Roots of Civil Rights Politics in Northern Churches: Black Migration to Saginaw,Michigan 1915 to 1960

Abstract

The southern-led civil rights movement was an important transformational period in the history of African American life and culture in the USA. While we know much about the social, economic, and political activities that occurred in southern cities in the 10 years preceding the civil rights movement, we know less about how parallel social processes developed in urban northern communities between 1946 and 1960 and how they prepared the black church for radical politics during the civil rights period. Black migration to Saginaw, Michigan serves as a case study to show how middle class migrants were the causal mechanism that secularized black churches through their overlapping memberships in status groups, black churches and secular organizations, and how this population helped to prepare black churches in Saginaw (and much of the north) for radical politics on the eve of the civil rights movement.