Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes

Allen has promoted recognition for African-American nonbelievers since he founded the group African Americans for Humanism in 1989. This year, more than 15 local AAH chapters are expected to highlight Randolph and about a dozen others as part of their observance of a Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers on Sunday.

The hope, Allen said, is that highlighting the contributions of African-American humanists — and humanists in general — both in the civil rights movement and beyond will encourage acceptance of nonbelievers, a group that polls consistently rank as the least liked in the U.S.

"So often people look at atheists as if they have horns on their heads," Allen said. "In order to correct that, it would be important to correct the historical record and show that African-American humanists have been involved in numerous instances in the civil rights movement and before."

AAH is also promoting black humanists in a billboard campaign in several cities, including New York, Dallas, Chicago and Durham, N.C. Each one pairs a local black nontheist with a black nonbeliever from the past. "Doubts about religion?" the billboard reads. "You're one of many."

A billboard in Los Angeles pairs Sikivu Hutchinson, a humanist activist based in Los Angeles, with Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist of African-American culture who wrote of being an unbeliever in her childhood. Hutchinson, author of the forthcoming "Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels," links blacks' religiosity with social ills such as poverty, joblessness and inequality.

"To become politically visible as a constituency, it is critical for black nonbelievers to say we have this parallel position within the civil rights struggle," she said.

A strain of unbelief runs across African-American history, said Anthony Pinn, a Rice University professor and author of a book about African-American humanists. He points to figures like Hubert Henry Harrison, an early 20th- century activist who equated religion with slavery, and W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP, who was often critical of black churches.

"Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes— they were all critical of belief in God," Pinn said. "They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle."

But they are often ignored in the narrative of American history, sacrificed to the myth that the achievements of the civil rights movement were the accomplishments of religious — mainly Christian — people.

Add in that black nonbelievers are a double minority — polls show African-Americans are among the most religious U.S. group — and it becomes even more difficult to discuss the atheism of heroes of black history.