History of ADC

When the small, motley band of black leaders joined forces in 1960 to form the Alabama Democratic Conference to support the Kennedy - Johnson Presidential ticket, little did they know how much their lives would matter politically in 55 years. When the ADC founders began their organizing work there were few black voters to work with. Furthermore, the climate of white resistance to black voter participation was still strong. Even so, the founders persevered with limited resources. What mattered to them was seeing blacks gain political access.

Founder Q.D. Adams of Gadsden, AL often told the story about how he knew he had become a man based on two things that meant a lot to him: first, when he got his voter registration card, and second, when he became a Mason like his dad. On the other hand, the late Butler County farmer, Fred Bennett, often spoke fondly of ADC founder Rufus Lewis of Montgomery as someone who believed so strongly in the power of the ballot and how much every voter mattered that Lewis would often drive several hours to a county to teach one or two people how to complete the voter registration form. As a businessman who owned and operated the Citizen’s Club in Montgomery, the “locals” say that Lewis required members to be registered voters, first. With exceptional founders like this, plus Arthur Shores in Birmingham, Isom Clemon in Mobile, and Dr. Charles Gomillion and Beulah Johnson in Tuskegee, we should not be surprised that ADC has grown and become one of the premier grassroots black political organizations in the nation.

To our credit the founders and subsequent ADC leaders have always believed that black lives matter in effecting change. As a result, the Alabama Democratic Conference has been a bellwether for political change in this state for 55 years, and is unequaled in demonstrating that black lives matter. In 1968, ADC brokered a deal with the Democratic Party leadership to get the first black delegates from Alabama seated at a Democratic National Convention. Today, blacks constitute a voting majority in the State Party. Moreover, at the past two Democratic National Conventions, Alabama had more black delegates per capita than any other state, based on a survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. Indeed, few political organizations have mattered as much in the lives of so many people consistently as ADC has done for 55 years.