Book Review: A Stone of Hope

David L. Chappell. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

          In A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, David L. Chappell sheds new light on the components of the civil rights movement, concretely adding prophetic religion to the mix of ingredients of those tumultuous times from 1940s-1960s. Chappell’s thesis states “that faith drove black southern protesters to their extraordinary victories in the mid-1960s, grew out of a realistic understanding of the typically dim prospects for social justice in the world.” The protester’s prophetic content of their speeches, diaries, and other paraphernalia related to the civil rights movement, illuminates this great divide. With an eye for detail, Chappell points to the factors of religion that have been overlooked by other historians as our country ended Jim Crow and segregation.

          One of Chappell’s interesting beliefs was that the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow and segregation took place at a weak point in white solidarity. He claims that Southern blacks did not have the same number of supporters as segregationists, but “that white racism could not withstand the strength of the cultural resources that some black protesters brought to bear on the struggle.” In short, antiracists and black protesters had a greater understanding of human nature that helps explain their defeat of segregationists.

          To acknowledge all of the leading protesters and their theories on racism, liberalism, and the like would take more space than Chappell could probably afford. Instead, he highlights several of the most well-known and “ordinary” leaders of the civil rights movement, and details their theories and philosophies. Of the more interesting to read about were Bob Moses with his prophetic brand of skepticism about human progress, the outspoken preacher Fannie Lou Hamer who felt that the civil rights battle was an inherently spiritual struggle for black Americans and held on to the adage that the most segregated hour in America was ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Fred Shuttlesworth, a charismatic leader who believed that the movement was “a religious crusade, a fight between light and darkness, right and wrong, good and evil, fair play and tyranny.” Bringing to life these types of characters in such a defining moment of American history, and not just relying on the most well-known such as Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pulls into focus the point that the civil rights movement was a movement led by ordinary people faced with extraordinary racial and religious obstacles.

          Bringing religion into the picture, Chappell compares the civil rights movement to a historic revival. The civil rights movement “shifted the focus of church doctrine away from eternal salvation and toward attaining justice in this life.” The enthusiasm of the movement moved into the streets, and if it did not directly influence every listener, Chappell claims that the message reached them nonetheless, whether or not they accepted. The church was the perfect breeding ground for the movement to take place. Weekly meetings, racially divided, large groups, prophetic messages, nowhere else would large numbers of Southern blacks be gathered together and easier to organize than the church house.

          Of books related to the civil rights movement, most overwhelmingly center on desegregation and it’s defendants. Chappell does something interesting by highlighting segregationists and their thinking, the evil in a good versus evil battle. Part of his claim is that the white South did not put up much of a fight. He spends an entire chapter trying to explain this seemingly incomprehensible phenomenon. Fear was a driving force behind white southerner’s relationships with each other. The minds of the segregationist faction feared what the “white bigots and demagogues” would do and react. According to Chappell, this division in effect, lost the segregationist battle of the civil rights movement. “Fortunately for the black protesters, they were not united.”

          Chappell deserves a ton of credit for completing A Stone of Hope, especially given the subject matter: prophetic religion. In his conclusion, Chappell admits, “First approaching this story as an atheist, I was surprised and skeptical to hear so many of my subjects – whom I admired from afar – expressing what Bayard Rustin called “fundamentalist” views.” Chappell goes on to describe his reluctance to believe his subject’s testimony of “miracles” had it not been for their frequency and key to the beliefs of his subject’s choices. In a catch-22 situation, perhaps only an atheist could tell this story with an objective mind, but perhaps a religious mind could have given more clarity to certain aspects.

          Clearly a well-researched book, A Stone of Hope is nevertheless not an easily understandable book by someone who is not somewhat familiar or the least bit interested in the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Chappell obviously has a great handle on the material but seems to have trouble getting that material to the reader in a fashion that is interesting and relatable. It is more a book of general theories than facts, which is more difficult to understand.

As compared to W. J. Cash’s book, The Mind of the South, A Stone of Hope picks up Cash’s story long after The Mind of the South was published. Cash lays a foundation of the general racial attitudes of the South before the civil rights movement gained steam. Cash’s generalizations about African-Americans are just as offensive in the twenty-first century as they would have been in the middle of the twentieth when black protesters marched on Birmingham. Cash would have scarcely believed the desegregated America that emerged as a result of the civil rights movement. Chappell clarifies this movement and gives black Americans a legacy to be proud of. He very clearly shows that the protesters of the civil rights movement were not deaf and dumb to their plight. Their hope of equality set them apart from Cash’s typical African-American.