Chapter One provides a broad historical overview of African American community formation in Cairo, illuminating how the region’s economic instability and distinct blend of northern and southern racial practices combined to solidify the Black church’s emergence as the leading institution in local community-building and protest traditions. This chapter argues that the Black church’s preeminence was not inevitable. It was instead a creative and necessary response to broader patterns of Black political marginalization and an absence of alternative institutions due to the precarious economic position of Cairo’s Black working-class. The chapter also contends that the ability of Cairo’s Black churches to fill this organizational vacuum was made possible by the distinctive religious tradition harbored by African American communities across the borderland.
African American Community Building in Atlanta: A Guide to the Study of Race in America
