The most "potent tool" in the American civil rights movement's arsenal wasn't demonstrations or boycotts, or even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or other charismatic leaders, but rather another source of power during those turbulent times, a Bluffton University audience heard Jan. 11.
In an unprecedented move, a grass-roots movement within the movement took the risk of using prayer to create crisis that caught political leaders' attention and ultimately brought change, said Dr. Tobin Miller Shearer, a University of Montana historian speaking at a Bluffton Forum.