The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in large measure because of rhetorical appeals grounded in the Judeo-Christian religion. While movement leaders often used America's founding documents and ideals to depict Jim Crow's contradictory ways, the language and lessons of both the Old and New Testaments were often brought to bear on many civil rights events and issues from local desegregation to national policy matters. This volume chronicles how national movement leaders and local activists moved a nation to live up to the biblical ideals it often professed but infrequently practiced."

Historians have long agreed that women--black and white--were instrumental in shaping the civil rights movement. Until recently, though, such claims have not been supported by easily accessed texts of speeches and addresses. With this first-of-its-kind anthology, Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon present thirty-nine full-text addresses by women who spoke out while the struggle was at its most intense.

Beginning with the Brown decision in 1954 and extending through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the editors chronicle the unique and important rhetorical contributions made by such...

Building upon their critically acclaimed first volume, Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon's new Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965 is a recovery project of enormous proportions. Houck and Dixon have again combed church archives, government documents, university libraries, and private collections in pursuit of the civil rights movement's long-buried eloquence. Their new work presents fifty new speeches and sermons delivered by both famed leaders and little-known civil rights activists, on national stages and in quiet shacks. The speeches carry novel insights...