"Racial Justice Begins at Home"
Unitarian Universalists of the Cumberland Valley - March 3, 2002
The Reverend Judy Welles©

This morning I’m going to tell you a story, a true story from our recent past as Unitarian Universalists. One way of looking at the power and the value of this story is through the words of historian Paul Conkin which are the epigram on today’s Order of Service. He wrote, "When we face problems of identity… we have to carry on an endless dialogue with our past, to relate our hopes to our memories." Diane has reminded us of the importance of knowing more than just "happy history." It is for that exact reason that many people who are influential in Unitarian Universalism today are in endless dialogue with this particular story and the ripples it has caused. They are using the experience of the past to help shape the hoped-for future of the Unitarian Universalist Association as an anti-racist, multi-cultural, welcoming, diverse organization which is acutely sensitive to issues of race, separatism, and inclusivity.

Of course this story didn’t happen in a vacuum; it happened in a context. And that context was fraught with tension, fear, and misunderstanding. Some of us remember those "long hot summers" of the late 1960’s in this country: race riots, civil disorder, entire city blocks in flames, the intermittent, halting successes of public integration, the beginning of the Black Power movement — Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, the Black Panthers. This context was the nationwide backdrop for the unfolding of the story of Black Empowerment and the UUA.

Within the UUA itself, there was also a context; some call it "the spirit of Selma." In 1965, in Selma Alabama, white U.U. minister James Reeb was killed when he and two colleagues were brutally attacked by a group of white racists while they were in Selma working for voting rights for Blacks. The UUA Board of Trustees was meeting in Boston at the time; when they received word of Reeb’s death, they adjourned their meeting and re-convened in Selma. "What a symbol!" writes U.U. lecturer Victor Carpenter. "No other denomination could or did make such a profound statement of denominational solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement or such an affirmation of the movement’s black leadership. The experience of Selma made a deep impression on the denominational consciousness…"

Two years later, in October, 1967, in order to increase their understanding of and frame a denominational response to the incidents of violence and urban unrest occurring in this country, the UUA called an "Emergency Conference on the Black Rebellion" at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City. 140 Unitarian Universalists attended; 37 of them were Black. At that time, probably about 1% of Unitarian Universalists were Black (although no data are kept which differentiate UU’s by race, so that is only a guess.)

Only a small number of the Blacks attending the Emergency Conference were experienced already in the emerging Black Power movement. As the conference began, they called immediately for the formation of a Black Caucus to hold meetings separate from and closed to the Whites in attendance. UUA staff member Henry Hampton reflected on the experience of the Caucus:

[Most of the Black U.U.’s] went into the caucus meeting as middle-class Negroes who had done some individual work in civil rights, but many were far from the struggle and had little to show for it other than their NAACP membership cards. When they came out they were still middle-class Negroes, but they were now blacks seeking to work through the denomination, giving up the old attempts at harmony and peace for a program of action. The Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus, or BUUC, emerged from behind closed doors with a set of demands. Their core demand was that a Black Affairs Council be established, to be appointed by the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus (BUUC) and funded for four years at $250,000 a year, for a total of a million dollars. The funds would go for grants to fight political repression and economic exploitation in the black community and support black cultural expressions and community education; the Council would have sole authority and discrimination over how the money would be spent. After intense debate, the BUUC demands were passed by a two-thirds majority of the attendees at the Emergency Conference.

This conference, however, had no authority to make anything happen, so a delegation from BUUC attended the November meeting of the UUA Trustees with their demands. And this is where the story begins to unfold as a classic tragedy.

I call it a tragedy because it’s a story in which there are no clear-cut definitions of right and wrong, there are no distinct good guys and bad guys. Caring people with good intentions found themselves furious with one another, frightened, at a complete impasse in terms of how to proceed. And this impasse was caused primarily by some very different ways of looking at race relations in this country, and a different understanding of what must be done to heal the nation’s wounds.

Although this is an oversimplification, because there were far more than two sides to the story, I’ll generalize and say that on the one hand were the Trustees of the UUA, the very body that had adjourned its meeting two years earlier and reconvened in Selma, Alabama in a strong show of commitment to the Civil rights movement. Within the UUA, they were trying to expand the numbers of Blacks on committees and on the staff. They were proud of their long history of support for human rights issues, and they were strongly committed to working for integration in all aspects of American society. Being a liberal institution with deep sympathy for the racial problems in American culture, the UUA was both a logical source of visionary and creative responses to the issues of the time, and also a fertile field for failure, as the complexities of the problem tore at the delicate fabric of liberal good intentions.

