Awakening to Equality: A Young White Pastor at the Dawn of Civil Rights by Karl E. Lutze
Awakening to Equality: A Young White Pastor at the Dawn of Civil Rights by Karl E. Lutze
English | Apr 1, 2006 | ISBN: 0826216323 | 175 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
English | Apr 1, 2006 | ISBN: 0826216323 | 175 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
When Karl Lutze arrived in Oklahoma in 1945, he stepped into another world. A newly ordained clergyman born in Wisconsin, he was a young white man assigned to minister among Muskogee’s African American community. He soon found that in the South, crosses were as likely to be burned as revered. His recollections of postwar Oklahoma provide a compelling testament to the era’s racial conflict and some steps taken toward its resolution.
Awakening to Equality offers a unique perspective on an often-violent era that witnessed the gradual dismantling of segregation. Serving congregations in Muskogee and Tulsa, Lutze encountered a cross section of both communities—from the white and black power brokers to the most disempowered black and biracial families—and a stratified society buttressed by intimidation, cross burnings, and bombs. His activism in the Urban League and other local civil rights organizations gave him firsthand experience with forces moving toward change, as well as with the more entrenched forces resisting it.