History of King Solomon Baptist Church

King Solomon Baptist Church is a historic church in northwest Detroit. The original church building opened in 1917 under Temple Baptist, a congregation dating back to the late 1800s . King Solomon, under the leadership of Reverend Moses Williams, started in 1926 in a small church on Rivard St., close to modern-day Downtown Detroit. King Solomon would move locations many times until 1929 when it found a permanent location. As Temple Baptist grew , it opened and expanded on the land around the 14th St. church location. In October 1937, a new 5,000-seat auditorium was dedicated across the street from the present building. The existing building was transformed into an Education and Recreation Center for Temple Baptist Church. In 1937 and 1941 , the church was expanded to add two new wings for classroom Sunday School services. By 1941, Temple Baptist reached its peak at the 14th St. location and began looking for new land to build a new church. This was largely due to the major white population at Temple Church , as the neighborhood around it had become a majority Black area . Since Temple was a Southern- based church, it did not agree with mixing races in church services . King Solomon, on the other hand, was a majority Black church, eager to move into a region of Detroit that had transformed to be Black- based. They agreed to buy the church and its expansions, and Temple Baptist moved locations to Grand River in 1951. King Solomon took over the Temple Church in 1952, at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to pick up steam. The 1950s marked a significant change in America, and with King Solomon 's size and Black Baptist views, it gained traction as a major venue in Detroit to express Black Civil Rights. In its early years on 14th St. , King Solomon had over 1,000 members. Many leaders in the Civil Rights Movement gave speeches here. In 1954, Thurgood Marshall, leader of the NAACP, gave a speech at King Solomon following the victory of Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned segregation in schools . A Black Baptist minister and one of the most prominent figures in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech at King Solomon in 1958 during the 78th annual National Baptist Convention of America. Later, he would return in 1963, one week after his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., to deliver a speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation . Malcolm X also gave his "Message to the Grassroots " speech a few weeks after King Solomon and it became one of Malcolm X's most influential speeches ever given. Many Gospel musicians also performed at King Solomon throughout the 1960s, such as Reverend James Cleveland, the Five Blind Boys, and The Clouds of Joy. The church also hosted one of the four hidden boxing gyms in Detroit, where famed trainer Emmanuel Steward trained Tommy Hearns in the basement of Solomon . Hearns would go on to achieve a 61-5 win record and win professional boxing's National Golden Gloves award in 1977. He would also face a very out-of-prime Muhammad Ali in 1981. In that same year, he would go up against Sugar Ray Leonard, which resulted in Hearns suffering his first defeat in the ring. Although Hearns and Mike Tyson boxed during the same period , they never faced each other. King Solomon began to fade as the neighborhood around it started to decay with the decline of Detroit in the 1970s, struggling as members moved out of the blighted area . In 1999, the church was abandoned as it fell into financial trouble and used the building originally built by Temple across the street as the main church , which it still uses to this day. In 2011, the 1917 church was awarded historic designation by the City of Detroit.