"Sanctuaries of Segregation: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Jackson, Mississippi, church visit campaign of 1963-1964 and the efforts by segregationists to protect their final sanctuary. For ten months, integrated groups of ministers and laypeople attempted to attend Sunday worship services at all-white Protestant and Catholic churches in the state's capital city. While the church visit was a common tactic of activists in the early 1960s, Jackson was the only city where groups mounted a sustained campaign targeting a wide variety of white churches. Carter Dalton Lyon situates the visits within the context of the Jackson Movement, church visits and kneel-ins in other cities, and controversies over race within churches and denominations. He then traces the campaign from its inception in early June 1963 through Easter Sunday 1964, highlighting the motivations of the various people and organizations, the interracial dialogue that took place on the church steps, the divisions and turmoil created within churches and denominations by the campaign, the decisions by individual congregations to exclude black visitors, and the efforts by the state and the Citizens' Council to thwart the integration attempts. Sanctuaries of Segregation provides a unique perspective of how a church community and individual church people reacted to civil rights activists and the movement as a whole during those tumultuous years."--Provided by publisher.