On the other hand were the newly radicalized Black Unitarian Universalists, advocates of Black Power insisting that it was time for Blacks to take control of the solutions to Black problems, and for whites to stay in their own communities to deal with white racism. The Black Unitarian Universalists may have been well educated, middle class professionals, but they were lonely in their churches (being of such a small number) and they were discovering real community among other Blacks.

Gwen Thomas, a university professor who was vice-chair of the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus, said recently

I think that you ought to see what was going on with Unitarian Universalists in the context of what was going on with African American people throughout the country. I would walk into an airport and a janitor would say "Hello, Sister!" Now that was an unusual experience for some of us professional African American people, but it was the tenor of the times. We were recognizing all of our African Americans as being related to whatever we were doing, and so the African American Unitarians were very much a part of that atmosphere in the country. It wasn’t just limited to the small number of African Americans who happened to be Unitarian Universalists, you see. It was an American thing that was going on, and we were part of the mood of the Black movement that was taking place at the time. Another Black Unitarian Universalist, Alex Poinsett, once an editor at Ebony magazine, pointed out recently that integration was merely a way to keep social and institutional power among white people and force Blacks to adopt white cultural values and behavior in order to fit in. He wrote, While many of us had respected Martin Luther King’s nonviolent disobedience stance, we knew that his "integration" goal was rejected by many others. It had dawned on us that you could not integrate elephants and gophers because of the unequal power relationship, the unlevel playing field. Also, integration was, in fact, a one-way movement of Black to White, an assimilation process in which African Americans, instead of affirming their unique gifts, became mere carbon copies of Whites. Indeed, integration as defined in the 1960’s was cultural suicide. Looking back now from the perspective of thirty-plus years of hard learning, we can see something that wasn’t so evident at the time — at least not evident to the Whites, though it may have been glaringly evident to the Blacks. Now we have a better understanding of institutional racism, of the systemic racism that runs throughout our culture and affects all of us, every one, even those who could never be defined as racists individually, even those whose hearts were fully committed to righting the wrongs they saw Blacks suffering under.

Victor Carpenter, a white UU minister with strong sympathies toward BUUC, wrote

…systemic racism was something that we would learn about. We would learn that even those who had worked assiduously for the civil rights cause, who had worked to achieve an inter-racial character of Unitarian Universalist committees and commissions, would be called "racist." We would learn that doing things with black people as a way of doing things for black people is racist; that paternalism is racist; that inter-racial committees established to bring about racial justice but which have white majorities are racist; that the very motive for helping a people stemming from the knowledge that you are in a position of power which can be used to help them is racist. We would learn that being always in a position of power and authority because of one’s race leads, inevitably, to an attitude of implicit or explicit superiority which is racist. It’s important to make clear that there were Blacks and Whites on all sides of the arguments about Black empowerment in the UUA. Some Blacks were resentful of the strong-arm tactics used at the Biltmore conference to get all the Black attendees into the closed Black caucus; some refused to be pulled into a split along racial lines in subsequent years as the events unfolded further. Some Whites, such as Victor Carpenter whom I’ve quoted above, were not only supportive of the goals of Black empowerment, but were actively engaged in a variety of ways to insure that Black demands were met and Whites undertook the task of understanding their complicity in institutional racism.

Now let’s get back to the story. When the Black U.U. Caucus (BUUC) came to the UUA Board meeting in November, 1967 with its non-negotiable demands, the Board responded by voting not to form a Black Affairs Council, but instead to reorganize its Commission on Religion and Race, adding "substantial participation of non-whites." It also refused the request for a million dollars over four years. Feeling insulted and betrayed, BUUC responded to the vote by sending out a letter urging congregations to withhold financial support from the UUA Annual Fund and contribute directly to them.

The following February (1968) BUUC held the first National Conference of Black Unitarian Universalists, attended by 207 delegates. Its stated purpose was "to determine the relevancy of a predominantly white institution to its black constituency." There, a Black Affairs Council was established, with six Black and three White members. The caucus voted "to join with sympathetic white radicals in an honest and candid examination of the problem of white racism," recognizing some white allies among their co-religionists.

In April, two Philadelphia-area ministers spearheaded the formation of a nationwide network to support Black empowerment in the UUA. It was called FULLBAC, which stood for Full Recognition and Funding for the Black Affairs Council. During its first organizing meeting, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Just imagine the impact of that event…

Meanwhile, back in Boston, the UUA Trustees at their March meeting reluctantly had acknowledged the Black Affairs Council which had been formed in February, and invited it into Affiliate status, acknowledging that it would be beneficial to the denomination. However, at the same meeting, they established a UU Commission for Action on Race, which would administer a new fund called The Fund for Racial Justice Now with an annual budget of $300,000. The newly-recognized Black Affairs Council could apply to the Commission for funding, but was again refused its own funding to control and disseminate.

