Minister led civil rights sit-in

The Rev. Abraham Woods Jr., 80, a founder and longtime president of the Birmingham, Ala., chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died Friday of complications of cancer at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham.

In the spring of 1963, Woods led the first sit-in at a department store in Birmingham. Woods along with his brother, the Rev. Calvin Woods, and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Civil Rights. The clergymen also invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Birmingham to help push for an end to segregation and unfair employment practices.

Woods helped coordinate the March on Washington in August 1963 and stood behind King as he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Woods was one of 11 children born in Birmingham to the Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods Sr., a Baptist minister, and Maggie Woods, a homemaker and housekeeper. He received his undergraduate degree in theology from Birmingham Baptist College, an undergraduate degree in sociology from Miles College and a master’s degree in American history from the University of Alabama. He was later the first African American to teach history at the University of Alabama.

He became pastor of St. Joseph’s Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1967 and was still pastor at the time of his death. He relinquished the job as president of the local SCLC in 2006.