What Role Did Religion Play In The Civil Rights Movement Essay

Every movement with the intent to create change must begin with a foundation of beliefs. These beliefs form the basis of convictions and ideals that those firmly rooted in the movement will act upon. In the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, religion played a major role. We explore these ideas in the March trilogy, written by John Lewis. Church gatherings and meeting places served as important locations for inspiration and refuge. Religious images and leaders, including Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, set an example the activists aimed to follow. The Social Gospel was pivotal in creating the underlying philosophy of the movement, while Islam may have been a source of tension.

Black religion was no longer regarded as exemplary or special. During a time of growing segregation and violence, some black leaders attempted to counter this perspective seen by whites by embracing the romantic racialist notions that “blacks possessed peculiar gifts.” These gifts being directly connected to the importance of black churches in a time of direct exclusion of blacks from other pieces of society.

This was largely as a result of the non-violent approach of the CRM, as compared to the more radical and violent BPM. Both movements had a significant impact on society and, while the CRM is believed to have had a greater impact in general, the effectiveness of the BPM cannot be disregarded. Each movement produced notable figures of American Civil Rights history and contributed to the changing society of the 1950s to the 1970s. However, the CRM gained more popularity and support by appealing to the consciences of the public in a peaceful manner and subsequently achieved what it aimed to do: to desegregate the South and enable Black people to vote. The BPM did not entirely achieve its aims, nor did it change legislation, but it did succeed in creating a strengthened sense of Black identity and pride in the North. As the above essay is written from the general sense, it is recommended that more personal accounts of the CRM and BPM can be researched to fully understand the effectiveness of each movement on a personal

The struggle to obtain gay and civil rights has been directly influenced by religion, either in a positive or negative way. More specifically, religion has served as a disadvantage to achieving gay rights and an advantage to those that participated in the civil rights movement. Contrary to the recent successes of the gay rights movement, there have been a lot of obstacles along the way and most of them have been due to religious beliefs and practices. Religion opposes gay rights, especially gay marriage on the basis that it immoral and unnatural, it is against the word of God and it is incompatible with religious beliefs, sacred texts, and traditions of many religious groups(Eskridge,15). On the other hand, religion more directly influences the outcome of the civil rights movement by providing a basis for unity among African Americans. The concepts and strategies of the civil rights movement alluded to Biblical stories and admonitions. The church provided a physical shelter for African Americans to congregate and organize marches, sit-ins and protests, but also a spiritual overlook that guided them to the freedom that they always deserved.

To understand the present and the future one must understand the past.  The book Civilities and Civil Rights by William Chafe provided a detailed look at North Carolina, specifically Greensboro between the years of the 1930s through the 1960’s. The state of events that occur can be linked to many of the events that one sees today due to the fact that the foundation and structure of the south was built on racism. No one came straight out and said they were racist, instead the problem was covered up with civilities. Few leaders wanted to rock the boat or change things that would allow African Americans rights. This report will show how the civilities during this time hindered the success of civil rights in Greensboro, and also how it was harder for activists in Greensboro to win support and accomplish their goals.

Following the Civil War in the 1860s, African Americans were freed and given suffrage. However, following events such as Plessy v. Ferguson and the end of Reconstruction, much of what they gained was taken from them. African American leaders tried to earn them back in a number of different ways, but with similar goals in mind. Although African American leaders from the 1890s to the 1920s and from the 1950s to the 1960s had different strategies such as the Talented Tenth compared the March on Washington, both time period’s leader sought the same goals, namely suffrage and the end of segregation therefore, they are significantly different in strategy and majorly similar in goals.

African-Americans in the North had the right to do things on their own, but couldn’t do certain things with Caucasians. In Doc. B Charles Mackay says “We shall not make the black man a slave, we shall not buy him or sell him and shall not associate with him, he shall be free to live and thrive, if he can, and to pay taxes and perform duties; but he shall not be free to dine and drink at our table- to share with us the deliberations of the jury box, to attend us in our courts, to represent us in the legislature, to attend us at the bed of sickness and pain- to mingle with us in the concert room, the lecture room, the theatre, or the church, or to marry with our daughters.” This is giving African-Americans social freedom, but taking away some of their freedom because what Charles Mackay is saying is that blacks are allowed to do things with blacks but couldn't do certain things with whites. African-Americans had more social freedom when it was only within their race. Separate black churches made African-Americans in the North more free, because blacks had the right to discuss and run anything in their church. The note says that the church was a place to become involved in community politics, to fight for social causes like voting rights, temperance, and abolition. It was a place to marry, and to be buried and the church offered a literary club, ran a sunday school, published a newspaper, hosted

As an African American growing up in a multi-generational household I appreciated the stories my grandparents told me about the Civil Rights Movement through their eyes. They acknowledged that Martin Luther King was not just for people of color; but all human beings who were being treated unjustly. He is known for many speeches, but The Letter from a Birmingham Jail” written in 1963 was phenomenal in my opinion; this letter, written in response to “A Call for Unity,”(Carpenter et. el, 1963 ) an article written by eight, white, Alabama clergymen, was to serve as a response to those who believed that King acted inappropriately for coming to Birmingham, Alabama, as an outsider, for creating immense tension with his demonstrations, and for the inopportune timing of his marches. Even though, the clergymen agreed that social injustice did exist, it was their opinion that these types of matter should be handled in the judicial system rather than in the streets.

