Key site in Montgomery Bus Boycott preserved for future generations
As part of the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mount Zion AME Zion Church held a preview of its Memorial Annex, which preserves the site that played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement.
It was 70 years ago in the basement of the church, located on South Holt Street, that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association with the Ministerial Alliance. The people chosen at the meeting led the bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery city bus. The boycott lasted for more than a year and helped end segregation.
WATCH: Action 8 News Extra on efforts to save the historic church
Through years of painstaking work that we have followed on Action 8 News, the space has been preserved.
As part of today’s event, there was an exhibit with the minutes from that meeting with Dr. King that nobody knew about. They were written by Uriah Fields.
Today was the first viewing of the historical memorial that’s cost about $1.5 million dollars. Through grants and foundation donations, they were able to put this space back to the way it was in 1955.
“This is phenomenal, and you get a chance to look back and touch that time just by looking at some photos, some historical sketches what our church look like then, and to feel the importance of what one meeting did for this Montgomery community, for the State of Alabama, even the nation, and I’m sure some parts of the world,” Rev. Claude Shuford of Mt. Zion AME Zion Church told Action 8 News.
The church congregation moved to a new location years ago, selling the old church property, which fell into disrepair. At one time, it had a hole in the roof and appeared that its future was very much in doubt.
Later, the church became a stopping-off point for marchers on the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march of 1965, a decade following the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then, in 1990, it became a backdrop for the movie, “The Long Walk Home” starring Whoopi Goldberg.
