Why Historic Bethel Baptist Church Needs Saving Now
As a child growing up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and ’60s, there was one place where educator and preservationist Martha Bouyer felt valued: her community church.
“Outside, I was just another Black face, nameless, and did not really matter to those who did not know me. At church, I was somebody. I was ‘a promise and a possibility,’” says Bouyer of 31st Street Baptist Church, which she attended with her mother, grandmother, and three sisters—and later with her daughter.
There, her mother, grandmother, and aunts, along with their friends, were respected leaders and treated with dignity by their peers. Children, too, were often called upon to stand up and speak in front of large groups that included adults. “The opportunity to recite a long Christmas or Easter speech before the congregation was an investment in me. The opportunity to help count the Sunday school collection was like saying, ‘I trust you,’” says Bouyer. “Church gave me a sense of personhood and a sense of who I could become.”
Belief in one’s ability to make a difference in society is just what Bouyer strives to impart to visitors to Birmingham’s Historic Bethel Baptist Church, where the former teacher now serves as executive director of the Historic Bethel Baptist Church Community Restoration Fund. Built in 1926, the church is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, is a National Historic Landmark, and has been nominated for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In addition to overseeing the preservation of the building and its surrounding community of Collegeville, Bouyer is preserving the tremendous yet often overlooked legacy of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who served as pastor of the church from 1953 to 1961, by teaching visitors about the impact he had on the modern civil rights movement using a series of interpretive lessons she has created.
It was at Bethel that Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) in 1956 after the state outlawed the NAACP. From its home base at Bethel, the ACMHR organized legal challenges and nonviolent protests to combat segregation throughout the city, from schools and courtrooms to public facilities and places of business.
His success in ultimately defeating segregation in Birmingham came despite near-constant attempts on his life and the lives of others—Bethel and its parsonage were bombed three times during the height of the civil rights movement—and it inspired people across the country and around the world to join the movement.
In 1957, in the wake of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, Shuttlesworth worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black pastors to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); the group’s commitment to battling segregation through nonviolent protest echoed principles outlined in the bylaws of the ACMHR. Shuttlesworth’s reputation as a courageous and effective leader extended well beyond the South: In 1961 he worked with President Kennedy’s administration and other movement leaders to coordinate the Freedom Rides through Alabama, sheltering riders who had been beaten in Birmingham at Bethel's parsonage.
Today visitors to the church discover the depths of Shuttlesworth’s work at Bouyer’s hands. Thanks to her use of music, primary source read-alouds, and skits with audience involvement, Bouyer’s history lesson is a more immersive experience than classroom instruction. “We’re trying to do three things: engage first, educate you about why this place is important, and then empower you to realize that you’re the next leader to change the world,” says Bouyer. A visit to Historic Bethel “has the power to help each individual realize you do matter and you can make a difference.”
Bouyer’s powerful tutorial is a natural extension of her decades of experience in the classroom and as a curriculum supervisor for the Jefferson County (Alabama) Schools. She also trains teachers from around the world on how to teach the history of the civil rights movement via a project she developed with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alabama Humanities Alliance called “Stony the Road We Trod ...”: Exploring Alabama’s Civil Rights Legacy.
But Bouyer has an even bigger vision for how to evolve the visitor experience to Historic Bethel. She has worked with interpretive experience design firm TimeLooper to develop a plan for a series of augmented and virtual reality exhibits beginning upstairs in the architecturally intact historic nave and continuing downstairs into the service spaces of the building. Plans also include a memorial garden adjacent to the historic building for reflection.
Thanks to a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to the City of Birmingham, a critical first step in the execution of Bouyer’s vision—the creation of a Historic Structures Report (HSR)—has been completed for Historic Bethel.
“An HSR is a road map for preservation planning and for understanding how to intervene in the future,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the Action Fund and senior vice president of the National Trust, who explains the report establishes and documents a building’s period of significance, why it holds important historical value, what its preservation needs are, and what the appropriate treatments are. An HSR also includes a conditions assessment report with cost estimates for preservation work. “It’s really a blueprint for laying out how we care for a historical asset,” says Leggs.
With the HSR in hand, Historic Bethel and Bouyer are poised for the next phase of its preservation and realizing her vision for interpretive education there, pending additional fundraising. Leggs, who recently announced the first round of grant recipients of the Preserving Black Churches project he launched with support from the Lilly Endowment Inc. in 2022, emphasizes how critical the need is for investing in the future of Black community churches.
“The Black church has been the center of our community. As children and as members, we’ve been able to see role models and examples of other community members who are professionals, examples of what our potential could be,” he says, echoing Bouyer’s childhood experience in Birmingham. But, says Leggs, “the future of the Black church is vulnerable given societal shifts in the way we connect to religion.”
The Action Fund’s Preserving Black Churches project aims to protect the future of these institutions by not only preserving the buildings to preserve their religious missions but also empowering them to leverage their resources to serve their communities’ most critical needs.
Restoring the Collegeville neighborhood, which was developed for industrial workers' housing given its proximity to factories and mills and remains isolated from the rest of the city by industrial tracts and railyards, is work Bouyer considers part of her mission in preserving Historic Bethel, the parsonage, and Shuttlesworth’s legacy.
For example, Bouyer has raised money through grants and individual donors to make structural improvements to houses throughout the neighborhood and provide high-speed internet access to surrounding residents. And in September of this year, which marks the 60th anniversary of the events of 1963, Bouyer plans to hold a healing conference for surviving community members who suffered trauma during the children’s march, the joint ACMHR-SCLC Birmingham Campaign protests and the subsequent bombings, and the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
“Martha’s vision for the future of Historic Bethel Baptist is not only beautiful but impactful. Visitors will walk away empowered to ask themselves, What is my social responsibility to create a more just and equitable society? How can I harness my talents and passion to have a positive impact on other people?” says Leggs. “It truly brings life to the power of place in history.”
To support the preservation of Historic Bethel Baptist Church, visit thehistoricbethel.org.
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