John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle
With the deaths of Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, the U.S. has lost two civil rights greats who drew upon their faith as they pushed for equality for Black Americans.
Vivian, an early adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died July 17 at the age of 95. News of his passing was followed just hours later by that of Lewis, 80, an ordained Baptist minister and towering figure in the civil rights struggle.
That both men were people of the cloth is no coincidence.
From the earliest times in U.S. history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for Black Americans. As an ordained minister and a historian, I see a common thread running from Black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the c...