The failure of Reconstruction dashed Black hopes of social parity and justice, which were met with violence and terror.
His first book in 1986 was a well-research, 702-page collection of writings and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.
Included were newspaper and magazine pieces from the midst of the struggle, various interviews, and articles from academic and religious journals.
Starting in 1976 professor Washington taught church history at the Union Theological Seminary.
Du Bois, Sojourner Truth, professor Howard Thurman, poet Esther Popel, Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin, writer Alice Walker and James Alexander Forbes Jr.[9] Many of the quotations given were by relatively unknown Christians, from various points along the difficult and painful, yet blessed history of the Black American church.
[11] "We intensely debated the meaning of the Cross-the whence and whither of evil, the sources of struggle against suffering, and the mysterious grounds of hope.
And we always rooted our fierce exchanges in the concrete reality of everyday Black people dealing with the absurdities and indignities of American life.