The Origins of Black Humanism in America: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church (Black Religion Womanist Thought Social Justice)

Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice Series Editors: Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas Published by Palgrave Macmillan

“How Long this Road”: Race, Religion, and the Legacy of C. Eric Lincoln Edited by Alton B. Pollard, III and Love Henry Whelchel, Jr. African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod By Anthony B. Pinn White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity By James W. Perkinson The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God By Sylvester Johnson Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church By Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr. Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion By James W. Perkinson Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count Among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue: Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In By Anthony G. Reddie Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil By Emilie M. Townes Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice through Reparations and Sovereignty By Jennifer Harvey Black Theology and Pedagogy By Noel Leo Erskine

The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu By Johnny B. Hill Conceptions of God, Freedom, and Ethics in African American and Jewish Theology By Kurt Buhring The Origins of Black Humanism in America: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church By Juan M. Floyd-Thomas

The Origins of Black Humanism in America Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church Juan M. Floyd-Thomas

THE ORIGINS OF BLACK HUMANISM IN AMERICA

Copyright © Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, 2008. All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the US—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–60677–7 ISBN-10: 0–230–60677–6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Floyd-Thomas, Juan Marcial. The origins of Black Humanism in America : Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church / Juan M. Floyd-Thomas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–60677–6 (alk. paper) 1. Harlem Unitarian Church (New York, N.Y.)—History. 2. Brown, Egbert Ethelred. 3. African American Unitarian Universalists—History. 4. Unitarian Universalist Association—Clergy—Biography. I. Title. BX9861.N5F56 2008 289.1⬘747108996073—dc22

2008007258

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To my mother and father, Desrine M. Thomas and Juan M. Thomas, Sr.

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Contents

Acknowledgments A Note on Usage Introduction 1 2 3

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5 6

ix xiii 1

Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow: Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Roots of Black Humanism in Harlem

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Building the Church of Tomorrow: Race, Religion, and Social Thought in the Harlem Unitarian Church

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Against Principalities, Against Powers: Racial Uplift and Working-Class Radicalism in the Harlem Unitarian Church

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In the Shadow of Egypt: Racial Consciousness and Pan-Caribbean Nationalism in the Harlem Unitarian Church

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The Price We Pay: The Demise of the Harlem Unitarian Church

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A Unique and Significant Religious Experiment: Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Legacy of Black Humanism

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

It is both a pleasure and a privilege to give thanks to all those who helped make this book a reality. Although graduate studies can often be a lonely and alienating endeavor, these individuals—mentors, colleagues, friends, and beloved family members—helped me stay focused on the task at hand, in this case the role of unbelief in the African American religious experience. Any and all shortcomings that remain in this text are clearly there due to my own limitations. To whatever extent this project achieves any of the goals or dreams that I had for it merely illustrates how richly blessed I was to have the support of so many others to help make this text (and me) whole. Since the genesis of this monograph on Black humanism arose from my dissertation on Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church, I must express my gratitude to my doctoral committee for their many insightful contributions toward what has become this book. First and foremost, I am eternally indebted to my advisor and role model, Dr. Mary Frances Berry, for her sage advice, unwavering support, and infinite patience over the years. Without a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Berry went beyond her appointed duty to offer any guidance and assistance necessary to pursue a life and career beyond the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. Moreover, since I have known Dr. Berry, she has not only been the consummate scholar, teacher, mentor, and advocate for social justice, but she also set the highest standard for personal integrity, intellectual rigor, and unlimited generosity that will remain a constant inspiration in my life. Providing sharp reading of my work in terms of my formative exploration of African American religious and intellectual history, Dr. Barbara D. Savage gave her constructive criticism, warm encouragement, and boundless enthusiasm to this project since its inception. During my graduate studies at Penn, Dr. Savage selflessly and graciously lent her

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time, energies, scholarly acumen, and great wit in order to help me see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Many thanks also to Dr. Beth Wenger who offered poignant insights and provocative comments rooted in her own interdisciplinary approach to the study of American religion that greatly enriched this project as well as my larger academic development in ways that I still find inspiring. In the process of formulating the ideas at the core of this examination of Black humanist thought and traditions in the context of the United States, I have amassed a rather large intellectual debt that can never be fully repaid. I am extremely appreciative to the following scholars for their conversations, suggestions, recommendations, and other invaluable contributions at various stages of this enterprise: Peter Paris; Judith Weisenfeld; A.G. Miller; Bettye Collier-Thomas; Wilbert L. Jenkins; Walter Licht; Elijah Anderson; Earl Lewis; Robin D.G. Kelley; Mark Gilderhus; and Kenneth Kusmer. While working at Virginia Tech and Texas Christian University, it was the warm sentiments and steadfast support of colleagues such as Terry Kershaw, Ingrid Banks, Mark Toulouse, Elaine Robinson, David Nelson, and Laura Gillman that proved immensely helpful as I finished what I started. A special word of thanks also goes to the awesome staff of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Archives and Manuscript Division. Without them and that venerable institution, I would never have been able to begin, much less complete, this book. It was during my years of graduate study in the History department at Temple University where I first encountered Peniel E. Joseph who later became not only an excellent friend and classmate but a brother and comrade to my wife and me ever since. Niel’s visionary work on Black Power Studies demonstrates his unrivaled brilliance, inexhaustible work ethic, and prodigious skills as a historian of the highest order. More than that, I am appreciative for the gracious gift of his friendship and passion for scholarly activism as we find peace and strength in the struggle. For nearly a decade, Anthony B. Pinn has been a mentor, conversation partner, and friend to me. In many ways this book would not exist had it not been for him, a fact that I will never forget and will be forever indebted. Ever since I found his early writings as a graduate student, Tony’s work on religion in general and African American humanism in particular continues to shape my approach to this subject. In light of his scholarly enthusiasm and unselfish demeanor all of these years, I remain constantly impressed by his warmth, generosity, sense of humor, and soaring intellect. He represents the

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finest example of a gentleman and a scholar in the American academy as well as serving as a great role model to me. I am extremely thankful to Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas, the series editors, for the opportunity to contribute this volume to the Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice Series. Their efforts are helping to transform contemporary African American religious studies and theological discourse and I am proud to participate in such an endeavor. Additionally, I would like to express my supreme gratitude to Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Brigitte Shull, and Matt Robison of Palgrave Macmillan for their incredible support of this project. I would also be remiss if I did not mention Chris Driscoll, Lauren Bryant, Martin Tulic, and Maran Elancheran who were diligently committed to the task of helping to bring this book to fruition in the best way imaginable. Thank you for your able assistance. Even as I began this research on the longue durée of Black humanist principles and praxis in the United States many years ago, I found my own personal faith strengthened in the process. Toward this end, I am deeply grateful to my church families at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, PA, Greater St. Stephen First Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, TX, and Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, TX, who embraced me as both a scholar and a member. I was especially fortunate and blessed to have pastors such as Rev. Dr. Willie E. Robinson, Rev. Dr. Michael A. Bell, and Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III respectively who practiced what they preached by loving God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Invigorated and nurtured within a proudly Black Christian tradition that unites head and heart, I see no irony in expressing thanks and praise to God for making this book on Black humanism a reality. No measure of thanks can ever repay the debt I owe my family. I give special thanks to my mother, Desrine Thomas, for always being a source of support and encouragement through all the trials and tribulations in my life. I am especially grateful to Mom for instilling within me the diligence, courage, and determination to choose my own destiny and follow my dream. A word of thanks must also go to my father, Juan M. Thomas Sr., who taught me to love education at an early age. The loving prayers and moral support of Mrs. Lillian Floyd and Rev. Janet Floyd, my mother-in-law and sister-in law respectively, have been great comfort in the darkest hours. Above all, I want to thank my wife, best friend, confidant, and soulmate, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, for being my most ardent supporter and personal hero. It has been Stacey’s endless compassion, sound counsel, sweet

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spirit, and incredible sense of whimsy that have made any of this worthwhile. Even as we have toiled to remake our world anew, every day with Stacey has been filled with incomparable and unspeakable joy. The culmination of this project stands as a testament of our love for and commitment to one another against all odds. Thank you, Stacey, for always being my better half and loving me regardless . . .

A Note on Usage

Readers will note that the terms “Black,” “Negro,” “Afro-American,” “Afro-Caribbean,” “West Indian,” “African,” and “African American” are used somewhat interchangeably in this book except when it is necessary to be specific in terms of chronology or nationality. As author, I have chosen to use “Black” as my preferred descriptive label of racial identification because, contrary to any negative connotations about the pigmentation of human skin or pejorative assessments of personal traits and behavior, I hope to make a small contribution in reclaiming the term as an unifying description of peoples, communities, and cultures of African descent that span the limits of historic time and geographic space. However, anyone reading this text who remembers the dramatic tensions and ideological debates that accompanied the transition from “Negro” to “Black” within American popular culture and jargon circa the late 1960s will doubtless retain a level of skepticism toward the establishment of a single, normative usage. Moreover, contemporary devotees of postmodernism and political correctness might equally contend that using the term “Black” as a means of expressing a mode of racial identification that is essentialist, overly generalized, and assumes certain levels of racial authenticity. My emphasis of the term “Black” strives to counter such claims by asserting racial notions of blackness that are richly layered, complex, and diverse in nature. Nevertheless, I do alternate among “Black,” “African American,” and “Afro-American” largely to maintain contextual and emphatic options for using these multiple terms. Equally, I have tried to minimize the use of outdated terms like “Negro” and “colored” in reference to Black Americans except in the case of direct quotations or the titles of articles, books, sermons, and the like. Most importantly, I have chosen to capitalize “Black” as a means of moving beyond skin color toward a notion of shared history, cultural heritage, and group identity as well as a challenge to the

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pervasiveness of white supremacist thought. Whenever the term “black” is used with lowercase “b” intact, it will only be in order to retain the integrity of a quotation from its original source. Having said all that, I have not found an equally logical, compelling or worthwhile rationale for capitalizing the term “white.”

