A. J. Dickinson

Alfred James Dickinson, Jr (born August 22, 1889 in Culpepper, Virginia - died August 1964 or 1965) was pastor of First Baptist Church of Birmingham from 1901 to 1918.

Dickinson was the son of A. J. and Lucy Stone Dickinson of Culpepper, Virginia. He attended the Marion Military Institute in Perry County and the University of Alabama before completing seminary at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He continued his studies at the University of Chicago and spent time in Grenada, Mississippi, where he married the former Bertha Thomas Trotter in 1914, and in Eufaula, where the first of his two children, Susie and Alfred III were born.

Dickinson was considered a liberal and a reformer by the standards of the day, having involved himself in Social Gospel and progressive causes. He supported the theory of "higher criticism" which held the text of the Bible subject to contemporary methods of scientific inquiry rather than held to be infallible. He was also respected for his humility and supported economic and labor reforms to benefit the working classes.

Dickinson also firmly believed in a moral imperative for racial segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans. He held that the power of the vote should only be entrusted in a select few with the moral and intellectual means to exercise it for the betterment of all.

Dickinson was also leader of a strenuously anti-Catholic political organization called the "True Americans" that succeeded in installing former East Lake mayor Nathaniel Barrett into the presidency of the Birmingham City Commission on a campaign of removing Catholics from public service and firmly establishing the sanctity of the Sabbath by keeping cinemas closed on Sundays. The True Americans were known for employing strong tactics to pressure employers to dismiss Catholics and were suspected in incidents of violence against Catholic churches and parochial schools.

During World War I Dickinson served as chaplain to the 356th Infantry, 89th Division in France. He was cited for valor at Zivray in 1919. After the war Dickinson returned to his family and moved to Tupelo, Mississippi, where he had two more children, Lucy and Bertha.

References

• Jones, Terry Lawrence (1968) "Attitudes of Alabama Baptists toward Negroes, 1890-1914". master's thesis. Samford University, cited in S. Jonathan Bass (2001) Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807128007
• Burrows, John H. (1970) "The Great Disturber: The Social Philosophy and Theology of Alfred James Dickinson". master's thesis. Samford University, cited in Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolkm editor (1987) From Civil War to Civil Rights: Alabama, 1860-1960: An Anthology from the Alabama review. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817303413
• Breedlove, Michael A. (July 1980) "Progressivism and Nativism: The Race for the Presidency of the City Commission of Birmingham, Alabama in 1917". Journal of the Birmingham Historical Society. Vol. 6, Nos. 6 & 7, reprinted in James L. Baggett, ed. (2000) The Journal of the Birmingham Historical Society: An Anthology Honoring Marvin Yeomans Whiting. Birmingham: Birmingham Public Library and Birmingham Historical Society. ISBN 0942301250