1. Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol.1: Human Nature (New York: Scribner's, 1941)Google Scholar.

2. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Sickness of American Culture,” Nation, 03 6, 1948, 268Google Scholar.

3. Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner's, 1944), viiGoogle Scholar.

4. Niebuhr, Reinhold, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner's, 1953), 71–72Google Scholar. In spite of his appreciation of Burke's realistic view, Niebuhr was not a true “Burkean Conservative,” as several scholars, most notably the religious sociologist Will Herberg, have characterized him (see, for example, Herberg, , “Reinhold Niebuhr, Burkean Conservative,” National Review 13 [12 2, 1961]: 5Google Scholar). Vigen Gurioan has noted that Niebuhr formulated his ideas independently of Burke, whom he did not read until he was in middle age, and he argues persuasively that Niebuhr was an “operational” conservative, concerned with regulating the process of change but strongly attached to the principles of liberal democracy, whereas Burke was a “structural” conservative who viewed reform as part of the defense of established institutions (such as the British monarchy) (Gurioan, , “The Conservatism of Reinhold Niebuhr: The Burkean Connection,” Modern Age 29 [Spring 1985]: 224–32Google Scholar).

5. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Fair Employment Practices Act,” Christianity and Society, Summer 1950, 2Google Scholar.

6. During his years as a pastor in Detroit, Niebuhr chaired the Interracial Committee that was formed following racial rioting in 1925, and he drafted the committee report that attacked crowded and unsafe housing, job discrimination, and police brutality against blacks. In the mid-1930s, during his Marxist period, Niebuhr became involved in radicalizing Southern blacks through the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen (formed in part by his students), and he served on the boards of interracial action groups such as the Highlander Folk School and the Providence Collective Farm (Egerton, John, Speak Now Against the Day [Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994]Google Scholar).

7. Niebuhr, , Children of Light, 151Google Scholar. This analysis of racial pride is quite similar to that which Niebuhr made in an article written during his early years as a pastor in Detroit. At that time, however, Niebuhr wrote that racial sentiment was an unfortunate component of group pride, which was a globally positive sentiment. Niebuhr urged members of minority groups to cease assuming moral superiority and to deal with prejudice as a universal trait: “Colored people who have long lived in the North and gained social and cultural advantages that recently migrated Southern Negroes do not possess, have almost as difficult a task to deal justly with their underprivileged brothers as have the white people” (Niebuhr, , “The Confession of a Tired Radical,” Christian Century, 08 30, 1928Google Scholar; reprinted in Robinson, D. B., Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957], 121–22Google Scholar).

8. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Race Problem,” Christianity and Society, Summer 1942, 3Google Scholar.

9. Niebuhr, , Children of Light, 140–41Google Scholar.

10. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Negro Issue in America,” Christianity and Society, Summer 1944, 2Google Scholar.

11. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Review of An American Dilemma,” Christianity and Society, Summer 1944, 42Google Scholar; and Niebuhr, , “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis, 09 18, 1944, 2Google Scholar.

12. For Niebuhr's connection to Park, see McKee, James, Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Interestingly, this view represented something of a step backward for Niebuhr. Previously, during his Marxist period, he had rejected sociological views of race as an outdated rationalization for capitalist exploitation and advocated mass revolt: “The oppressed, whether they be the Indians in the British empire, or the Negroes in our own country or the industrial workers in every nation, have a higher moral right to challenge their oppressors than these have to maintain their rule by force” (Niebuhr, , Moral Man and Immoral Society [New York: Scribner's, 1933], 127Google Scholar). Under the influence of his friend, African-American theologian Howard Thurman, he argued that black people's particular combination of spiritual fortitude and resentment of injustice made them an ideal leadership group for creative nonviolent struggle.

13. Niebuhr, “Race Problem.”

14. Ibid.

15. Niebuhr, “Negro Issue.”

16. For 1930s racial thought, see Egerton, Speak Now. For more on Black's attack on civil rights activism, see Robinson, Greg and Eisenstadt, Peter, “Two Dilemmas: Ralph Bunche and Hugo Black in 1940,” Prospects 22 (1997): 453–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Justice to the American Negro from State, Community, and Church,” in Pious and Secular America (New York: Scribner's, 1958), 81Google Scholar.

