This essay expresses the why and how the black church in America has been home to so many blacks in America over the course of their oppressive state of being. The black church and its leaders were instrumental in fighting for equal economic justice in a nation which held blacks as second class citizens for so many years. The religious leadership in black churches has been significant in the fight against racial and economic oppression in America for all peoples, black or white.

The historical significance of the Black Church was its distinction of being at the center of the modern Civil Rights Movement. In the struggle for freedom, its goal was to defeat segregation, in the name of justice and democracy, in the American south, in both the first and second Reconstruction, periods. Furthermore, it was the black religious leadership, most notably that of Martin Luther King, Jr., that paved the way for the non-violent resistance movement and the fight against economic oppression, especially in the years from 1963-1968, in America. The organization of the mass boycotts, mass marches, the sit-ins, protesting the Viet Nam War, and poverty, along with other forms of civil disobedience put America’s democracy on a political, social, economic, and moral trial. It was the strength of the Black Church and its leadership that was at the root of the freedom struggle.

The Black Church was the only institution in black communities where significant numbers of black people would bother to invest their time or money or savings, in a sense of belonging. The foundations of modern black politics are found in the black church. From slavery times, the minister assumed a privileged position within society and the black church as a secular and spiritual leader. The Black Minister had multiple responsibilities and often served in dual roles, whether it was acting as a social worker, legal advisor, politician, or educator. In addition, the Black Church was able to develop its own welfare system.

The Black Church was independent of the larger white society and skilled in the management of people and resources. It was an institutionalized financial base where protest of the struggle was financed and served as the meeting place where tactics and strategies were discussed in a collective manner. The Civil Rights movement was in a large way, spearheaded by the role of the Black Church in accomplishing its political goals. It was the role of the Church ministers and the call for the mass movement at the grass-roots levels that put the movement into forward motion. The Church was able to mobilize the masses and able to directly confront the white power structures who were responsible for their oppression. In doing this blacks adopted non-violent tactics as a mass technique to bring about change. The Black Church was instrumental in organizing, setting up movement centers, and in the day-to-day organizing and strategic planning of the movement. The role of the Church minister and others in the black church hierarchy that proved to be of the utmost importance in the direction of the mass movement in the social protest of the modern Civil Rights movement. The Black Church was the only institution that African-Americans owned exclusively without white power or white control, thus helping to make the Civil Rights movement a success. It was the most successful black institution because its leaders were autonomous and free of white domination, therefore they could establish a grass-roots organization for the struggle and set their own policies. In addition, the Black churches provided the money necessary to support the campaign of the Civil Rights movement through tithing.

In a most ironic way, the very place where blacks would gain their strength would be a place where blacks were segregated first, and to a large degree into the twenty-first century, still are: The Black Church. Martin Luther King knew that if southern segregation continued to go unchallenged, that transformation of any change in the political, social, and economic order would never occur. But the segregation in the church was most disturbing to King. Dr. King pointed out that the Sunday schools were the most segregated schools in the nation, and that the white man’s interpretation of the Book of Acts, and Noah’s curse in the Book of Genesis, allowed for this justification. King also knew that his Church could not join the Southern Baptist Convention because it was all-white, and that the moral conflicts in whites, in the south came from this entity. King was aware that many blacks were hesitant to confront the white structure of domination because they depended on it for their food, jobs, and shelter. He was also aware that only with prayer and activism could any changes take place. King had great faith in the black church. He felt that the solidarity effort was founded in the black church where traditionally blacks could feel safe in having their own legitimate values. King thought with a united effort that many social ills that the black community faced due to racism, segregation and economic exploitation could be confronted, or changed.

The vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.,  was in large part due to his own Christian optimism and a deep faith in justice and democracy for all people. To King the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the South was a place where this vision would be transformed into a practical reality. The importance of Martin Luther King in the movement was that he used a deep faith and spirituality to motivate the mass consciousness of the black poor, the black working classes, and even the educated classes. It was King’s charisma that he could attract both blacks and whites alike to take decisive action against the interests of the racists and the state. Although Reverend King was the most prominently known of all the Church ministers, there were other black preachers and laypersons who were also just as responsible for the accomplishments of the movement.

