"Yes, You" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

March 17, 2002 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair or fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.

PRAYER: by W.E.B. Dubois:

The prayer of our souls is a prayer for persistence; not for the one good fight, not for the one good deed, or single thought, but deed on deed, and thought on thought, until day calling unto day shall make a life worth living.

READING: by Mary Caroline Richards [in Centering]

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the… great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is…the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice…True peace is not merely the absence of war, but it is the presence of justice.

“Love is not a doctrine. Peace is not an international agreement. Love and Peace are beings who live as possibilities within us.”

SERMON: “Yes, You” - Rev. Alison Hyder

I am recently back from Birmingham Alabama, where the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association held our 4th or 5th Convocation (I’m not sure which, because they are held only every seven years, and I was still a seminarian when the last one was held). Most of each day was spent listening to colleagues talk about different aspects of ministry, and what inspires them and feeds them, and where they think Unitarian Universalism is heading. Most of our time was spent in large and windowless hotel ballrooms, but the quality and passion of the speakers was illuminating. I am very impressed with the caliber of our ministers, and proud to be among them. Plus, it was wonderful to see friends and mentors and put faces to the names I’ve read and quoted. I didn’t get to either of the dances – too busy talking to folks – but I did sing “Plastic Heart” in the talent show. So on the whole, it was quite exhausting, but very worthwhile.

We also went to the Civil Rights Institute Museum, which is right across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church. This is where 4 black girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, aged 14 and 11 – were killed when a bomb planted by white racists exploded in the basement.

Imagine if a bomb had gone off here at 10:19 this morning. It’s hard to envision, but there are probably people who hate us that much too, and all that we stand for, in our diversity and integrity and liberal ideals. Back in the 60s, several Unitarian Universalist churches in the south were bombed or torched when they supported black civil rights, and UU ministers were regularly threatened and harassed. So our sojourn in the south was a way to remember and honor their courage.

After the Convo, some of us stayed an extra day to take a bus tour to Selma. For many of us the trip was a pilgrimage. But for two of the ministers it was a confrontation with the most terrifying night of their lives.

As all of you know, in the 1960s, blacks were engaged in a struggle for the most basic civil rights. Every aspect of their lives was controlled by a system of laws that specified where they lived, ate, sat, and went to school, who they married, and what opinions they could voice. Most of the sheriffs and many judges supported – or engaged in – lynchings and beatings to keep black people repressed and afraid. Most black citizens were kept from voting through a series of tight standards and rules. If all else failed, they were given “literacy tests,” with such absurd questions as, “How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?”

For three years the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and groups of people in Selma had been working to get black people registered, but were blocked and threatened at every turn. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Selma in January, 1965, to lead a rally at the First Baptist Church, renewing both the momentum and the backlash. Jimmie Lee Jackson was returning from a rally with his mother and grandfather when Alabama State Troopers attacked the crowd. The Jacksons sought refuge in a café, but the Troopers followed them in. They moved to strike Viola Jackson, then turned on Jimmie Lee when he tried to protect his mother. A Trooper shot him at point blank range, and he died from his wounds. Jackson’s death angered the black community, but caused no other stir. Nothing changed. So the black leaders decided to hold a non-violent march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, with Dr. King at the lead.

The first two attempts were met with violence. I’m sure that most of you have seen footage of the attacks at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where mounted police trampled and beat the marchers. That scene was broadcast on televisions around the country. Dr. King decided that the presence of white clergy would increase sympathy and attention for their cause. He called and telegrammed clergy around the country and urged them to join in the march. Over 450 rabbis, nuns, priests and ministers responded. At one point over a third of all of the Unitarian Universalist ministers in the Association – and our entire board of directors - were in Alabama.

One of the first to respond was the Reverend James Reeb, a UU community minister in Boston. On the night of March 9th, Reeb and a number of other UU ministers went out to eat at Walker’s Café, a black restaurant a few blocks from Brown Chapel. White people were not supposed to eat in black restaurants, but they knew that no northerner – no stranger of any color – was safe in the white parts of town. As the ministers straggled out after their meal, most of them took the same route back. But Clark Olsen, Orloff Miller and Jim Reeb turned right. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference. But they hadn’t gone more than a half a block when some whites came at them from across the street. The ministers tried to ignore them, as they’d been trained. But one of the attackers swung a heavy club. Reeb was bludgeoned in the back of the skull, and Miller and Olsen were kicked and hit. In seconds it was all over.

