The modern civil rights movement was the most important
social protest movement of the twentieth century. People
who were locked out of the formal political process
due to racial barriers were able to mount numerous campaigns
over three decades to eradicate racial injustice and
in the process transform the nation. In its greatest
accomplishment, the civil rights movement successfully
eliminated the American apartheid system popularly known
as Jim Crow.
A major reason for the movement’s success was
its religious leadership. The Reverends Martin Luther
King, Jr., Andrew Young, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt T.
Walker, Joseph Lowery, and Jesse Jackson were just a
few of the gifted religious figures who played a national
leadership role in the movement. In many instances black
clergy became the spokespeople for campaigns articulating
the grievances of black people, and they became the
strategists who shaped the objectives and methods of
the movement that sought to redress those grievances.
Furthermore, they were able to win the allegiance of
a large number of people and convince them to make great
sacrifices for racial justice.
One trait that helped black ministers win support was
their charismatic style of oratory, which was used both
to convey meaning and to inspire people involved in
the struggle for racial equality. The rhetoric that
the ministers used explained that the civil rights participants
were engaged in a religious as well as an historical
mission. Ministers spoke of the holy crusade to force
America to live up to its promise of democracy. For
example, in a 1963 campaign to force the state of New
York and the building-trade unions to hire black and
Hispanic construction workers at the Downstate Medical
Center in Brooklyn, ministers involved in the struggle
told their congregations that they were part of a “moral
and patriotic movement” to make America more democratic.
“There will be no turning back until people in
high places correct the wrongs of the nation,”
the Reverend Gardner C. Taylor of Concord Baptist Church
in Brooklyn declared in a speech to a crowd of 6,000.
Ministers like Taylor were able to use a certain rapidity,
tempo, and reiteration in their sermons and speeches
that evoked an emotional response from their audience.
These performances convinced followers that their cause
was right and that their pastors were called to a divine
task by God. Many participants in the Birmingham, Alabama
bus boycott noted they became involved in the campaign
because they were inspired by their charismatic pastors.
Beyond Ministerial Leadership
Ministers became the spokespeople that a predominantly
white media presented as leaders of the movement. However
the religious leadership of the civil rights movement
was not limited to these ministers but encompassed nonclerical
church leaders, many of whom had still deeper roots
in the black community than the ministers. Besides nurturing
charismatic ministers, most of whom were men, black
churches also helped instill cooperative values in nonclerical
leaders, emphasizing democracy, equality, and caring
for others. The process of cultivating cooperative values
usually took place outside of conventional avenues of
ministerial training such as seminaries, ministerial
alliances, and denominational conventions, which emphasized
a hierarchical approach to leadership. Instead, the
institutions responsible for inculcating cooperative
values in church members—clubs, choirs, missionary
societies, and other church auxiliaries-- were both
created and operated by lay members of churches.
In church auxiliaries, most of which were created and
run by women of the church, members learned to handle
money, speak in public, and work on behalf of the less
fortunate. Auxiliaries provided a space in which members
socialized, developed strong bonds, and worked on tasks
in a supportive atmosphere. Although the role of laity
in the civil rights movement is still an unwritten history,
there is evidence that auxiliaries played a pivotal
role in what happened. For instance, the laity of black
churches organized the carpools used during the bus
boycotts in Louisiana and Alabama. And in the North,
the auxiliaries of Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn
created a schedule designating a specific day that members
of a particular auxiliary would participate in the protest
at the Brooklyn construction site. Many of the church
members from Siloam and other churches that participated
became “jailbirds for freedom,” volunteering
to be arrested at the construction site. This willingness
to make a sacrifice for the struggle was encouraged
by the collective sentiment fostered in these church’s
auxiliaries. Gwendolyn Timmons, a member of Siloam’s
choir, recalls being arrested at Downstate because members
of the choir had pledged to join the picket line. Most
of the black women active in the Birmingham, Alabama
bus boycott belonged to Baptist churches and were members
of those churches’ choirs, missionary societies,
usher boards, pastor aid societies, and other auxiliaries.
Although many asserted that they became involved in
the movement because of their pastors’ leadership,
others attributed their involvement to their belief
in a religion that dedicated itself to addressing the
social conditions of the oppressed.
The collective sentiment of helping the oppressed had
been a longstanding objective of these lay religious
organizations. Ella Baker, who became one of the movement’s
key leaders and thinkers, recalled her mother’s
involvement with the women’s missionary movement
of black churches and how her mother embraced the missionary
groups’ stress on communal support to black communities.
This concern for oppressed communities would influence
Baker’s thinking and political activity.
Perhaps the best-known leader in the civil rights movement
who expressed the cooperative values of the church was
Fannie Lou Hamer. Born in poverty in rural Mississippi,
Hamer finished only the sixth grade and picked cotton
to survive in the Jim-Crow South. She was deeply religious,
and the Baptist church that she attended, where she
read and studied the Bible, was a central part of her
life. Hamer’s religious convictions informed her
politics. After she joined SNCC, she dedicated herself
to improving the lives of black families. Bob Moses,
head of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Campaign, noted
that Hamer sang the spirituals that she had learned
in the church at civil rights gatherings to help foster
a feeling of community among the young SNCC activists.
Hamer became field secretary for SNCC and a founding
member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP),
and she ran for Congress. She helped lead the voter
registration campaign in Mississippi, and was arrested
and beaten for her activity. As a leader of the MFDP,
which challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation
to the Democratic National Convention in 1964, Hamer
addressed the nation. She spoke of her own plight, the
murder of civil rights activists, and the racial terror
that black Mississippians faced for attempting to exercise
their rights. She questioned the nation’s commitment
to democracy if the Democratic convention failed to
unseat the all-white delegation from Mississippi and
recognize delegates from the MFDP. When the Democratic
Party’s leadership, with the support of prominent
civil rights leaders, worked out a compromise to give
two seats to members of the MFDP, the dissident group
of delegates rejected the deal because all of the members
would not be seated. It was Hamer who best expressed
the cooperative spirit of black religious institutions
when she said, “We didn’t come for no two
seats when all of us is tired.”
It was through a coordinated effort between the clerical
and nonclerical leadership at the national and local
levels that victories were achieved. It is important
to pay attention to the contributions that individual
religious leaders made to the civil rights movement.
However, to more fully understand the role black churches
played in the movement, it is equally important to examine
the cooperative values that these churches fostered
in leaders outside of the clergy. Some people say we
need another Martin Luther King. What is needed is an
army of Fannie Lou Hamers.
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