Unitarian Universalist Ministers of the Deep South - Brief Introductory

Notes

by Gordon Gibson

* Clif Hoffman had been the American Unitarian Association regional

director of an area stretching from Dallas to Richmond and became

District Exec for the Southeast after merger in 1961. He nurtured and

supported a couple of generations of ministers across that area.

* Alfred Hobart served our congregations in New Orleans and Charleston,

and then became the founding minister of the Birmingham, Alabama,

Church. He worked quietly and courageously in that hottest of all hot

spots. For example, when the Alabama Education Association disinvited

John Ciardi, poetry editor of the Saturday Review, because he had

published an attack on Jim Crow, Al Hobart invited him to speak to a

non-segregated audience at the Unitarian Church, which Ciardi did.

* Albert D'Orlando hung in for 31 years as minister of the First

Unitarian Church of New Orleans, surviving the process of fully

desegregating an established southern congregation, and also surviving

the bombing of both the church and his home. He and the church

established a "Freedom Fund" which distributed over $25,000 to help

with legal expenses and living expenses of those who fought

segregation.

* Jim Brewer went to Norfolk, Virginia, as his second settlement as a

Unitarian minister. He was there during the crisis period when there

was talk of closing the public schools rather than desegregating them

on even a token basis, and he led a local effort that swung public

opinion behind keeping the schools open.

* Dick Henry, Bob West, and Ken MacLean each gave notable leadership in

Knoxville in this era, with Bob West there during the time of sit-ins.

A Presbyterian observer/participant of the sit-ins wrote of him, "Bob

is a wiry young man whose keen mind quickly pierces to the heart of a

problem. I have a great deal of admiration for him -- almost enough now

to quit wishing he were a Presbyterian."

* Glen Canfield, Ed Cahill, and Gene Pickett served the Unitarian

Universalist Congregation of Atlanta through these years. There had

been a predecessor congregation with a clear policy of segregation, at

least for a little while, and so it was not a clean, fresh start. Even

with the announced intention in 1952 of breaking from that past, there

were the agonies of meeting in rented quarters that did not permit real

desegregation, much less integration, of the new congregation at the

outset. Despite the delay this caused, the congregation very quickly

developed a very strong operation as an integrated institution that

worked actively on issues of racial justice. Atlanta was one of three

cities in the South where the Unitarian Service Committee funded a

staff member whose job was to start a bi-racial Human Relations

Council. There were close personal and institutional ties between this

congregation and Ebenezer Baptist Church and the King family. For

example, I heard that Atlanta performances of the Metropolitan Opera

were desegregated by means of a white Atlanta Unitarian Universalist,

Jerry Reed, buying tickets for Coretta Scott King.

* Ed Cahill also served with vigor and distinction in Charlotte, North

Carolina, before going to Atlanta. In Charlotte, the congregation's

ringing affirmation of an open membership policy was reported in the

newspapers on the same day in 1954 that the Supreme Court handed down

its decision on school segregation in Brown vs. Board of Education.

* Sid Freeman went from being a Professor at Sweet Briar College in

Virginia to being minister of the Charlotte, North Carolina,

congregation 1957 to 1989. He was active in sit-ins and the

congregation housed the area's first integrated pre-school, which

continues even today.

* Spencer Lavan, later President and Dean of Meadville/Lombard

Theological School, had Charleston, South Carolina, as his first

settlement, 1962-64. It was not an easy or comfortable time. One member

of the Vestry ("board") was a vocal member of the John Birch Society

who actively questioned both Spencer and his predecessor's support of

what were by Birch Society standards "Communist" causes. In June of

1963 Spencer wrote the manager of one local hotel deploring the arrest

of African-Americans seeking to use the hotel's facilities, and he

reported that the District Ministers Association had moved their next

year's meeting to a different hotel. Unfortunately, two of the owners

of the offending hotel happened to be members of the Charleston church.

That was the downside, but there was an upside too. During Spencer's

two years in Charleston there was at least one folk concert presented

in the church's parish house by Guy and Candie Carawan, friends of the

church, and important as people who taught singing to various groups in

the Civil Rights Movement. Guy Carawan in particular is identified as

one of the people, along with Pete Seeger, in the line of transmission

that transformed a song called, "I'll Be Alright," into the Movement

anthem, "We Shall Overcome."

