Was organized in the basement of the white Baptist Church (First
Baptist Church) just after the close of the war. The corner stone of
their present building on Columbus street was laid in 1867. Their
first pastor was the late Rev. Nathan Ashby, who, prior to the war,
had preached to the colored membership on Sundays in the afternoon,
in the basement of the white church. Mr. Ashby being stricken down
by paralysis, closed his pastorate in 1870. Under his pastorate this
church issued the call for the first session of the State Convention in
1868; hence this church is the source--the mother--of our Convention.
For a few months the Rev. J. W. Stevens supplied the pulpit.
In 1871 the late Rev. James H. Foster was called to the pastoral
office, which he served for the space of twenty years, leaving it only
to answer the summons of his Master to appear in purer and higher
spheres. Under his administration the church increased its membership
from a few hundred to several thousand. He expended some $10,000 or
$12,000 on the present edifice. Under his pastorate the Foreign Mission
Convention was organized in 1880.
After Mr. Foster’s death, December 1, 1891, Rev. A. J, Stokes, then
pastor at Fernandina, Fla., was called to their pulpit, and now
serves with great success, having added within the last two months
about 500 by baptism. So far, his success is a wonder to the people
of Montgomery. The special item under his administration is the
organization of the young people for training and work.
Old Brother Boykin (about 85 years old) in speaking of the work about
Montgomery, said: “The first colored preacher I saw after coming from
Charleston, was Bro. Cyrus Hale. He came from South Carolina. He was an
old man when I first met him. He was well read, was a good preacher,
and the white people ’lowed him to go anywhere there was a call for
him. He was the father of the work in this section. Following him, was
Bro. Jacob Belser, and then came Bro. Nathan Ashby. Brother Hale must
have been ordained, for he used to baptize in slavery time.
“While we were worshiping in the white church, we had some ’sistant
deacons--Bros. Fayette Vandeville, Jerry Fye, Peter Miles and Abe
Blackshear.”
Rev. William Jenkins relates the following: “I was born in Montgomery
in 1835, and have been here every since. I began to speak in public in
1852, and continued to speak in the city and on neighboring plantations
all the while. I was allowed to read the Bible, but I had rather been
caught with a hog than with a newspaper; because, for the hog, I was
likely to get a whipping; but for the newspaper I might get a hanging.
And there was some faith them times. On a plantation out here where I
used to preach, there was a balloon coming down one day. The overseer
and the people saw it, and as that was a new thing with them, it
frightened them, and everybody fled except one brother, who, on seeing
the man in the balloon, and believing that it was the Lord, ran towards
the descending balloon, exclaiming as he looked up: ‘Lord, I’s been
looking for you for so long a time, and now you’s come at last!’ The
balloon man said: ‘Go away, boy; I’m nothing but a man.’”
Montgomery is no longer what it was when, thirty years ago, Bro.
Ashby spoke in the afternoon in the basement of the white church. Six
colored Baptist churches now worship within the city and suburbs of
Montgomery. The edifice of Dexter Avenue Church, standing near the
first capital of the ex-Confederacy, is one of the most substantial and
neat brick structures in the city, and the congregation which worships
therein are people of money and refinement. Messrs. H. A. Loveless,
the coal dealer, William Watkins, the contractor, and Charles Steers,
the upholsterer, are owners and managers of large affairs, involving
thousands of dollars.
The colored people of this city own many hundred thousand dollars in
real estate. Mr. Billingslea, the barber, is said to own $300,000. Dr.
Dorsett runs a successful drug business in one of the lower departments
of a two-story brick building owned by himself. The widow of the late
Hon. James Hale has built and is maintaining an infirmary for the sick
poor people of her race.
Contrast this state of things with thirty years ago, when the colored
people, like “dumb driven cattle” before hound and lash, wended their
way in the “death march” of slavery, and ask if the negro of to-day is
the negro of thirty years ago. There is on Dexter avenue, in the
city of Montgomery, an old brick building wherein the “negro trader”
used to pen his slaves to await his purchasers. Herein the writer
organized the Dexter Avenue Church. Compare the occupants of the slave
pen with the audience in Dexter Avenue Church.