Introduction [The Harlem Unitarian Church] is now an established institution, and is in truth what it claims to be, namely a temple and a forum: a temple in which we worship the true and good and beautiful, and receive inspiration to live a life of service; a forum whereat [sic] mind sharpens mind as we strive to plumb the depths, span the breadth, and scale the heights of knowledge. —Rev. Ethelred Brown, The World Tomorrow1

In a 1926 Amsterdam News article, a Jamaican immigrant and ordained Unitarian minister named Rev. E. Ethelred Brown proclaimed that “the Negro . . . needs a religion which at once appeals to his mind and to his heart and which in its creeds and its formulas is neither an insult to his reason nor an offense to his conscience.”2 In 1920, Rev. Brown founded the Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), the first Black Unitarian fellowship in North America, in the hope of filling this void by offering a bold new religious alternative that would improve social conditions for Black America. Rev. Ethelred Brown introduced Unitarianism to Harlem’s already rich and diverse religious universe in the hope of creating a new theological, social, and cultural standard within the Black community. From its humble beginnings in 1920 until its dissolution in 1956, the HUC provided all interested parties in Harlem with an extraordinary venue in which to engage in open debate, social activism, and spiritual awakening through a radical brand of Black Christianity deeply infused with humanist principles.3 Under Brown’s leadership, the Harlem Unitarian Church provided “a temple and a forum” where members of Harlem’s Black intelligentsia and political circles came together in a venue that enabled them to openly express their views on the religion, culture, and politics of the

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

day. By 1920, there was no overall consensus on how people of African descent—both native-born African Americans and newly arrived Afro-Caribbean immigrants—should safeguard themselves against and ultimately resist various forms of social oppression they encountered in the United States. Examining its brief history, one finds that the church was especially important for the ways it actively sought to enhance the status of Black women and the working class in modern American society. Generally speaking, Brown’s church served as a unique model of Black religious, cultural, and political expression in the United States during the former half of the twentieth century. In their words and actions, the pastor and members of this church had a significant belief in its struggles to achieve social justice in America’s most renowned Black community through their interesting merger of liberal Christianity, cultural nationalism, working-class radicalism, and racial uplift. The Origins of Black Humanism in America studies the relationship between Brown’s church, the larger Harlem community, and the forces, activities, and ideas that shaped it as part of a much larger story. This book analyzes the emergence of Black humanism in its various forms—freethought, skepticism, secularism, agnosticism, and atheism—as a neglected aspect of American religious and intellectual history. Toward this end, The Origins of Black Humanism in America traces the development of Black humanist thought with a special emphasis on the interplay of culture, religion, and radical political ideology as a very unique religious expression within the grand scheme of the African American experience. This book effectively expands current thoughts on the ironclad trinity of race, class, and gender to include the transcendent yet often contested factors of religion, culture, and politics in the lives of these Black Unitarians and other Harlemites during this period. There has been a growing interest in the historic example of Rev. Ethelred Brown, a story that is woefully underserved by existing literature on Unitarianism. The efforts of Rev. Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church serve as an important turning point for the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in its commitment to advance greater racial inclusiveness and social justice within its ranks as well as the larger context of American society in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, contemporary Black liberation theologians and historians have not sufficiently attended to Rev. Brown’s particularly strained relationship with traditional Black Protestantism to envision ways in which Unitarianism could be understood as a part of the

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larger Black religious experience. Aside from dictionary entries, encyclopedia articles, or book chapters in Mark Morrison-Reed’s Black Pioneers in a White Denomination (1984) and Anthony B. Pinn’s Varieties of African American Religious Experience (1998), the historic efforts of Rev. Brown and the HUC have been examined only in a limited fashion thus far. Since there is no single monograph to date that has addressed this minister and his role in fomenting the Black Unitarian movement, this book will be a distinctive contribution to the literature of Black religious studies.

What is Black Humanism Anyway? As the title suggests, The Origins of Black Humanism in America offers a provocative examination of Rev. Brown’s work that illuminates Black humanism qua Unitarianism as a revealed religious tradition intended to more purposefully align Black people’s religious responses to life’s myriad crises. This book repositions Brown’s writings and its significance for Black religious thought by overcoming the curious and glaring silence about Brown’s pioneering efforts. The Origins of Black Humanism in America brings Rev. Brown and his church within the canon of Black theological discourse by illustrating how much Brown’s ministry and writings serve as a vital resource for contemporary Black theologians and religious studies scholars. Although Brown spent much of his life operating outside of the conventional modes of Black theological reflection, this book helps to uncover how his work and writings are important in comprehending key concerns within Black religious life. One definition for Black humanism refers to it as a descriptive phrase for “Black self-control, self-assertion, and concern for the human family . . . [H]umanism is a statement of humanity’s connectedness/ oneness and need for self-determination, without a conscious discussion of this assertion’s impact on traditional conceptions of divinity or ultimate reality.”4 Another perspective on the matter suggests that Black humanism “is a rational, human-centered life stance that is primarily concerned with life in the here and now.”5 While finding no problem with either of these definitions per se, the intention of this book is to stretch the definition of Black humanism to be somewhat more comprehensive. After studying Rev. Brown’s approach to Black humanism with its clearly Christian underpinnings, it seemed necessary to rethink the prevalent definition of Black humanism. In these pages, a final definition indicates yet another way for readers to be

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better served in how they envision the concept of humanism for people of African descent. Instead of viewing Black humanism as a repudiation of faith, it could actually be considered as a redirection of faith in the work of human heads and hands rather than heavenly help to resolve the problems of the world. Keeping these three different yet related insights in mind, the significance of Black humanism within the Black religious experience might become clearer. Readers will find that The Origins of Black Humanism in America not only depicts a vision of Black humanism that resonates with so many tenets of Black religious life in America but also charts future directions for understanding Black religion in America. Whether he was focused on an emphasis of Jesus’ humanity that demanded an end to racism, sexism, and poverty or a prophetic witness against imperialism, Christian fundamentalism, xenophobia, and global warfare, Brown and his contribution to the articulation of radical Black humanism illustrates how he and the HUC consciously worked to challenge and change the status quo by bringing a new, more complex understanding of Black religiosity and social justice in the United States. This book helps raise significant questions concerning the nature, meaning, and expression of African American religion. The Origins of Black Humanism in America makes a significant contribution to Black religious studies because it provides a more detailed cartography of Black religiosity in America and in this fashion pushes for greater clarity concerning the language, structure, and broad contours of Black religious engagement. There are a significant number of works that discuss the emergence of Black humanism in great length and more effective detail elsewhere.6 Rather than retrace the standard narrative about humanism in the American context and its impact on the Black experience as an afterthought or by-product of white humanism, this book intends to extend a different assertion: Black humanism in its genuine and purest form is radically different from its white counterpoint by the very premise that the history of race and the permanence of racism making any comparison between the two much like comparing apples and oranges. As humanist theologian William Jones asserts, it is crucial to acknowledge the different origins of Black and white humanism. As Jones contends: Any assessment of the relation between black humanism and traditional Western humanism must incorporate this understanding of the genesis of Afro-American nontheism. Though black humanism and those

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humanists who trace their lineage to the enlightenment [sic] or the scientific revolution are akin in attacking the superstructure of theism, their criticisms develop from radically different socio-economic contexts.7

It must be noted that Black humanism is not a sepia-toned subsidiary or chocolate-covered clone of white humanism and should not be regarded as such. Although definitely connected to in certain ways (such as a shared focus on individual human action, emphasis on free will and moral agency, the centrality of reason, and the appeal of democratic self-governance, etc.), Black humanism functions in vastly divergent ways than its white counterpart because it has different obstacles to overcome and different objectives to obtain. By way of illustration, regardless of how a white unbeliever defines his or her embrace of humanism, white humanists operate in a realm governed by several key presuppositions, namely that: people of European descent are human beings upon birth; people of European descent have their personal freedom as both natural birthright and normative existential expectation; people of European descent are recognized as thinking, feeling creatures and deserved to be acknowledged as such; and, people of European descent can be considered fully functioning, holistic, independent, and moral actors free to choose isolation or community. These selfsame truths are not true for Black people in general and Black humanists in particular. Due to the destructive as well as pervasive power of white supremacy in the modern world, especially as it has been enshrined through important global epochs such as the Reformation, the Age of Exploration, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Revolutions, Black humanity has always been considered a negligible if not altogether nonexistent situation rather than an absolute fact. Stated plainly, philosopher of religion Cornel West states “the notion that black people are human beings is a relatively new discovery in the modern West.”8 That realization alone makes it vitally important for any person of African descent to critically question and confront the pretense or notion that Black people can adopt anything from dominant Western culture without undergoing some process to radically adapt it to match their own needs and concerns. Toward this end, it is now necessary to turn to the matter of examining the varieties of Black humanism that exist. In his text Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology, theologian Anthony Pinn offers a binary designation of strong versus

