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In the 1960s, the mainstream Protestant churches responded to an urgent need by becoming deeply involved with the national black community in its struggle for racial justice. The National Council of Churches (NCC), as the principal ecumenical organization of the national Protestant religious establishment, initiated an active new role by establishing a Commission on Religion and Race in 1963. Focusing primarily on the efforts of the NCC, this is the first study by an historian to examine the relationship of the predominantly white, mainstream Protestant Churches to the Civil Rights movement. Drawing on hitherto little-used and unknown archival resources and extensive interviews with participants, Findlay documents the churches' committed involvement in the March on Washington in 1963, the massive lobbying effort to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their powerful support of the struggle to end legal segregation in Mississippi, and their efforts to respond to the Black Manifesto and the rise of black militancy before and during 1969. Findlay chronicles initial successes, then growing frustration as the events of the 1960s unfolded and the national liberal coalition, of which the churches were a part, disintegrated. While never losing sight of the central, indispensable role of the African-American community, Findlay's study for the first time makes clear the highly significant contribution made by liberal religious groups in the turbulent, exciting, moving, and historic decade of the 1960s.

This book details, in a series of first-person accounts, how Hubert Humphrey and other dedicated civil rights supporters fashioned the famous cloture vote that turned back the determined southern filibuster in the U. S. Senate and got the monumental Civil Rights Act bill passed into law. Authors include Humphrey, who was the Democratic whip in the Senate at the time; Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., a top Washington civil rights lobbyist; and John G. Stewart, Humphrey's top legislative aide. These accounts are essential for understanding the full meaning and effect of America's civil rights movement.

With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the US government ushered in a new era of social welfare policies, to counteract the devastation of The Great Depression. While political philosophers generally view the welfare state to be built on values of equality and human dignity, America's politicians, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, argued on different grounds. From the beginning, Roosevelt based his defense of the welfare state on the individualist, or Lockean premises inherent in America's political culture. As a result, he not only encouraged the United States' commitment to individualism, but also contributed to distinctively harsh American stigmatization of welfare recipients. In The Transformation of American Liberalism, George Klosko explores how American political leaders have justified social welfare programs since the 1930s, ultimately showing how their arguments have contributed to notably ungenerous programs. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Individualist values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America's leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and American culture's individualist assumptions. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in American political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.