* Bob Palmer, the first settled minister of our Nashville congregation,

is recalled by the Rev. Will Campbell, who served as the National

Council of Churches' chaplain to the civil rights movement, as, "a

tough and noble soul." Another evaluation of Palmer comes in a story

recounted by church member Ray Norris, who for a time served as Acting

Dean at the George Peabody College for Teachers. Peabody had

desegregated its graduate level programs, but on the undergraduate

level and in its laboratory school it was still segregated. The

President of the college wanted to change this and carefully calculated

the votes available, even having a dying Board member ready to come by

ambulance from Knoxville if his vote was needed. The Board voted to

desegregate the undergraduate programs immediately and the

Demonstration School the following year, but the newspapers simply

reported that the vote had been to desegregate both programs. The

President left for Europe immediately after the meeting and Ray Norris

was left with the designation of "Acting President." The first day of

summer school Ray got a call from the Principal of the Demonstration

School saying that a black man had come to register his son for the

School and the man wanted to talk to someone with more authority than

the Principal. Ray said to send the man up. The man in question turned

out to be the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church

and the pre-eminent black preacher in Nashville. Ray Norris began by

apologizing for his embarrassment in having to decline the

registration, and he explained that in order to get the change through

the Board they had had to postpone a year the Demonstration School

desegregation. The Rev. Kelly Miller Smith asked, "Where do you go to

church?" Ray said, "I'm a member of the First Unitarian Church." Smith

said, "You're one of Bob Palmer's boys. Okay, I believe you. Now, would

it help or hurt if I were to put some demonstrators in front of that

school down there?" Ray Norris assured him that it would hurt, and so

there were no demonstrations. All this on the strength of Norris being

"one of Bob Palmer's boys."

* Charles Blackburn had a short and intense settlement in Huntsville,

Alabama, which included his jailing in McComb, Mississippi,

participation in two marches in Selma, and various local civil rights

activities in Huntsville 1964-66.

* Greta Crosby had a part-time ministry in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1962-66.

Using her knowledge as a graduate of Harvard Law School as well as

Meadville/Lombard Theological School she wrote a letter to the editor

about issues of fairness in the rape trials of an African American man.

Although she had signed only her name, the editor of the newspaper

appended her church affiliation and life became controversial for a

time. She was also active as Secretary of the Virginia Council on Human

Relations, again, not without some controversy.

Southern Unitarian Universalists in the Civil Rights Era -

A Story of Small Acts of Great Courage

A Presentation by the Rev. Gordon D. Gibson

under auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society

at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association

June 23, 2000, Nashville, Tennessee

What was it like to be a Unitarian Universalist living in the Deep South in

the Civil Rights era? For many people on many days it was much the same as

being a Unitarian Universalist anywhere in the U.S. during the 1950s and

1960s. But sometimes it became more complicated and less comfortable than

that.

When Paul and Thelma Worksman moved from the Washington area to Mississippi

they bought a house in Clinton, just west of Jackson. Paul was on the front

lawn, supervising the unloading of the moving van, when a car pulled up. A

man emerged from the car, walked up to Paul and introduced himself as the

minister of the Morrison Heights Baptist Church. He invited the Worksmans to

attend Morrison Heights Baptist. Paul thanked him for the invitation but

said that they would be attending the Unitarian Universalist Church in

Jackson. The man hesitated a moment and then said, "You know they shot the

minister of that church."

We all remember the Rev. James Reeb, fatally injured during the voting

rights campaign in Selma, but some southern Unitarian Universalists have

especially vivid and poignant memories. The Rev. Charles Blackburn, a native

southerner serving the Huntsville, Alabama, Fellowship, remembers telling

northern colleagues, including Reeb, that they were safe within the

neighborhood right around Brown's Chapel A.M.E. Church but not outside it; a

few hours later Reeb was attacked after eating in a African American

restaurant outside that immediate neighborhood. Jean Levine of Atlanta

remembers that Reeb had his suitcase in the trunk of her car that afternoon,

ready to go back to the Atlanta airport, but then pulled the suitcase out to

stay another day or two. H.A. "Bob" Ross, then of Miami, remembers sitting

at dinner with Reeb, but turning left as he departed the restaurant and

later hearing on the car radio that Reeb, who had turned right, had been

attacked and critically injured.

In Baton Rouge in 1955 a service on the lynching of Emmett Till was attended

by about ten "southern gentlemen," dressed in dark suits and dark hats. That

was almost half the attendance that day. A few months later the YWCA told

the congregation that the space they had been renting for services was

needed for YWCA programming, although there was no evidence of the Y doing

any new programming in that space for years to come.

