Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 158. Momentum: The Ripples Made by Ordinary People, Part 13

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

On today’s episode in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon tackles the vast topic of religion within the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movement, religion was used as a tool of oppression and an excuse for many white people, especially in the South, to remain firm and justified in their belief of white supremacy. But religion was also a catalyst for change. Black churches and congregations invigorated communities by encouraging people to gather, to plan, to organize, and to keep the faith for small, incremental wins in the fight for equal access and rights. In fact, the Civil Rights Movement may not have seen the success it did without the empowerment of Black American Christian culture. Sharon takes a closer look at the role of religion, especially how it was practiced in many Southern states in the 1950s. What led to church-sanctified mob violence? How did the role of the church sermon become a catalyst for a movement of civil liberties and freedom? Stick with us to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to the 13th installment of our special series called Momentum. We are continuing our exploration of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and the gains made by the tenacity of ordinary people.

and the gains made by the tenacity of ordinary people. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. To say that religion has played an important role in the history of our nation is a massive understatement. Religion has long been used to dominate, persecute, but also liberate and buoy the quest for justice. During the civil rights movement, religion in their belief of white supremacy. But religion was also a catalyst for change. Black churches and congregations invigorated communities, encouraging people to gather, to plan, to organize, and to keep the faith for small, incremental wins in the fight for equal access and equal rights. In fact, the civil rights movement may not have seen the success it did without the empowerment of Black American Christian culture.

Black religious ideals and traditions cultivated over centuries of enslavement and oppression are what gave the movement its movement. Historian and Martin Luther King biographer Taylor Branch once said that the civil rights movement fused the political promise of equal votes with the spiritual doctrine of equal souls. So let's take a closer look, and I want to make sure that you know that this is all historic information. This is not a criticism of anyone's current religious beliefs. criticism of anyone's current religious beliefs. Before and during the civil rights movement, Black churches and white churches often differed in their understanding of Christian doctrine. Christian doctrine in the white church was often used to confirm their religious, economic, and political superiority. And in many ways, the evolution of the Black church was in direct

response to the unequal and often brutal and violent assertion of white domination. In the Jim Crow era, religion and biblical scripture were often cited in white churches as justification for maintaining inequality. This was an evolution of the same ideology that religious slaveholders used in the 19th century. They often pointed to the presence of slavery in the Bible as evidence that it fit within God's plan for a social order that placed white men at the top. This religious social order became the accepted dominant way of life, particularly in the American South. Pro-slavery leaders capitalized on the concept of religious freedom because it carried significant cultural value in a country that was still pretty freshly

independent. They crafted this view of slavery as a central religious freedom, and it became one they were willing to fight for. It took the Civil War to challenge that religious notion, and even then, the majority of the white South was not willing to part with a way of thinking that had become so fundamental to their religious culture. Instead, the South's ideas on race and religion evolved. Many preachers and politicians began shaping a segregationist theology that justified their social and religious views that Black Americans were still inferior to whites. They preached that God had created the races separate and did not want them to mix. This is still the ideology used

by many white supremacists. The segregationists argued that the civil rights movement was trying to impose an anti-Christian and sometimes even communistic theology that would destroy the traditional God-ordained racial order of the South. In 1948, a New Deal staffer warned that Franklin Roosevelt's proposed Federal Fair Employment Practices Act, which prohibited racial discrimination by all federal agencies and unions and companies engaged in war-related work, was communist-inspired and would destroy freedom of religion. The staffer wrote that, quote, such legislation would force associations that many Americans find repulsive, not because of any narrow prejudice,

but because of profound religious convictions. End quote. According to segregationist readings of the Bible, Black people were inferior to white people. They were cursed by God with darkened skin and naturally suited to manual labor. Requiring white employers to hire black people and white schools to teach black children were seen as violations of these deeply held religious convictions. There were many ways in which this religious dogma was supported by white churches and parishioners in the South during the 1940s and 50s, and we've talked about many of them, like segregated transportation, segregated schooling. And even when the successes of the civil rights movement should have destroyed the justifications of racial discrimination, bigotry remained very much alive and practiced.

