King Solomon Baptist Church

01 / The story of this place

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The church complex started life in 1917 as the Fourteenth Avenue Baptist Church, a Tudor Revival building; a larger Art Deco auditorium next door followed in 1937 after the congregation merged with Grand River Avenue Baptist Church to become Temple Baptist Church. The building later passed to the King Solomon Missionary Baptist congregation, and it became a landmark of the civil rights era on November 10, 1963, when Malcolm X delivered his famous Message to the Grass Roots address to roughly 3,000 people at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, a speech that sharpened the split between civil rights and Black nationalist thinking in America. Malcolm X returned in April 1964 to give a version of his Ballot or the Bullet speech at the same church. Martin Luther King Jr. also spoke here, at the National Baptist Convention of America. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2015, recognizing both its architecture and its role in Detroit's civil rights history.

1. Built in stages from 1917 (Tudor Revival) and 1937 (Art Deco)
2. Malcolm X delivered Message to the Grass Roots here, November 10, 1963
3. Malcolm X returned in April 1964 for a Ballot or the Bullet speech
4. Martin Luther King Jr. also spoke here
5. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2015