In Knoxville in 1952 the Ohio State Symphonic Choir, scheduled to sing at

the University of Tennessee, could not be fed on campus because it was an

integrated group. The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church fed the visiting

choir.

Those are a few vignettes. What was the larger picture?

If you looked at the Deep South -- the states that had formed the

Confederacy -- a century or a century and a half ago, you would have seen a

scattering of Universalist congregations in each state, but many states with

no Unitarian presence. This meant that the South in the 1950s and 1960s, the

civil rights era, was to a great extent just beginning to encounter

Universalist and Unitarian ideas and persons with much frequency. This was a

fateful time for liberal ideas and principles to be coming to the fore in

this part of the world. The dominant social ideas of the South in the 1950s

and 1960s were of control, continuity, conformity, hierarchy. The ethos and

core of Unitarianism and Universalism elevated values of freedom, personal

responsibility, unfettered truth-seeking, and affirmation of human dignity.

The dominant values of this religious movement were, to put it mildly, in

conflict with the dominant values of the region. That conflict is what I

will be talking about.

The Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s was a place of undeniable charm and a

place of significant repression. The South had been hit desperately hard by

the Depression. Roosevelt's recovery programs, the economic stimulus of the

war years, and related factors were bringing change to the South. But change

was not welcome in all its manifestations. Economic change unsettled some

people. Racial change, which was increasingly talked about and sometimes

enacted, was deeply troubling to many white southerners. John Egerton, a

native southerner and a wise and discerning observer of the region, has

written:

" . . . it was precisely these problems of racial and regional

inequality -- the one sustaining the other -- that festered

beneath the surface of midcentury life in the region. In no remote

sense could these be thought of as new problems. For nearly

seventy-five years -- since the end of Reconstruction -- the

political and economic rulers in the states of the Old Confederacy

had gradually tightened their oligarchic grip until their control

was more secure than it had ever been, even in the days of

slavery. With the indulgence and complicity of their Yankee

conquerors, they had locked the black minority in a straitjacket

of segregation and built a self-perpetuating hierarchy based on

political, economic, religious, and racial monopoly."

Another observer, also a lover of the South, was Professor James W. Silver

of the University of Mississippi. In November of 1963 he gave an address as

the retiring President of the Southern Historical Association. That address

expanded into his 1964 book, Mississippi: The Closed Society. In that book

he wrote:

There are parallels between the 1850's and the 1950's which remind

us that Mississippi has been on the defensive against inexorable

change for more than a century, and that by the time of the Civil

War it had developed a closed society with an orthodoxy accepted

by nearly everybody in the state. The all-pervading doctrine, then

and now, has been white supremacy, whether achieved through

slavery or segregation, rationalized by a professed belief in

state rights and bolstered by religious fundamentalism. In such a

society a never-ceasing propagation of the "true faith" must go on

relentlessly, with a constantly reiterated demand for loyalty to

the united front, requiring that non-conformists and dissenters

from the code be silenced, or, in a crisis, driven from the

community. Violence and the threat of violence have confirmed and

enforced the image of unanimity.

This, then, is the essence of the closed society. For whatever

reason, the community sets up the orthodox view. . . . When there

is no effective challenge to the code, a mild toleration of

dissent is evident, providing the non-conformist is tactful and

does not go too far. But with a substantial challenge from the

outside -- to slavery in the 1850's and to segregation in the

1950's -- the society tightly closes its ranks, becomes inflexible

and stubborn, and lets no scruple, legal or ethical, stand in the

way of the enforcement of the orthodoxy. The voice of reason is

stilled and the moderate either goes along or is eliminated.

In short, the South, ruled by a white power structure and pervaded by an

ideology widely shared by its white residents, was facing a crisis in ideas

and in social patterns at just the time that Unitarians, Universalists, and

soon Unitarian Universalists began to be a visible and contrarian presence

after World War II. The white South felt besieged and was in a mood to

strike back at those perceived as agents of change, as "outside agitators,"

or as "traitors." Persons operating on the principles that were inherent to

Universalism, Unitarianism, and then Unitarian Universalism were almost

inevitably a challenge to southern mores and social patterns.

What was the result of this conflict? The result could have been Unitarian

Universalists fading away, retreating yet again from the South even as the

Unitarians in particular had previously avoided the South.