BAC, BUUC and their white supporters in FULLBAC viewed both the Board’s actions and its rationale for its actions negatively. The Board’s refusal to forfeit its responsibility for an integrated approach to race relations was interpreted as their refusal to acknowledge and support Black leadership in dealing with "the number one problem in the nation." In some quarters, this move was seen as a sophisticated ploy for subverting Black Caucus leadership; yet others understood the Board’s reluctance to relinquish control over such a large amount of money as prudent fiscal management and a desire to be responsible for the funds entrusted to the UUA for a variety of purposes. Again, the impasse of differing and irreconcilable points of view, both of them sympathetic, neither one "wrong."

After intense dialogue throughout the denomination in publications, magazines, sermons, and letter-writing campaigns, another organization was formed in May, this one with an integrationist model. It was called BAWA, which initially stood for Black And White Alternative (an alternative to FULLBAC), later changed to Black And White Action. A new element of confrontation emerged, as both blacks and whites in BAWA deplored the tactics of BUUC, calling them separatist and undemocratic. BAWA reflected the traditional philosophy of racial integration and articulated the themes associated with the Civil Rights movement.

Matters took a dramatic turn at the General Assembly in Cleveland later that month of May, 1968. There, the delegates overwhelmingly went against the recommendations of the UUA Board of Trustees, and voted to commit a million dollars over four years to the Black Affairs Council. BAWA was given neither funding nor affiliate status. Victor Carpenter writes, "By their action the General Assembly delegates, representatives of their individual Unitarian Universalist societies, had catapulted their denomination into a position of unchallenged leadership among all the religious bodies on this continent who were concerned with issues of black empowerment." But the victory was short-lived.

In the very next month, it was discovered and announced that the UUA’s unrestricted endowment funds had been spent, and there was not enough money to fund the Association’s current operations and programs. While attempting to honor the will of the General Assembly, the Trustees also had to deal with the real question of where the money for the Black Affairs Council would come from. To the dismay of BAC and BUUC, they decided that the BAC appropriation would need to be re-affirmed and voted annually at each subsequent General Assembly.

They did manage to make initial funds available to BAC, however, and substantial programs in four cities were supported, with emphasis on black education, community organizing, corporate responsibility, Black United Funds, and voter education. BAC funds supported voting rights lawsuits in South Carolina. Many creative and imaginative grass-roots programs were designed, though few ended up being funded because the money flow ran dry.

During the year between the 1968 GA in Cleveland and the 1969 GA in Boston, there was a tremendous amount of backlash within the congregations of the UUA. Cities across the US were burning, race riots were endemic, and middle class whites were scared. There were accusations of separatism, there was resistance to the confrontational tactics used by BUUC and BAC, and a general sense of a changing mood among many naïve white liberals.

The agenda for the 1969 General Assembly included a recommendation from the UUA Board of Trustees to allocate the second quarter million to BAC and $50,000 to BAWA, despite the huge financial strains the Association was under. BAC insisted that funding both groups would be contradictory — that the UUA either supported black empowerment or it didn’t — and therefore it would refuse funding if BAWA got even a penny. As soon as the business session of the Assembly began, BAC supporters moved to take up this agenda item immediately. When their motion failed, BAC and BUUC supporters seized the microphones on the floor of the assembly and brought the proceedings to a standstill. Totally unused to such heavy-handed tactics — and undoubtedly feeling threatened by the loss of access to power (for what is power to a Unitarian Universalist if not the right to speak?) — the delegates were outraged. Victor Carpenter ironically reminds us that for once, white Unitarian Universalists were experiencing first-hand the denial of access to power that was utterly routine to their black counterparts.

When a motion to change the agenda failed a second time, BUUC/BAC walked out of the Assembly, prepared to leave the UUA for good. Jack Mendelsohn, a white member of FULLBAC and the minister of the Arlington Street Church in Boston, asked for permission to address the General Assembly. With great emotion, he said, "The spirit of Cleveland has been diminished. Our Black delegates of BAC have now left the room. They have left this Assembly, and they have left our movement, because life and time are short and running out very swiftly, and because the Assembly is returning to business as usual and to the position of Black people at the back of the bus." Despite the howl of outrage that erupted at these words, Mendelsohn continued. "I‘m going over to Arlington Street Church, because I can’t stay here and do business as usual any more. And those who want to join me, I invite to come and join me. Be free to come." He went down the stairs of the platform from the stage, and one of his colleagues came up and spit in his face.

