Background Benefactor
Background Benefactor
Archibald J. Carey Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement
Starting in the 1930s and 1940s, A. Philip Randolph won the support of a small but significant cadre of African American religious intellectuals, including Howard Thurman, Sue Bailey Thurman, Mordecai W. Johnson, William Stuart Nelson, Blanche Wright Nelson, Benjamin E. Mays, and George D. Kelsey. Archibald J. Carey Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. joined Randolph’s March on Washington Movement and became key figures of the grassroots mobilization tactics used by a younger group of ministers to advance black civil rights. Carey also endorsed the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He served as the Chicago NAACP’s third vice president in 1948 and relied on public theology to influence other ministers in his denomination. Carey was reelected as a Cook County judge in 1970 and 1976. He died at home on April 20, 1981, at the age of seventy-three.
Keywords: civil rights, A. Philip Randolph, Archibald J. Carey, Adam Clayton Powell, March on Washington, grassroots mobilization, NAACP, National Urban League, Chicago, public theology