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A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell*
7:00 A.M. ET March 7, 2012
Each year, people gather to make the civil rights pilgrimage over the Edmund Pettus
Bridge into Selma, Ala. The bridge was the scene of “Bloody Sunday” March 7, 1965.
A 2009 UMNS file photo by Kathy L. Gilbert.
View in Photo Gallery
This week people have gathered to remember and to re-enact the Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965. As I’ve watched the preparations via television, I have thought of these words introducing the "Social Community" section of the Social Principles in our United Methodist Book of Discipline:
"The rights and privileges a society bestows or withholds from those
who comprise it indicate the relative esteem in which that society
holds particular persons and groups of persons. We affirm all persons
as equally valid in the "sight of God." (Paragraph 162)
We in The United Methodist Church have every right to be proud of the leadership roles the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. James Lawson and other United Methodists played in the Martin Luther King-led Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that initiated the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
At the same time, it is important to remember that the Voting Rights Act of 1965
was one result of that effort. In this presidential election year,
much attention is being given to voter identification and
participation. Many of us hope that United Methodists, along with all
Americans, will make sure voter identification does not become voter
suppression.
Many United Methodists, lay and clergy, black and white, participated in the civil rights demonstrations that pushed our nation from legal racial segregation to racial desegregation and integration. My hope is that at General Conference 2012 some mention will be made of the newly dedicated Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington and its testimony to the activism of many United Methodists, living and dead.
‘Foot soldier’ in the movement
I describe myself as a "foot soldier" in the civil rights movement.
From 1963 to 1968, while I was senior pastor of Union Methodist Church
in Boston, I was part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 and was
active in the Massachusetts Unit of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. After the brutality of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma,
I prayerfully made the decision to go there even though it meant
leaving my wife, Grace, and our two young sons in Boston. Some of us in
the unit were among many people from Boston who responded to a call to
come to Selma on the following Tuesday. Among us was the Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister in Boston, whom I had gotten to know.
That Tuesday came to be known as "Turnaround Tuesday." Our sense of
the rightness of our commitment to racial justice was stronger than any
apprehension or fear. I experienced for the first time the inner peace
and strength that accompanies a commitment to nonviolence. After a
stirring service in Brown Chapel AME Church, we marched across the
Edmund Pettus Bridge, stopped behind the leaders of the march, had
moments of prayer and returned to Selma. We found out later, to the
disappointment of many, that we did not continue the march that day
because the arrangements for protection of the marchers had not been
completed.
That evening, Jim Reeb and some of his Unitarian colleagues visited a
restaurant. When they left, Jim was attacked and beaten so severely
that he died a few days later. When we heard of the beating on our way
back to the airport, we were stunned. I asked myself, what was it that
made white persons shoot or beat up other white persons because they
joined with those of us who are black in the struggle for racial
justice? The violence Jim experienced on that "Turnaround Tuesday"
erased the elation that was mine earlier in the day.
After returning to Boston, I participated in his memorial service at
Arlington Street Unitarian Church as a representative of the
Massachusetts Unit. As we raised money to contribute to the expenses
incurred by the march, I was chosen to return to present the check. My
memories of the night before we marched into Montgomery on March 24,
1965, are vivid.
Children lay a wreath at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery during
the annual congressional civil rights pilgrimage to Alabama. A UMNS 2009
file photo by Kathy Gilbert.
View in Photo Gallery
Camping out in the rain
We camped out in the rain and mud at the City of St. Jude, a
Catholic compound outside of Montgomery. Harry Belafonte led an outdoor
rally that included many of his friends from the entertainment world. I
was invited to the stage because of the check I was to present. Since
that night, I have had fun telling my family and friends that, although
I have never had any musical or other entertaining ability, I was on
the stage with Johnny Mathis; Tony Bennett; Peter, Paul and Mary, and
Joan Baez as well as with James Baldwin, Nipsey Russell, Dick Gregory,
Ossie Davis, Floyd Patterson and others! (Harry Belafonte has a
marvelous description of that celebratory event during the
Selma-to-Montgomery march in his memoir, “My Song” [Alfred A. Knopf,
2011], but he neglected to mention that on that stage there also was Gil
Caldwell, a 31-year-old Methodist preacher from Boston — smile.)
We must never forget the participation of well-known and lesser-known United Methodists in the Civil Rights Movement.
We, as a church in this General Conference year, have an opportunity
to celebrate that in the past, the denomination and individual United
Methodists "walked our talk" as we made our United Methodist Social
Principles come alive. May this always be so of the people called
United Methodist!
*Caldwell is a retired elder and member of the Rocky Mountain
Conference. A member of the board of the African-American Methodist
Heritage Center, he lives in Asbury Park, N.J.
News media contact: Kathy Noble, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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