This is an "oral history" project whose goal is to archive on digital videotape the stories of the first-hand participants in the so-called Black Empowerment Controversy within the UUA of the 1960s and 1970s, thus preserving this important witness for future generations. An interim video will be shown.

Speakers: Ronald Cordes, Mildred Seabor

Black Empowerment Era Oral History Project

Many events over the past two hundred years have helped shape today's Unitarian-Universalist movement. The split with the Trinitarian Congregationalists in the 1820s and 1830s established a true Unitarian movement in the image of that which began in Transylvania 250 years earlier. The Abolitionists, Transcendentalists, and Women's Suffragists of the nineteenth century shaped our faith into one centered on individual spiritual inquiry and social justice. The merger between the Unitarians and Universalists in 1960 and our joint involvement in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s firmly established our commitment to the progressive social changes which were sweeping through the last half of the twentieth century.

Perhaps the high-water mark to that time came in March 1965 when the UUA Board of Trustees adjourned an in-progress meeting and reconvened in Selma, Alabama to march and show solidarity with Dr. Martin Luther Ling, Jr. and the other participants in the Selma-to-Montgomery march. In his 1983 Minns Lecture, the Reverend Victor H. Carpenter observed,

"What a symbol! 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. The surge of pride flowed through the Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships. By its official (and 'official' is important here) participation in the civil rights struggle in Selma, Alabama, the UUA had demonstrated that it was a caring institution prepared and ready to do something tangible in the cause of Black Empowerment. That was the signal which our direct official denominational participation in the civil rights struggle sent to black people in this country."

Ten years later all that lay in ashes.

What happened in those ten years to the bright promise and the huge potential of the late 1960s? Why did many people of color leave our Association in that time? What was it about this particular controversy which cut so deep and divided us so irrevocably? Why were the passions aroused so strong as to lead one Unitarian-Universalist minister to spit in the face of another Unitarian-Universalist minister on the floor of General Assembly and later proclaim, "if I had had a gun I would have shot him."?

And why, as we later struggled with similar Empowerment movements of Women, Gay and Lesbian Unitarian-Universalists, and others, did we not encounter the same enormous divisions in our Association? Was it because we learned from the mistakes of the Black Empowerment Movement, or was there something more insidious at work then, some deep-seated racism that we (even we as liberal religionists) find difficult to overcome? Do we still, like most of our fellow Americans, find it more difficult to relate to each other across racial lines than across gender or sexual orientation lines?

The facts of that decade are well known and have been chronicled in several places, including the exhaustive 1983 study by the Commission on Appraisal. But the real story of those ten years lies not in the cold facts but in the human drama behind those events.

The stories of many Unitarian-Universalists who participated in these events, who witnessed them, or who were directly affected by them, have never been told. Many of them have died in the intervening three decades; their stories will forever remain untold. Many others still refuse to speak of these events, so deep are their wounds. Yet it is imperative that these stories be told, to help heal the wounds, to try to bridge the chasm which we have dug for ourselves and between ourselves, and, if nothing else, to paraphrase George Santayana, to understand what happened thirty years ago, lest we inevitably make the same mistakes all over again.

With the extraordinarily generous help of the Massachusetts Bay District of Unitarian-Universalist Churches, the Mass Bay District Chalice Lighters program, and the Fund for Unitarian-Universalism, the Mass Bay District Racial Justice Coordinating Council has begun a project to archive on digital videotape the Witness of as many people as we can find with first-hand knowledge of this crucial, and yet little-understood, era in our Association's history. This project will record, without editing or editorial comment, the first-hand witness - stories, impressions, memories, observations, printed material, photographs, home movies, whatever - of those who participated in these events. We are equally interested in all sides of the controversy - BUUC, BAC, FULLBAC, BAWA, the UUA Board of Trustees and central administration, as well as ordinary UU ministers and lay-people who were first-hand witnesses to these events.

Our goal is to store the raw unedited interview tapes in a publicly-accessible library or archive and to offer through the UUA Bookstore, a video which describes as objectively as possible the events of this period and which catalogues the archival materials available. Copies of the archived materials will be made available at no more than a media duplication charge to present and future historians or other researchers concerned with these events.

The core group leading the project and doing most of the videotaping consists of Millie Seaborn, Bill Norris, and Ron Cordes. We are both black and white, male and female. We come to this work with a perspective which we believe helps insure our impartiality - none of us were Unitarian-Universalists thirty years ago. None of us took sides then. None of us were there to stare across that self-dug chasm at each other. None of us have an axe to grind. We are all "born-again" UU's, having made this our chosen faith within the last two decades. We are all laypeople who have been leaders within our own congregations and District. We all share a passion for racial justice. And we all firmly believe that we will not be able to make the progress that all Unitarian-Universalists profess to want to make until we come to terms with the events of our past and learn the lessons they have to teach us. Only then will we be able to truly complete our Journey Toward Wholeness.

And we need your help. If you were a first-hand witness to the events of 1967 - 1975 and would like your story to be part of these archives, we want to talk with you. If you have printed materials, photographs, home movies, or other materials which relate to the Black Empowerment Era that you would allow us to copy, we want to talk with you. Everyone has a different story to tell. Without your unique perspective, this archive will be less than it could be.

We will be at the Cleveland General Assembly this spring prepared to talk to you and to record your Witness. If you plan to attend General Assembly, we can schedule a time to meet with you and talk. Then, if you wish, we can record your contribution to the archive right there. Please call, write, or e-mail one of us as soon as possible so we can plan our schedule in Cleveland. If you will not be in Cleveland, if it is convenient to talk to us before Cleveland, or if you have printed or photographed materials which you would let us copy prior to General Assembly, please contact one of us.

Without you, this important Witness from this critical period in Unitarian-Universalist history will be lost forever. Click here for the event handout.

General Assembly 2001 · Program Grid

Unitarian Universalist Association
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