CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH, 1955-65

Willie Hiatt via ZOOM

The civil rights movement (1955-65) emerged from an unexpected place: the southern black church. Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955 helped launch a social movement that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which dismantled Jim Crow segregation. While Brown v. Board of Education (1954) signaled the important role the courts would play in the movement, leaders such as Martin Luther King understood that the courts alone were not enough. This lecture explores how the black church came to lead a movement that relied on civil disobedience and non-violence to confront institutional racism.

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