Participate
Religious Pluralism and Civil Rights
Outside the Black church, other faith-based communities also contributed to the movement. The civil rights struggle intersected with earlier efforts to promote religious pluralism. In Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise, Kevin M. Schultz argues that in the 1940s and '50s, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews came together to foster interfaith dialogue and mutual understanding.
Many of the predominantly white organizations that promoted religious pluralism in the 1940s failed to extend their advocacy efforts to African Americans. However, some did. Several Jewish organizations, for example, moved beyond the cause of fostering religious ecumenism to champion racial equality.71 Southern Universalists, Unitarians, and Unitarian Universalists also contributed meaningfully to the movement. Hundreds of Unitarian Universalists took part in the Selma to Montgomery march. Among them were Reverend James Reeb and Viola Luizzo who were both murdered by segregationists for their activism.72
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In his interview, Orloff Miller reflects Unitarian Universalists' involvement in the campaign in Selma, Alabama. Along with James Reeb, Miller went to Selma at the request of Martin Luther King, Jr., who sent a telegram asking that ministers of all faiths to come to Selma to take part in the campaign. Miller reflects that the Unitarian Universalist church was, until that time, "very much removed from the Black community—North or South." Yet he expresses pride in his church's role in Selma: "I was, in some ways, quite ashamed of the fact that Unitarian Universalism was not more involved," Miller says, "but Selma changed all that. Because before we were done with Selma and Selma was done with us, half of our entire denominational ministry was involved."73
The Interviews
Many of the subjects interviewed by the Blackside crew were peope of faith. The following list, however, is limited to those who held official positions in religious organizations:
Ralph Abernathy: Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and founding member of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
James Bevel: Baptist minister and member of the Nashville chapter of the SCLC
Will D. Campbell: Baptist pastor, Director of Religious Life at the University of Mississippi and executive director of the National Council of Churches Summer Project in Nashville, Tennessee
Joseph Ellwanger: Lutheran minister and pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Birmingham, Alabama. One of the few white southern pastors active in the civil rights movement
Dana Greeley: Unitarian minister and founding president of the Unitarian Universalist Association; participated in the Selma campaign
James Lawson: Reverend and educator in nonviolent activism; worked to desegregate Nashville and helped organize the Freedom Rides
Orloff Miller: Unitarian Universalist minister; participated in the Selma campaign
Frederick Reese: Active in the Selma campaign; became pastor of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, in 1965
C. T. Vivian: Reverend and executive staff member of the SCLC
Wyatt Tee Walker: Baptist minister; one of the founders of the SCLC
A. W. Wilson: Pastor of the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama
Andrew Young: Pastor active in the Department of Youth Work at the National Council of Churches before becoming a leader within the SCLC