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weak humanism as a means of describing a person’s demonstrable application of humanist traits and values. While this mechanism is suitable in a biographical or theological sense, it is arguably insufficient in a grand historical sense. To put it another way, the framework of strong/weak humanism is not incorrect so much as it seems incomplete. Rather than viewing Black humanism as a static system of thought and experience with two diametrically opposed extremes, a more dynamic estimation of the various iterations of Black humanism is needed in order to examine it in terms of the longue durée rather than the here and now. When envisioning the broad contours of Black humanist thought, it seems that a better means of assessing the range of nontheism in the Black religious experience would be best understood in terms of developmental phases: contextual humanism; contractual humanism; and constitutive humanism. The reassessment of Black humanism in this fashion is necessary because, while this analytic matrix still pays attention to individuals, it also looks beyond the lone social actor, isolated moral agent, or singular believer (or unbeliever as the case may be). In this sense, issues such as communal concern, aggregate action, and collective culpability must be of supreme importance for Black humanists since the permanence of white supremacy within Western society has made the prospect of transcending or escaping racist stigma impossible for people of African descent, whether they are humanists or not. By outlining the three developmental phases mentioned above, the reader might be better able to ascertain how, in spite of the radically bold step necessary for Black people to declare themselves humanists, such demonstrations of unbelief (nontheistic thought and practice), whether for a moment or an entire lifetime, makes sense in the larger scheme of the historic Black experience. Contextual humanism refers to external circumstances and imposed conditions that place questions of theism (belief in God) and theodicy (critical examination of divine role in human suffering) more central in the lives of Black women, men, and children striving to survive in an antagonistic world. When addressing the New World context, this phase of Black humanism seems most evident in the horrifying reality of the five centuries of African enslavement in the Americas. The most emblematic illustration of this contextual humanism can be seen in the existential crisis represented by the African holocaust known as the Middle Passage. Used as a powerful illustration by the British abolitionists, the classic diagram of the Brookes has been a chief means to give present generations some sense of how

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many African people were crammed together like cargo onboard the thousands of slave ships that traversed at the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Although an estimated 454 enslaved Africans were supposed to be tightly packed into every available space of the vessel’s cargo hold, when the Brookes originally set sail in 1783, however, more than 600 people were squeezed together, often in shackles, for the fearsome Atlantic crossing. The crossing could take one to two months, an experience immediately followed by another four to six months spent sailing along the African coast to load enslaved people. With historic documentation of approximately 28,000 Atlantic voyages by slave traders, some twelve million Africans survived the horrific ordeal.9 Nonetheless, months spent suffering such unspeakable conditions resulted in the death of nearly two million Black women, men, and children on the open seas, often from dysentery, physical torture, violent retribution for rebellion, and even suicide. More than that, though, has to be considered the psychic trauma for those who survived the sheer physical torment. When recounting his experience aboard a slave ship making the fateful voyage to America, formerly enslaved African writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano expresses in his slave narrative the overwhelming sense of shock, misery, and isolation felt by him and other Africans captives in the belly of the ship: The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time . . . some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for fresh air. But now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number of the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations so that the air became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the [enslaved], of which many died—thus falling victims of the improvident avarice . . . of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now became insupportable, and the filth of the necessary [latrines], into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.10

If there can be a more jarring scenario that comes closest to the concept of perfect chaos, it most surely must be the experience of an

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enslaved African, shackled and trapped in a dark, dank, diseasedridden floating dungeon with all hope slipping away with every stifled breath taken. It does not take too great a leap of the imagination to envision how the situation might cause anyone to fall into a deep existential crisis (some Black psychologists imagine this would be akin to a prolonged, untreated from of posttraumatic stress disorder). But how does the human mind possibly multiply this horrific scene a million times? How about ten to twelve million times, not counting those who died at various stages of this hellish sea voyage? Historian Charles H. Long suggests that the intense human catastrophe of Black bodies being dragged across the ocean as part of the Triangle Trade may have, in fact, caused a metaphysical rupture that created new sensory realities for those generations of Africans who survived the treacherous sea voyage and their descendents. As Long states, The Middle Passage—chained enslaved Africans in the holds of several ships of every Atlantic maritime nation—was never forgotten by the Africans, neither during slavery nor in freedom. The watery passage of the Atlantic, that fearsome journey, that cataclysm of modernity, has served as a mnemonic structure, evoking a memory that forms the disjunctive and involuntary presence of these Africans in the Atlantic world. From this perspective, religion is not a cultural system, much less rituals or performance, not a theological language, but an orientation, a basic turning of the soul toward another defining reality.11

En route to an uncertain but presumably miserable fate in the as-yetunknown New World, Black women, men, and children caught in the throes of inhuman bondage had to cry out for forgiveness and salvation to a God of which they might have grown suspicious and doubtful. Based on the reality of their immediate surroundings, some number of the enslaved Africans surely must have questioned the existence or benevolence of a Divine Creator that could leave them trapped in a world of filth, death, and despair. Moreover, Europeans approached their supposed cultural and intellectual apex in terms of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment while engaging in the trafficking of human beings for several centuries with reckless abandon. Without imagining that the aggregate grief and anguish of the enslaved Africans, often unaddressed in the artistic, religious, and philosophical output of early modernity, European civilizations callously produced the conditions the desperate, soul-wrenching hunger for liberation that would be the core of the Black freedom struggle. By uncovering the degrading and inhumane treatment of enslaved

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Africans during the infamous journey across the Atlantic, one can begin to understand how the roots of Black humanism surfaced as an unintended consequence of the creation of the Atlantic world order. Even after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished and the Middle Passage became the stuff of haunted memories, the exigencies of Black lives caught in the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery led to very serious and legitimate interrogations of the meaning of faith in early American society. There were many slaveholders in the antebellum South who openly believed that exposure to religion, specifically Christianity, could serve as an invaluable means of social control, thus instilling submissiveness, good will, and obedience within the enslaved. Once the Africans and African Americans were introduced to Christianity, many claimed the faith wholeheartedly and made it their own. But, unbeknownst to the slaveholding elite, the Christianity that was being embraced by Black Baptists and Methodists during the late 1700s and early 1800s was of a completely different nature than what they originally expected. The fact that the Black Church tradition in America emerged as a hybrid form of religiosity with combined elements of West African cosmology and spirituality with Western Christianity’s symbols, rituals, and doctrines indicates that Black women, men, and children were never tabula rasa but were thinking beings who made conscious choices about what they accepted and rejected regarding religion. As a result, as historians Albert J. Raboteau, Mechal Sobel, and others have shown, the Black Church tradition emerged in a parallel sphere of sacrality alongside white mainline American Christianity that allowed Black Christianity enough critical difference and distinction from its white counterpart to the God-fearing Black Christian to see his or her faith not only as a system of survival but also a “terrible swift sword” of divine justice that inspired them to risk all in pursuit of their freedom.12 What is most pertinent for this current examination, however, are the ways in which African Americans of the era—whether enslaved or free— could not only choose whatever faith tradition suited their religious needs and concerns but could also critique what they viewed as the lukewarm faith of white Christians. In his slave narrative, Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass offers his reflections on the utter hypocrisy of American Christianity: What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this

10

The Origins of Black Humanism in America land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. . . . Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.13

Despite racist allegations that people of African descent could not grasp the deeper structures of religious meanings for having primitive, uncivilized nature, Africans and their descendents born on American soil developed razor-sharp perspectives toward the fallacies and foibles of white Christianity. While Harriet Jacob was enduring the physical, emotional, and psychological brutality of domination on a plantation in the Old South as an enslaved Black woman, she also epitomizes the construction by the rapacious culture of chattel slavery of what historian Jennifer Morgan refers to as a “laboring woman.”14 According to Morgan, the expropriation of enslaved Black women’s hard work (physical labor) paired with the maximizing of their reproductive potential as mothers of future enslaved workers (labor pains) forced Black women like Harriet Jacobs to serve as great engines of wealth generation within New World slavery but totally robbed them of their richly complex humanity. Daring to speak out against such soul-wrenching situation, Jacob directly confronts the weak-willed, spineless practitioners of a religion that allows the most dastardly slaveholders being the penultimate examples of salvation in their communities. Much like Douglass, Jacobs argues in her slave narrative that there is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south [sic]. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious. If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church will dismiss him, if she is a white woman; but if she is colored, it does not his continuing to be their good shepherd.15