The twentieth century saw a decline in the significant role that the Church minister had in comparison to the days preceding the first reconstruction from 1865-1877. Throughout history, the church minister was a target of white domination. Often the minister was pressured by local white leaders because they knew the central role of a minister had a direct impact on the daily life of the black community and used covert tactics of intimidation and financial pay-offs, while the demands of white oppressors affected the political and religious practices of black Americans. With the rise of the Jim Crow laws and the electoral disenfranchisement, after 1900, one of the lasting roles that a minister could exercise political influence was that of a church minister. With the Supreme Court decision, in Brown vs. Board of Education, in 1954, new challenges awaited Black Ministers. It was the white ministers who were the most opposed to desegregation, as they did not believe in integration. Throughout the 1950’s and the 1960’s, the American Baptist Convention condemned desegregation. In 1950, the white-led American Council of Christian Churches declared that integration, “does violence to the true gospel of Jesus Christ”. This comment not only puzzled King but infuriated him. He could not understand how this organization could give millions of dollars in aid to missions in Africa, but could turn around and endorse this inhumane treatment of blacks on American soil. He looked at them as quite hypocritical.

One of the tasks of the Black Church was to provide a social, cultural, and moral unity and a respect for African-American history while opposing the oppression of white society, in regard to racial segregation, vigilante violence, and racial hatred. The Black Church was a place for blacks as in any institution in creating a sense of collective consciousness. The Church assisted in a large way on the fights against legal segregation and the deprivation of the system, in social protest for social change, with the tactical and often innovative, non-violent strategies, in: Birmingham; Montgomery; Selma; Memphis; all consisted of mass marches, boycotts, sit-ins, and prayer vigils.

As in the years from 1865-1877, during the first Reconstruction period, the Black Church provided the Civil Rights Movement the necessary space for political discussion, strategy, and means for effective protest. The leaders acquired an opportunity to pave a new historic meaning to the masses in this practical struggle against white domination. In the fight against segregation the leaders of the Church could fight to overturn the Jim Crow laws, improve the housing situation for blacks, and fight for the exercise of the vote. It was here, in 1955, that the Black Church and its leadership, became instrumental as in the first Reconstruction, from 1865-1877, in providing the leadership, organization, and social space for the political discussions regarding the protest.

The success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott helped with the protest potential of the Black Church and the Black Clergy. The creation of the SCLC and the MIA were two benefits of the success that were launched by the mass movements and became decentralized church-based, organizations that dealt with political issues separate from religious issues.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, was not initiated by Black Ministers or the Black Church, but by laypersons. Did they have a deep moral commitment? Did they have a strong faith? Were they, in any way, influenced by their experience in the Church? The Black Church in a historical role served traditionally as a “refuge” for blacks. The success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott uplifted again the significance of the Black Church.

In 1946 the Women’s Political Council was formed with Mary Fair Burks as its first President. Inspired by, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Minister Vernon Johns’ who preached, largely a social gospel, he also detested segregation. He called upon blacks not to be complacent or apathetic and attacked the elitism of Southern whites. Many thought it was Johns’ forceful sermons that the people to recognized the social issues before King arrived to the Dexter Avenue Church. With the teachings of Johns’, Burks formed the WPC and her priorities were raising political issues to protest racial inequality and registering blacks to vote. Rosa Parks was a dignified woman with a high ethical standard for living. Parks was inspired by King and on being arrested remembered what King had said about making sacrifices on behalf of the struggle, when he said, “some of us must bear the burden of trying to save the soul of America”. Parks a devout Christian, was praised by King at the Holt Street Church that night as a woman of high integrity who was committed to the teachings of Christ, while hailing her as one of the best citizens in Montgomery. King also told the congregation that in a democratic nation like America protest was allowed as a right to do what is right.

