Black Baptist women and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1963: historians and journalists during and immediately after the Civil Rights Movement emphasized the role of religion in the movement. They showed how the black church and its leaders provided the charisma, finance, inspiration, spiritual nurture, and the foot soldiers that made the movement successful.

Most of the attention was lavished on ordained clergy and prominent male leadership figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt T. Walker, James Farmer, and Fred Shuttlesworth. In recent years, more attention has been given to the work of religious women, especially those of grassroots importance in the various civil rights campaigns. Scholars, many of them females, have sought to show how the history of the black women's religious experience informed their sense of social responsibility and activism. One of the most important civil rights campaigns occurred in…