18. Niebuhr, , “Fair Employment Practices Act,” 147–48Google Scholar.

19. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, 11 10, 1971, in Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula M. Niebuhr, ed. Niebuhr, Ursula M. (New York: Harper, 1991), 371Google Scholar; and Vann Woodward, C., “The Irony of Southern History,” Journal of Southern History 19 (1953): 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Stone, Ronald, Reinhold Niebuhr, Prophet to Politicians (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972), 145Google Scholar.

21. See, for example, Fox, Richard Brightman, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon, 1985)Google Scholar; McWilliams, Wilson Carey, “Reinhold Niebuhr: New Orthodoxy for Old Liberalism,” American Political Science Review, 1967, 874–85Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America (New York: Norton, 1965), 300Google Scholar; and Reinitz, Richard, Irony and Consciousness (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 98Google Scholar. Niebuhr continued to be defensive over Russian attacks on American racism (see, for example, his article “Judgment by Evildoers” in New Leader, 02 20, 1956, 8Google Scholar).

22. Reinhold Niebuhr, letter to Felix Frankfurter, May 18, 1954, in Niebuhr, Ursula, Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr, 308Google Scholar.

23. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Supreme Court on Segregation in the Schools,” Christianity and Crisis, 06 14, 1954, 77Google Scholar.

24. See Reinhold Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” interview, 5/14/54(?) (Columbia History Oral History Project, Columbia University), 45.

25. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Ideals and Basic Law,” New Leader, 11 1, 1954, 11Google Scholar.

26. Niebuhr, , “Supreme Court,” 77Google Scholar.

27. Reinhold Niebuhr, letter to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., July 22, 1956, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Papers, Box P-20, Kennedy Library, Boston.

28. Niebuhr, , “Ideals and Basic Law,” 11Google Scholar.

29. Niebuhr, , “Supreme Court,” 75Google Scholar.

30. Ibid.

31. Niebuhr was continually disappointed by the failure of the clergy to assume leadership in favor of equality, especially when measured against the liberal position of the Catholic Church and the leading role the Church and Christian doctrine played in the black civil rights struggle. He ascribed the white Protestant church's weakness to its excessive congregationalism, which left enlightened local leaders powerless to influence their followers. Niebuhr's student Richard Newman recalled him ticking off the different white churches in order of magnitude of their positive role in race relations, “from Roman Catholic through Presbyterian and Methodist to Southern Baptist, with Pentecostals off the map,” an order that Newman realized was exactly proportional to the authoritarian tendencies of the churches. Niebuhr remarked that “democracy does not necessarily produce justice” (Newman, letter to author, October 15, 1996).

32. Jackson, Walter, “White Liberal Intellectuals, Civil Rights, and Gradualism, 1954–1960,” in The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Ward, Brian and Badger, Tony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 104Google Scholar

33. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “School, Church, and the Ordeals of Integration,” Christianity and Crisis, 10 1, 1956, 121Google Scholar.

34. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Nullification,” New Leader, 03 5, 1956, 4Google Scholar.

35. Jackson, “White Liberal Intellectuals.”

36. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “What Resources Can the Christian Church Offer to Meet Crisis in Race Relations?” Messenger, 04 3, 1956Google Scholar; reprinted in Robertson, , Love and Justice, 152, 154Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 153.

38. Ibid. Curiously, this rather tepid endorsement was Niebuhr's first discussion of the Montgomery Movement, even though it had been in operation against great opposition for five months and was led by Martin Luther King Jr., a minister who was an avowed disciple of Niebuhr. King soon after vainly solicited his mentor's aid in securing President Eisenhower's intervention in civil rights (see Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters [New York: Touchstone, 1988], 999Google Scholar).

39. Niebuhr, “What Resources?”

40. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Race Problem in America,” Christianity and Crisis, 12 26, 1955, 170Google Scholar.

41. Niebuhr, , “Justice,” 75Google Scholar.

42. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Civil Rights Bill,” New Leader, 09 16, 1957, 9Google Scholar.