Following the passage of the Supreme Court ruling on Brown versus the Board of Education, in which schools were desegregated, an influx of private Christian schools opened. Hundreds of these schools, known as segregation academies, sprang up across the country over the next few decades. They allowed white Christian parents to avoid sending their children to the newly integrated public schools. And it wasn't until 1976 that the Supreme Court affirmed in Runyon v. McCrary that private schools may not discriminate on the basis of race. Like with many school desegregation efforts during the 1950s, it was students, children, who led the change. Michael McCrary and Colin Gonzalez were denied admission to schools they wanted to attend.

Both of them were private and founded in the mid-1950s as segregation academies in Virginia. Neither school had ever admitted a Black student. And so the boys' parents filed a class action lawsuit against the schools. A federal district court ruled for McCrary and Gonzalez finding that the school's admissions policies were racially discriminatory. And the United States Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. appeals affirmed that decision. However, most of the remaining segregation academies that have opened their doors to Black students are still overwhelmingly white institutions. Often they use tuition fees as an entry barrier. In communities where many or most white students are sent to these private schools, Black learners make up the majority of the student body in the nearby tuition-free public schools.

In the 1970s, the IRS started holding up a magnifying glass to these racially discriminatory practices of tax-exempt private religious schools. The IRS ruled that racially discriminatory practices would render an institution not charitable as they violated federal policy. This new interpretation of Section 501c3 followed a federal district court injunction preventing the IRS from granting exempt status to private schools in Mississippi that practiced racial discrimination in admissions. In 1970, the IRS notified Bob Jones University in South Carolina, along with a few other private Christian educational institutions, that to maintain or receive tax-exempt status, they would have to modify their racially discriminatory practices. status, they would have to modify their racially discriminatory practices. Bob Jones University began admitting Black students in 1971, but continued their other racist policies, including their ban on interracial dating and marriage among students, staff, or faculty. And so in 1976, the IRS revoked their tax-exempt status, and the university sued the IRS. The Supreme Court heard that case in 1982.

That shows how recently and how significantly these issues have been grappled with and continue to be grappled with in the United States. This was a 1982 Supreme Court case. The court found that the IRS interpretation was correct, and that the government's purpose of eliminating discrimination in education was so fundamental that it overrode Bob Jones University's religious convictions. And this is something that I have spoken about many times and easily represents this concept of a tension between rights. Whose rights are more important? The rights of a religious school to practice their religion in the way they see fit, even if it means being racially discriminatory, or the rights of the individual to be free from racial discrimination.

Often, you can't have it both ways. And that tension is constantly present within the United States government. To this day, it is something that the Supreme Court constantly hears cases about, that tension between whose rights supersede the other group or person's rights. So after the court's decision was handed down, Congress modified the language of Section 501c3 to deny exempt status to institutions that have discriminatory practices. Bob Jones University, however, didn't drop its interracial dating ban until the year 2000, when then-President Bob Jones III did so during a nationally televised interview with Larry King. And the university reapplied for tax-exempt status in 2014.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to

see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. In the first half of the 20th century, so many white Southern religious groups supported maintaining racial segregation that a number of people became emboldened to enforce it through mob violence. Sometimes individual ministers or church members would intervene, but most often local churches and larger religious organizations failed to make a consistent effort to lead against racial mob violence. And the link between lynching and race is unquestionable. At least 2,500 Black Americans are known to have been murdered during the lynching era. It's probably much higher than that, actually. And that is a rate of roughly one mob killing every week for 50 years. And as we saw in the last episode with

