In the 1950s black residents of Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed their city Bombingham. There had been more than a dozen unsolved bombings of black homes to deter black people from moving into white neighbourhoods. Birmingham was also one of the few Southern cities yet to appoint a black policeman. The city police chief, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had a reputation for hitting first and arresting later. One of those who took a stand for black equality was the Rev Abraham L. Woods.

In the 1960s he became involved in some of the most dramatic moments of the Civil Rights movement. He comforted mourners after a bomb killed four girls at church; he stood behind Martin Luther King at the march on Washington; and he led the first demonstration at a segregated store in Birmingham. By the end of his life he had helped to elect the city’s first black mayor; he had forced the integration of the city’s police department; and he had prodded the FBI into renewing its interest in the church bombing.

Woods’s parents, Maggie, a housekeeper, and Abraham Sr, a minister, clearly hoped their son would take a stand for justice. They named him Abraham Lincoln Woods. At high school he pondered the implications of black achievements in history. As he put it later: “It gave me a great sense of pride and self-esteem. I came to believe that I certainly was much more than what the Southern way of life had tried to portray me.”

He then won a scholarship to Morehouse College, in Atlanta, the principal black college for men in the American South. Some of the civil rights movement’s leaders, including Martin Luther King, graduated from Morehouse. Woods, though, became ill and returned to Birmingham after a year.

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At the time, the most outspoken black leader in Birmingham — and later one of the most important figures in the national movement — was the Rev Fred Shuttlesworth. A devout Christian, outspoken and uncompromising, Shuttlesworth turned on faint-hearted black ministers almost as much as he challenged white politicians. When one minister said God had told him that Shuttlesworth should cancel a protest meeting, Shuttlesworth shot back: “Now just when did the Lord start sending my messages through you?” But Shuttlesworth inspired loyalty from a small group of more militant ministers, and none more than Abraham Woods.

When Alabama outlawed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Woods joined his brother, Calvin, and Shuttlesworth to form the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. This would be the vehicle for protest throughout the tumultuous 1960s. Woods was a founding vice-president. When Shuttlesworth tried to enrol his children at a local white school in 1957 Woods drove the lookout car.

The arrival of Martin Luther King in 1963 — at the invitation of the Alabama Christian Movement — sparked a summer of confrontational protest. Woods was in the vanguard of many of the demonstrations, including sit-ins at department store cafés. The marches were non-violent, but police brutality prompted many in the crowd to fight back. Remembering the bombing of King’s motel in Birmingham, Woods recalled: “That was a terrible night, when blacks went wild. I knew then that we were not going to be able to long hold this element in check.”

Still, the story in the news was of white violence, often by city officials. Bull Connor famously lost his temper, sending out his police with dogs and his firemen with hoses to try to stop the marches. Pictures of snarling dogs jumping at children, and water jets knocking children over, proved shocking. So too did the bombing of a local church by the Ku Klux Klan, leading to the death of four girls attending Sunday school. Woods was one of the first on the scene. “The smell of dynamite, kids screaming, and some people cussing and swearing threats . . . It felt like something was swallowing your heart,” he said. On June 11 President Kennedy told the nation that “the cries of Birmingham and elsewhere” compelled him to act. The following week, he sent a Civil Rights Bill to Congress which marked the beginning of the end of racial segregation in the US.

What became the Civil Rights Act, though, did not end racial discrimination in Birmingham. Woods succeeded Shuttlesworth as president of the Alabama Christian Movement, and continued with protests long after Birmingham had dropped out of the news. The main issue was job integration, and, ironically, Woods targeted the city police force to highlight the issue. He helped to tutor applicants for positions in the force. The city signed a landmark consent degree, agreeing to appoint a minimum of one black policeman for every two white officers. After the shooting of a black woman by the police in 1979, Woods urged a black lecturer, Richard Arrington, to run for mayor. With white flight to the suburbs leaving a black majority in the city, Arrington won.

In 1993 Woods persuaded the FBI to reopen the church bombing case. More than a generation after the deaths of the four girls, two former Klansmen were convicted. “I felt very good about that,” he said, “because something within me could have some satisfaction and rest because I was bothered down through the years, as long as the other assailants escaped the bar of justice”.

Woods was pastor of St Joseph’s Baptist Church from 1967 until he died. He taught history for 41 years at Miles College, retiring in 2002. He received an honorary doctorate from Miles, and earned a doctorate in American history from the University of Alabama. In 1968 he was appointed the first lecturer in black history at the University of Alabama.

Woods is survived by his wife, Marian, and their seven children.

The Rev Abraham L. Woods, civil rights activist, was born on October 7, 1928. He died on November 7, 2008, aged 80