From the beginning of direct action work in the South, the student civil rights movement constantly evolved new programs and tactics. While the goals of the programs were always to work toward desegregation and voter registration, the programs often stressed varied approaches to those goals and had different tactical components.

During 1832 to 1833, the faculty and trustees of Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, were embroiled in a controversy over immediate abolition. The faculty advocated immediate abolition and the establishment of biracial equality in the United States; the trustees urged gradual abolition and the colonization of freed slaves in Liberia. The controversy at Western Reserve College raises the question of why some people adopted immediate abolitionism while others of similar background remained colonizationists? Although the case of Western Reserve College provides no Rosetta Stone to unravel the mystery of motivation, there were notable differences in age, in relationship to the community, and in enthusiasm for the evangelical doctrine of the immediate repentance of sin that distinguished the main protagonists among the faculty and the trustees from one another.

In their 150-year history the Mormons have undergone a metamorphosis. From a position where they were considered moral pariahs, they have emerged as the very models of social decorum and moral respectability. In the nineteenth century their founder, Joseph Smith, was martyred in Illinois; they were driven from Missouri under a governor's extermination order; hundreds were jailed as “prisoners of conscience” in Utah for refusal to abandon polygamy; and their prophets were pursued by federal marshals as fugitives from justice. The popular attitudes towards these 19th-century “social outcasts” are a far cry from the image reflected by the activities of some prominent Mormons in the 20th-century: Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson; Michigan Governor, George Romney; Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall; Secretary of the Treasury, David Kennedy; U. S. Commissioner of Education, Sterling M. McMurrin; the current Secretary of Education, T. H. Bell; and Florida's Senator Paula Hawkins, the second woman ever elected to the U. S. Senate. Other Mormons who have caught the public eye (and ear) include television inventor, Philo Farnsworth; Harvey Fletcher, developer of stereophonic sound; Henry Eyring, recipient of the prestigious “Priestly Medal” in chemistry; and such heroes of middle America as the Osmonds and Merlin Olson, defense tackle for the Los Angeles Rams. The perception of the Mormon educational point-of-view has also shifted: once considered proponents of ignorance and gullibility, they are now seen as unalloyed supporters of educational advancement.