Emmett Till, the catalyst was often a perceived threat against the morality and purity of white women. Walter White, who was the NAACP leader at the time, wrote, It is exceedingly doubtful if lynching could possibly exist under any other religion than Christianity. religion than Christianity. No person who is familiar with the Bible-beating, acrobatic, fanatical preachers of hellfire in the South and who has seen the orgies of emotion created by them can doubt for a moment that dangerous passions are released which contribute to emotional instability and play a part in lynching. But where white religious organizations failed to check the storm of segregationist preachings and mob violence, Black religious communities stepped in. Well-known civil rights leaders leaned on a mixture of their

spiritual beliefs and nonviolent philosophies to lead and motivate Black Americans through years of conflict. Bayard Rustin, who I briefly mentioned in a previous episode as one of the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or the SCLC, was born in Pennsylvania and raised by his Quaker grandparents. I have another episode about Quakerism if you are interested in that. And as he grew into adulthood, Rustin embodied his religion's pacifist teachings and became a primary influence in bringing non-violent resistance into the civil rights movement. During World War II, Rustin was jailed for his conscientious objection to cooperating with the draft. And while he was in jail, he organized protests

against segregated seating in the dining hall. There was segregated seating in jail. In jail. In a letter to the prison warden, he wrote both morally and practically, In a letter to the prison warden, he wrote both morally and practically, Segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it. And there are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. A. One can accept it without protest. B. One can seek to avoid it.

Or C. One can resist the injustice nonviolently. To accept it is to perpetuate it. And American philosopher Henry David Thoreau brought this idea of passive resistance to the mainstream in an essay that he wrote called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Though Thoreau's work wasn't really well known while he was alive, when a young Martin Luther King Jr. read the piece as a college student in the 1940s, it influenced his life in a big way. King wrote in his autobiography, here in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. King was already on his path to becoming a minister, and Thoreau's writing reinforced his spiritual belief in

non-violent responses to oppression. He further explained that impact that Thoreau had on him, saying, I became convinced that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. I love that. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. So both Bayard Rustin and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were also in part inspired by the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian independence movement. Gandhi's movement deeply influenced Black Americans, including Rustin, who visited India between the 1930s and 1950s and who brought home this mixture of spiritual ideas and philosophical practices that were

changing the political landscape in the East. But nonviolent philosophies weren't new to Black communities, where religion was deeply seated and practiced in daily life. Ministers used sermons to educate their Black parishioners about the inequities at hand and to motivate them to participate as they believed God had ordained. Consider a few of these sermon titles. This will really illustrate what I'm talking about here. Moral Crisis in a Troubled South. The Dangerous Gift of Freedom. The South Under God. Demonstrations in the street and in the house of God. On Sundays, Black church leaders and civil rights organizers were utilizing sermons to recruit more volunteers to the cause and then opening up their doors to activists during the rest of the week. It

was in these crowded church basements and cramped offices that plans were made and strategies were organized. King and other Black leaders formed the SCLC with the goal of organizing anti-segregation efforts in Southern communities. Its members included people like Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, James Lawson, and Wyatt Walker. They were from all different denominations, like the United Methodist Church, a Congregationalist Church, a Baptist Church. And historian Albert Robiteau noted that the formation of the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was when, quote, the civil rights movement became a religious crusade. And this is why you cannot talk about civil rights fully without talking about the impact of religion. The civil rights movement became a religious crusade. Churches began playing an even more pivotal role in the movement after decades of providing social and spiritual services for Black communities. Churches saw many of their

parishioners take an active and eager role in organized political protest. Peaceful protests, rallies, sit-ins, marches, they all had sort of a feeling of a religious service. They often began with prayers or short sermons. Many times religious songs were sung, which gave marchers a sense of courage and comfort. Not all churches joined the civil rights movement. We need to be clear about that, especially at first. Many pastors and congregations were reluctant to defy the status quo. Joseph Harrison Jackson, who was the leader of the National Baptist Convention and a pastor of Chicago's Olivet Baptist Church opposed Martin Luther King's tactics. Like Thurgood Marshall, he believed that civil disobedience and mass

protests would compromise their efforts toward equality through the courts and the legal system. This disagreement on tactics led to a split in the National Baptist Convention, which was the largest historically Black religious denomination. King and his followers broke off to form the Progressive Baptist Convention. Similar to emancipation in the previous century, the civil rights movement was buoyed by the Exodus story. Former congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis once observed, slavery was our Egypt. Segregation was our Egypt. Discrimination was our Egypt. And so during the height of the civil rights movement, it was not unusual for people to be singing, it was not unusual for people to be singing, go down Moses, way on down in Egypt's land,

