The civil rights movement was arguably the most successful social movement in American history. In a provocative new assessment of its success, David Chappell argues that the story of civil rights is not a story of the ultimate triumph of liberal ideas after decades of gradual progress. Rather, it is a story of the power of religious tradition.

Chapter 1: Hungry liberals: their sense that something was missing -- Chapter 2: Recovering optimists -- Chapter 3: The prophetic ideas that made civil rights move -- Chapter 4: Prophetic Christian realism and the 1960s generation -- Chapter 5: The civil rights movement as a religious revival -- Chapter 6: Broken churches, broken race: white southern religious leadership and the decline of white supremacy -- Chapter 7: Pulpit versus Pew -- Chapter 8: Segregationist thought in crisis: what the movement was up against -- Conclusions: Gamaliel, Caesar and us.