The individual “no” Parks’ gave to the bus driver was a collective “no” to all those in the movement. The Montgomery Bus Boycott initiated by Jo Anne Robinson after Rosa Parks, the catalyst of the modern Civil Rights Movement refused to give up her seat to a white man on December 1, 1955, started the Second Reconstruction, for blacks. The was to be the test of the Jim Crow laws in Montgomery. On Monday December 5, 1955, Blacks boycotted the buses after Robinson had distributed literature calling for the boycott. As a committed member and President of the Women’s Political Council, Robinson’s organizational skills and devotion to freedom for Blacks would help in her future actions with the Black Ministers, like Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the same day that Rosa Parks was found guilty breaking the city’s segregation laws, the Black ministers at the Holt Street Church were deciding by a mass vote to continue the struggle. The Women’s Political Council was passing the baton to the men of Montgomery, most notably the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the MIA, to keep the movement alive. From the Women’s Political Council the Montgomery Improvement Association was born where the doctrine of a Christian ideal of passive non-resistance was to be followed. The goal of the MIA was to protect and defend those in the black community against unfair treatment and prejudice. King was chosen as its President and because of his leadership qualities and his age of twenty-six, he was the perfect man at the time to lead the movement. The indigenous role of the black Church’s workshop was the model for the mass meeting and the Montgomery Improvement Association, that led the boycott. The MIA was based in the church and the ministers assumed control of it. The main goal was to desegregate the city’s buses and in opposition of any barriers that would adversely affect the movement. The effective “car lift” strategy used by Reverend Theodore Jemison in Baton Rouge, Louisiana would be the model that the Montgomery Bus Boycott would use to bring protesters where they needed to go, whether it was to work or to the store. The churches became the dispatch centers of the movement where people waited for rides. The church in this vain was not only preaching a moral gospel, but was now preaching a social gospel.

After December 5, 1955, Robinson continued to work alongside King with planning strategies for the ongoing boycotts. In short, the boycott was hurting the city buses and on December 22, 1955, the buses were stopped, and area businesses were substantially losing money. With the white power structure upset and tensions running high, on Tuesday February 21, 1956, a Grand Jury ruled the boycott illegal. This led to many arrests, including King. By February 22, 1956, mass arrests began. King compared the jails to Calvary during the time of Jesus Christ, as he looked at the jail as a symbol for the fight for justice and equality against oppression. In June of 1956, a three-judge panel ruled that the bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court upheld the ruling on November 13, 1956. The written mandate arrived in Montgomery on December 20, 1956. As Robinson would say, the white man was forced to recognize the legitimacy of blacks’ citizenship through the legal system. The men and the ministers who led the movement after Montgomery, were given a head start by Robinson, and E. D. Nixon. The leadership of the women and the WPC, preceded the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Burks called Parks the “patron saint” of the movement and called Robinson, the “Joan of Arc” in the movement. Burks looked at the men as the torchbearers, and called the women, the trailblazers.

With the help of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the leadership of King, these proactive measures proved that blacks could organize in masses and with the help from the Black Church itself, was able to raise money to keep the movement going. Monday nights were the days where the official meetings were held at the Holt Street Church. It was here that E. D. Nixon, the treasurer of the organization and King would meet to discuss strategy and where the money would go, to supplant the movement. The MIA was an political entity of the Church so people could meet without white interference. Robinson was grateful that the Ministers and the new association were willing to intervene in carrying out the movement. She was also thankful that the ministers were able to calm down the masses so physical retaliation against white oppressors did not happen. King would urge calm more than once throughout the Civil Rights struggle, but often times these remarks should have been directed at the white oppressors, rather than the exploited blacks. It became a massive and ethical movement by blacks and their white liberal allies to destroy racial segregation. King’s speech at the Holt Street Church at the outset of the Boycott established the framework for the resistance movement.

