The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — barred African-Americans from full membership until 1978. Since then, the church has increased its outreach to African-American communities, but has yet to repudiate its old teachings that blacks were cursed by God as descendents of Cain or Ham.

Read the funeral tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta by Methodist theologian L. Harold DeWolf.

Howard Thurman had a profound spiritual impact on civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. Yet for much of the last half century Thurman's contributions have often been overlooked. Now, more than 20 years after his death in 1981, Howard Thurman is finding a new audience.

Read more of our interview with Dr. Robert Franklin, President of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, who describes prominent African-American scholar and activist Howard Thurman as a "21st-century theologian working in the middle of the 20th century."