The result could have been Unitarian Universalists finding that

accommodation to society was really more important than their own professed

values; this was certainly something that had happened in many other

religious traditions.

Either of these results would have been understandable, and in some

instances one or both happened. There were places where Unitarian

Universalists folded their tents and silently stole away in the night. There

were Unitarian Universalists who accommodated deeply to the dominant

society, maintaining only a mild and intensely private religious deviation

from the social norm.

The most typical response, however, was for Unitarian Universalists to learn

how to live in some degree of tension between their core beliefs on the one

hand and, on the other hand, the beliefs and practices deemed acceptable by

southern society. If the society was closed, we were a place of openness.

This stance was not easy to maintain. It led some congregations and many

individuals to what I would characterize as "small acts of great courage." I

spent two months of my sabbatical this year collecting stories of these

"small acts of great courage." Why did I spend my time this way? Because I

am a Unitarian Universalist, with three prior and one succeeding generation

of my family in this faith. Because I am a native southerner, born and

raised in the border South (Kentucky) and for 15 years (1969-1984) being the

Unitarian Universalist minister in Mississippi. Because my couple of weeks

in Selma, including a week in jail, make me, in a small way, a veteran of

the Movement. Because this is history which, for the most part, was not

written down as it was created, and is thus at great risk of being lost to

us if we do not soon capture some of these "small acts of great courage"

while some of the actors are still alive.

In a few minutes I want to share more of those stories with you, but as a

setting for those stories, I would like to outline a typical or generic

congregational history in the South. I think that that may begin to help you

understand some of the unique aspects of the tension between liberal

religious institutions and the broader southern society thirty to fifty

years ago.

The first step in the typical history of a southern congregation in 1950 or

1955 was not that different from one in Minnesota, Arizona, or California.

Someone from the American Unitarian Association, very likely Fellowship

Director Munroe Husbands, would have come to town. That person would have

collected names through an ad placed in local newspapers, from Church of the

Larger Fellowship membership, through the Layman's League "Are You a

Unitarian Without Knowing It?" ads, and from other sources. A meeting would

be held, probably in a hotel function room. If there were ten or more people

eager to have a congregation, they would be encouraged to charter themselves

and apply for recognition as a fellowship, a small, lay-led congregation.

There would be a modest but steady flow of supportive material from

headquarters in Boston, and ready response to correspondence.

The fellowship would begin to meet, perhaps at first in the living rooms of

members, but soon outgrowing that and finding public space that it could

rent or borrow. And, more frequently in the South than elsewhere, the

fellowship would be asked to move. It might be religious prejudice: "You are

not Christian." It often was because the fellowship did not exclude people

from attendance because of race. With the first African American visitors

the YMCA, or hotel, or school, or whatever would announce a moving date.

Some congregations went through half a dozen or a dozen meeting places.

Eventually, if this was a growing congregation, they would purchase or build

their own building and/or would call a minister. These two steps

intertwined, then as now. Both gave stability and maturity to a

congregation. With a meeting place that they owned, the congregation no

longer had anyone else policing their attendance or membership policies.

With a minister, they generally found they had a consistent voice of

conscience, which was heard in the wider community.

Finally, the congregation, now with full church status, would undertake a

fuller level of programming. There might be a regular community forum. They

might broadcast on the radio. Many members would work to form a local Human

Relations Council, and often the Unitarian Universalist Church would be the

only place, at least on the white side of town, where the integrated Human

Relations Council could meet. In a number of instances, RE classrooms would

be put to use during the week for a pre-school that would offer the only

racially integrated learning situation in town. Depending on the

congregation and on the issues in the local community, there might be an

explicit support of African American demands for justice and equity.

Now that is an idealized schema. No one congregation followed exactly that

trajectory. Nashville's variations on this institutional theme are

instructive and cautionary.

Our General Assembly host congregation here in Nashville stayed close to the

typical story that I outlined. Let me, however, mention a messy interlude.

In 1951 Munroe Husbands of the American Unitarian Association Fellowship

Office heard that the Nashville Fellowship had adopted a verbal agreement

"that if a Negro should wish to become a member, or worship with" the

Fellowship "he would be informed that his presence was not wanted." Husbands

fired off a letter of inquiry, noting that he had found their by-laws

proclaiming as one purpose "brotherhood undivided by nation, race or creed,"

and so he hoped that what he had heard was incorrect. The President of the

congregation responded:

When we formed this Fellowship at one of our meetings this

question came up and someone had said there were several

Unitarians connected with Fisk University and they might offer to

attend our Fellowship services. We discussed the matter pro and

con and finally decided that if we allowed negroes (sic) to become

a (sic) member of our Fellowship that we might as well stop where

we were. You might break the laws of a country and get away with

it but you can't violate its customs without paying the penalty.

