A Powerful Blessing: The Life of Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter, Sr., 1899-1969, Sixth Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, 1938-1968

This biography of the author’s father — who was among the eight Birmingham clergy addressed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” — sheds light on the work that Bishop Carpenter and his fellow clergymen did in their efforts for integration. The author also describes how his father, who graduated from Princeton in 1921, came to be a visionary. The author was rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Birmingham, Ala.