When I think of the statements that church cornerstones make in Birmingham, two churches come first to mind: Forty-Sixth Street Missionary Baptist Church and Grant Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In the 1980s, both moved from their historic locations east to church buildings that White congregations had vacated.
Forty-Sixty Street had been founded in 1914 and met at several sites before relocating to broad A-frame church built by the East Lake Alliance Church in 1992. The address is 230 85th Street North.
The church brought with it from North Birmingham the cornerstone of its 1956 building at 1532 Cahaba Street and placed it beside a large new stone labeled “Cornerstone Resolution” which listed both the leaders of the church and its complete address. (The church’s former neighborhood was redeveloped as Greenwood Park.)
Read this first post for more on this series on Birmingham churches and their cornerstones.
Chasing Churches 