James Cone argues that “the task of black theology is to analyze the nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the light of oppressed blacks so they will see the gospel as inseparable from their humiliated condition, and as bestowing on them the necessary power to break the chains of oppression.” Throughout the Black Freedom Struggle, African American activists have mobilized Black theology to inspire forms of political action, shape the institutional design of social movements, generate theories of political organizing, deploy political rhetoric, and orient critiques of American society. Black theology has historically animated various movements, including (most famously) the Abolitionist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement led by stalwarts like Pauli Murray, Maria Stewart, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. As Taylor Branch writes, "The civil rights movement fused the political promise of equal votes with the spiritual doctrine of equal souls".