Munroe Husbands' reply asked, "Are you in truth living up to your Bylaws? To

avowed Unitarian principles?" He also related his observation of the

experience of other, similar fellowships, noting that Austin, Texas, Little

Rock, Dallas, New Orleans, and Knoxville had open memberships and thrived.

Then he concluded:

I mention the above, for I realize that it is more difficult, due

to generations of "problems," for the Negro and the white to meet

for worship and discussion in the South than in the North. And yet

the Southerners seem to be doing more about it.

Within a couple of years this debate became academic when there were, in

fact, African American members. That couple told me that they think one or

two people quit when they joined. Obviously, for most Nashville Unitarians

it was not a problem. Indeed, many provided outstanding civil rights

leadership.

The ministers who served these congregations in this era are heroes of mine.

They stood tall when it would have been easier to keep their heads down.

They lived and mostly thrived in places that most of their colleagues avidly

avoided. They grew vibrant congregations. Who were they? In order to keep

this presentation with some time boundaries, I have prepared a handout to

honor in a small way the roster of colleagues who are at least the beginning

of my list. Many of them -- Albert D'Orlando, Alfred Hobart, Clif Hoffman

come to mind -- probably deserve full biographies or at least treatment in

someone's doctoral dissertation, rather than a measly few sentences here.

Read the handout for an understanding of what I mean. But let me give notice

to one undersung hero to whom I feel particularly close.

Donald Thompson served the First Unitarian Church of Jackson, Mississippi,

1963-65. In August of 1965 he was shot by the Ku Klux Klan and critically

injured. A few weeks later the settlement director in the UUA Department of

Ministry wrote inquiring whether "you think the time is now for you to move

to a more comfortable situation or a different climate." Don replied from

his hospital room:

Thanks for your offer of assistance in placement. If any of the

Miss. congregations feel that my presence is a danger to them,

I'll take advantage of your offer.

Otherwise, I feel that I ought to try to stay here for the next

seven or eight years. ("I should live so long.")

I realize that the same night riders may be out to finish the job,

but why have a successor who would also be a target.

The Klan probably is quite upset because, for once, their

execution didn't take. Maybe they'll do something about it. Yet

one cannot live on the basis of fear.

. . . It takes courage in Jackson to join a liberal church. Yet I

believe that my continuing after the shooting incident might

attract some worthwhile members.

As it worked out, a couple of months later Don accepted the advice of local

friends, corroborated by the FBI, and left the state of Mississippi on a few

hour's notice before the Klan again attempted to kill him.

As I said, Don Thompson and the 16 others profiled on the handout are heroes

of mine. But they are not my only heroes or heroines. There were people in

other professions who performed heroically.

Unitarian Universalist physicians were often ahead of the pack. Page Acree

willingly signed public petitions, even knowing that if the names were

listed alphabetically he would probably be at the top of the list. But, he

observes looking back, he was the only heart surgeon in Baton Rouge and so

someone would have to go out of town for treatment in order to boycott him.

Carlton Watkins began his medical practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, in

1946 with a non-segregated waiting room. For many years he was the only

pediatrician serving the only hospital in Charlotte that took African

American patients. This probably helped him get African American votes in

1966 when he was elected to the School Board after he and his wife had each

run unsuccessfully once before. During his service on the School Board he

was a voice for a good desegregation plan for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg

school system.

Attorneys who were members or friends of Unitarian Universalist

congregations included a disproportionate number of the white attorneys who

would deal with civil rights cases. For example, in 1953, the first time

that an attempt was made in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a Unitarian

Fellowship, the person elected President was Clifford Durr. Durr and his

wife Virginia rose to prominence (or, in the eyes of some, notoriety) after

1955 as supporters and advisors to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Mr. Durr

later returned to the Presbyterian Church of his upbringing, but both

Clifford and Virginia Durr remained friends of the Fellowship in its later

incarnations. The Fellowship that formed in 1966 and that still exists built

its current building during the congregational presidency of Morris Dees,

our Ware Lecturer this year, although no longer active in that congregation.

