Freedom Center - America's Underground Railroad Discover Your Family's Story at the FamilySearch Center of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati Ohio)

The Black Bucket List : the Underground Rasilroad

The Grimke Sisters - two early female abolitionists and women's rights activists. They grew up in the privileged milieu of Plantation life. more. Their father, was a strong advocate of slavery and of the subordination of women. A wealthy planter who held hundreds of slaves, he was a gifted and morally upstanding Christian who even served as chief judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. But the girls, Sarah and Angelina, were repelled by the brutality of slavery, the floggings, the destruction of the black family (the injustice to the white wives, too?) Sarah said that at age five, after she saw a slave being whipped, she tried to board a steamer to a place where there was no slavery. Later, in violation of the law, she taught her personal slave to read. Sarah wanted to become an attorney and follow in her father's footsteps.

Oberlin College "Oberlin is peculiar in that which is good." This site by nonresistance.org highlights the strategic if often neglected role of the Oberlin community, founded in 1833 as a utopian religious community. Oberlin has a long and distinguished history of visionary activism and progressive work for peaceful social change. From the very beginning, Oberlinians advocated the peaceful abolition of slavery as well as gender and racial equality, being the first coeducational college and the first integrated college in the United States. [Oberlin and Georgetown]

Howard Thurman : Jesus and the Disinherited - When Howard Thurman spoke, he filled the entire room with compassion, truth, keen intellect, and joy. To be in his presence was to experience the drama of life itself -- with all its attending conflicts -- and to be carried beyond these realities to the Reality of a gracious God whose will is life and wholeness.

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin: From PBS Point of View program. For more information on this Audio/Video see rustin.org or PBS' POV Purchasing information for educators and organizations is at California Newsreel or call toll-free 1-877-811-7495.

Bayard Rustin - the First Freedom Ride. Another overview is the following critical look at the impact of Bayard Rustin on the Black Protest Movement. There has been a Negro Revolt in every decade of this century," Lerone Bennett wrote in 1963. "Each revolt failed, only to emerge in the next decade on a higher level of development."1 If there is a single person who served as the nexus between these decennial revolts, it was Bayard Rustin.

Bayard Rustin's Quaker Background from Bayard Rustin Centennial. Bayard Rustin, an African American, was raised a Quaker by his grandparents. Rustin augmented his childhood familiarity with Quaker principles by engaging daily in Quaker meditation beginning in his twenties and dedicating himself, through committee work and peace testimony, to the principles of respect for every human being; non-violence in one's behavior; and assertion of one's own dignity. During his twenties, Rustin further reinforced his understanding of Quakerism by traveling as a volunteer throughout New York State teaching pacifism for the American Friends Service Committee. He is credited as the prime organizational force behind the success of the August 1963 March on Washington.

Bill Sutherland: Non-violent warrior for peace - Bill Sutherland's pacifism during World War II meant a four-year sentence in Lewisburg prison as a conscientious objector. Through his belief in nonviolence he made lifelong friends who shared his views, Dave Dellinger and Don Benedict among them. He was released in 1945. It was not long before his deep commitment led him to Africa, then in the birth throes of the independence movement. See Pan-African Leaders

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Nonviolent Action as the Sword that Heals. Pacifism after the Gandhi model. It was through the influence of the well-known pacifist A J Muste as well as Mordecai Johnson that King drew closer to the Gandhian concept of non-violent direct action, which in turn drew heavily from Leo Tolstoy. (Link is from Tolstoy's The Law of Love and the Law of Violence.) See "Limits of Turning the Other Cheek"

And an essay by H. Bruce Franklin, The anti war movement we are supposed to forget (The connection between the anti-war movement opposing US involvement in Vietnam .... and the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.)

In the forefront of education. Clinton Pettus has devoted a lifetime to the education of the next generation. In fact, his career in education spans some thirty years as both a faculty member aa well as a college administrator. Dr. Pettus' formal training includes receiving the PhD in personality psychology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He also completed a management development program at Harvard University. When he retired as a higher education administrator, he became interested in ways to manage and resolve conflict and was a certified trainer of managing conflict in the work place. He begins his current leadership role with the mid atlantic AFSC, having recently retired as President of Cheyney University.

Someone Who Cared: The Perry Reese Story. A coach who truly made a difference, now taken from us. Too soon, my friend. All too soon you are gone.