The actions of Robinson with the WPC and the actions of Rosa Parks ignited the movement that King and other ministers who would later become involved with. The unsung heroes were also men like E. D. Nixon who as King said helped to, “rouse Negroes from their apathy”. King had to admit that people like Robinson and Nixon deserved as much credit for the movement as he did or Ralph Abernathy, (King’s close associate in Montgomery) did. As far as King was concerned this was a mass movement of the collective people in Montgomery, and he was just one person of many in the fight for equal justice.

The development of the NAACP from Jewish leadership to Black leadership was reliant upon its allying with the black church. With the emergence of the NAACP and the influence of the Church, Blacks wanted to have leadership of its own to demonstrate that they could lead and organize, free of white influence. In addition the black leadership wanted to be free of the perception they could not be effective leaders due to the paternalistic nature of the white power structure. With the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King and Abernathy were able to confront segregation laws forging an appropriate vehicle to destroy the Jim Crow laws. In creating this decentralized arm of the church, they were able to carry out the political measures needed to reclaim some of the prestige that the clergy had lost prior to this time. Between 1963 and 1968, the SCLC expanded its movement into St. Augustine, Florida, Greenwood, Mississippi, and many other small towns in the South with the realization that non-violent resistance worked. It was King who was convinced that the non-violent movement was responsible for the victory over the forces of segregation in Birmingham and that the image of the Black Church was now etched in the national consciousness, that would lead to more campaigns, in the struggle for civil rights. Although many were skeptical of the SCLC at first, in time many Black Churches became the key centers in spreading the cause for freedom and justice. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who at one time led the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, in 1956, the ACHR had become the instrumental in helping to defeat the Jim Crow laws. The Black Church was able to tap into spiritual resources and reinforce community, while exposing a racist and oppressive white society.

The organization of the mass movement dispelled many false notions about the blacks ability to organize. The white power structure assumed that they could not organize because of their perceived lower class status. The white power structure did not think blacks had the economic resources to fund or launch a mass movement. The white power structure also assumed that because of blacks low educational levels and “lacking literacy”, they would not be able to comprehend the complex policy issues in the south, thus a movement would not be able to take place. And since the first Reconstruction period, Blacks had reverted back to a subversive role. The lynchings of black men in the south put them in a position, not wanting to challenge this exploitive behavior.

Reverend King and other black leaders were able to effect legal change within the democratic system but were not able to change the sufferings of the larger black masses due to the capitalistic structure and the institutional racism that plagued the United States. When King started to challenge the system by advancing a progressive human rights campaigns and started to make a case for an economic democracy he was met with opposition in the black community, as well as with the black clergy who did not want to follow what he set out to accomplish, from 1960-1968. With the Second Reconstruction came the passage of key legislative elements of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society with the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the Jim Crow laws in public accommodations of every kind, in every city and state. The passage of the Voting Rights Act came on August 6, 1965, and the federal government promised to safeguard the registration and voting rights of blacks. The 1964 Civil Rights Act increased violence against blacks across the South. Lester Maddox of the Whites Citizen Council, a racist organization threatened any black patron with bodily harm if they tried to enter his business. In 1966, he was elected as the Governor of Georgia. In the summer of 1964, where blacks had convened in Mississippi to register blacks to vote with help from NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC, six blacks were murdered and 1,000 arrested, 30 buildings were bombed and 36 churches were burned. Despite the efforts of the black Church to exercise the civil rights movement and taking the torch from the women who were the trailblazers, the summer of 1964 proved that their were indeed flaws in the reform movement, in spite of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The legacy of Malcolm X is that he preached a message aimed at the poor and oppressed blacks, and was also angry at the black middle classes who compromised the black poor. He would often say in response to his white critics who accused him of a doctrine of hate, by saying that, “for the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, do you hate me?...” According to Malcolm X, the white man had no right to accuse him (Malcolm) or any other black man or oppressed person of hate, since it was the racist/capitalist white man who was responsible for oppression. To Malcolm, segregation was forced upon by the dominating classes who considered themselves superior and the black man inferior. In the summer of 1964, Malcolm developed a strong anti-racist and anti-capitalistic campaign that was not favorable to the white power structure in America and even some in the black community criticized, as the black elite. Malcolm thought that capitalism was directly responsible in exploiting blacks, and that it reduced them to an inferior class. The only time Blacks would be free to or liberated was when the destruction of capitalism through the radical change of a revolutionary nationalist movement. Through the movement of Socialism, Malcolm felt that the uprooting of the nation’s economic structure could be accomplished. Malcolm X thought that whites exploited blacks even through religion. After his visit to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm thought that not only the Black Muslims endorsed exploitation, but that Christianity was also a religion that the white man allowed the Negroes to borrow. He broke with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhommed after returning from Egypt. Furthermore, he felt that Christianity and the Black Muslims both had characteristics of racism and materialism, that were directly hurting black people.

