The Moves of Civil Rights: Examining the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

Abstract The catalog of the major marches held during the movement for Black freedom typically focuses on events of the 1960s: the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1965 March across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, or James Meredith’s 1966 March against Fear. While the largest and best-remembered civil rights marches did indeed occur in the 1960s, the first national march of the movement took place in 1957 at an event held on the National Mall in Washington, DC: the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. To craft this demonstration, leaders invited activists to take up social, geographic, and spiritual movements, movements that relied on memory and prayer. This article analyzes the event through these three dimensions of movement and rethinks the significance of the Prayer Pilgrimage for rhetorical histories of civil rights and the march as protest tactic.