The power of religion in the civil rights movement In a provocative assessment of the success of the civil rights movement, David L. Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament - sometimes translated into secular language - drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

Winner of the Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in North America Award from the Gustavus Myers Center "In the movement, we always said that, like in a washing machine, it was the agitator that got the dirt out. David Chappell's book shows how the inside agitators helped cleanse the society of an extreme injustice. It is an enlightening and important look at a less publicized part of this history." -Andrew Young "A superb study done with subtlety and keen insight, it is absolutely essential for understanding the vital role white Southerners played in the civil rights movement." -C. Vann Woodward, Yale University "Chappell's argument is insightful and worth serious attention. It makes particularly fascinating reading from the perspective of the 1990s." -David R. Colburn, Reviews in American History "In this engaging work on Southern whites who sympathized with the Civil Rights Movement, Chappell argues that moderate whites, though lacking a moral commitment to civil rights, played a key role in the movement's success at both the local and national levels." -Virginia Quarterly Review