After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., James H. Cone denounced the lukewarm responses of mainline Protestant and Catholic Christians to the plight of black Americans.
Sister Thea did not hesitate to challenge and even chide the bishops for their complicity in a “church of paternalism, of a patronizing attitude” toward people of color.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (May 1954), racial tensions in Alabama heightened considerably. When in February 1956 Autherine Lucy, a black student, began attending class at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, white students and community membe