Annemarie Mingo examines the theological and ethical influences of Black churchwomen’s activism in the Civil Rights movement. This work stretches across the fields of church history, ethics and African American Studies, combining both oral histories and archival sources to provide a glimpse into the perspectives of Black women’s organising and sense of justice. For Mingo, Black women’s lived religion and liberation ethic derived from their experiences of engaging in the Civil Rights movement; their liberative theology differed from traditional Latin American liberation theology and Black liberation theology that were produced by men around this time (p. 6). The book is helpful in providing further histories of Black churches in the Civil Rights movement, with a particular focus on gender and class. It serves as an important recovery project, while following a strong tradition of scholarship that expands the scope of the Civil Rights movement beyond a few key players.

Mingo’s book sheds light on the previously unnamed Black women activists in the Civil Rights movement, who risked individual gains for greater moral change in American society. She considers the motivations and personal sacrifices of everyday Black women organisers and how the ethical virtues learned from the movement can help ground Black women today. The book is a result of conducting oral histories with over forty women, most of whom are members of Ebeneezer Baptist Church and Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, and Abyssinian Baptist Church and First AME Bethel Church in Harlem. Through a methodological position she terms the ‘inside-outsider’ status, Mingo explains that her shared Black American Christian culture and knowledge of common sacred traditions led the selected churches to support her oral history work and provide her with access and closeness that an outsider would not be able to easily attain. Yet, as a non-member, she was able to critically engage with her interlocutors and their practices (p. 4). The oral histories provide new insight into the lives of Black women in both the South and north-east, linking regions often viewed separately despite the impact of the second wave of the Great Migration, between 1940 and the early 1970s, on the Civil Rights movement.

The structure of Have you got good religion? moves from the sociohistorical beginnings of Black churchwomen’s religious activism during the Civil Rights movement to the liberative theology that present-day Black women engage with in their organising for Black freedom. Divided into five chapters, the book sets out to recover the voices of everyday Black women activists through its extensive use of oral histories and additional archival sources. Each chapter is paired with a corresponding moral exemplar of a Black woman leader engaging their faith towards justice. In the first chapter, Mingo explains the social and historical influences on Black women’s organising in the civil rights era, including the Black Church’s long heritage of socio-religious activism and the racial segregation experienced in housing, work and leisure. In addition, Mingo raises the importance of the Black media’s coverage of landmark events, including the murder of Emmett Till, as well as announcements for local opportunities to organise. This chapter also features the stories of the eight major figures that Mingo primarily draws on as sources. For this project, nearly half of the Mingo’s forty Black churchwomen interviewees are cited in the text; their additional biographies are featured in the appendix.

The next three chapters explore the virtues that support Black churchwomen’s individual and communal liberative social ethics: freedom faith, courageous resistance and theo-moral imagination. In chapter ii Mingo examines the scriptural texts, lived experiences and prayers that Black women have passed through generations to consider how their freedom faith oriented them towards justice. This focus on how faith is shared through families is vital to how Mingo interprets Black women’s ability to critique oppressive systems and willingness to risk their lives in organising. In the third chapter, Mingo documents the actions that Black churchwomen performed in their ‘courageous resistance’ against white supremacy despite their fears and opposition (p. 80). Mingo is particularly concerned with how young women, primarily in high school and college, were willing to take physical, emotional and spiritual risks for collective freedoms, rather than individual gains. In chapter iv, Mingo demonstrates how these Black women activists engaged in ‘theo-moral imagination’, creating radical visions that combined hope and God-guided imagination (p. 116). In the final chapter of the book, Mingo builds upon the three virtue ethics discussed in previous chapters to offer a contemporary theology of movements for liberation, informed by lessons and materials of the Civil Rights movement.

Mingo’s clear and concise writing makes reading through dozens of biographical sketches an engaging experience. Her interweaving of her own family’s histories of organising create an intimate encounter through themes of family, legacy and justice. In this project, Mingo seeks to learn the perspectives of everyday Black churchwomen and provides a repository of organising tactics and stories within the Black Church. Though, at times, the Black Church category overshadows the distinct religious experiences of her interviewees and the nuances of the Black American religious landscape. For example, Bennett College’s United Methodist affiliation (p. 107) and Bessie Smith Sellaway’s time spent in a Black Catholic school (p. 25) are productive sites to discuss the distinctions within Black Christian women’s religious formation. Of the eight women whose stories Mingo draws upon in the text (with short biographies in chapter i), half were affiliated with an AME church and the other half with a Baptist church. What can this religious variance reveal about conceptions of freedom and justice among traditions of the Black Church? The discussion of ‘Good Religion’ – the act of following through with words and actions that exhibit a justice-led faith – was a helpful lens in viewing Black churchwomen’s contributions to the moral change in society. The concept of Good Religion could have been more impactful if introduced earlier in the text, rather than in the last chapters. Mingo’s book displays the importance of oral history work in recovering voices and perspectives of the past. Her approach to oral histories helps us consider how a researcher’s positionality might impact access to knowledge of the past. In addition, she assures us that there are lessons to be learned from the past and provides virtuous paths of organising to inspire the present reader.

As an important work of recovery for histories of Black women’s labour and sacrifice in the Civil Rights movement, Have you got good religion? offers readers an excellent opportunity to hear the voices of previously unnamed Black churchwomen organisers. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the recovery work of the Civil Rights movement and lessons to be learned in the contemporary struggles for justice.