The trio of Johnson, Mays, and Thurman, upon establishing black internationalism and Gandhian nonviolence at Howard, compelled Howard professors to reconsider their low opinion of theologians, religion, and the School of Religion. All three came up through YMCA ecumenism. For them, the path to Gandhian internationalism ran through Protestant missionary societies, especially the YMCA and its youth activist offspring, the Student Christian Movement. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Thurman was supposed to be the answer to the Gandhi question. He heard it constantly on the lecture circuit.

But Thurman did not have the temperament to be a political leader, or even the willingness to speak for racial justice in the manner of Johnson and Mays. Political advocacy felt crude to him, and he tired of the classroom too. Increasingly he gave himself to his inward mystical spirituality. He disappointed his friends and spouse by accepting a ministerial call to an interracial congregation in San Francisco, applying to himself the advice he gave to others, his best-known saying: “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and do it. For what the world needs is people who are fully alive.” Thurman had his greatest influence on the black freedom movement in the early 1940s, on the lecture circuit, where he fended off the Gandhi question. Then he became a sage and author, exerting a different kind of influence. And his influence grew after he was gone.

For a long time the symbol of church-based racial justice militancy was Adam Clayton Powell Jr. His father was a famous social gospel pastor at the Abyssinian Church in Harlem, and in 1930 he joined his father at Abyssinian. Powell became a prominent community leader, crusading for jobs and affordable housing. In 1938 he succeeded his father as pastor at Abyssinian, preaching social-gospel progressivism. In 1944 he became New York State’s first black representative in Congress and the first from any Northern state besides Illinois since Reconstruction.

Powell ended business as usual in the House of Representatives. Stubbornly, proudly, defiantly, by himself, sometimes gleefully, he forced the House to deal with racial segregation, week after week. He blasted segregation and challenged segregationists to defend their policies. He condemned racist language on the House floor, defied segregationists in his party, and goaded liberals to take a stand against racial caste. He added “Powell Amendments” to bills proposing federal expenditures, denying federal funds to segregated jurisdictions. The Powell defunding strategy was engrafted in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Powell steered much of the Great Society legislation through his congressional committee.

For most of his career, Powell was the only nationally prominent black politician, period. He had a vivid theological imagination, a liberal theology steeped in romanticism, and a devoted following at the Abyssinian Church. But Powell clashed with King and other civil rights leaders, offending King in 1960 with a malicious threat that severed King’s alliance with pacifist and movement-organizer Bayard Rustin for three years. When Rustin, King, and labor leader A. Philip Randolph pulled off the historic March on Washington in 1963, they kept Powell off the speakers’ platform, and Powell’s congressional career ended badly in 1971. He was charismatic and arrogant, righteous and corrupt, and religious and cynical. He mystified allies and enemies alike with his contradictions. Among black social-gospel leaders, only King accomplished more than Powell, but Powell damaged his own legacy.