Calvary Baptist Church is a Baptist Church founded in 1879 in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the American Baptist Churches, USA.
Martin Luther King Jr. attended and worked with Calvary Baptist Church while he studied at the Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951.
Calvary Baptist Church was organized in 1879 by a small group of freed slaves who migrated from Louisa County, Virginia. The church began as prayer services held in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Basil Thompson in 1875. [1]
On August 10, 1897, a church building at Second and Baker Streets was dedicated. The church was built with funding from Samuel A. Crozer, brother of the wealthy textile manufacturer John Price Crozer. [1]
Martin Luther King Jr. attended Calvary Baptist Church while studying at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951. [2] King's father had reached out to the pastor of Calvary Baptist, J. Pius Barbour who agreed to take King Jr. under his care and to monitor his studies and activities at Crozer. [3] King became known as one of the "Sons of Calvary", a distinction he shared with William Augustus Jones, Jr. and Samuel D. Proctor. [2] King served as a Sunday School teacher and youth minister at Calvary Baptist [4] and the church became his home away from home. [5] King was a frequent guest at the Barbour house for the southern cooking but also the academic debates and challenging ideas. [6] King and Barbour became "like father and son" [7] and King's biographer, Lawrence D. Reddick, stated that Dr. King credited J. Pius Barbour as one of the single most influential forces in his life. [1]
In the mid-1950s, the church was expanded through the purchase and razing of nearby homes. A new chapel, Sunday School rooms and social activity areas were added. [1]
In 1959, the civil rights leader Muhammad Kenyatta, born Donald Jackson, was ordained a minister at the age of 14 at Calvary Baptist Church. [8]
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A Black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States.
Upland is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Upland is governed by an elected seven-member borough council. The population was 3,239 at the 2010 census, up from 2,974 at the 2000 census.
Martin Luther King Sr. was an African-American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the civil rights movement. He was the father and namesake of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1931 to 1975.
Alberta Christine Williams King was an American civil rights organizer best known as the mother of Martin Luther King Jr., and as the wife of Martin Luther King Sr. She was the choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by 23-year-old Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of her eldest son Martin Luther King Jr.
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park covers about 35 acres (0.14 km2) and includes several sites in Atlanta, Georgia related to the life and work of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Within the park is his boyhood home, and Ebenezer Baptist Church — the church where King was baptized and both he and his father, Martin Luther King Sr., were pastors — as well as, the grave site of King, Jr., and his wife, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King.
Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
The Crozer Theological Seminary was a Baptist seminary located in Upland, Pennsylvania founded in 1868.
William Augustus Jones Jr. was an African-American Minister and Civil Rights leader.
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is a Baptist seminary in Rochester, New York. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.
Samuel DeWitt Proctor was an American minister, educator, and humanitarian. An African-American church and higher education leader, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement and is perhaps best known as a mentor and friend of Martin Luther King Jr.
Crozer Health is a four-hospital health system based in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and serving Delaware County; northern Delaware and parts of western New Jersey.
The Reverend Horatius Holipheal Coleman, better known as H. H. Coleman, was an American church pastor and evangelist. Reverend Coleman, who was born in Sandersville, Georgia, was senior pastor of Greater Macedonia Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, from 1935 until his death in 1969. He was the paternal great-grandfather of former U.S. Representative Kendrick B. Meek, and the maternal grandfather of actress Barbara Meek.
Otis Moss Jr. is an American pastor, theologian, speaker, author, and activist. Moss is well known for his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and his friendship with both Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther King Sr. He is also the father of Otis Moss III, the current pastor of the famous Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Ebenezer Baptist Church is a Baptist megachurch located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches USA. It was the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was co-pastor from 1960 until his assassination in 1968, the location of the funerals of both Dr. King and, in its later expanded sanctuary, congressman John Lewis, and the church for which United States Senator Raphael Warnock has been pastor since 2005. Its historic church building and expanded sanctuary building are located in the historic area now designated as the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.
The Twelfth Baptist Church is a historic church in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1840, it is the oldest direct descendant of the First Independent Baptist Church in Beacon Hill. Notable members have included abolitionists such as Lewis Hayden and Rev. Leonard Grimes, the historian George Washington Williams, the artist Edward Mitchell Bannister, abolitionist and entrepreneur Christiana Carteaux, pioneering educator Wilhelmina Crosson, and civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Amos Cleophilus Brown is an African American pastor and civil rights activist. He is the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, and has been the pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco since 1976. Brown was one of only eight students who took the only college class ever taught by Martin Luther King Jr. He serves on the board of the California Reparations Task Force.
John Price Crozer was an American textile manufacturer, banker, president of the board of directors of the American Baptist Publication Society, and philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mills produced clothing for the US Army and other customers.
Upland Baptist Church is a Baptist church built in 1851 in Upland, Pennsylvania.
Samuel Berry McKinney was an American Christian pastor and Civil Rights leader. He was the pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle for four decades. He attended the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and he served on the Seattle Human Rights Commission.
Josephus Pius Barbour was an American Baptist pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Chester, Pennsylvania who served as an executive director of the National Baptist Association and editor of the National Baptist Voice publication. The first African American to graduate from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1937, he later mentored a teenaged Martin Luther King Jr., when King was a student there.
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