When King started to advocate change in the name of improved economic conditions he attempted to change the conditions of the black majority for the better. This is when King’s maturity evolved into a leader of all the people. King went from advocating Civil Rights to even a higher calling of Human Rights. In his Viet Nam speech, King spoke with a fervor that included elements of anti-communism, morality, and passivism. By 1967, King was leading the Peace Movement and leading the fight against the war in Viet Nam. When King was assassinated many in the Movement had isolated him and perceived his actions as being disloyal. It was at this time that the perception was that King was more concerned about the similarity between the oppressed material conditions of the unemployed blacks and whites, in proposing a “Poor People’s March”, on Washington, D.C. In exposing the weaknesses of the American capitalistic society, King called upon massive federal expenditures to enhance the poor and depraved communities in America. He called upon job training, guaranteed housing for the poor, proper medical care, and annual income for the poor. The SCLC covertly criticized King for his involvement in the antiwar demonstrations and his peace services and did not publicly endorse his activities. The Black Church in its National Institutional form never made a strong effort to help those in poverty in black communities despite King’s proposals, with the “Poor People’s Campaigns” of 1967 and 1968. The failure of the Black Church to fight against economic oppression was the main reason why King was critical of that institution.

King differed with other Church leaders and felt it was necessary to lead in the fight for the reconstruction of United States political and civil society. King concluded by his stands on economic oppression that the legal defeat of segregation was not enough for creating a just society but that fundamental change that would not be easily answered in the existing system would have to be addressed. King’s evolution toward a more radical way of politics was due to his insistence that in order to succeed Church Ministers had to speak with a moral and ethical commitment that would fight against the existing racism and economic exploitation. King was convinced that a radical restructuring of the American economic system was necessary of any real change was to take place and his views became stronger when he saw the gap between racial oppression, class exploitation, and militarism.

In “Where Do We Go From Here”, King asserts “Negroes who have achieved educational and economic security have forgotten that they are where they are because of the support of faceless, unlettered and unheralded Negroes who did ordinary jobs in an extraordinary way?” King goes on fiurther to say that black mothers and fathers worked hard so their children could become educated and successful, and therefore it was a shame that middle-class blacks could now be detached from the struggles of the poor blacks.

In the last two years of King’s life from 1966-1968, he started to focus on economic issues that plagued the poor classes and blacks in America. He felt that with a united front that the social ills of crime, poverty, family disorganization, illegitimacy, and other social issues that were due to segregation could be altered, if the federal government assisted in helping solve some of these problems. His vision was rooted in a deep Christian optimism with a strong faith in justice for all. Through the mass movements and demonstrations in the fight for social change fighting against legal segregation from Selma to Montgomery, King saw the need to fight against the overwhelming deprivation blacks suffered within the exploitive capitalistic structure. With the new legal decisions, King saw a vestige of hope for blacks and the old stereotypes used against blacks were no longer valid.

