St. Paul UMC to commemorate 60th anniversary of 1963 Palm Sunday march
On April 7, 1963, three ministers — the Rev. A. D. King, the Rev. Nelson Smith, and the Rev. John Porter — led more than 500 demonstrators on a march from St. Paul United Methodist Church to Birmingham City Hall.
Held on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, the march followed a mass meeting at the church. The demonstration was part of the Birmingham Campaign — a series of meetings and protests to attack the city’s segregation system. The project started after the release of Fred Shuttlesworth’s “Birmingham Manifesto,” a series of demands for justice and equality outlined on behalf of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. The marchers were attacked with billy clubs and police dogs as they made their way to city hall.
This Saturday, April 1, St. Paul UMC will host a day of events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Palm Sunday march. The program kicks off at 10 a.m. inside the church with a morning service, followed by a commemorative march to the Three Ministers kneeling monument in Kelly Ingram Park.
Ministers A. D. King, Nelson Smith, and the John Porter kneel as they lead demonstrators on a march to Birmingham City Hall on April 7, 1963. (Credit: Alabama Department of Archives and History. Donated by Alabama Media Group. Photo by Robert Adams, Ed Jones, Jack Hopper, Tom Lankford, and Lou Isaacson; Birmingham News.)Alabama Department of Archives a
The Kneeling Minsters sculpture in Kelly Ingram Park is a tribute to the clergy members who helped lead and organize demonstrations during Birmingham’s civil rights movement . (Shauna Stuart| Al.com)
Tour guides with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Youth Leadership Program talk about the Three Kneeling Ministers sculpture in Kelly Ingram Park. (Shauna Stuart| Al.com)
At noon, the Magic City Festival, Scrollworks, and the National Parks Service will host Poetry in The Park, an afternoon of poetry readings along the Birmingham Civil Rights trail featuring poets Jacqueline Trimble, Jahman Hill, and Dikerius Blevins. Following the poetry tour, St. Paul UMC and the surrounding sites on the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument will host an outdoor festival with food trucks, vendors and music. Patrons will also be able to purchase tickets to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the 16th Street Baptist Church Museum.
Registration and a full schedule of events is available on Eventbrite.
Saturday’s Palm Sunday March program at St. Paul UMC is part of Birmingham’s year-long series of events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the city’s 1963 civil rights campaign.
Founded in 1869, St. Paul United Methodist Church is one of the oldest African American churches in Birmingham. In 1956, the church held Birmingham’s first mass civil rights meetings following the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights’ first major campaign to integrate Birmingham buses.
Seven years later, St. Paul UMC was one of several churches that served as training centers for “Project C” leaders who taught training sessions in nonviolent civil disobedience, including classes for the young protestors who demonstrated in the 1963 Children’s Crusade. In 1964, Dr. Rev. Joseph Lowery, the noted civil rights leader and cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, returned to Alabama from a tenure in Nashville to lead the congregation of St. Paul UMC until 1968.
In 2023, the National Park Service awarded St. Paul UMC a $500,000 grant for historic preservation and repair. Last week, the Jefferson County Commission approved $2.7 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to six organizations in the downtown Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument district for tourism projects. St. Paul UMC is slated to receive $101,261 to help fund a tourist center. The exhibit, according to the Birmingham Times, is expected to be complete by 2025.