Montgomery is no longer what it was when, thirty years ago, Bro. Ashby spoke in the afternoon in the basement of the white church. Six colored Baptist churches now worship within the city and suburbs of Montgomery. The edifice of Dexter Avenue Church, standing near the first capital of the ex-Confederacy, is one of the most substantial and neat brick structures in the city, and the congregation which worships therein are people of money and refinement. Messrs. H. A. Loveless, the coal dealer, William Watkins, the contractor, and Charles Steers, the upholsterer, are owners and managers of large affairs, involving thousands of dollars. The colored people of this city own many hundred thousand dollars in real estate. Mr. Billingslea, the barber, is said to own $300,000. Dr. Dorsett runs a successful drug business in one of the lower departments of a two-story brick building owned by himself. The widow of the late Hon. James Hale has built and is maintaining an infirmary for the sick poor people of her race. Contrast this state of things with thirty years ago, when the colored people, like “dumb driven cattle” before hound and lash, wended their way in the “death march” of slavery, and ask if the negro of to-day is the negro of thirty years ago. There is on Dexter avenue, in the city of Montgomery, an old brick building wherein the “negro trader” used to pen his slaves to await his purchasers. Herein the writer organized the Dexter Avenue Church. Compare the occupants of the slave pen with the audience in Dexter Avenue Church. DEXTER AVENUE CHURCH. This church is a secession from the Columbus Street Church, occurring in the latter part of the year 1877. Its first meeting, with a view to organization, took place in the parlor of Mr. Samuel Phillips. The chief persons in the constitutional membership were Messrs. Samuel Phillips, John Phillips, Alfred Thomas (the father of Mrs. S. H. Wright), C. Sterrs, William Watkins and H. A. Loveless. The meeting for the recognition of the church was held in a hall on Dexter avenue, January, 1878, which in former days had been used as a slave trader’s pen. Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, pastor of the First Church (White), with his deacons, represented the white brethren, and Rev. J. A. Foster, pastor of the Columbus Street Church, represented his church.