| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Fighting the Good Fight: The Story of Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, 1865–1977. By Houston Bryan Roberson. (New York: Routledge, 2005. xxii, 248 pp. Cloth, $85.00, ISBN 0-415-94920-3. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-415-94921-1.)
Martin Luther King Jr. made a little brick church in Montgomery famous. Less obviously, that church—in the original sense of "congregation"—made King famous. Dexter Avenue Baptist was King's first and only full-time pastorate (1954–1960). Twenty months after King arrived, Dexter hosted the first meeting of the Montgomery bus boycott, launching King on a twelve-year ride to world-historical significance and early death. King left the church, and pastoral responsibilities, in 1960. A year later, one might say dexterously, he named one of his sons Dexter.	1
The brick building has a startling location, which still makes visitors wonder about the role of Providence in city planning. Dexter stands just across the lawn—the front lawn—of the Alabama State Capitol. Dexter has been upstaging that symbol of racial and regional defiance since 1885, in mortifying and redemptive ways. The struggles of the church, renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist in 1978, deserve a history of their own.	. . .

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