Much of the book explores the effect of segregation on both blacks and whites in terms of loss of dignity, self-esteem, and moral understanding of one's fellows. He discusses how segregation harmed both blacks and whites by creating a 'wall' between them and an atmosphere of fear and hatred. Thurman describes many incidents in his life beginning with his childhood in heavily segregated Jacksonville, Florida which show how he came to understand the pernicious effects of segregation upon his own life and on his family and community. The book is not a historical account of the Civil Rights Movement but is instead personal, reflective, and philosophical. There is no waking moment or sleeping interval when one may expect respite from the desolation and despair of segregation.' To work as if the walls did not exist, to be nourished by the strength of one's ethnic idiom, and at the same time to be victimized by the walls is as exhilarating as it is hazardous. He wrote: 'A man must be at home somewhere before he can feel at home everywhere.' He also believed that the sense of separateness resulting from segregation and divisions among people needed to be overcome, 'even as it sustains and supports.' Thurman wrote: 'This is the crucial paradox in the achievement of an integrated personality as of an integrated society. Thurman took great inspiration from the vitality of his upbringing and from what he termed the 'Negro idiom'. And this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience.' '[A} strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: human life is one and all men are members of one another. He wrote about what he saw as the crucial insight he learned from his experience of segregation in his own life: In the book's 'Foreword', Thurman noted the deeply personal character of this essay. Thurman ultimately grounds his understanding of the evils of segregation in mysticism and religious philosophy. In 1965, near the end of the movement, Thurman wrote this book, 'The Luminous Darkness: A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope.' In it, Thurman offered his own understanding of the nature of segregation and its impact.

Howard Thurman's famous book 'Jesus and the Disinherited' (1949) helped to inspire the Civil Rights movement that soon followed in its wake.

The Luminous Darkness by Howard Thurman