Mendelsohn was followed by about 400 delegates in what has come to be known in UU lore simply as "the walkout." The delegates stayed out for a day, and were finally persuaded to rejoin the Assembly by UUA President Dana Greeley, who was himself the former minister at Arlington Street and was still a member there — so this walkout had been led by his minister to his church. Eventually the Assembly voted to fund BAC and not BAWA, but the new president who was elected at that GA did not support BAC/FULLBAC, so the overall results of that GA were ambiguous and inconclusive.

If this were a television show or a movie, there would be some sort of dramatic denouement, and a tidy wrap-up to the drama. But it isn’t entertainment, it’s real life, where tidy conclusions are often elusive. So I can’t tell you any dramatic ending to the story, because there isn’t one. Many Blacks left the UUA during these times of controversy and never returned. Others stayed to serve the movement and are still among us. The newly-elected President of the UUA, Bill Sinkford, is our first African American president; he was one of the young adults who left our denomination during the Black Empowerment struggle and returned years later because of his passionate belief that, despite its flaws, Unitarian Universalism has a saving message for the world.

By 1970, recognition of the financial plight of the UUA deflated some of the rhetoric and passion of the previous years. If the money simply wasn’t there, there was really not much to fight about. Funding for anti-racism efforts was taken on by the Veach Foundation, a private foundation administered through one of our churches on Long Island. BAC was pitted in a lawsuit against a new constituency, the Black Humanist Fellowship, in a disagreement about maintaining continued connection with the UUA, and its energy was dissipated. BAWA encountered difficulties in maintaining its Associate status with the UUA, and was eventually dissolved in 1981.

I find this story fascinating… and tragic. But like many stories, it must be approached at many levels and understood to have many ramifications. Let me share with you just two:

First, the issue of separatism. If I had been immediately involved in these controversial issues in the late 60’s, I probably would have sided with the integrationists, naively believing that people of good will could always find ways to work together to end oppression. (There’s still a part of me that believes that.) BUT that was then and this is now, and what has happened in the intervening 30 years would probably cause me to choose differently now.

For me, the primary cultural change that affects my hindsight understanding of the Black Power movement is the Women’s Movement. Now I "get it" in an entirely different way. I remember complaining to my husband in the early 70’s about the common use of words like "man" and "mankind" to refer to everyone, and how jarring that was to me. I’ll never forget his reply. He said "The use of the masculine is deemed to include the feminine." (He was a lawyer; he talked like that.) "The use of the masculine is deemed to include the feminine." Well I sure didn’t feel like it included me, and it didn’t matter what he said or what fancy language he used. I knew better because "we" were talking about "my" experience which was NOT "his" experience.

The person in the position of power can talk all he wants about inclusion and embrace and togetherness, but the disempowered person knows better. And just as Blacks needed to get away by themselves in order to close ranks and develop group solidarity, so did women during the Women’s Movement. We have learned that some issues regarding the oppression of women can be addressed only by women, with the support of other women. So looking at this story through the lens of a woman, I see things very differently, and I feel much more sympathy and instinctive support for those Unitarian Universalists who were demanding self-determination for Black UU’s back in those angry days.

Second, the issue of where do we go from here? There is much to say — and most of it is very good news — about the work that has been done in UU congregations around issues of racism and anti-racism since the Black Empowerment controversy. We have learned a lot about white privilege, about institutional and systemic racism, about the complex inter-relationship between racism and classism.

Of equal importance is the assessment by people still involved in the UUA, many of whom have served our movement with great dedication. Cutting their teeth as leaders in BUUC, BAC and FULLBAC, these people went on to serve on the UUA Board of Trustees and other important commissions and committees of the UUA and its affiliate organizations. A year ago twelve key participants in the Black Empowerment Controversy were invited to Starr King School for the Ministry to reconnect and share their stories of that formative epoch of their lives. In the closing colloquium of that gathering, Victor Carpenter said "I hope one of the things you carry away from this meeting today is that you are seeing before you some people who were really turned on by this, who do not regard it as a failure, who regard it as the most important experience in their professional and individual lives. This was really important stuff, and if nothing else gets out about these meetings…let it be known that the Black Empowerment moment was a moment of enormous religious significance…"

So with the full awareness that the ripples of this story continue to spread throughout our movement, let’s lift our voices in song — a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us; a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

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