The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church later in the early 1960s became known as the church from which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the Civil Rights Movement. It is today a National Historic Landmark. The Emancipation Proclamation Association, which published DeMond's speech, was one of several African-American social and beneficent organizations in the US South. William Watkins, who offered the resolution to publish the speech, was a contractor and lay leader of the congregation and responsible for building much of the church.