King became a fierce advocate for change and looked upon the federal government to assist with economic assistance for affordable housing, improved educational opportunities, improved healthcare, childcare, increased wages, and other economic opportunities for blacks. In his fight for this economic change, King thought that a restructuring of the system was necessary as he became more aware of the relationship between racial oppression, class exploitation, and militarism. He called upon the federal government to provide massive economic expenditures to help deprived communities, guarantee medical care, and an annual income for the poor.

Many of King’s lieutenants in the Black Clergy did not actualize the vision of King and by 1980 abandoned the liberal causes of King and endorsed an ultraconservative President Ronald Reagan. Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and Charles Evers, the brother of late slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers all endorsed Reagan by 1980, vicariously endorsing a man with overt racial hostilities. By the 1980’s there were immediate challenges facing the African-American Community. There was a political crisis as the black leadership was on a downward spiral of failure. Reagan used the symbol of “welfare mothers” in deragatory tones and re-initiated the battle of Federalism. Within five years under Reagan federal housing expenditures that were to help low income families went from 30 million dollars to eight million dollars, and the number of homeless people doubled.

By 1983, of the Reagan Presidency, he had eliminated many of the advances that King had advocated as both a moral and political leader of the movement. Reagan was successful in eliminating many federal agencies that were used to implement Civil Rights laws and equal opportunity standards. The agency at this time was pronouncing Reagan’s opposition to school desegregation while discounting the use of goals or timetables to hire minorities or women. In short, Reagan was an ardent contrarian against Affirmative Action programs, and was a staunch supporter of rugged individualism. Reagan opposed minority set asides, the enforcement of equal opportunity, or employment regulations. Reagan abandoned the social reforms that came out of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and accused the federal government of being the problem. Reagan cut social programs in the 1980’s and put the money into a larger defense system, with the goal of defeating the Soviet Union and Communism.

In the 1980’s the Reverend Jesse Jackson emerged into the national spotlight as the political symbolic leader of the black community reaching out to blacks, minority groups, and whites urging equal representation in the electoral process. Jackson continued to place blacks in political terms and started the Rainbow Coalition. Jackson’s ideology embarked upon the same integration model of what his mentor Martin Luther King had envisioned some thirty years before, that called upon the equality, justice, and humane treatment for all.

The political discourse in Black America was very much embedded in the Black Church, and the leader was usually the Church minister. It was the minister who would lead the fight against oppression, racial inequities, labor exploitation, and unemployment. With the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the social movements they embarked upon were sadly diminished. After the deaths of these two men, the structure lost its bottom-up, grass-roots philosophy and started to resemble a more top-down elite approach. And by 1983, many of the reforms that King had attempted to achieve on behalf of the black working class and poor had become unraveled by the Reagan administration.

As a group none of those who were linked to King have pursued his political or moral vision. As Manning Marable points out in Chapter seven in, “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America”, those who were with King seemed to have abandoned their commitment in favor of an economic order that perpetuates a Negro middle class that is in line with the small black elite, rather than the black majority or poor blacks, which makes up the mass population of the black classes. Although the Black Church has emerged as a strong force at important periods of the Black struggle, like the first Reconstruction period from 1865-1877, and in the Civil Rights Movement in the King years, from 1955-1968, it has failed to carry out a continuous, constant, long-term strategy that is cohesive from the bottom-down to the top. After King’s death, and in the last few years before his assassination, the leadership of the black clergy seemed to adopt more of a top-down attitude toward the masses. Despite King’s departure into a more radical Civil Rights struggle strategy, none of his lieutenants like Abernathy or Williams, ever took the torchbearer role that King had undertaken.

