Nation: March on Gwynn Oak Park

Meeting in New York City last month, the general board of the National Council of Churches entered into soul-searching discussion of the role its members should play in the nation's civil rights struggle. Were pulpit pronouncements enough? Could the Christian conscience be satisfied by mere pious expressions of sympathy for the Negro? One who thought not was the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, executive head of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.'s general assembly, former president of the National Council and one of the U.S.'s most respected clergymen (TIME cover, May 26,...