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Having not only the presence of mind to recognize this sort of corruption, hypocrisy, and abuse by lay and/or ordain religious leaders but also having the courage to denounce all sorts of travesty—torture, rape, manipulation, exploitation, and racial antipathy—demonstrates a radical concern for the well-being of Black people and all humanity (including herself) that resonates quite well with Black humanism. Being trapped in a world circumscribed by inhuman bondage, the prospects for enslaved and free Blacks alike to speak out against what they clearly saw as a self-contradictory religion such as mainline Christianity was an undeniably radical act of free inquiry. As the next phase of Black humanist development, contractual humanism emerged in the era of quasi-freedom following the American Civil War. This is epitomized during the Reconstruction era wherein people of African descent were directly targeted and victimized by overt white supremacy in attempts to abolish such inhuman modes of oppression as racial segregation and terroristic hate crimes in the United States as well as militaristic imperial domination across the African diaspora at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In response to what historian Rayford Logan called the “nadir of American race relations” and witnessing the questionable lack of institutional or ideological means within the Black community to immediately counteract such negative forces, a growing number of Black people began to gravitate toward philosophical and ideological systems in order to resist the creeping fog of racial injustice and indignities. Though divergent in many of their core details, one common trait that many of these systems share is that they often endorsed a repudiation of Christian theism as a key element of loyalty/adherence (i.e., Marxism, secular humanism, existentialism, Black nationalism/ pan-Africanism). In his classic text, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, historian and theologian Gayraud Wilmore noted that the Black experience during much of the twentieth century was marked by a twofold process, the deradicalization of the Black Church and the dechristianization of Black radicalism.16 Accordingly, part and parcel for many radical Black thinkers and activists who became involved in the Black freedom struggle was the belief that they had to pursue a revolutionary intellectual or sociopolitical enterprise that could either supplement (if possible) or supplant (if necessary) the apathy and inertia of the Black Church tradition during that era. As will be elaborated later in this text, although Rev. Brown’s efforts with the HUC serve as notable exceptions to this phenomenon, they

12

The Origins of Black Humanism in America

do not disqualify the larger observation being considered. The preeminent Black minister, intellectual, and educator Benjamin Mays’s landmark text, The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature, proves most significant for its emphasis of humanist tendencies residing within the Black religious experience as articulated in the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance era. As Mays illustrates, the potential for a generation of Black folks who have been emancipated from inhuman bondage but still bear the burden of racial oppression emerge from the shadows of American history better educated, more ambitious, and to find any strategy or system by which to break out of the iron cage of subordination. As outlined by Mays, the “New Negro” of the early twentieth century approached this dilemma and subsequently made the conscious decision to abandon theism based largely on the three following factors: 1. There is a strong tendency to doubt God’s value to the Negro in his struggle to gain a stable economic, social, and political foothold. 2. God is described as having outlived His usefulness. Historically, when gods have outlived their usefulness, either they have been abandoned or a new conception of God has been developed to meet the new experiences. The younger Negro writers seem to be inclined to abandon the idea rather than develop new conceptions. 3. There is a denial of the existence of God.17

On the whole, Mays’s schema indicates the functional core of contractual humanism in which the person perceives of either belief or unbelief in terms of a negotiated exchange of what has God done or not done on behalf of Black people lately. As a great exemplar of the Black Christian tradition as well as a personal mentor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless other “Morehouse Men,” Mays was not expressing advocacy for Black humanism. Rather, he was providing sociological analysis in addition to theological insights in order to assess some of the best and brightest members of the Black community to become disaffected and ultimately disconnected from the Black Church tradition. As a result of his research, he concluded that for a certain strata of Black people, various forms of Black humanism do not develop as the results of the findings of modern science, nor form the observations that nature is cruel and indifferent; but primarily because in the social situation, [Black Americans] find [themselves] hampered and restricted . . . Heretical ideas of God develop because in the social situation the “breaks” seem to be against the Negro and

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black thinkers are unable to harmonize this fact with the God pictured by Christianity.18

Taken in this light, contractual humanism became a serviceable concept for Black artists, radicals, and intellectuals during the era of Jim and Jane Crow who were frustrated by second-class citizenship and unable to fathom the destructive crush of unfettered racism upon Black minds, bodies, and souls. More importantly, this mode of Black humanism allowed the individual to advance to this stated position not due to external conditions or circumstance but through his or her use of moral agency, personal experience, and critical reason in order to discern whether unbelief is logical and appropriate for them. This mode of Black humanism embraced by many of the key figures of African American thought and politics are representative of contractual humanism. For instance, Helga Crane, the protagonist of Nella Larsen’s classic novel Quicksand, poses a query about the existence of a white racist God as evidence of her (and ostensibly the author’s) secularist sensibilities: The white man’s God—And this great love for all people regardless of race! What idiotic nonsense she allowed herself to believe. How could she, how could anyone, have been so deluded? How could ten million black folk credit it when daily before their eyes were enacted its contradiction?19

Working from this empirical observation, Larsen’s character Helga wrestles with the bitter betrayal that is based in her belief that the Christian faith she had innocently welcomed and wholeheartedly embraced was nothing more than a rigged game with the odds stacked against every Black person. In spite of her skepticism, she does stretch her imagination so that, as Larsen writes, her mind, swaying back to the protection that religion had afforded her, almost she wished that it had not failed her. An illusion. Yes. But better, far better, than this terrible reality. Religion had, after all, its uses. It blunted the perceptions. Robbed life of its crudest truths. Especially it had its uses for the poor—and the blacks. 20

This statement is fascinating because, contrary to typical readings of Helga Crane’s denunciation of theistic faith, her almost nostalgic reverie about the perceived good works provided by Black Church tradition indicates that her rejection of African American Christianity

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

was neither automatic nor absolute. Before she makes her final desultory remark about Christian theism, she actually shows signs of hesitation and a slight hint of regret. Nevertheless, after her momentary pause, Helga’s argument continues onward to its logical conclusion wherein she states that the Western mode of Christian theism was what ailed the whole Negro race in America, this fatuous belief in the white man’s God, this childlike trust in full compensation for all woes and privations in “Kingdom” com . . . How the white man’s God must laugh at the great joke He had played on them, bound them at slavery, then to poverty and insult, and made them bear it unresistingly, uncomplainingly almost, by sweet promises of mansions in the sky, by and by. 21

In the final analysis, Larsen’s Helga Crane arrives at her humanist position as a result of her disillusionment at the thought of the eschatological rhetoric incumbent of Black Christian theology that looked to “some great heavenly reward” and “pie in the sky” promises that are not only unfulfilled but guarantee that poor and desperate Black people never rebel against their oppressors. Without question, her dismissal of Black Christian theism for its apparent ineffectiveness and lack of concern for the earthly welfare of Black people was neither singular nor isolated during this era. In his autobiography, Black Boy, author Richard Wright recounts his experiences as a youth growing up in Mississippi, reflecting upon his early atheist leanings while still in the presence of his deeply religious Granny. As Wright recalls, “Granny was an ardent member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and I was compelled to make a pretense of worshipping her God, which was an exaction for my keep.”22 Even though Wright’s statement was made as an adult looking back at and writing about his worldview as a twelve-year old, the presence of mind he seemed to possess as a young child to “mind his elders” and “know his place” appear to have been well intact. Moreover, his innate knowledge that an outward show of obedience and piety would not only guarantee a reduction of stress and tension in Granny’s household but also proffer him the continued benefits of food and shelter made his chief identification with Christian theism as a matter of having material or structural needs being met. Interestingly enough, however, Wright mentions that the church services had some nominal albeit fleeting effect on him: “While listening to the vivid language of the sermons I was pulled toward emotional belief, but as

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soon as I went out of the church and saw the bright sunshine and felt the throbbing life of the people in the streets I knew that none of it was true and that nothing would happen.”23 Nonetheless, he further elaborates that his status in his Granny’s household was a delicate one; I was a minor, an uninvited dependent, a blood relative who professed no salvation and whose soul stood in mortal peril. Granny intimated boldly, basing her logic on God’ justice, that one sinful person in a household could bring the wrath of God upon the entire establishment, damning both the innocent and the guilty, and on more than one occasion she interpreted my mother’s long illness as the result of my faithlessness. I became skilled in ignoring these cosmic threats and developed a callousness toward all metaphysical preachments. 24

While lending full credence to the adage that “child is father to the man,” Wright also demonstrates another vital aspect of contractual humanism: an antiauthoritarian imperative that serves as an overall desire to have a sense of mastery over one’s own life. This was most readily demonstrated by his subsequent exchange with another child about God when young Richard acknowledged the fact that Embedded in me was a notion of the suffering in life, but none of it seemed like the consequences of original sin to me; I simply could not feel weak and lost in a cosmic manner. Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God’s existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen His creatures serve Him at first hand, I had had my doubts. My faith, such as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power. 25

Richard Wright’s private acknowledgment of his atheism was the requisite precondition for his more formal embrace of communism and eventually existentialism in his later years because, among many other factors, it was a definitive measure of his moral autonomy and personal freedom the traditional theistic faith that he felt had been forced upon him. On the whole, members of the first generation of freeborn Black people in the United States began a shift toward contractual humanism because, in their quest to end racial oppression and dehumanization, they had to lose their traditional religion if they were ever going to be free indeed.

