Lift Up Your Voice Like a Trumpet: White Clergy and the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements, 1954-1973

When the Supreme Court declared in 1954 that segregated public
schools were unconstitutional, the highest echelons of
Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish religious organizations
enthusiastically supported the ruling, and black civil rights
workers expected and actively sought the cooperation of their
white religious cohorts. Many white southern clergy, however,
were outspoken in their defense of segregation, and even those
who supported integration were wary of risking their positions by
urging parish...