Free Indeed, Mennonite Cultural Comm. discussion starter for issues of white privilege

Axiology; Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Two audio tapes by Dr. Joy DeGruy-Leary, African American psychologist. For information about her and ordering tapes, see Power of Oneness

Letting God Go (the Holy Spirit Within) - Striking parallels exist between Quaker silent worship and the practice glossolalia [modern Pentecostalism]. At its best Quaker silent worship involves a kind of letting go, a lack of strain or effortful attention, a willingness to "flow" with the leading of the Spirit and with the larger movement of the entire meeting. ... As in the case of glossolalia, the process of speaking out of the silence and of listening in the silence involves a resting of the analytical mind, a refusal to let deliberative, objective thinking dominate the meeting. Rather, one tries to "center down" and become open to the ''inner light" within himself, to "that of God in every man,'' to the "leading of the Spirit.'' (Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, Spitter, Richard A. Baer, 1976, p 154) Quoted

Athena Mutual - An alum of historic Quaker Earlham College in Indiana (renowned mystic Elton Trueblood taught here), Dr. Mutua earned her fame in the areas of critical race and feminist legal theory. She has a law degree from Harvard and a J.D. from American University. Her most recent book, Progressive Black Masculinities, is already making waves. In an interview, Mutua says the book is personal to her because of her three sons. "What do I do with these sons?" she asks. "What is it that I want to tell them? I want to tell them this: Please be progressive. Please be human." See What does it mean to be a black man?

Paul Robeson the great Negro singer, scholar-athelete (Princeton), and later courageous activist in the face of vicious calumny and ostracism, was descended from Quakers on his mother's side. His mother was Maria Louisa Bustill, a Quaker schoolteacher, and both her father and paternal grandmother were of the Friends religious society.

Emily Green Balch the first Quaker to win the Nobel Prize

Mae Bertha Carter - American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Friends in the Civil Rights movement. The AFSC was an early ally of the civil rights movement, and many members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and CORE were Quakers, including Bayard Rustin. Historical recognition came when, in 1947, the AFSC (as an organization) won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1950s, the AFSC publicly supported Martin Luther King Jr. and sent members south on the freedom rides. Mississippi Freedom Summer

One bridge between the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar crusade was the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California at Berkeley. Begun in December 1964 by students who had participated in Mississippi's "Freedom Summer," the FSM provided an example of how students could bring about change through organization. In several skirmishes with University President Clark Kerr, the FSM and its dynamic leader Mario Savio publicized the close ties between academic and military establishments. With the rise of SDS and the FSM, the Old Left peace advocates had discovered a large and vocal body of sympathizers, many of whom had gained experience in dissent through the Civil Rights battles in the South. the book Freedom Summer

The philosophy and tactics of civil disobedience have been used by Quakers and other religious groups, the British labor movement, suffragists, feminists, adherents of prohibition, pacifists and other war resisters (see conscientious objector), supporters of the disabled, and a wide variety of other dissenters. In the United States, the most outstanding theoretician and practitioner of civil disobedience was civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During the 1950s and 60s he achieved international fame by leading numerous peaceful marches, boycotts, and sit-ins. Like Gandhi, he was jailed several times. The beatings, mass arrests, and even killings of civil-rights demonstrators pledged to nonviolent civil disobedience were important factors in swaying public opinion and in the ultimate passage of new civil-rights legislation. More on Thoreau.

Center for the Study of White American Culture Founded by Quaker Jeff Hitchcock, author of Lifting the White Veil. Webiste: www.euroamerican.org lists many resources.

Loving your neighbor as yourself? - racism and life, the Religious Society of Friends, FUM essay. Gordon Browne.

The faith of a lost faith - the remarkable witness of Ayaan Hirsi Ali :: a woman's life of indomitable courage.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. New PBS Series. 4 parts. See PBS to order. ($80 for all four.) Highly recommended for history of racism in U.S.

The Veterans of Hope Project (Vincent Harding), videos documenting the lives of "veterans" of social change movements, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210; 303-763-3194; vohproject@iliff.edu

Pendle Hill 2002-2003 lecture series on racial justice. Can order video and audio tapes: set or individually. Series speakers, topics, and some transcripts on website (Pendle Hill). Series will include Feb. 23, 2003, lecture by Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye.

The Cadbury Family - Quaker Social Reformers. White Girls Prefer Chocolate. Bill Samuels' essay on the social reform efforts of the Cadbury family, founder of Cadbury's chocolates, including treatment of their labor force

Do white girls prefer chocolate?

BBC:

BBC: Giving women a lift -

Faith and action - Quaker faith springs from a deeply held belief in living our lives according to our spiritual experience. Some of our spiritual insights, which we call our testimonies, spring from deep experience and have been part of Quaker faith for many years.

BBC - Though half the globe away, Jainism is an ancient religion (mostly western India) that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation.

The ideals of non-violence and reconciliation were central to the great movements for freedom and social justice in American history (as well of the sister movements in England). Martin Luther King Jr, though Baptist to the core, embraced doctrines of non-violent direct action, and an unflinching peace witness that was inspired by Gandhi and (through him) the Quaker testimony. See The spirituality of Thoreau's "living sacrifice"

Bob Zellner, an Alabama Methodist, was one of the white heroes of the freedom struggle of Civil Rights days. See Wrong Side of Murder Creek.

If the peace witness of Quakers (and other deeply committed Christians) has been viewed as subversive or unpatriotic, the simple record of the early church reveals that the first Christians themselves resisted the belligerence of militarism. See link on the peace legacy of the primordial church