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

Finally, constitutive humanism suggests that the humanist perspective is neither incidental nor ideological to the Black experience but rather an intrinsic dimension of the African worldview that requires equal consideration alongside theistic expressions of Black religious experience. From this viewpoint, humanism exists as a core and essential element within the sacred Black cosmos, one manifestation of Black faith and religious experience amongst a host of other alternatives, both sacred and secular/theistic and nontheistic. As theologian William Jones mentions, while Black humanism has been largely ignored as the “dirty little secret” of Black religion, it is equally important to recognize its significance as an inescapable and invaluable part of the Black theological landscape in the United States and worldwide. In this regard, Jones’s methodological analysis of Black humanism proves very useful. Mapping out the dynamics of Black religion and culture, Jones argues that there are two major faith traditions within the Black religious experience: the majority tradition of theism (articulated in either Christian and non-Christian expressions) and a minority tradition of humanism. He identifies that a number of key forces are at work that continue to obscure a fuller and richer treatment of Black humanism as a factor in the Black religious experience. First, Jones indicates that there is a questionable methodological and semantic practice that dominates discourse about as well as research in Black religion and theology. Second, Jones argues that there is a biased pattern of selectivity used to compile and transmit the Black religious heritage: humanism’s status as a fringe philosophical/theological perspective not an ongoing parallel institution with shared cultural roots and social exigencies as Black theism. Arguably, because Black Christianity has been the dominant religious tradition for people of African descent in the United States, it has been deemed alright to ignore humanism as the “minority report.” Third, he articulates the requisite interpretive principles needed to uncover what he deems the “missing link” in Black religion. As such, Jones further argues that the actual matrix of Black humanism is not the brainchild of Western (read white) culture and civilization but rather a response to perceived inadequacies of Black Christian theism to confront and ultimately end Black oppression caused by white supremacy. Thus, in Jones’s estimation, Black humanism must be interpreted as a specific strategy for liberation and a particular philosophy of liberation within, rather than outside of, Black religiosity.26 The thinking of Jones and many of his successors seems to have centered upon constitutive humanism as the key means of recognizing, interpreting, and understanding the presence of humanism within Black religious thought and experience.

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The notion of constitutive humanism appears evident in the efforts of various Black humanists over the last few decades. A prime example of this effort is the emergence of Norm R. Allen Jr. and African Americans for Humanism (AAH). Founded in 1989, Allen directly solicited support from Paul Kurtz, humanist philosopher, the head of the Council for Secular Humanism, and the president of Prometheus Books, in order to serve as a base of operations for developing and nurturing humanism among Black women, men, and children. As a subdivision of the Council for Secular Humanism, according to Allen, the AAH is “primarily an educational organization that promotes humanist values such as critical thinking, humanist ethics, church/ state separation, and an appreciation for scientific methods of investigation.”27 As a prolific and vocal proponent for humanism, Allen has taken great pains to establish a research agenda by which a key facet of the AAH’s output as well as community outreach focuses on asserting the historicity of Black humanism not only in America but also worldwide. By promoting the presence of Black humanist forebears and exemplars in the United States, Allen and the AAH are digging deep into the various aspects of Black thought and culture in order to illustrate historic linkages for those who seem doubtful of humanism as a legitimate alternative for people of African descent. In a similar sense, Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed, an African American Unitarian Universalist minister, has been one of many Black members of the denomination to pursue a similar effort to recover and reconstruct the history of the Black presence within the Unitarian Universalist Association as a leading humanist organization in the United States. A major step forward in this regard was MorrisonReed’s Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, which not only highlighted two pioneering Black humanist ministers (one of whom was Ethelred Brown) but also grappled with racial tensions within the denomination. Over the past twenty years, Morrison-Reed and others within the UUA have challenged their religious institution to think about how it will deal with its past, present, and future in a nation such as the United States that is poised to be the most multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural society in human history. Whether striving to find the roots of Black humanism in secular or religious context like Allen or Morrison-Reed respectively, the overarching concern within a constitutive humanist framework is to assert and affirm that humanism is a continuation rather than a contradiction of the Black religious experience. Another component of constitutive humanism is the exploration of Black religious discourse and experience in ways that are constructive,

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

creative, and expansive in nature. As someone who has had considerable impact on American literature, popular culture, academic scholarship, and social activism for more than a quarter century, author and activist Alice Walker’s has advanced a humanist perspective that holds great reverence for nature as well as a transcendent sense of religiosity that moves beyond traditional theism regarding the humanDivine relationship. By way of illustration, in discussing her personal search for new religious understanding, Walker tackles provocative issues about race, gender, poverty, and violence by stating that: I salute the major recent (from five thousand years or so) religions of the world; though to be honest, I feel most of them, alpha-maledominant to the core, have done more harm than good. I would certainly never consent to guide my own life by any religion that teaches the inferiority of women and the degradation of people of color. Or the acceptance of poverty as inevitable and husbands should control wives. That people should be stoned for any reason whatsoever. That people labeled witches should be burned. Religions that forbid women to speak in those places dedicated to the Spirit. Or even to sit or stand near anything the males consider holy. Or that violence against others, especially against anyone perceived to be “the enemy” is sanctioned by an easily irritated and wrathful God who is not moved in the least by the slaughter of pregnant women and babies. A God that so jealous that all female Gods before him had to be destroyed. 28

In a recent essay, “The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind,” Walker squarely articulates her theological vision by stating that “Nature, Mother Earth, is such a good choice . . . Everyone deserves a God who adores our freedom: Nature would never advise us to do anything but be ourselves. Mother Earth will do all that She can to support our choices. Whatever they are. For they are of Her, and inherent in our creation is Her trust.”29 Describing a concept of the Divine that is not just feminine but also integral in a positive, life-affirming entity rather than a frightening, cruel, murderous, and jealous God, Walker has begun a wider conversation concerning many issues in religion and spirituality that are so often left unmentioned in traditional circles because, no matter how vital or real they may be, they upset the dominant ontology. Nevertheless, even if she might not win over the majority of public opinion toward her way of thinking, Walker has created an intriguing concern that is sadly all too rare in most contemporary discussions about religious matters: a willingness to

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speak about what might heal us rather than those things that hurt us. It is especially significant that someone with artistic stature and international reputation of Alice Walker has the overall opportunity to not only speak her mind but also bare her soul with regards to advancing her viewpoints as a Black humanist to a broader public. Since the 1990s, Anthony B. Pinn’s critical humanist assessment of Black suffering within Black Church tradition/Black liberation theology has caused quite a stir within the context of Black theology. Unlike the preceding two generations of Black theologians, Pinn took seriously the provocative challenge to the Black Church tradition presented by the likes of humanist pioneer William Jones. While standing on the shoulders of such a intellectual giant, Pinn has gone much further than Jones by virtue of his sharper, more critical definition of Black humanism both in terms of his prolific scholarly output as well as his avowed commitment to all facets of the Black community especially the Black Church tradition. In his text African American Humanist Principles, Pinn provides a strongly moving and personally touching autobiography in the book’s preface that shows his move from a deep Christian faith to an almost equally strong humanist perspective as a sort of “reverse revelation” wherein rather than having a theophany (the appearance of God to a human), he underwent a moment of theocide (the death of God).30 To assert that God does not exist and that notions of theism and supernaturalism are matters of non-reality are bold positions to assume. But, in keeping with the concept of constitutive humanism, Pinn has been able to make this stand as a Black theologian and religious studies scholar who is a humanist while arguing that the creation of a shared set of Black humanist values and principles need not be viewed as alien imports but rather are central as well as essential components of Black community. Pinn’s theological focus challenges supporters and critics alike to recognize that, in a reconsideration of the notion of transcendent immanence, the capacity of Black women, men, and children everywhere to live fuller, better, and more meaningful existences have always already been within all of us. As he continues further on his particular journey, it will be interesting to see how his vision of Black humanism will grow and evolve as well in academia and elsewhere. Taken as a whole, these three phases of Black humanism—contextual humanism, contractual humanism, constitutive humanism—indicate the general epochs in which the unfolding and evolution of nontheistic sensibilities and perspectives could develop in tandem with their theistic counterparts. Moving from the horrors of the Middle Passage and

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

chattel slavery to the great uncertainty of our post-everything present, these iterations of Black humanism can still correspond to labels such as strong or weak but this schema provides greater levels of variegation in determination of the roots, nature, and depth of one’s espousal of humanism within the Black religious experience not only in his/her own life but also in the scope of the larger historical moment. Based on the criteria outlined above, it seems quite evident that Rev. Brown and many members of the HUC fall quite neatly into the category of contractual humanism, both in historic sense and their overall faith stance. Be that as it may, Brown and the HUC also ought to be seen as part of the humanist continuum described earlier inasmuch as they stand on the proverbial “middle ground,” not facing the exigent horrors of the contextual humanists yet also not exploring the expansive options of the constitutive humanists. In the pages that follow, much of what Rev. Brown and his fellow travelers in the HUC experienced seems largely defined in terms of negotiated realities and sacrificial exchanges. It is up to the reader to consider whether or not this paradigm works.

