Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / Howard Thurman (1900-1981) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) were both Christian pastors and social prophets who made significant contributions to the religious and social life of America and the world. Although Howard Thurman is the lesser known of the two, his life and ministry influenced many individuals (including King) who have impacted American society and the larger world community. Both thinkers were also black Americans whose earliest experiences of oppression based on the coalescence of color and race in the segregated South had a profound impact on their quests and interpretations of human community. [TRUNCATED] / 2017-04-13

Loved or despised, black ministers Malcolm X and Martin Luther King made their ways from birth in Baptist parsonages separated by half a continent to significant positions in mid-twentieth century America. Both men were painfully dramatizing black problems and poignantly articulating black-white tensions when their careers were violently concluded in their thirty-ninth years by assassins' bullets-This dissertation is a study of the goals and strategies of these two ministers who became martyrs in the cause of freedom. The writings and speeches of each man served the author as the basic source from which the concepts which guided Malcolm and King were gleaned.Chapter I presents brief, integrated biographies of Malcolm and King as well as their reactions to the ideas of one another. Chapters II and III deal with Malcolm and King, respectively; the format is the same for both chapters. Following a short introduction, goals are reviewed. Then, attention is turned to the strategies by which each leader sought to secure his goals. At the end of each chapter a number of summary ideas which represent the author's personal reaction to the life of the man under review are presented. Chapter IV concludes the dissertation with an essay in which the styles and ideas of the two men are compared andcontrasted.Opinions about Malcolm and King and their roles in American society are as diverse as the number of people who have heeded them. -4To some, these two represent American determination for freedom at its most noble level; others cast them in the role of despicable demogogues. Some were able to accept King's leadership while rejecting Malcolm's. Some, who at first repudiated King, began to accept him when Malcolm's impassioned voice stirred new visions of racial revolution. Others felt that Malcolm was possessed with an urgency that was lacking in the approach of King.The operational principles of King's life were well defined when he became pastor of a Southern church in 1954. Early in his life King had synthesized the Christian message of love and the Ganahh en teaching, of nonviolence; this synthesis was to provide the springboard for his future ideology and program. It should not be assumed, however, that King did not develop new visions nor sense new relationships as he traveled the tortuous road from Montgomery to Memphis. Rather, it was his basic, undergirding position which was unchanged as he moved along that route.On the other hand, any attempt to force Malcolm's strategy into such a unitary mold will result in an inaccurate evaluation of the man. During the last fifty weeks of his life, Malcolm was undergoing significant philosophical changes. Even though he had earnestly preached orthodox Black Muslim doctrine for a dozen years, the split with Elijah Muhammad in early 1964 and especially the transforming Mecca pilgrimage caused his thinking to move in radically new directions. Many of his positions were not yet fully defined nor articulated at the time of his death.Malcolm and King presented American blacks with alternative means to secure the same goals. Both dramatically expressed feelings that were shared, some perhaps unconsciously, by most blacks. Their fearless articulation of the black plight attests to their personal integrity and their unflinching determination to build a more just world. By defining problems in a simple, naked manner a nation was briefly aroused from its apathy to deal creatively with its racial crisis. Perhaps, even now, the message Malcolm and King espoused has been too quickly forgotten.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1991.

Post-World War II public schools in Harlem, New York were segregated, under-resourced and educationally inequitable. Addressing disparities in education was of paramount importance for the socioeconomic mobility and future of the neighborhood. In an effort to understand how race, religion, community, and education intersected in this context, this dissertation answers the following research question: How did St. Philip’s, the first Black Episcopal church in the city and one of the most historic churches in Harlem, participate in education during the post-World War II period? Responding to and preventing inequities in the neighborhood, including the substandard state of the public schools, St. Philip’s served as an educational space and organizational base for the community. St. Philip’s participation accounts for the way a Black church emerged as a space for education when the public schools were foundering. The church’s ethos of education - community engagement - reframes traditional frameworks of teaching and learning beyond schoolhouse doors. During the postwar period, St. Philip’s expanded its in-house programming for Black children, youth and adults, constructing a new community youth center, where classes, tutoring, after-school activities, college counseling, career guidance, day-care, recreation and clubs were community staples. Understanding the importance of inclusivity, continuity and consistency, programming was accessible to the entire neighborhood, regardless of membership with year-round services such as summer camp and career counseling. As an organizational base, the church hosted education talks and committee meetings, facilitating a forum for the community to engage in critical conversations about the state of education. It was a safe space for transparency and troubleshooting. Concerns about education expanded beyond conversations in the church, however. St. Philip’s corresponded directly with city governance, petitioning school-makers with recommendations and demands. This dissertation broadens the traditional civil rights narrative of Black religious activism, which has the tendency to dichotomize who participated and how they participated. This polarization includes regions: North-South, religions: Christian-Muslim, figureheads: Martin Luther King, Jr.-Malcolm X, and strategies: peaceful-militant. Historians Charles Payne and Nikhil Pal Singh push back on this oversimplified interpretation as “King-centric.”* St. Philip’s educational activism foils this paradigm as a Black Episcopal institution in a northern city. St. Philip’s brings nuance to categorizations of Black churches as either being focused on the far-reaching goal of social transformation or compliant with conservative social philosophies based on respectability politics. Its participation was both radical (such as establishing educational programming at the Community youth center that was open to members and non-members alike, regardless of class, age, political or religious beliefs) and conservative (such as sitting out of the 1964 citywide school boycott, while the majority of the Black community participated). In this way, St. Philip’s educational activism in Harlem calls into question criticisms of the Black Episcopal Church that position it as elitist and accommodationist to white values and white power, hence, apathetic to the challenges facing the Black population in cities during the post-World War II period. *Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 6; and Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 419.

This thesis shows that because the Poor People’s Campaign was created by and operated within the formal structure of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - a nonprofit organization - it was unable to achieve success by almost any measure. SCLC’s organizational structure made it extremely difficult to create a national campaign from the ground up, and its leadership strategy guaranteed that it would be virtually impossible to sustain that kind of national campaign.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis shows that because the Poor People’s Campaign was created by and operated within the formal structure of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - a nonprofit organization - it was unable to achieve success by almost any measure. SCLC’s organizational structure made it extremely difficult to create a national campaign from the ground up, and its leadership strategy guaranteed that it would be virtually impossible to sustain that kind of national campaign.