If in the historical sense the Black Church is to fulfill the collective needs of its Black brethren, than it must first transform a class consciousness into a situation where class distinctions become a thing of the past. The collective appeal of the Church members has to be more important than any single minister. When King talked about the economic plight of the blacks and the poor he was treading on ground that nobody would touch. In the years from 1966-68, King had changed his strategy looking into the needs of those exploited in black and white America. His moral beliefs transcended his political beliefs and he died not only from a courageous fight but a battle for the low man on the totem pole. King was criticized by the Black elite, scorned by white racists and the white elite alike, and was unable to ever see his dream for total equality, freedom, and justice carried out. By embracing the poor classes of blacks King made a conscious decision to fight economic exploitation and in doing so had made a fundamental personal change, away from just advocating for only integration. When King became a proponent of economic change after maturing into a great leader for human rights, he shared this belief in unison with Malcolm X, and in that they were both in agreement on this issue.

As Manning Marable points out in Chapter 7 , in “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America“, If history serves as a guide and is doomed to repeat itself, when it has learned from it, then there is a very good chance that as with the first and second Reconstruction periods in the South, for true racial, political, economic, and social equality, than the Black Church just might be the best solution that provides both the Black elite and the Black (poor) Majority to defeat racism, exploitation, and oppression, that white America has bestowed upon Black America, ever since the introduction to Christianity, during the time of slavery.

In conclusion, the historical significance of black religious leadership is that it played without a doubt black leadership the most significant role in the fight against racial and economic oppression during the Civil Rights struggle from Vernon Johns to King to Malcolm X down to the congregations they were trying to reach. There would have been no movement whether one deems it a success or a failure without the black religious leadership. With the help of the masses of people, the laypersons, and the Minister at the head of the church, the organization of the movement was successful in attaining successful legal decisions and raising the consciousness of Black Americans. A restoration of hope was instilled in Black Americans, by Rev. King, Malcolm X, and to the present day Rev. Jesse Jackson. Although Blacks have not been rewarded even close to their service in America, in helping this country as bonded men and women, the role of the religious leadership, in the 1960’s attempted to forge a new beginning of hope in the freedom struggle. The legal reforms were in large part due to the mass movements that were initiated in the boycotts of the 1950’s, the ensuing actions of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, in the 1960’s.

The black religious leadership picked up the momentum at a crucial time during segregation, after the, 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education, decision, and whether always effective or not, has been a force to be reckoned with even to the present day. The biggest failure of the black religious leadership is that it did not pick up the speed King had given to the movement. After many religious leaders abandoned King, he was much on his own during the last two years of his life, fighting poverty and for better wages for black laborers. He was effective from the Montgomery bus boycott until his death in combining a moral philosophy with a social cause. The inspiration of the church leaders was instrumental from Minister Johns’ message to his influence on Mary Burks, and the influence that King had on the masses of people, including Rosa Parks, as well as Malcolm’s ability to identify with a different segment of the Black population. The battle in fighting racial economic oppression may not have been won , in the total sense by the black leadership, but they were very influential in being at the center of the movement when America’s democracy was being questioned in the United States and around the world. In mobilizing this mass movement the black religious leadership exposed the inequality of America and showed how brutal the white man did in abusing black men and women.

Although African-Americans are now confronted with living in an a society that is still racially and economically oppressed into the twenty-first century, integration into the "white" system is better than it was in 1956. This is not to say that violence, racism, or prejudice doesn’t still exist. It does. However, the legal changes now at least provide for more of an opportunity than prior to 1956, 1964, and 1965. The consciousness that the black leaders instilled in the masses of people in both the first and second Reconstruction periods are in large part the reasons why the successful reforms took place, but in some measure the laws that defeated segregation, in King’s lifetime, have not been carried through, with the likes of Ralph Abernathy and Hosea Williams, who endorsed Ronald Reagan, whom consequently, abandoned King’s message.

Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X concluded, that economic equality and being free from poverty were essential to have a harmonious society that would ensure an equal society for blacks and would have the same opportunities in the system free of oppression. In sum, these two men were and still are, perhaps, the two most influential figures of the Civil Rights Movement, who at one time did not agree on everything, but economic equality for blacks was one item they did agree upon. Unfortunately since King’s assassination blacks are still disproportionately impoverished, and violence still rings out, as in the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas, in 1997, by two white racists. The dream continues and the beat keeps marching on!