9 - The Religious Significance and Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, 1950–1970

Summary

This essay examines the civil rights movement and its impact on the quest for human freedom from 1950 to 1970 particularly from the perspective of religion. Few movements in American history have had as profound an impact on the nation and the world. It was a movement of freedom or liberation for African Americans as they, along with white and other nonblack allies, fought against segregation, voter disfranchisement, and poverty, as well as against violent attitudes and behavior. Yet the leaders of this movement defined it as more than simply a domestic quest for equality and empowerment for a specific racial class. It was always abundantly clear to African Americans that their journey to freedom was paving the way for others also to travel along the same road to liberation, though even African Americans were sometimes surprised, even shocked, at how their labors and those of others were embraced as guideposts and paradigms. From the beginning, spokespersons such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saw the international, even universal, meaning and implications of this grand undertaking. Civil rights participants understood the political and economic applications of their struggle. They also comprehended that this quest involved a spiritual warfare contrasting two fundamental ways of understanding Christianity, in particular, and religion, in general.

THE RARITY AND UNIQUENESS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

This struggle for equity and justice, a grand undertaking, took place as a part of the long historical march of African Americans for freedom. The historical struggle for black freedom has captured the attention of the nation and made an impact in ways that the freedom quests of few other peoples have equaled. This last statement does not signify that other movements for freedom have been less important or that African Americans have some special entitlement to freedom over others.