But it was soon obvious that Reeb was seriously hurt. None of the white people watching from the café came to help, but the ministers managed to get him to a local black insurance agency, who called a nearby funeral home for an ambulance. They were treated at the local black infirmary by Dr. Dinkins, who had been Jimmie Lee Jackson’s doctor. Dr. Dinkins realized that Jim Reeb needed a neurosurgeon. The nearest was in Birmingham, over an hour away. Miller and Olsen climbed into the dilapidated ambulance and cradled Reeb’s head in their lap for the bumpy ride. The stretcher was unsteady, and the siren didn’t work. But the worst was to come. Out on the rural highway, the ambulance got a flat tire and had to turn back. A car of white men pulled up after them, and stared. But finally, driving on the rim, they found a black establishment where they could call for another ambulance. Reeb finally made it to the hospital. He was in and out of a coma for 2 days. James Reeb died on March 11th, leaving his wife and four young children. Dr. King delivered his funeral address at Brown Chapel.

The country was silent for Jimmie Lee Jackson’s death, but Jimmy Reeb’s death caused a huge public outcry. The Roman Catholic newspaper of the Worcester, Massachusetts diocese proposed him for sainthood. Hundreds more people traveled to Selma for the march. Viola Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from the Unitarian church in Detroit, drove down to help. And President Johnson persuaded Governor Wallace to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Local blacks said that many of the Guardsmen would have been the ones shooting at them if they’d been out of uniform. Despite all this, the marchers were contained and stopped for about two weeks until Judge Johnson enjoined the law from interfering with the marchers. Three thousand marchers left Selma on March 21, 1965, though due to the narrow two-lane highway only 300 were allowed to walk the entire route. UU minister Dick Leonard, who had been in Selma since the beginning, was among the marchers and kept a diary of the entire event (just published as a book, Call to Selma). It rained for some of the four days. They camped overnight in cold, muddy fields, often without shelter or blankets. But they made it all the way, joined toward the end by thousands more.

After the rally on the capital steps, the crowd slowly dispersed. Viola Liuzzo and black Alabaman Leroy Moton spent the day driving marchers to their cars and homes back in Selma. At some point, a car filled with Ku Klux Klan members chased their car. The men fired two shots, and killed Liuzzo instantly. Moton survived. Unlike Reeb’s death, Liuzzo’s perpetrators were caught and eventually convicted. Despite the eye-witness testimony of Reverends Clark and Miller, Reeb’s killers went free.

Fueled in part by their outrage at these deaths and the graphic footage from the south, Congress went to work on the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson signed into law on August 6th, 1965.

Dick Leonard and Orloff Miller had not returned to Selma since then, but Clark Olsen had been back to film a documentary about the events with his daughter Marika, a producer for CNN. Still, his eyes teared when he showed us the spot where they’d been assaulted, and throughout the day (he says its his new pacemaker). It was moving to sit in Brown’s Chapel exactly 37 years to the day after Reeb’s death, and to visit the memorials and museums and see Reeb and Liuzzo depicted and remembered. The civil rights era brought forth much of what is finest in Unitarian Universalism. It’s a very proud time in our history, especially for me. I grew up as Baltimore was in transition, and I still remember my confusion and indignation over segregated housing. Racism has always been a concern of mine.

Unitarian Universalists have never since found an action that engaged us to that degree. Very few causes have been as monumental or immediate. Or maybe no one has asked. However, many U Us have been involved in campaigns to end nuclear testing and power plants, resisting wars, working for the environment, and to end the death penalty. Many UU churches were involved in the Sanctuary movement, providing safety to political refugees from South America, and numbers regularly protest and get arrested at the School of the Americas, which trains the South American military regimes how to torture and silence their opposition - your tax dollars at work. Unitarian Universalists have also been killed protecting abortion rights, and of course, we are involved in all sorts of movements and organizations.

