Old Sardis Baptist Church

Old Sardis Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church at 1240 4th Street North in Enon Ridge that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights was created here at a mass meeting on June 5, 1956.

Until 1975 the building was the home of Sardis Baptist Church (also known as Sardis Missionary Baptist Church). In that year the growing congregation relocated to Graymont Avenue. Some members wished to remain in the historic location left Sardis Baptist Church and incorporated as Old Sardis Baptist Church.

Old Sardis dates its founding to the organization of Sardis Baptist Church in 1884. Its building was erected in around 1910.

In 2022 the Old Sardis Revitalization Community Development Corporation was awarded grand funding from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to commission a historic structures report as a guide for preserving the church building.

Pastors

• Willie Smith, 1998
• Camara J. Blue, 2022

External site

• Old Sardis Baptist Church website

References

• White, Marjorie Longenecker (1998) A Walk to Freedom: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1956-1964. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society. ISBN 0943994241