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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.