The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.We felt we had a mandate, maybe from God Almighty, maybe from the Holy Spirit, to do something, to move. We used to pray and say things like, "When you pray, you move your feet." It's not just enough just to stay down on your knees, but you have to get up and do something.
The movement became a religious movement. It was the hymns of the church, but it was not just the hymns. It was the teachings of great teachers -- the teachings of the prophets, the teachings of Gandhi and all the great religions of the world all coming together to give us the necessary power and strength to protest, to get us to move on in spite of our fears -- in a sense, to lose yourself in something much bigger, much larger than you.
Many of the mass meetings and gatherings, the nonviolent workshops, were held in churches. But it was not just a meeting place, a gathering place. And it was not enough to sit in church. It was not enough to come and listen to a great sermon or message every Sunday morning and be confined to those four walls and those four corners. You had to get out and do something. You had to act. Our hands and our feet [and] our voices had to become the hands and feet and voices of the Almighty.