In New Orleans, Ben Smith had a general practice of law with some

specialization in labor law. With the advent of the civil rights movement he

began to fill a vacuum that existed, especially in Mississippi, for legal

representation of demonstrators. There were only three or four African

American attorneys in the state of Mississippi in the early 1960s. Once Bill

Higgs, a member of the Jackson congregation, was run out of the state there

were no white attorneys in Mississippi who would take civil rights cases.

Ben Smith, others from his law office, and colleagues from the National

Lawyers Guild helped fill the void. Smith also is notable for hiring the

first African American secretary in the central business district of New

Orleans, something that cost the law firm the renewal of its lease.

So far I have been speaking of Unitarian Universalists of European American

background. There were also Unitarian Universalists of African American

background, some of them publicly well-known and some with a lower profile.

John Frazier became an activist while he was still in high school in

Greenville, Mississippi. He was expelled from that school for insisting that

the principal celebrate the Supreme Court school desegregation decision. He

had arrests in Greenville and Winona, Mississippi. John worked with Medgar

Evers and was the youngest member of the national NAACP Board. While he was

seeking to be the first African American to enroll at the University of

Southern Mississippi he met Buford Posey, a white Unitarian Universalist who

was an alumnus of USM willing to sign John's application for admission

there. Eventually Buford invited John to attend the First Unitarian Church

in Jackson. Subsequently John Frazier attended Crane Theological School of

Tufts University, and was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in

1969.

Two Alabama African American political figures have Unitarian Universalist

ties. Dr. John Cashin, a Huntsville dentist, ran for Mayor of Huntsville and

Governor of Alabama, and led the movement to found the National Democratic

Party of Alabama. Cashin and his late wife Joan were for a time very active

members of the Huntsville Fellowship. In Mobile John LeFlore had a dual

membership, belonging to both an A.M.E. Church and the Unitarian

Universalist Fellowship. He ran for one of Alabama's U.S. Senate seats, and

was serving in the Alabama House of Representatives at the time of his death

in 1976.

A word also needs to be said about children and youth. Over and over again I

heard people who had just described their own actions add the thought, "My

kids paid a lot for what I did." Often the "kids" themselves stood apart

from their schoolmates in their announced attitudes and in overt actions

they took. Carolyn Fuller, now herself a mother, was in the early 1960s the

teen-aged daughter of Peggy and John Fuller of Birmingham. Listen to some

sections of her e-mailed response to my questions to her about her

experience:

. . . there is no doubt in my mind that the reason I wanted to

raise my son in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a direct result [of]

my reaction to growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm extremely

proud that my parents took such a role in the Civil Rights

Movement. I'm extremely grateful that Morris Dees continues to

live in Alabama and fight a very important battle. But I just

couldn't. I ran as hard and as fast as I could to a complete safe

haven. But just how safe is Cambridge? I can try to hide but none

of us will ever be safe until all of us are.

When asked what she herself had done, she replied:

This was my sophomore year in high school. I talked to the black

student who desegregated the school. I whole-heartedly supported

my mother when she asked me if we could enter a law suit against

the State of Alabama for closing the schools. As far as I know I

was completely isolated. But I suspect I wasn't as isolated as I

thought. I had friends, timid though they be. There was someone

who came to warn me when a fellow student was waiting outside the

school doors, planning on doing violence against me. The student

who planned the violence was the son of a former Unitarian who

left the church when it became integrated. In fact, there were

three of us Unitarians at the school and one of them wanted to

kill me and the other would avoid me for all she was worth. But

the Unitarian Church was my SANCTUARY. It provided the only really

happy peaceful memories I have. Recreating that experience for my

son has been a real driving force in my life.

Outside of the threat on my life from the fellow student and the

feeling of complete isolation, [a] traumatic event associated with

that particular school year was when I came home late from school

one day because I had Junior Achievement. My Mom had forgotten.

She had received an anonymous phone call, saying that I would be

arriving home in 10 pieces. She was frantic and I was scared.

There were many more traumatic moments that year forever seared

into my brain: the church bombing (I knew one of the children who

was blown up), JFK's assassination (None of my friends cared about

him. They only wanted to know the answer to the algebra test

questions. A teacher led one of my classes in applause.).

And now I'd like to share a few more stories -- stories from the average

(but exceptional) people in the pews (or the folding chairs as the case

often was in the early days).

