3082 Racial Reparations, Racial Reconciliation, Racial Justice
Faith in Action Dept, UUA

Presenters: The Rev. Mel Hoover, Director, Faith in Action Department, UUA The Rev. Sharon Dittmar, minister, First Unitarian Church, Cincinnati Lee Meyer, President, First Unitarian Church, Cincinnati The Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa The Rev. Yielbonzie Charles Johnson, former minister, Church of the Restoration, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Acting Director, UU Urban Ministry Moderator: John Hurley, Director of Information and Public Witness, UUA

Rev. Mel Hoover The Rev. Mel Hoover began by offering a framework within which the participants might better understand the issues of reparations, reconciliation and justice. He elicited reactions to those words from the audience. The responses were varied, from "fairness" to "fears." The underlying question, Hoover said, is "How do we collectively deal with injustice and imbalance in the past?" It’s important, he stressed, to say "Some things were wrong in the past and need to be put right." A uniquely suitable role for UUs, he continued, is to help people think through these issues and to guide the conversations. It is a "faith challenge," he said, to figure out how to live faithfully while opening old wounds, and still go on to join together to build a better society. Hoover outlined some ways that a church in Massachusetts and a racial reparations committee in Indiana have approached issues of past injustice and current repair.

Rev. Sharon Dittmar The Rev. Sharon Dittmar, minister of First Unitarian Church, Cincinnati, spoke next. She talked about how the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed’s book, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, had moved her during her preparation for ministry. As a result, in teaching a UU history course, she added a section on the African American experience in UU history. In particular, she mentioned a black Cincinnati minister, the Rev. W. H. G. Carter, who served about 1918 to 1936 in an African American neighborhood, and how he’d been virtually shunned, not only by the American Unitarian Association, but also by the predominantly white Cincinnati Unitarian churches and their ministers. To her surprise, one of the students identified himself as a grandson of Carter! This was Dittmar’s first direct contact with the family. After her call to First Unitarian,. Dittmar repeated the story there, and the congregation "embraced the history,' eventually deciding that an apology to Carter’s descendants was in order. As the date for the apology meeting approached, the congregation dealt with emerging fears. "The closer it got, the harder it got," Dittmar told the audience. In the end, what carried them through was realizing that their congregation had been wrong in the past not to support Carter’s ministry, and that the apology was not an act of disrespect for their own past ministers, but an opportunity to "redeem our ancestors." Dittmar closed with a quote from the theologian Dorothy Soelle: "I am responsible for the house I did not build but in which I live."

Lee Meyer Lee Meyer, President of the First Unitarian Church, Cincinnati, told more of the story of the apology meeting. There was "not a dry eye in the house," she said. The choir was augmented for the occasion with a local Christian church’s choir, helping the UU choir to understand "you can move while you sing" (a learning process that, she said, continues). ,p> She cited Dittmar’s "Get Back on the Bus" sermon as important in helping the congregation take on racial justice issues. Most members no longer live in the urban area where the church is located, but drive in from suburbs. Now they’ve been motivated to get more involved locally. Some in the congregation, including member Walter Herz, have begun researching the part that members may have played in the Underground Railroad. Records aren’t always clear -- it was, after all, illegal to aid escaping slaves, and the death penalty was a risk. Fewer members seem to have been involved than the congregation hoped to find. But the members have supported the "Let Freedom Ring" research group and have become involved with the National Freedom Center. The congregation also formed a racial justice task force. Not long after that, race riots broke out in Cincinnati, in reaction to continuing inequality, police brutality and discrimination, and racial profiling. First Unitarian remained open all night to allow people to come in to talk. Although no one took the church up on this offer, the community knew that the church had been open -- an important message. This still-predominantly-white UU congregation continues to work in coalition with local African American groups, and is also sponsoring an African refugee family in cooperation with a local African American Christian congregation.

Rev. Yielbonzie Charles Johnson The Rev. Yielbonzie Charles Johnson, of the UU Urban Ministry, shifted the topic to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He briefly summarized the history of the 1921 race riots -- more accurately, a race war, since it was an attack on the black community by whites. Johnson outlined as well the likely complicity of the then-minister of Tulsa’s Unitarian church, who was also the publisher of a newspaper that essentially invited white citizens to react to a rape trial. Exact details are difficult to pin down -- even the archived newspapers of the time have holes in them, omitting most of the history of the events. In 1986, as minister of Tulsa’s Church of the Reconciliation (UU), Johnson preached a sermon on the "race riot." He urged that the history of the event not be told simply as a sermon illustration, or to "get over" a feeling of guilt. He cautioned, too, against sentimentalization.

Rev. Marlin Lavanhar The Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, senior minister of Tulsa’s All Souls Unitarian Church, continued the story. He talked of the 38 square blocks destroyed in the "riots" -- "the Black Wall Street" of what was then the premier economic city for African Americans. A government commission recently took up the issue of reparations and justice for the survivors of the "riots," and Lavanhar told the audience of the efforts of All Souls to encourage the city’s interfaith board to respond more quickly than the commission was going to respond. Of the 138 survivors, many were dying each year. The ability of UUs, because of the Statement of Conscience passed by the 2001 General Assembly, to help start the fund for reparations helped inspire other faith communities in Tulsa -- and even the Chamber of Commerce -- to support a more immediate reparation fund. Checks are now being paid quarterly to each known survivor, apportioned from the money coming in. Mr. Lavanhar also said that "People are pulling together to make the last chapter for these people a better one." He closed by reading two moving letters of gratitude from survivors who had received payment from the fund, and then added, "No one should confuse this small effort with full reparations, but it was an essential beginning of reconciliation in our community." Reporter Jone Johnson Lewis, Editor Bill Lewis

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