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

Review:

" Chappell's new interpretation of the civil rights movement is a first-rate work of history. . . . The book is a major contribution to civil-rights history: clearly written, prodigiously researched and forcefully argued. . . . "A Stone of Hope" respects the public power of religion, but it also brings Dr. King and his co-workers down from the mountaintop, transfiguring them into human beings. "Wall Street Journal "" It's impossible to read the book without doing some fundamental rethinking about the role religion can play in . . . public life. "New York Times" "Intricate, dazzling in its reach into so many corners of black and white Southern life and fascinating at every turn. . . . In its mix of rigor, daring and perceptiveness, "A Stone of Hope" is a spectacular work. "New York Times Book Review"" "[Chappell's] new interpretation of the civil rights movement is a first-rate work of history. . . . The book is a major contribution to civil-rights history: clearly written, prodigiously researched and forcefully argued. . . . "A Stone of Hope" respects the public power of religion, but it also brings Dr. King and his co-workers down from the mountaintop, transfiguring them into human beings. "Wall Street Journal "" "[A] pathbreaking study of prophetic Protestantism and the camapaign against Jim Crow." -- "Commonwealth"

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.

About this edition

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