Horace Montgomery is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of

Georgia. On his apartment wall is a framed memento of something he is proud

of having taken a leading role in. It is an odd memento: an envelope that

arrived with three cents postage due, mailed from Seattle, addressed to "Dr.

Horace Montgomery, Professor of History, Director N.A.A.C.P., University of

Georgia, Athens, Georgia." With the envelope, the typed note that it

contained: "Horace, Judas received 30 pieces of silver for Betraying only

one Man. HOW MUCH DID THE N.A.A.C.P. PAY YOU FOR BETRAYING YOUR RACE? PLEASE

BE THE MAN THAT JUDAS WAS." You see, Horace had led the faculty effort to

keep the University open and the two African-American students enrolled when

there began to be unrest after the University of Georgia desegregated.

Georgia had less difficulty than Alabama or Mississippi where there was no

such clear stance by a majority of the faculty.

On March 6, 1965, the Rev. Joseph Ellwanger, a Lutheran minister and the

Chairman of Concerned White Citizens of Alabama, led a group of 72 white

Alabama registered voters in a march to the Dallas County Courthouse in

Selma, Alabama. On the steps of the Courthouse they read a one page

statement in support of black voting rights. Of the 72 Alabamans in that

group, 36 were Unitarian Universalists.

Some of those 36 were from the Unitarian Church in Birmingham. The events

around Selma were traumatic for that church. A day after the Concerned White

Citizens march there was the first attempt to march to Montgomery, which

ended with the beatings and teargassing known as "Bloody Sunday." The

following Tuesday well over 100 Unitarian Universalists were among the

people who answered Martin Luther King's call to come to Selma for a second

attempt, which proved merely symbolic, marching to the point at which

Sunday's beatings had occurred, praying, and turning around. But that night

three of the Unitarian Universalist participants were attacked and one, Jim

Reeb, fatally injured. Birmingham is where Jim was taken for treatment and

where he died. The UUA Board adjourned its meeting from Boston to Selma.

Hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists came to Selma for the memorial

service and later for the march. The Birmingham Church installed extra phone

lines, met people at the airport, fed people, put people up overnight,

arranged buses. In the midst of this was a Sunday when they were welcoming

25 new members and having a kickoff dinner for their first "by the book"

pledge drive. The tea after church to welcome new members was cut short when

the police appeared to search the building for bombs. Child care during the

canvass dinner was moved out of the church for security reasons. This

pressure stretched over more than two weeks. The church survived. The church

served the larger movement generously and bravely. And the church increased

its pledging by 50%.

I could go on, but I won't. I hope that you understand the tenor of the

stories. And they continue through the Carolinas and Virginia, over into

Louisiana, down into parts of Florida. In most of the places where there

were Unitarian Universalists there were at least some of these stories.

These stories do not mean, "Unitarian Universalists led the civil rights

movement." The Movement was a movement of, by, and for African Americans,

only some of whom were Unitarian Universalist. An accurate history of the

Movement could be written without using the words "Unitarian Universalist."

I think it would be missing some of the details, because there were small

but crucial contributions by individuals and congregations which were

Unitarian Universalist, but it could be done.

Although the overwhelming thrust of the Movement was the liberation of

African Americans, there was a secondary effect, and that was the liberation

of European Americans. Unitarian Universalists were among the first

liberated, and among the key liberators.

What these stories -- stories of congregations, stories of individuals,

stories of acts, small and large, of great courage -- what these stories do

mean is that Unitarian Universalists often provided an early crack in the

"closed society" of the white South. In response to an ideology allied with

religious fundamentalism, we were religiously open and tolerant. In response

to an ideology that depicted some people as of great worth and others as of

little worth, we proclaimed the worth and dignity of all persons.

We were a crack in the "closed society," but not without cost. What was done

was often at a high price for some. Those of us who are white were often too

radical to have much of any support from other whites. But we were also too

white to merit much support or attention from African Americans. There were

psychological scars. There were family ties sundered. There were jobs lost.

There were sometimes physical attacks. Those are very real costs.

But there were benefits as well. The benefits were less tangible, but they

were real. At base, I think the benefit obtained by Unitarian Universalists,

young and old, lay and clergy, was the sense that they were in fact living

out their faith. Their integrity was intact. They were making real some

small part of the ideal world that they imagined.

