Religion and Culture in the Southern Organizing Model

During the movement years, religion lived at the heart of the southern African American community -- not only in churches, but in homes, public gatherings and personal relationships. Religion had long been one of the greatest resources of African American activism and creativity and in the civil rights campaigns it provided a way to confront, engage and overcome fear. It was also a source of hope amidst the terrors the movement faced. Even northern college students, who may have come south without any particular sense of religious identity, soon felt the power of freedom in the sung and spoken rhythms of southern black religion -- and in the steady determination of the local people to hold their country accountable to its stated ideals and promises. Singing was an essential part of the life of the region and it became an essential part of the life of the freedom movement. As Bernice Johnson Reagan and Ruby Sales remind us, not only did movement songs and spirituals connect the singers with "the power of the universe" and the strength of the generations who came before them, but it was an important means of creating a sense of community, even smoothing over discords among the activists themselves.

The organizing model created in the movement context was characterized by many of the elements of southern African American history and culture -- respect for age as well as skills and talents; meetings in churches and on front porches; music as a resource for community-building; religion/spirituality as a guiding and sustaining force; and courageous individual and collective action to challenge white supremacist laws, institutions and ideology. Because of their work together -- perhaps, partly because of the dangers they faced together, or partly because of the traditional communal black southern lifeways on which the movement was built -- movement participants often became a kind of extended family to each other. This sense of belonging to the movement "family" remains, for many former civil rights activists, an identifying force in their lives to this day.

The majority-African American counties of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Also some sections of Louisiana, the Carolinas and Tennessee.