40 Fun Facts About Ebenezer Baptist Church

Which relative of Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead inside Ebenezer Baptist Church in June 1974?

His mother, Alberta Williams King, was at the church organ during a Sunday service when a gunman opened fire, six years after her son's assassination. A deacon, Edward Boykin, was also killed.

What carried Martin Luther King Jr.'s casket through Atlanta after his 1968 funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

A mule-drawn wagon, a simple wooden farm cart pulled by mules named Belle and Ada, carried him past more than 100,000 onlookers on the way to a second service.

Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church for four decades, was born with which first name?

Michael was the name both he and his eldest son carried until the 1930s, when the pastor renamed them after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

Which senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church became Georgia's first Black US senator in 2021?

Raphael Warnock became Ebenezer's senior pastor in 2005, and he kept the post after entering the Senate.

What does Ebenezer, the Hebrew name chosen by the founders of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, mean?

Stone of help is what an Old Testament prophet called the memorial he raised after the Israelites beat the Philistines, a story the church's founders borrowed for their new congregation.

Which congressman's 2020 funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church featured speeches by three former US presidents?

John Lewis had walked in King's funeral procession from the same church in 1968; his own service was held in its newer sanctuary across the street.

Which civil rights organization grew out of a January 1957 meeting of ministers at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, made Martin Luther King Jr. its first president and set up its first office in a Masonic temple on the same street.

Who became the first sitting US president to deliver a Sunday sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Joe Biden preached there in January 2023, on what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 94th birthday, at the invitation of the church's pastor.

Ebenezer Baptist Church stands in which historic Atlanta neighborhood, long a hub of Black-owned businesses?

Sweet Auburn got its name from civic leader John Wesley Dobbs, and the city's first Black-owned life insurance company grew up along its main avenue.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral procession walked from Ebenezer Baptist Church to which Atlanta campus?

Morehouse College was King's alma mater, and its former president Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy at an open-air public service there.

Which honor did Martin Luther King Jr. receive in 1964 while serving as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Nobel Peace Prize or not, King later told the Ebenezer congregation that he wanted no awards mentioned at his funeral, only that he had tried to serve others.

In which city was Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated five days before his funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Memphis was where King had gone to back striking sanitation workers, and a first memorial was held in a funeral home there before his body returned to Atlanta.

Who founded the nonviolence center beside Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she now lies entombed with her husband?

Coretta Scott King started the center in her own home in 1968, the year her husband was killed, and moved it beside the church in 1981.

Which federal agency restored the original sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church and now opens it to visitors?

National Park Service crews returned the room to how it looked in the 1960s, when King shared the pulpit with his father, and relit the sign over the entrance.

A statue of which foreign leader, an inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr., stands near Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Mahatma Gandhi's life-size statue was donated by the government of India and dedicated in 1998, a nod to the roots of King's nonviolent protest.

Which nickname did Ebenezer Baptist Church's congregation give the pastor who led it from 1931 to 1975?

Daddy King was how he was commonly known far beyond the church, and in 1980 he made it the title of his autobiography.

The 1957 ministers' meeting at Ebenezer Baptist Church followed a successful boycott of what in Montgomery, Alabama?

City buses were the first target the ministers had in mind: the group's original name promised a conference on transportation and nonviolent integration.

How was Adam Daniel Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1894 to 1931, related to Martin Luther King Jr.?

His grandfather, Williams grew the congregation from a handful of members to hundreds, and King was born in the house Williams had bought a block from the church.

Which sermon, preached by Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1968, was replayed at his funeral?

The Drum Major Instinct ends with King imagining his own funeral and asking to be remembered for serving others; his widow had the recording played two months later.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s parents were married at Ebenezer Baptist Church on which holiday in 1926?

Thanksgiving Day made the pastor's daughter a bride, and it cost her a career: the local school board barred married women from teaching.

A 1934 trip to which country inspired Ebenezer Baptist Church's pastor to rename himself after a Protestant reformer?

Germany was the home of Martin Luther, and after touring sites linked to him during a Baptist congress the pastor took the reformer's name for himself and his eldest son.

Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Martin Luther King Sr. switched his 1960 presidential endorsement to which candidate?

John F. Kennedy won him over when the candidate's camp phoned a Georgia judge to help free the pastor's jailed son; until then the lifelong Republican had backed the other party.

Which Montgomery congregation did Martin Luther King Jr. leave to join his father as co-pastor at Ebenezer in 1960?

Dexter Avenue Baptist had been his first pastorate, taken up in 1954, and Ebenezer members travelled in large numbers to his installation service there.

Which US vice president attended the 1968 funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church in place of President Lyndon Johnson?

Hubert Humphrey went because of fears that the president's presence would draw protests over the Vietnam War and disrupt the service.

Which minister and close ally of Martin Luther King Jr. conducted his funeral service at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Ralph Abernathy had helped King organize the Montgomery protest more than a decade earlier, and he took over the presidency of King's organization after the assassination.

Which minister became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in September 1968, then drowned at home ten months later?

A. D. King, the younger brother of Martin Luther King Jr., had been a leader of the Birmingham campaign; their father wrote that he still had questions about the drowning.

What did Ebenezer Baptist Church name the larger worship hall it opened across the street in 1999?

Horizon Sanctuary was planned by pastor Joseph Roberts after the congregation outgrew the 1922 building, which then took the name Heritage Sanctuary.

The statue Behold, outside Ebenezer Baptist Church, shows which fictional character lifting a newborn to the sky?

Kunta Kinte, the hero of Alex Haley's Roots, raises his child in an African ritual; the bronze was an unsolicited gift that the center next door at first hesitated over.

Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Adam Daniel Williams marked his birthday the day after which 1863 decree took effect?

Emancipation Proclamation day was January 1, 1863, and Williams, born to enslaved parents probably two years earlier, claimed the next morning as his birthday.

Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Adam Daniel Williams became Atlanta branch president of which group in 1918?

NAACP membership in Atlanta swelled to 1,400 within five months of his taking charge, and he persuaded the national convention to meet in the South for the first time.

Martin Luther King Jr. preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church on breaks from doctoral studies at which school?

Boston University kept him away for most of the year, but he came home as Ebenezer's associate minister until early 1954, when an Alabama church called him.

Which Old Testament prophet gave the name Ebenezer to a spot where Israel defeated the Philistines?

Samuel set up a memorial there after offering a sacrifice, and the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing refers to that monument.

Which Georgia governor refused Martin Luther King Jr. a state funeral as mourners filled Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Lester Maddox posted riot-helmeted state troopers at the Capitol steps and lowered the flag only when told that a federal order required it.

Which minister, born into slavery, founded Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1886 and served as its first pastor?

John A. Parker began with a handful of worshippers in a small building on Airline Street and led them for eight years.

Joseph Roberts, Ebenezer Baptist Church's pastor from 1975, had earlier been a minister in which other denomination?

Presbyterian churches in New Jersey were his earlier pulpits; he went on to lead Ebenezer for thirty years and built its new sanctuary.

Martin Luther King Jr. was first buried at which Atlanta burial ground, resting place of other Ebenezer pastors?

South-View Cemetery held his remains only until 1970, when they were moved to a tomb beside the church; his parents were later buried at South-View.

Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Martin Luther King Sr. first practiced preaching eulogies over which farm animals?

Chickens on the family farm in Stockbridge, Georgia, were his first congregation; by the end of 1917 he had decided to become a minister.

Ebenezer Baptist Church's fifth senior pastor, installed in 2005, grew up in public housing in which Georgia city?

Savannah is where he grew up as the eleventh of twelve children of two Pentecostal pastors, before following King's path to college in Atlanta.

An 1894 landmark near Ebenezer Baptist Church, now a museum on desegregating an Atlanta city service, was built as what?

A fire station, No. 6, served the neighborhood until 1991; its museum tells how the Atlanta Fire Department was desegregated and displays a 1927 fire engine.

Ebenezer Baptist Church's senior pastor won a full Senate term in 2022 by beating which former football star?

Herschel Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia, forced a December runoff and lost it by 51.4% to 48.6%.