Rationale and Overview of This Book So, what was Rev. Brown doing religiously as a Black humanist and what sorts of theological legacy did he leave behind? What can be learned about Black religion in the United States from his writings and activism? The Origins of Black Humanism in America makes use of Rev. Brown’s relationship to faith, belief, religious institutions, and notions of the sacred as means of discussing broader issues of Black humanism in the United States. Although this is not a strict biography of Ethelred Brown in any sense, this book examines his life and times to provide new insights into this provocative albeit overlooked religious thinker and also to illuminate various aspects of Black religion in American culture. The Origins of Black Humanism in America is also a new analysis of Rev. Brown’s embrace of Unitarianism as a means of discussing humanism’s place in African American religious history. William Jones notes that “in discussions of black religion, humanism of all varieties is virtually ignored, and when it is unexpectedly remembered, it suffers the unfortunate fate of being misinterpreted and misunderstood.”31 Inasmuch as Jones raises the fact that Black humanism “has little standing as an accredited representative of the black religious experience,” he is articulating a notion of humanism as a stepchild of Black religion. 32 By dismissing humanism from ongoing

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dialogue and debate about the Black religious experience, Jones contends that scholars of Black religion cheat themselves of a truly invaluable counterpoint for studying the nature of religious institutions, the meaning of belief, the intersections of religion and power, the necessity of faith for social justice, and the vitality of critical inquiry in spiritual matters. In short, Black humanism provides ways in which researchers can better understand not only how it functions in tandem with more traditional modes of Black religion in American society, but also how it informs the human condition as we pay attention to the life, ministry, and activism of Rev. Brown. Approaching Black humanism as a religion and ideological system that attempts to scrutinize and structure events, actions, attitudes, and ideals in contractual terms that seek to emphasize the supersensible (e.g., Beauty, Truth, Justice, Love, Reason, etc.) rather than the supernatural (e.g., God, Satan, Heaven, Hell, miracles, eternity, etc.), The Origins of Black Humanism seeks to understand Black faith in all its complexity. By gleaning insights from Rev. Brown’s life and career, it is possible to realize that his Black humanism had many facets that were intertwined yet constantly in tension. In some instances, he was a bold religious reformer who called for Black and white believers to serve their God and their communities with truth, integrity, justice, and dignity; in other instances, he was a fiery apostate who railed against superstition and demolished dogmatic teachings. On one hand, Brown felt himself called to be a apostle of Black humanism to attack white supremacy, economic exploitation, and bore the mark of the agnostic who deeply despised the perpetuation of theological doctrines and traditions that worked to oppress individuals and groups in American society. One aspect of Brown took up the pastoral mission of authoring prayers, sermons, and hymns to meet the needs and concerns of the embattled people to whom he ministered; the other took up the prophetic ministry by expanding the hopes of social transformation by moving the spirit of activism out of makeshift church sanctuary to the street corners of Harlem and beyond. One dimension of Brown enabled him to spark moral awareness and religious insights in the hearts of diehard Marxists, panAfricanists, skeptics, and nontheists of various kinds; another dimension was the man who suffered many abuses for being too secular, too heretical, too sacrilegious, and too blasphemous to be taken seriously by many of his contemporaries. As a consequence, in looking at the broad spectrum of Rev. Brown’s experiences as a pioneering Black humanist, this book is not and does not claim to be a religious

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

biography in any typical sense. Rather, consider this work a cartography of his religious, intellectual, and political perspectives. In other words, in order to map out the various contours that comprised the landscape of Brown’s faithful imagination and conscious thought, this text provides a generally rough sketch of his development as a deeply religious yet very complex person and the ways in which his embrace of Black humanism in terms of Unitarianism both facilitated and frustrated said development. It is the intention of this work to never lose sight of the multifaceted nature of Rev. Brown’s dynamic life and ministry as well as the multifarious elements of Black humanism as religious enterprise. As such, there will be great pains taken in this book to not privilege any single facet of Brown’s thought and commitment as a religious being at the expense of the rest. Without a doubt, Brown was complex and a complicated personality who was able to maintain spiritual faith yet reject its most traditional expressions, appreciate sacred ritual and prophet social witness yet detest constrictive dogma and coercive religious orthodoxy, and speak profoundly to religious beliefs without surrendering to them in an uncritical, slavish fashion. This may serve as Rev. Brown’s most profound lesson and richest legacy to contemporary students and practitioners of religion in America. It is hopeful that this book will reinvigorate a larger conversation in the study of American religion in general and Black religion in particular about Rev. Brown and his brand of Black humanism in regards to how it might illuminate our understanding of the contemporary Black religious experience. Something that has been difficult to fully convey in this text has been the intensity of Brown’s spiritual outrage at the worldly injustices of his era. Not trying to stereotypically portray him as just another “angry Black man,” it is also hard to ignore the circumstances and conditions that might have fueled his righteous discontent. Confronted by the intractable racism embedded within his predominantly white liberal Christian denomination on one side, and the crushing force of injustice and oppression he contended with on a daily basis as he traversed the city streets of Harlem on the other side, this well-educated, cosmopolitan, and dignified minister was brimming over with a spiritual anger. Borrowing critical insights from feminist ethicist Bev Harrison, it is important that, in reading about Brown’s thoughts and activism, readers remain cognizant of anger’s necessary role in justice-making work—that no one can change the world if they are comfortable with it as it is. 33 But before dismissing

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the importance of anger as an engine for religious and social change, one can cull examples ranging from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr. to envision how effective spiritual anger can be if harnessed and channeled correctly. Nevertheless, whether attacking entrenched racism among white liberal Christians, stultified credalism, and political inaction within the historic Black Church tradition and pernicious economic injustice and imperial domination on the larger world stage, Rev. Brown continually invoked God’s righteousness and Jesus’ superlative example of compassionate, committed humanity on earth. It could be reasonably argued that facing all of those maddening forces at work, Rev. Brown had more than a right to be outraged. As a consequence, this spiritual anger was infused in various aspects of his religious thought and served as a definitive concern within his long and varied life. Time and time again, in the research of Brown’s life and career as a Black Unitarian minister, the temptation ran high to simply view his religious perspectives as a manifestation of DuBoisian “double consciousness” regarding an internal tug-of-war concerning race and religion. Put another way, was Brown wrestling with what it meant to be Black at the same time he was dealing with what it meant to be religious? This conjoined question has been a matter of identity and authenticity that, while present, does not seem to have confounded Rev. Brown throughout his life. For all intents and purposes, Brown seemed to navigate the rocky terrain of race’s role in society, politics, economics, ideology, culture, and religion. Unlike today’s’ feverish debates about what constitutes “Blackness” in the American context, especially along lines of religious identification, political orientation, nationality, intellectualism, and economic class status, Rev. Brown was often very comfortable in his own skin (pun fully intended). One might speculate that before the civil rights struggle following the Second World War in which segregation, discrimination, and hate crimes based on race abounded, Rev. Brown and countless other Black people probably did not have either the luxury or the inclination of asking “Am I Black enough?” While certainly not advancing a fixed, essentialist sense of Black racial identity (his humanist and Marxist beliefs are just two examples of him deviating from the presumed norm), he operated within a world of certain racial exigencies while not surrendering to others’ expectations. Likewise, rather than demonstrating signs of being constrained and hemmed in by his professed embrace of Black humanism, his faith seemed to allow him to approach religiosity in more creative and expansive ways. While it

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The Origins of Black Humanism in America

should not be surprising that matters of the Divine, the meaning of Jesus and the Gospel in human affairs, and the proper role of the church in challenging social injustice should preoccupy the thoughts of an ordained minister; this becomes all the more notable because of his humanist perspective. Without question, spiritual concerns and theological concepts permeated his place in it, his consideration of Back and white people, and his passion for the empowerment of oppressed and marginalized people here and everywhere. Well in advance of a more formal and rigorous articulation of Black liberation theology in the late 1960s, Brown drew upon a universe of religious ideas, sacred rhetoric, spiritual teachings, and theological beliefs that undermined strongholds of structural inequality by suggesting all people were God’s creations deserving of the full blessings of life and liberty. By turning a blind eye to Brown’s life and ministry because it does not fit neatly in general perceptions of what Black religion is and should be, scholars not only garble historical or theological understandings of him as a religious figure but also hinder contemporary efforts to apprehend or even apply many religious lessons Rev. Brown taught. In light of all this, researching and writing the story of Rev. Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church in larger historical context of Black humanism’s emergence in the United States poses very special and peculiar challenges. It is generally difficult for historians to figure out exactly what people experienced in the past and explain why it matters. It is even more difficult to find out what the various figures thought about their world in the midst of certain historical moments. It is most difficult to imagine ways to assess what they believed in religious terms. Historians of religion, culture, and ideas usually have to make inferences, imaginative leaps, and informed guesses about matters of faith based on their written statements as well as recorded observations of their actions. Therefore, attempts at outlining the full weight of a person’s belief or unbelief, or asserting full mastery of another human being’s innermost thoughts or subconscious fears may be an ultimately impossible task for any historian; this statement is intended to serve as explanation rather than an excuse. The unique pleasure and uneasy burden of studying the life and thought of Rev. Brown has been the fact that he was very clear, prescient, and uncompromising about his stance on the great religious questions such as the ultimate means of attaining the “good life,” the relationship (or lack thereof) between the natural and the supernatural, the significance of Jesus’ life and ministry to humankind, and the moral

