In this Book

Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries

Book
Tobin Miller Shearer
2010
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summary
The Mennonites, with their long tradition of peaceful protest and commitment to equality, were castigated by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. for not showing up on the streets to support the civil rights movement. Daily Demonstrators shows how the civil rights movement played out in Mennonite homes and churches from the 1940s through the 1960s.In the first book to bring together Mennonite religious history and civil rights movement history, Tobin Miller Shearer discusses how the civil rights movement challenged Mennonites to explore whether they, within their own church, were truly as committed to racial tolerance and equality as they might like to believe. Shearer shows the surprising role of children in overcoming the racial stereotypes of white adults. Reflecting the transformation taking place in the nation as a whole, Mennonites had to go through their own civil rights struggle before they came to accept interracial marriages and integrated congregations.Based on oral history interviews, photographs, letters, minutes, diaries, and journals of white and African-American Mennonites, this fascinating book further illuminates the role of race in modern American religion.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

pp. i-iii

Copyright Page

pp. iv

Contents

Preface

pp. vii-xxi

CHAPTER 1. A Separated History

pp. 1-28

CHAPTER 2. Prayer-Covered Protest

pp. 29-61

CHAPTER 3. Fresh Air Disruption

pp. 62-97

CHAPTER 4. Vincent Harding’s Dual Demonstration

pp. 98-129

CHAPTER 5. The Wedding March

pp. 130-159

CHAPTER 6. Congregational Campaign

pp. 160-189

CHAPTER 7. The Manifesto Movement

pp. 190-220

CHAPTER 8. A New Civil Rights Story

pp. 221-250

Appendix. Interview Subjects

pp. 251-252

Notes

pp. 253-328

Bibliography

pp. 329-343

Index

pp. 345-361
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