Some quick mental drivelings.

[Angrboda]

Something I've noticed is that atheists have always been in the shadows in the last couple centuries in matters of social progress. Rosa Parks was instructed on civil disobedience by atheist supporters, and Martin Luther King Jr. was advised and relied on the support of a group of atheist non-profit sponsors. The feminist movement was largely supported by the atheist community first and foremost before it went elsewhere, and it was driven largely by atheists. These supporters were not loud about their atheism, they instead were loud about the issues they supported....

This is something of an offshoot, but I think it's relevant. It's a talk Sam Harris gave at the Atheist Alliance conference suggesting we abandon the term "atheism." Kichi posted the transcript and Youtube video, so I'll just link to her post, .

Beyond that, I wonder about the historical accuracy here; surely atheists have been actively involved in social causes, and early perhaps, but to give them prime position is a claim I hadn't heard before, and I'd like to see more evidence of this. Especially if one considers the very real possibility that atheists make up only 2-3% of the population (I don't think this is an accurate assessment, but it does have valid support; when people refer to atheists being 12-20% of the population, they often don't differentiate between people who are not affiliated with a particular religion, non-believers (if that is a separate category), and atheists/atheist-agnostics. There are severe methodological and conceptual hurdles involved in gauging the number of atheists. Worse, these problems were likely not even acknowledged by the historical researchers involved.