43. Ibid. Ironically, two years later, when pressures mounted for another civil rights bill, Niebuhr complained that Johnson, with the help of “so-called ‘liberals,’” had helped defeat meaningful change in Senate rules to block filibusters, though he admitted that Johnson had acted to prevent a ruinous split in the Democratic Party. He nonetheless warned that the party could only win the presidency in 1960 by defying the South, as it had in 1948 (Niebuhr, , “Civil Rights and the Filibuster,” Christianity and Crisis, 02 2, 1959, 2Google Scholar).

44. Niebuhr, , “Civil Rights Bill,” 9Google Scholar.

45. Reinhold Niebuhr, letter to Felix Frankfurter, February 8, 1957, Felix Frankfurter Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Showing a remarkable ignorance both of Eisenhower's character and of changing electoral realities, Niebuhr remarked that he could not imagine why the President feared taking a hard line with the South, since he was a Republican.

46. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The States Rights Crisis,” New Leader, 09 29, 1958, 14Google Scholar.

47. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Bad Days at Little Rock,” Christianity and Crisis, 10 14, 1957, 2Google Scholar.

48. Niebuhr, “States Rights Crisis.”

49. Niebuhr, , “The Negro Dilemma,” New Leader, 04 11, 1960, 13–14Google Scholar.

50. Niebuhr, Reinhold, Prospects for the South,” New Leader, 06 19, 1961, 4Google Scholar.

51. Ibid.

52. Niebuhr, , “Prospects for the South,” 4Google Scholar.

53. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Intractability of Race Prejudice,” Christianity and Crisis, 10 29, 1962, 181Google Scholar.

54. Niebuhr, , “Prospects for the South,” 3Google Scholar.

55. Reinhold, Niebuhr, “The Mounting Racial Crisis,” Christianity and Crisis, 07 8, 1963, 121Google Scholar.

56. Niebuhr, “Intractability of Race Prejudice.”

57. Ibid.

58. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Revolution in an Open Society,” New Leader, 05 27, 1963, 7Google Scholar.

59. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Meaning of the Tragedy in Birmingham,” transcript of television show, September 22, 1963, in James Baldwin File, Box 6, Reinhold Niebuhr papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 5.

60. Ibid., 4. Niebuhr remarked privately that the March on Washington was “a splendid triumph for the Negroes” and predicted that Martin Luther King's eloquent “I have a Dream” speech would “influence the nation” (letter to William Scarlett, cited in Brown, Charles C., Niebuhr and His Age [Philadelphia: Trinity, 1992], 220Google Scholar).

61. See, for example, Niebuhr, “Meaning of the Tragedy”; “Herald Tribune Round Table Discussion with Reinhold Niebuhr, James Booker, LeRoi Jones, Sidney Lanier, Kyver Blumstein, and Kenneth B. Clark,” transcript of tape recordings, 1964, Box 7–7, Kenneth B. Clark Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Foreword,” in Mississippi Black Paper (New York: Random House), 1965Google Scholar.

62. Niebuhr, , “Mounting Racial Crisis,” 121Google Scholar.

63. Niebuhr, “Meaning of the Tragedy,” 6. Although Niebuhr had previously alluded to Nazism during the massive resistance campaign when he estimated that only some five percent of Southern white Protestant clergymen were willing to speak out for integration, a figure that matched the percentage of German clergy who spoke out against Hitler, the comparison was meant to rebut the idea of inherent American moral superiority rather than as a call to action (Niebuhr, “Nullification,” 4).

64. Ibid, 7.

65. Niebuhr, , “Revolution,” 8Google Scholar.

66. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Struggle for Justice,” New Leader, 07 6, 1964, 10Google Scholar.

67. Niebuhr, Reinhold and Sigmund, Paul E., The Democratic Experience: Past and Prospects (New York: Praeger, 1969), 16–17Google Scholar.

68. Ibid., vi.

69. See “Herald Tribune Round Table,” 27–28.

70. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “The Negro Minority and Its Fate in a Self-Righteous Society,” Social Action, 09 1968, 60Google Scholar.