1951

Roman Catholic 28,635,000

Methodist 9,066,000

Southern Baptist 7,373,000

Jewish 5,000,000

Episcopal 2,643,000

Presbyterian 2,360,000

1959

Roman Catholic 39,505,000

Methodist 9,815,000

Southern Baptist 9,485,000

Jewish 5,500,000

Episcopal 3,359,000

Presbyterian 3,210,000

Source:

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), p. 391.

Black Church Leaders and Civil Rights

Struggle for Rights.

The long-running efforts by black Americans to gain constitutional rights, especially in the South, acquired national attention in the 1950s. The 1956 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruled that legal segregation was unconstitutional, a ruling that signaled its ultimate end. But national attention was drawn to the problem of civil rights in the South in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. On 1 December 1955 Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to obey a city ordinance that required her to give up her seat to a white person when ordered to do so by the bus...