This study, first published in 1997, attempts to fill a gap in the historiography of the African American church by analysing the role and place of the African American church in one city, Birmingham, Alabama. It traces the roles and functions of the church from the arrival of African Americans as slaves in the early 1800s to 1963, the year that the civil rights movement reached a peak in the city. This title will be of interest to students of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious and social history.