As a denomination, we have been terrific at affirming rights for women, gay and transgendered people in our ministries and congregations and promoting healthy sexuality education for all ages. But we are congregations of individuals: of republicans, libertarians and mostly democrats, of most beliefs and lots of cultural backgrounds. We seldom agree on anything. We get hung up on the details; we like to keep an open mind. So although the religious right perceives us as a threat to all that is Christian and decent, in fact as a movement we are not particularly focused. We do not have a single agenda. Our UU president and staff are guided in part by our principles and purposes, and in part by the resolutions approved at our annual General Assembly.

Any UU congregation can propose a social justice issue for the denomination to study and address for the next two years. The study/action issues are sent to the Department of Social Witness, which then sends up to ten of them to the General Assembly, where our delegates will approve five. Materials and information on the final five are then sent out to the social action committees of each congregation. No congregation is required to address these issues although very often one or two will particularly interest some of the members, or tie in with their current justice work. After two years, the issue returns to the General Assembly, and can be voted in as a Statement of Social Conscience – our official UU stance on the issue. We also vote on Statements of Immediate Witness – in response to something urgent like the burning of black churches, or US policy on banning landmines, the bombing of Iraq, or same-sex marriage. None of these votes are binding on individual members or on congregations, but they do represent our denomination publicly and help guide the policies of the UU Association staff and our lobbying office in DC. In other words, the congregational governance of each UU church is reflected in our larger organization. Just like each member here votes in our annual meeting on policy issues and representation and ministry, each congregation can send delegates to vote on the issues that will inform and direct our leadership at 25 Beacon Street.

We’ve tended not to get engaged much in these study/action issues here, in part because of the more pressing demands of the AIDS ministry and other local problems, and partly because we seldom have delegates at the General Assembly. And with no active social action committee, there has not been a group to take on the work. It’s not a very good excuse. And I might add I’ve felt a little guilty about ignoring my duty this way, but this year I have an added incentive to act. Both Roberta Lasley and I are attending GA in Quebec City, and can serve as delegates. In fact, we are allowed one more (since I may vote in my own right as a minister) so if any one else is interested in going, let me know.

There are 7 study/action issues this year. I’ll describe them briefly, but will leave the full descriptions and study questions downstairs on the bulletin board for anyone who’s interested. We are supposed to choose 5 by April 15th, but if we don’t, we can still direct our delegates how to vote on the issues at General Assembly in June.

The 7 issues deal with:
The protection of Civil Liberties in the face of “homeland security” and the wars on terrorism and drugs.
Support and understanding of the cultural, financial, political, and environmental concerns of Indigenous Peoples of the United States and Canada.
Modern Slavery and the trafficking of humans here and abroad for sex and forced labor.
Promoting Peaceful Solutions to Global Terrorism.
Police Brutality and the need for oversight and accountability of law enforcement agencies in the United States.
Prison Reform and fair sentencing.
Changing the distribution of US Foreign Aid into more humanitarian areas and less military assistance.

Some of these issues affect us here on the Cape, and I know that a number of you are already engaged in a few of these areas. So if you would like to spearhead some discussion groups on all or any of these issues, just let me know. You certainly don’t need my permission, but I’ll be glad to support you any way I can. You can also get more information on these and past issues at the General Assembly website at uua.org.

I have never been a very politically active person. I’ve done a lot of self-education, and I’ve attended a few rallies and signed petitions and written letters to legislators and editors. But I’ve seldom done much to challenge my comfort or safety. I read about people like James Reeb and Nick Cardell, the UU minister who spent 6 months in jail for protesting at the School of the Americas, or see the work of people in the human rights campaigns, and feel very proud of our faith. But I cannot afford to rest on their achievements. None of us can. As Alice walker says, “Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.”

The world is changed by ordinary people trying to help. People just like us. It’s up to me, and you, to make a difference - “deed on deed, and thought on thought, until day calling unto day shall make a life worth living.” [W.E.B. DuBois]

And so may it be.

CLOSING WORDS: from Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton

“I shall no longer ask myself if this is expedient – but only if it is right. I shall do this not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that shall not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. I am no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of myself, and to deny it with another.”

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