Religious Leadership
These two volumes, one by the author of the essay in this
issue of History Now, will give you and your students
a solid background in the role of African American religious
leaders as political activists throughout American history:
Swift, David Everett. Black Prophets Of Justice:
Activist Clergy Before The Civil War. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Taylor, Clarence. Black Religious Intellectuals:
The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the Twenty-First
Century. New York: Routledge, 2002.
You may want to sample some of these biographies and
autobiographies of individual clergy in the civil rights
movement:
Frady, Marshall. Jesse: The Life And Pilgrimage
Of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random House, 1996.
Gardner, Carl. Andrew Young: A Biography.
New York: Drake, 1978.
Manis, Andrew Michael. A Fire You Can't Put Out:
The Civil Rights Life Of Birmingham's Reverend Fred
Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1999.
Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights
Movement and the Transformation of America. New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.
These books and videos focus on the lives of two of
the women whom Dr. Taylor highlights as examples of
the laywomen who spearheaded the civil rights movement
in their churches and communities:
Fannie Lou Hamer: Everyday Battle. Atlanta,
GA: History on Video, Inc., 1999.
Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. Fundi Productions;
New York, N.Y.: distributed by First Run, 1986. Video
recording of a prize-winning documentary.
Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie
Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life
of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Dutton,
1993.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker And The Black Freedom
Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
