The Black community had relatively little political power, but it had Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Richard Wright, Chuck Berry, Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, and Louis Armstrong, among others, who gained popularity among Black and white audiences and transformed American culture. And now it had a telegenic young preacher, declaring that racism was both unpatriotic and a sin against God, and building a following of his own.
