Biography | Martin Luther King Jr. — Dexter Avenue, the Pulpit Above the Capitol Steps

People treat King as the Lincoln Memorial and four words on a Washington afternoon. The first pastorate that can still be entered is this brick church. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church stands at 454 Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama, one block from the State Capitol. King became pastor here in 1954 at twenty-five. The bus boycott was organised from the basement after Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955. The church was later renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial. The sanctuary is small. The balcony and the dark wood pews face a pulpit that looks uphill toward the white dome. The basement meeting room is the room that turned a local arrest into a year-long boycott. On 21 December 1956 the buses were integrated. King left for Atlanta in 1960. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974. The pin is this church, not the Lorraine Motel and not Ebenezer in Atlanta. Those are later pins in the same life. This is the address where a new pastor met a city ordinance and did not yield the basement.