ABSTRACT
From the time that slaves first arrived in the area in 1815 to the time that the civil rights movement peaked in the city of Birmingham in 1963, religion and the church played a significant role among African Americans. In Birmingham the African American church boosted businesses, sponsored education, fostered moral discipline, promoted values, dispensed benevolence, and led the civil rights movement in the city. The Birmingham experience validates the latter view, which holds that the African American church possessed elements of compensation and militancy. The compensatory function of the African American church in Birmingham can also be seen during the depression with the emergence of gospel music and the growth of churches of the Pentecostal, Holiness, and Spiritualist tradition. Gospel music tended to be more otherworldly than the spirituals or meter hymns. After World War II, pastors begin to insist on the elimination of segregation and full rights for African- Americans.
