Becoming Wise is supported by the Fetzer Institute.

I've had hundreds of big conversations, and my conversation partners share wisdom I carry with me wherever I go.

Ruby Sales is an elder of the civil rights movement.

That movement's marches started in churches and ended in churches. Its leader was a preacher and its spirituals and hymns became hymns of the nation.

Ruby opens up what it was to be a teenage participant in that work of social shift,

including the impatient she had with religion,

and how she circled back through her experiences of the movement and of life to a sense of the

deep reason for inner life and religious groundings.

This is Becoming Wise. I'm Krista Tippett.

You know, one thing you've said, and you've likened yourself to the Black Lives Matter,

a lot of the kids who are involved in that today,

that you were not especially religious, right?

That you had this grounding in church,

but you said that you used to complain.

A lot of you used to complain when there had to be these obligatory prayers

before everything started.

It was downright embarrassing.

I mean, you know, you couldn't go to a mass meeting without these people always praying.

And it was like, my God, do we have to do this?

But I, you know, when I first went on my first demonstration, I was really kind of naive,

unsophisticated, a peasant who who had been bred on black folk religion, and who really believed

I was a part of the Pepsi generation, who really believed that right was right, and it went out.

...