and tell Pharaoh to let my people go. And arguably no one leaned more heavily on her faith than activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamer used the Bible to shame her white oppressors who claimed to be Christian. She would say, are you following the path of Christ through what you are doing to me, to my fellow community members and family members? And she used the Bible passages to remind Christian ministers of their job, saying, what are you doing up on that pulpit? You're telling people to be patient. Well, in the Bible, it says, stand up and lead people out of Egypt. In a previous episode, historian Dr. Keisha Blain spoke about Fannie Lou Hamer's life and activism. You can listen to that and read Dr. Blain's book about her if you're inspired. Fannie, who is often an overlooked civil rights activist, was known by her friends

and family to have a strong and steady singing voice. She used spiritual hymnals and biblical quotes to drive home her passion for civil rights. She was a sharecropper in Mississippi for most of her life, and she joined the civil rights movement in her 40s. She was threatened, harassed, shot at, assaulted, jailed, beaten for trying to exercise her right to vote and encourage other Black citizens to do the same. In the 1960s, she helped thousands of Black Mississippians become registered voters. When I hear stories like this, it's always so poignant to me, the struggle that some people have had to exercise a simple right. Assaulted, jailed, shot at, harassed, threatened, beaten. And it always makes me feel like even if somebody is running unopposed

in an election, I'm going to show up to vote because people who have gone before me have sacrificed that much. Fannie knew that faith alone wouldn't deliver results. She said loud and clear at a civil rights meeting in Mississippi, you can pray until you faint, but if you don't get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap. In 1963, Fannie was arrested in Winona, Mississippi, when she and her traveling companions stopped for a bite to eat on their way to an SCLC convention. She was brutally beaten and nearly killed that night. As she lay in her jail cell, bleeding and bruised and coming in and out of consciousness, she struggled to hang on.

Her cellmate, who was U. Vester Simpson, a teenage civil rights worker, was there with her. Fanny asked Uvestor to sing with her because she needed to find strength and she needed God to be with her. Together, Fanny Lou Hamer in her 40s and Uvestor Simpson, a teenager, sang, Walk With Me, Lord. Fannie Lou Hamer in her 40s and Yves Esther Simpson, a teenager, sang, Walk With Me, Lord. And some of the lyrics from that song are, Walk with me, Lord, walk with me. While I'm on, Lord, this tedious journey, I need Jesus to walk with me. Fannie Lou Hamer did survive the night and was able to get up and walk the next morning, though she would never fully heal from the brutal beating that she endured. When she was released from jail a few days later, Hamer turned to the white police officer who was with her and asked him, do you people ever wonder or think about how you feel

when the time comes you'll have to meet your God? In May of 1957, the first Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations was held in Nashville by the Tennessee Council of Churches and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. The council had invited 4,500 Southern Protestant clergymen to attend and collaborate on race relations. Only 300 attended. Dr. Benjamin Mays, who was the president of Atlanta's Morehouse College, spoke passionately to the clergymen in attendance. Three-quarters of them were white. He said of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, We speak the same language. We worship the same God. We fight for the same flag. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the church had led the Supreme Court? But the church didn't lead, and it didn't follow. We lack the moral courage to act. Over the following two days of the

conference, the participating church leaders attended seminars and worked on plans to combat racism within white church bodies using education and community events to bring together black and white parishioners. One pastor said, most of us are getting tired of seeing ministers and laymen react as Southerners first and Christians second. The Reverend Dr. King closed the conference with a challenge to the white majority. He said, the nation is looking to the white minister in the South for leadership. I'm aware of the difficulties that many white ministers confront, but in spite of these difficulties, the Christian minister must remember that he is a citizen of two worlds. He must again and again hear the words of Paul ringing across the centuries,

be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. by the renewing of your mind. But the religious leaders had a long road ahead of them. They knew their convention was a start. It would be many more years of work before the historically racist religious belief of whiteness as dominant and blackness as inferior would be radically overturned, at least as far as the change of federal policies and law were concerned. During the next episode, we're going to explore the role of celebrities in the civil rights movement

and hear about a book written by J. Edgar Hoover. I'll see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast, or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed

by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.