I just finished reading “The Children” by David Halberstam, about the nonviolent students who integrated lunch counters in Nashville. It gives me insight into what it’s really like to turn the other cheek, and how love is more powerful than hate. Some of these early leaders were young black fundamentalists, but unfortunately the book implies that nobody in those days had both a social conscience and a high view of the Bible.

What I like about that group is that most of them were motivated by their Christian faith and believed in nonviolence as a way of life, not just a temporary tactic. Even some who had lost their childhood faith seemed to be able to share in this fellowship. As if they had trouble believing the Christianity of their Sunday school but no trouble believing the Christianity of the civil rights movement. But by 1966 their organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had been taken over by non-religious black power/black separatism advocates who wanted to abandon nonviolence.