Download Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth

RELIGION
1957
January-February: Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele,
and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), of which King is made the
first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in
organizing the civil rights movement and bases its
principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience.
According to King it is essential that the civil rights
movement not sink level of the racists and hate mongers
who oppose them.
1963
SCLC
Dr. King in Atlanta SCLC Office
(Gandhi on wall), 1966
Influential leaders during the early years of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph
Abernathy (second from left) and Coretta Scott King
(center) march in 1966 on the Georgia state capitol
with Martin Luther King Jr.
September: Birmingham Alabama’s 16th
Street Baptist Church a cornerstone of
faith and center of the African American
community was bombed on Sunday
September 15th. The explosion killed four
girls and injured 20 other church goers.
The church was a known meeting place of
the SCLC and other civil rights
organizations.
A large crater is the result of a bomb that exploded
near a basement room of the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on
September 15, 1963, killing four black girls.
Part of the non-violent demonstrations that occurred in
the south had religious overtones. Many people are aware
of sit ins but also pray ins were very common across the
south. These pray ins were led by church goers and
occurred in public intuition the idea behind which was
that in the “Bible Belt” police and law enforcement would
be reluctant to disturb a meeting that was protected by
the first amendment. The folks were still arrested.
Church and its ministers were at the forefront of leadership
and organization during the civil rights movement. In the
African American community especially, the pastor and
church were the only independent voice that could stand
up for the rights and souls of its people. It is out of this
tradition that the leadership of the African American
community were drawn from.
Ministers outside an F.W. Woolworth store in
New York City, April 14, 1960, protest the store's
lunch counter segregation at the chain's
southern branches.
As a result of the civil rights movement and struggle for equality Theologians
took an interest and worked on developing a theology of this experience. In 1970
James H. Cone published his land mark book A Black Theology of Liberation. In
this book Cone reevaluates the Christianity through the Black experience in
North America. This Black liberation theology later influences church leaders
such as Alan Boesak and Desmond Tutu in their eventual victory over Apartheid
in South Africa.