It Changed My Life

The Civil Rights movement had come to us nightly
on the radio and on Television, in the newsmagazines.
We knew the cities, Montgomery,  Martin Luther King,
my heros were the
the Freedom Riders who rode the Greyhound buses,
sitting where they wished,
when there were arrests, there were more Freedom Riders,
Greyhound would soon desegregate its interstate bus runs,

In my religious education class at the First Unitarian Society in New  ton,
we had followed the arrests, tried to understand the struggle,
by the time I was old enough to join the youth group
Liberal Religious Youth,
we were ready, 
six of us were determined to be civil rights workers.

We asked our advisor what we could do,
he told us about social action,
about witnessing for what we believe, 
and how we needed to educate ourselves about social justice.

Our first project was what the UUA calls social service,
the Unitarian Service Committee
had put out a call for volunteers,
hundreds of Unitarian Universalist youth and their advisors
joined a large scale effort in African American community
to rehabilitate housing,

I remember the plaster, the scrapping,
learning to take the broken glass out of a frame,
and place the new plate in the frame and set the glass,

Two weekends a month  , youth from dozens of congregations,
meet early in the morning at the
the building that housed the Benevolent Fraternity,
for hot chocolate and donuts and our assignment,
every afternoon we came back to debrief,
to share our experiences,

Our home congregations raised the money
for the building supplies,
for our transportation,
and for the staff coordination,
it was a significant project,
both for ourselves and the people we helped.

Meanwhile back at the church,
on Sunday night at our LRY meetings,
and on Sunday morning during our Sunday school sessions,
we learned about social justice,
we learned that racism wasn't confined to the South,
Our experience
in Boston's inner city had convinced us of that.

My childhood experience in Jim Crow Dallas,
In Cherokee Country and in Dallas.
had given me insights that my peers lacked,
they had lived all their lives in an communities
as segregated as any in the South,
but going into Boston they confronted lack of job opportunities,
and bad housing and subtle and covert disc rimination,
Jim Crow was separation enshrined in laws,
But Greater Boston was segregated as well.

We were learning so much,
and what we were learning was exciting.
I loved to go to church in my youth,
because it was a happening place.
we learned about Unitarian and Universalist history,
In the process, I became convinced,
a conviction that has grown stronger over the years,
that to be Unitarian Universalist
was to be socially responsible,
actively working for the ideals of this faith

Our faith in the inherent dignity of every person,
in the divine spark that is every breast as Channing preached,
demandsed a response.

I learned about Theodore Parker and the underground railway,
that aided and abeted escaping slaves in their journey to freedom.
and about Susan B. Anthony and the fight for women's rights,
I  learned about Dorothy Dix
and her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill
and the mentally retarded
and Horace Mann and the public school system,
and the idea of free public education for everyone,
excited the imagination of a whole generation of Unitarians.

Having been a so so history student up to this point,
my conscience was awakened,
and so were my studies,
History made so much more sense to me now,
I saw it from the point of view of the reformers, and rebels,

My teachers in High school noted the difference,
assumed I was realizing my potential, 
overcoming my adolescent hangups,
they didn't get it, 
now I had something I wanted to learn.
It hadn't made much sense before,
now it was about changing the world and myself,
finding solutions to the problems that I was beginning to see.

African American students in the Southern colleges,
were organizing in those years
inspired by the civil rights movement in the cities,
they decided to take action,
Woolworths was Jim Crow,
They would sit at the counter and demand to be served.

The response across the South was immediate,
and soon the movement spread across the nation.
We were galvanized,
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,
that was for us,
at our youth group meeting we insisted.
we would join the picketlines at Woolworth.

The minister got a lot of calls from concerned parents,
and the Church Board meet with the advisor,
and a group of parents,
now I realize that my church took a courageous stand,
they decided we could go.
Of course the minister, the DRE and the advisor,
and six parents would go with us,
and entire church would be telephoned
explaining why the Board had made this decision,
why supporting the youth in expressing our values
would be in keeping with what we preached,
and doing otherwise would be hypocritical.

There was anger, and much criticism,
and I suspect that some folks left,
and more joined,

The First Unitarian Society of Newton writes its history,
and claims that the turbulent sixties
were a time of much church controversy.
They don't mention that the sixties came early,
and seemed to go on for years
into the seventies and eighties.

Decades later I have met
young people the West Newton church,
from the Young Religious Unitarian Universalists
in demonstrations for the environment,
or for a peace and justice issue.
When I have seen those young people
I remembered LRY 1958.

The social responsibility activity
that I learned in a Unitarian Universalist church
changed my life,
shaped my life,
motivated my work for four decades.

I learned so much in  over those years,
how to raise large amounts of money,
and mount a massive petition effort,
and transport hundreds of thousands of people
to the nation's capital,
how to work to assure that irresponsible people
don't disrupt the work with provocations,
how to speak on radio and television,
and build coalitions of concern.

But I still think the most concentrated learning,
that I ever did,
the most growth to becoming myself,
was the three years in Liberal Religious Youth.