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meaning of our individual/collective actions. When dealing with a personality such as this, either in a physical or virtual sense, it is important for the historian’s purposes to know that while religious zeal and intellectual fortitude can be commendable facets of a person’s demeanor, these traits can manifest themselves in constructive and destructive ways. The task for the historian, therefore, is to recognize and record these decisions and their consequences yet not ridicule or repudiate the motivation and causation for certain choices that were made. Stated another way, there were some instances in which, like many of us, Rev. Brown was dead certain and dead wrong in the same moment. Whether right or wrong, the responsibility of historians should be to portray a depiction of humanity, on either an individual or collective basis, in all of its self-contradictory messiness, as a mass of perfect imperfections as the case may be. Toward this end, this book does not simply concern itself with Rev. Brown’s religious conversion or his isolated belief in Unitarianism as a mode of humanistic faith. Rather, it focuses on how his approach to Black humanism was informed by and subsequently influenced various structure systems of belief/unbelief, such as progressive social reform, liberal Christian theology, Marxist political economic theory, Black nationalism/pan-Africanism, and racial integrationism. In order to hopefully achieve this objective, this work eschews a strictly chronological unfolding of Brown’s more than eight decades of life and ministry in lieu of a more thematic, topical approach. This strategy has several advantages from the viewpoint of the writer and researcher that, in turn, will hopefully benefit the reader. First, it allows Rev. Brown’s views, ideas, and beliefs to be set within a larger matrix of religious, intellectual, sociopolitical, and cultural modalities ranging from the decisive role of religion in the Back freedom struggle to the intermingled relationship of spiritual motivation and secular modernist movements such as Black Marxism and Black nationalism. Second, this approach allows access and insight into very specific ways in which Brown considered his humanistic faith. Whereas an implicitly chronological structure is present, the attempt to more forcefully make the details of Brown’s thoughts and religious views adhere to a clearly linear, forward march through human time, it would obscure the more organic connection of ideas, concepts, and beliefs that he reflected on throughout life. For example, Brown contemplated and preached about how the Black Church tradition could better serve the Black community and promote social change throughout his years in ministry but his focus in terms of sociopolitical, economic, ideological,

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or spiritual concerns ebbed and flowed throughout his adult life. In the words of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.” By concentrating on one theme at a time, this book links the numerous and sometimes conflicting views of Brown and others on a given topic in order to explore the depths of a particular matter so as to see its upshot. Thus, The Origins of Black Humanism pays less attention to the theological subtleties or spiritual transitions of Rev. Brown as much as it focuses on his religiosity played out in the major themes of his life’s work. In sum, by gauging his experience in this fashion, this ultimately allows the level of critical analysis to extend well before his birth and well beyond his death. Chapter one concentrates on how the arrival of Rev. Brown and his family to New York City illustrated Harlem’s historic role as the quintessential site for Black people’s overall encounter with modern urban, industrial society. In addition to providing a brief biographical sketch of Rev. Brown, this chapter complicates the very idea of a singular Black community in Harlem by demonstrating the wide range of peoples who flowed into Harlem during this era. By way of illustration, the HUC’s founding members were Afro-Caribbean immigrants who came to Manhattan between 1890 and 1920. They were part of a wave of forty thousand Black immigrants, largely from the Anglophone Caribbean, who came to the United States in search of better lives. As the pastor and members of this church interacted with and challenged their fellow African Americans and West Indians, it became evident that the ensuing relationships continually undermined notions of a seamless, monolithic sense of culture or community based simply on race in Harlem. More importantly, this chapter will demonstrate the various hopes and expectations held by newcomers such as Rev. Brown, and how Harlem came to represent the fulfillment of those dreams. Chapter two examines the efforts and exploits of this small congregation to become an officially recognized church both within the Unitarian denomination and their local environs. The HUC was the first and, until the late 1930s, only Black Unitarian congregation in America. Historically, Black men and women have been attracted to Unitarianism only in small numbers (and the denomination is accordingly absent from research about the historic Black Church tradition in America). Meanwhile, despite the American Unitarian Association’s (AUA) reputation as a bastion of liberal Christianity and progressive politics, this chapter illustrates the tense, uneasy relationship between the HUC and the AUA. However, there is virtually

Introduction

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no mention of racial or ethnic minorities who were members of the Unitarian denomination within the existing scholarship. As a result, the pure novelty of Brown’s efforts during this thirty-six-year period illuminates how the “color line” touched every aspect of American life, even religion. In these and other ways, the HUC sheds new light on American Unitarianism and Black religiosity. Chapter three examines the role of radical politics within the HUC’s larger vision of achieving social justice during the Great Depression. A number of Harlem’s leading Black Communists and Socialists were key members of this church from the 1920s to the 1940s. The Marxist bent shared by Brown and many members of his congregation was so pronounced that one observer informed an AUA official that the HUC’s Sunday service was akin to “a Bolshevist [sic] meeting.” The church’s deliberate effort to infuse its theology with an overtly radical political ideology had consequences that will bear further investigation within this book. For instance, to what degree did Black radicals such as these simply take what they wanted and needed from the Left, and formulate their own distinctive subversive traditions of opposition, thereby rejecting what might have been alien to their situation? The HUC represents an effort amongst its congregants to create a more religious strain of working-class radicalism within Harlem. Chapter four examines the different and often competing manifestations of Black culture in Harlem, particularly during the 1920s and early 1930s. Following the advent of New Negro militancy, it is generally understood that Harlem was inundated with a wide array of options concerning how culture was conceived, utilized, and manipulated by various segments of the local scene: the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance; Garveyite pan-Africanists; and nascent West Indian nationalists. In each instance, “culture” seemed to become synonymous with a utilitarian sense of racial identity and consciousness derived from essentialist notions of what is definitive or authentic about the Black experience in modern society. Hence, it seems that the debates and antagonisms about Black culture during the 1920s and 1930s, many of which fueled the social and intellectual ferment of this period, were based on the premise that racial uplift was a war between presentation and representation. Chapter five examines the HUC’s inability to carve a niche for itself in the wake of the Second World War. Numerous scholars have indicated that postwar transformations had considerably restructured the religious, cultural, and political dimensions of American society. From 1945 until the pastor’s death in 1956, the HUC was forced to

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adapt to the changing nature of racial identity, religion, and politics in America. This chapter examines how this congregation struggled against—and ultimately failed to meet—the challenges posed by the mounting Cold War anti-Communism, white backlash to the civil rights struggle, and the impending crisis of postwar urban decay. More than that, it is during this tumultuous period that the HUC began plans to build an edifice for their church, a project that was never realized. Chapter six begins with a brief discussion of how Rev. Brown’s efforts to create “a temple and a forum” shed new light on how religious experience, cultural self-determination, and radical ideology were defined, debated, and disseminated within Harlem during its most formative era as an urban Black community. By looking at his sermons and other writings, it is clear that Brown is very much rooted in a tradition of Black protest thought and prophetic witness that stands as his contribution to the articulation of Black humanism and illustrates how he and the HUC consciously worked to challenge and change the status quo by bringing a new, more complex understanding of black religiosity and social justice in the United States. Furthermore, this chapter examines subsequent manifestations of Black humanism that has emerged since Rev. Brown’s death in 1956 as it has been expressed most notably by the likes of William R. Jones, Anthony B. Pinn, Norm R. Allen Jr., Alice Walker, Mark MorrisonReed, and William G. Sinkford. Having said all this, one might wonder why Rev. Brown has been effectively written out of the historic annals of the Black religious experience in America? In a world of dishonesty, Brown was relentlessly honest about his views and beliefs, regardless of whether they fit comfortably with established opinions. In a historic enterprise such as Black Christianity that has had more than its fair share of theft, corruption, avarice, and apathy, Rev. Brown was self-sacrificing, giving, long-suffering, and deeply committed to social justice. Suffice it to say, Rev. Brown was not perfect and most certainly preferred to take the path of most rather than least resistance. But that is beside the point. Because of his adherence to an untraditional and challenging belief system and in spite of his awe of God’s divine glory or the profundity of the Christian gospel, he stands as an overlooked figure, always on the fringes of the “great cloud of witnesses” that make up the Black Church tradition. As an exemplar of Black humanism rooted in liberal Christianity, his thought and ministry should merit some analysis and reflection both now and in the future.

