Liturgy of Change

Liturgy of Change

Rhetorics of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting

Original archival research invites new ways of understanding the rhetorics of the civil rights movement

In Liturgy of Change, Elizabeth Ellis Miller examines civil rights mass meetings as a transformative rhetorical, and religious, experience. Scholars of rhetoric have analyzed components of the civil rights movement, including sit ins, marches, and voter registration campaigns, as well as meeting speeches delivered by well-known figures. The mass meeting itself still is also a significant site in rhetorical studies. Miller's "liturgy of change" framework brings attention to the pattern of religious genres—song, prayer, and testimony—that structured the events, and the ways these genres created rhetorical opportunities for ordinary people to speak up and develop their activism. To recover and reconstruct these patterns, Miller analyzes archival audio recordings of mass meetings held in Greenville and Hattisburg, Mississippi; Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama; Savannah, Sumter, and Albany, Georgia; St. Augustine, Florida; and Danville, Virginia.

  • Cover
  • Liturgy of Change
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • CONTENTS
  • List of Illustrations
  • Series Editor’s Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Recovering the Civil Rights Mass Meeting
  • ONE Becoming Hopeful: The Civil Rights Mass Meeting as Liturgy of Change
  • TWO Sounding Civic Identity: Freedom Song Invention at the Mass Meeting
  • THREE Embodying Peace: Prayer as Reverent Resistance
  • FOUR Speaking Truth in Love: Testimony in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Danville, Virginia
  • FIVE Reckoning with White Violence and Resistance: Audience(s) and the Civil Rights Mass Meeting
  • Conclusion: Faith, Racial Justice, and Rhetorical Activism in the Twenty-First Century
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index