I see a parallel in what Czech President Vaclav Havel has written about

living under Communism. It is not an exact parallel, but it is close enough

to be suggestive to me. Havel writes:

. . . ethical behavior pays in the long run. To be sure, such

behavior can often lead to suffering, and can't always be expected

to deliver immediate and obviously positive results. . . .Ethical

behavior pays not only for the individual, who may suffer but is

inwardly free and therefore fortunate, but mainly for society, in

which tens and hundreds of lives lived thus can create what might

be called a positive moral environment, a standard, or a

continually revitalized moral tradition or heritage, which

eventually becomes a force for the general good.

In short, I daresay that the basic political lesson taught to us

by life under communism is the recognition that the only kind of

politics that makes sense is a politics that grows out of the

imperative, and the need, to live as everyone ought to live and

therefore -- to put it somewhat dramatically -- to bear

responsibility for the entire world.

"To live as everyone ought to live and therefore . . . to bear

responsibility for the entire world": I think that comes close to what the

actions of southern Unitarian Universalists in the 1950s and 1960s meant,

even when they were undertaken spontaneously and without premeditation.

To help you remember that, let me introduce three homely symbols: a coffee

cup, a telephone, a shoe. There are stories for each, to add to the stories

you have already heard.

The coffee cup is for Virginia Price of Nashville, one of the first people I

interviewed in my sabbatical travels and one of many who were modest about

their contributions. Virginia said, "The main thing that I did was drink

enough coffee to float a battleship." She would go to one of the dime stores

when notified that there would be a sit-in, and take a seat by an African

American person at the counter. The point was to demonstrate that she would

be served while her African American compatriot would be ignored. They might

remain there for several hours. She comments that after a day spent in that

way, she would toss and turn at night, at least partly because of a heavy

caffeine intake. Virginia Price, a nice PTA mom, was one among many

Unitarian Universalists for whom a coffee cup at a lunch counter would be a

good symbol.

The telephone is for the Fuller family, Eve Gerard and Harry Wiersema, Jr.

The Fullers in Birmingham at one point had harassing phone calls coming in

every 13 minutes. Eve Gerard was for many years the secretary of the

Unitarian Church in Birmingham. As secretary she sometimes had to deal with

things not usually in the secretarial job description like the advisability

of inspecting the outside of the church before she went in if it was a time

when there were a lot of church bombings; things like fielding threatening

phone calls. One day she took a call threatening to bomb the church and came

up with the rejoinder: "You'll have to take your turn. There are several

people ahead of you." Harry Wiersema, Jr., grew up in the Tennessee Valley

Unitarian Church in Knoxville with activist parents, and he himself went on

to a career of activism. He told me that when people phoned with threats he

would try to keep them on the line. He would ask them what their motivation

was. Was it religious, as his was? The telephone is for the Fullers, Eve

Gerard, Harry Wiersema, Jr., and hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists

who picked up telephones not knowing what they would hear.

And the shoe is for the many ways that Unitarian Universalists gave feet to

their beliefs. Sometimes it was just the matter of walking into a church

that you knew was religiously and socially not approved by much of the rest

of the community, maybe disapproved of enough to be a potential bombing

target. Sometimes it was walking into work, knowing that you would take some

flak from co-workers or maybe a supervisor for what you or your minister had

said or done. Sometimes it was more dramatic than that. Charles Blackburn

tells me that on Tuesday, March 9, 1965, when the people assembled in Selma

heard that if they marched across the Pettus Bridge it would be in defiance

of a federal court order, each of the 15 people from the Huntsville

Fellowship who were there with him went off to ponder the implications. Each

of these people had a job in the aero-space program, a job that required a

security clearance, the sort of clearance that might be lost by defying a

federal court order. Each one of those people came back to say, "I'm

marching," and so they faced possible injury, death, arrest, or loss of

career. Their faith had more than the vaporous form of a sermon, the empty

elegance of a resolution, the enthusiasm of a weekend workshop. Their faith

had shoes. It walked, perhaps more than it talked.

Think about the coffee cup, the telephone, and the shoe. Think about the

other stories. They capture some of the best of Unitarian Universalism in

the 1950s and the 1960s. They capture some of the best of the South. They

suggest some of the remarkable history of southern Unitarian Universalism.

We have, despite our human flaws and failings, an empowering history. I hope

to find a way to share this history in greater depth and breadth, but I hope

you can begin to sense the power of it. Take this empowering history and use

it to inspire yourself to create solutions to today's problems where you

live as our southern forebears created solutions to the problems when and

where they lived. Take this history. It is, for the most part, a noble and

courageous history. Use it to make some history yourself.