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. refutes the condemnatory claims made by eight white Alabama clergymen. By appealing to ethos, logos, and pathos King argues that he is not an outsider and that the experience of African Americans in segregated Birmingham warrants well-intentioned demonstration and civil disobedience. In doing so, he calls attention to the clergymen’s hypocrisy and firmly garners their respect and understanding.

Political advocacy organizations have historically played a big part in securing political rights for minority groups in Western Liberal Democracies. Whether we look to the now infamous Boston Tea Party to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, we observe the importance of political organizations in their quest to ensure equitable rights for the people whom they represent. In context of the early twentieth century, the most prominent group to represent African-American’s in the United States was that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP, as it is more commonly called, was founded on February 12, 1909 by a mixed group of individuals including but not limited to Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. DuBois and Archibald Grimké with the goal of creating a civil rights organization that would help assist in organizing for civil rights for blacks. One of its most prominent members, Charles Hamilton Houston, who became a part of the organization around the mid-twentieth century, changed the trajectory of the organization for years to come. Hence this essay

The above articles and book outline the NAACP involvement in the civil rights movement during the mid-1930s and 1940s. They provided an excellent historiographical analysis of NAACP’s legal actions conducted during this period. Ultimately, these author’s articles and book supports the argument that the actions of the NAACP in the 1930s and 1940s impacted or contributed to the overall outcome of the civil rights movement in the

Alfred H. Kelly, author of “The School Desegregation Case,” begins his account of the journey the NAACP lawyers took to succeed in Brown v. Board of Education of the City of Topeka, with the minor but evident improvement of the political and economic status acquired by Blacks since the passing of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Blacks increasingly became more influential; fighting to escape the “inferior status” of a stranded “ex-slave” and progressing towards the “genuine integration of the Negro into the social, economic, and political fabric of American life” (Kelly 245-6). Such improvements between the Plessy and Brown cases enabled the victory of desegregation for the revolutionary NAACP lawyers. Political influence expanded for Blacks who made up an “elite” of professional individuals in large cities in the North. The power to vote and their “alliances with local urban political machines” gave them some input on local decisions and later on a more national scale under FDR’s New Deal. A wave of “jobs, pay ratings, union memberships” and intensified acknowledgements of “the cold realities of American racial segregation,” extended the economic power available to Blacks during WWII (Kelly 247). The “altered position of the Negro in America;” from neglected and helpless individuals, to influential “lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, social workers, [and] ministers,” was necessary for the social, economic and political power earned

Black people made a decisive effort to challenge their own subordination and end the racial nadir that had defined black life for more than fifty years. This essay provides a descriptive analysis of the Bogalusa movement and attempts to locate its importance as a significant and groundbreaking Black Power episode in the larger Southern civil rights struggles of the 1960s. It is organized into four sections. First, I describe the setting out of which the Bogalusa movement evolved. Second, I describe the origins of the Bogalusa movement and its leadership development. Third, I assess the self-defense character of the movement with the advent of the Deacons for Defense and Justice. Finally, I provide a summary conclusion of some of the major factors that shaped the movement and its

On the one hand, it is a historical fact that the autonomy of federal states was crucial to foster the abolition of slavery and facilitate a more open society (Witherspoon, 1965). On the other hand, this same autonomy served as the rearguard of the most conservative political forces, reluctant to recognize the civil rights of black populations. This twofold character of the American federal system, as well as its intrinsic tensions with the judicial system at national level (particularly with the Supreme Court of Justice), configured the structural platform upon which the African American civil rights movements developed its ideas and actions. Such an institutional complex will be conceptualized as a polycentric system in order to understand the advances and shortcomings towards the rights of African-Americans during the twentieth

The American declaration of independence stated, that: “All men are created equal”. But in the 19th century only whites were born with equal opportunities. Africans were imported as slaves and had to work on the fields of the whites. Until 1865 the Negroes were treated and looked at as something lower than human. They were compared to apes, and therefore just owned the same rights as animals. They were raised believing that whites were superior. It took them years to realize that they have to stand up for their rights. The uprising turned into a brutal civil war.