John Connolly, a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, has been named a recipient for the 2015-16 Harrison Undergraduate Research Award.

The University of Virginia’s Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards program funds outstanding undergraduate research projects to be carried out in the summer following application for the award and the subsequent academic year.

Connolly plans to research Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and its pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. in the years preceding and during the Montgomery bus boycott in order to understand the conditions required for the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Connolly will analyze how King’s conservative roots were critical assets to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Connolly plans to utilize the Project on Lived Theology’s Civil Rights Archive for his research.

For more information on the Harrison Undergraduate Research Award, click here. To explore the Civil Rights Archive, click here.