Old Mount Zion Baptist Church

Old Mount Zion Baptist Church - one of Albany's many stops in their African American Heritage Trail - Albany, Georgia's first African American Baptist congregation, was founded in 1866. On November 17, 1961, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd of 1,500 people there, with the audience overflowing into the street and into Shiloh Baptist Church on the other side of the street. That evening, Dr. King personally spoke to three members of the audience. 

After the Mt. Zion congregation relocated to a larger facility in 1994, the historic church was transformed into a museum honoring the Civil Rights Movement that originated there. Restored in 1998, the space soon proved too small to tell the full story, leading to the construction of a new facility, Albany Civil Rights Institute.