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.
