The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is arguably the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. At least it is the place where a new phase and leadership was ushered in when Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization which planned the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This was Dr. King’s first church, and he had been there about a year. When the boycott started, he was 26 years old. At the age of 25, I stood in front of the church on a quiet Saturday afternoon and looked up the street at the Capitol of the State of Alabama.
It was on the portico of this building that Jefferson Davis took the oath of office for his first term as President of the Confederate States of America. In a literal and legal sense, if not spiritual and political one, this is the site of the birth of the Confederacy. Just around the corner is the well-preserved first White House of the South. The capital was moved to Richmond after the secession of Virginia, so there was a White House there as well. I do not know why the South chose to retain the practice of calling the Executive residence the White House.
What I do know is that it is exceedingly strange to stand in sight of the nativity of two so radically different movements. Both are loved and reviled by people that I simultaneously love and revile. Living with paradox is a fact of life in the South, as is living in the middle of a complicated history. Davis and the Confederates were absolutely wrong in defense of slavery but ironically right in their aspiration to preserve honor and dignity. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were actually upholding honor and dignity, but one has to wonder if there may have been ways to preserve more of our communities in the process. The breath of the ghosts who ask these questions at the corner of South Decatur Street and Dexter Avenue blew through my spirit on that Saturday afternoon with gale force.