The Atlanta group met as the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration; it later changed its name to the Southern Christian leadership Conference. The choice of the new organization's name is a subtle indicator of the Cold War ethos that permeated black politics, as it did white society, during the 1950s. The decision to include Christian in the group's name was not simply an affirmation of people's faith that God was on their side but also a conscious effort to deflect any allegations of communist infiltration or influence, since the materialist worldview of
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