayette and Kathryn Lee Johnson. In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2016.
Joyce O’Neal, Voices of Alabama: Brown Chapel A.M.E. Other. AAACRHSC Voices of Alabama, 2021.
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