Faith in action : connected histories of religious civil rights activism in Texas.

Throughout this thesis, I explore Black and Mexican Americans’ struggle for equal educational opportunity and integration in Texas public schools. This work focuses primarily on the years between the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though the history of Black and Mexican American civil rights activism in Texas has been well documented, Faith in Action takes a new approach by using Protestantism as a lens to analyze civil rights activism among these groups. Through a historical lens of religious action, I demonstrate that churches, religious leaders, and religiously affiliated organizations played a central role in bringing about equal educational programs and school integration throughout Texas.