Almost a hundred years later, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was an important gathering place for activities related to the Civil Rights Movement, and became associated with Ralph Abernathy, the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, and the Freedom Rides of May 1961.

The first pastor was Nathan Ashby, who also became the first president of the Colored Baptist Convention in Alabama, founded in his church on December 17, 1868.

Foster is credited with increasing membership from a few hundred to several thousand; his successor, pastor Andrew Stokes, added even more.

Lewis, who had been active at American Baptist College and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, was planning to enroll at Troy State University in an attempt to desegregate the school, and was invited to Montgomery: at First Baptist Church in the pastor's office in the basement, he met Abernathy and King.

[14] On May 21, 1961, the church was a refuge for the passengers on the Freedom Ride which met with violence at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Montgomery.

The church was filled with some 1500 worshipers and activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Diane Nash, and James Farmer.

[16] In the basement, Dr. King, in the company of Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, James Farmer, and John Lewis, was on the phone with United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, while bricks were thrown through the windows and tear gas came drifting in.

A large group of city policemen along with more than a hundred members of the Alabama National Guard had swarmed to First Baptist Church and created a shield around it.