A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow - Hardcover

Chappell, David L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080782819X ISBN 13: 9780807828199

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Synopsis

The power of religion in the civil rights movement In a provocative assessment of the success of the civil rights movement, David L. Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament - sometimes translated into secular language - drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID L. CHAPPELL teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He is author of Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement.

From the Inside Flap

In a new assessment of the Civil Rights Movement, Chappell argues that its success was not due to the triumph of liberal ideas after decades of gradual progress, but to the tradition of prophetic religion that brought the vitality of a religious revival to the integrationist cause. Segregationists lost, he says, because they did not have support in their white southern religious denominations.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080782819X
• ISBN 13: 9780807828199
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360