1 Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow: Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Roots of Black Humanism in Harlem I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow. I’m tossed in this wide world alone. No hope have I for tomorrow. I’ve started to make heaven my home. Sometimes I am tossed and driven. Lord, sometimes I don’t know where to roam. [But] I’ve heard of a city called Heaven. I’ve started to make [Heaven] my home. —Traditional Gospel Song, “City Called Heaven”1 In the history of New York, the significance of the name has changed from Dutch to Irish to Jewish to Negro. Of these changes, the last has come most swiftly. Throughout colored America, from Massachusetts to Mississippi, and across the continent to Los Angeles and Seattle, its name, which as late as fifteen years ago had scarcely been heard, now stands for the Negro metropolis. Harlem is indeed the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious, and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib sea and has penetrated even into Africa. —James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem” 2

After traveling for nearly a week by sea, Rev. and Mrs. Brown arrived in New York City in the midst of a fierce snowstorm. The story of the Harlem Unitarian Church is about the combined effort of a few brave souls to bring about something the world had never seen before. What exactly that “something” was, however, is subject to any number of interpretations. Although Ethelred Brown had

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struggled to establish a predominantly Black Unitarian ministry back home in his native Jamaica for several years, his attempts were of no avail. So Rev. Brown and his wife, Ella, decided to leave the Caribbean and make a fresh start in the United States. The couple secured modest funds from a British Unitarian women’s mission group that allowed them to book passage aboard a ship setting sail from Kingston, Jamaica, on Saturday, February 21, 1920, headed for Harlem. Meanwhile, future HUC members such as Richard B. Moore, Frank R. Crosswaith, Grace Campbell, and W.A. Domingo had already been in America for a number of years. Each of them sought to stake their respective claims to what the United States had to offer: a better quality of living, greater social mobility, and an increased sense of individual potential, among other things. These personalities coalesced in Harlem to make their shared and individual goals materialize. Imagine what it must have been like to be a Black immigrant coming to the United States at the turn of the century. For the men and women coming from the Caribbean, the voyage meant sailing aboard large, cramped, steam-powered vessels that moaned as they cut through the choppy waters along the eastern seaboard. But as their ships made their way toward the island of Manhattan, only the hardest of hearts could remain unaffected by the experience unfolding before them. The surge of the vessels beneath their feet must have echoed a flood of emotion as Black newcomers made their imminent approach into the waters surrounding New York City. The very sight of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Manhattan’s soon to be legendary (and imitated) skyline must have added to the intensity of that singular moment. Unlike other African peoples who were forced to travel across the Atlantic generations earlier under horrific circumstances, Black immigrants from the Caribbean expected—and in some cases, demanded—freedom the minute they landed on American shores. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Black Harlem continued to grow as tens of thousands of migrants from the American South were joined by thousands of Black immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. As historian Cary Wintz argues, these pilgrims “all seemed to find their way to Harlem’s streets and tenements . . . By 1920 Harlem, by virtue of the sheer size of its Black population, had emerged as the capital of black America; its name evoked a magic that lured all classes of blacks from all sections of the country to its streets.”3

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The Browns and their compatriots were among tens of thousands of Black immigrants from the Caribbean drawn to the region of upper Manhattan otherwise known as Harlem. For more than two decades at the dawn of the twentieth century, Black people in the United States and elsewhere around the globe were steadily on the move in search of better lives. As the gospel song “A City Called Heaven” implies, countless men and women of African descent were prepared to go forth on faith to improve their living conditions. Whether they hailed from the Deep South, the Caribbean archipelago, or the African continent, this crush of humanity gravitated toward cities such as New York to take advantage of greater opportunities. In spite of the manifold forms of economic exploitation, social oppression, and political disfranchisement black men and women had endured by the start of the twentieth century, there seemed to be a transcendent hope and sense of freedom that may have at least inspired, if not directly caused, the sizable demographic shifts among blacks during this era. As much as they were trying to escape from untold poverty, terror, and adversity, they were also running toward a destination that promised a chance beyond presumed historical possibilities of the day. When black people sang of their heartfelt desire to make heaven their home, it was hardly a veiled or hidden reference. The possibility of going someplace where life could be bountiful and pleasant was not passive sentimentality on their part; instead they were very mindful that the future glory of the race could be achieved here on Earth, and they actively sought to make that vision real. Furthermore, the concept of “heaven on earth” seemed feasible. Despite the risky nature of the proposition facing the masses of Black migrants and immigrants who made the choice to leave their homes to seek new opportunities elsewhere, their choice was not foolhardy. Once freed of the overt and covert shackles of slavery and debt peonage, Black men and women gradually took advantage of their ability to “vote with their feet” and the power such an act conferred upon them. As theologian James Cone explains, “the idea of heaven provided ways for black people to affirm their humanity when other people were attempting to define them as non-persons. It enabled blacks to say yes to their right to be free by affirming God’s promise to the oppressed of the freedom to be.”4 To grasp fully the dynamics that gave rise to the Harlem Unitarian Church, we need to consider the broad social and intellectual context of the Black experience in Harlem during the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, the four most significant factors that shaped the lives of

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Black men and women were: the mass movement of Black Southerners to the North, and of Afro-Caribbean people to the United States; the common vision of Progressive reformers to make American local, state, and national government more responsive to the needs of a changing body politic; and the transformation of Harlem into a heralded and exemplary urban Black enclave. But this study proposes that we look to another set of motives to further explain the significance of this major demographic shift. There was another subtle change of attitude guiding the lives of many Blacks during the first half of the twentieth century. Quite simply, a hope persisted. During the turn of the century there was a growing belief— especially among Black intellectuals, political leaders, and clergy— that an ideal urban Black community such as Harlem illustrated positive attributes of racial uplift and Black pride. A principle of racial utopianism prevailed. The swelling ranks of Black migrants and immigrants of African descent that came to this vital hub of the Black experience believed that such a utopia could not only improve their own lives but also transform race relations in America as well as the international scene.

“From Montego Bay to Harlem”: Black Unitarianism in the United States Any history of the Harlem Unitarian Church must begin with its founder and pastor, Egbert Ethelred Brown. As a sixteen-year-old choirboy coming of age during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Egbert Ethelred Brown attended an Easter Sunday worship service at the Montego Bay Episcopal Church in Jamaica. As a departure from the church’s normal practice, the Athanasian Creed (the church’s principal statement of denominational faith) was not sung by the congregation. Instead, the priest and the assembled body of worshippers took turns reciting the creed that morning. It was this otherwise harmless exchange that led young Ethelred (as he was known) to begin questioning the most fundamental belief of his religion, namely the Trinity. Oddly, the fundamental premise that three divine entities somehow coexisting and operating in separate yet contiguous functions within the lives of Christians became less apparent to him. As Ethelred Brown later stated, it was after hearing the creed spoken aloud that “the strangeness of the Trinitarian arithmetic struck me forcibly—so forcibly that I decided then and there to sever

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my connection with a church which enunciated so impossible a proposition.”5 With such a burning conviction smoldering within his young heart and mind, Brown left the church that day in a very inquisitive mood. Later that same afternoon, he made a discovery that had a profound effect on his religious awakenings. In his uncle’s house, young Ethelred stumbled upon a copy of William Ellery Channing’s sermon, “Unitarian Christianity,” and read it with great interest. A declaration of legitimacy and purpose that lent great visionary focus to the Unitarian cause in America during the early 1800s, Channing’s stirring message sparked a revolution within Brown. From that point on, Brown realized two important things. First, his newly discovered beliefs (or doubts, as the case may be) had a name, definition, and history that were real and not the product of his imagination. Second and more important, he was not the only person who felt this way about Christian tenets or religion in general; even though he had not met them in the flesh, he had become aware that there were others who held beliefs similar to his. Although it is unclear how Brown’s uncle became familiar with Unitarianism or came to possess copies of Unitarian texts, his influential role in guiding his young nephew’s interests in Unitarianism is quite evident. Brown inquired further about this new religion. His uncle sent him to a friend who was an English physician and fellow Unitarian who had a modest collection of Unitarian literature in his personal library. As he continually pored over those texts, Brown found himself in a serious dilemma: he was now a Unitarian without a church or a fellowship to call his own. Although Jamaica was the only island in the entire Caribbean where a Unitarian ministry was ever attempted, that early effort failed shortly after its inception.6 Therefore, Brown could indulge his newfound religiosity only by himself as he distanced himself from organized religion for the next several years. In 1895, however, Brown was called upon to replace a sick organist for the Montego Bay Wesleyan Methodist Church, a position he held for four years. Then, in 1899, he was transferred to the Spanish Town Wesleyan Methodist Church where he was placed in charge of the choir as well as served as the church’s organist. During this same period, Brown had entered the Civil Service of Jamaica as a treasury clerk. This job was especially good because it was highly regarded and financially secure by colonial standards. Brown’s dual careers as a colonial civil servant and Anglican Church organist led him astray from his self-proclaimed adherence to Unitarianism.

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At the age of thirty-two, Ethelred Brown’s life went through a series of profound and ultimately drastic changes. While his career as a civil servant stabilized and his work for local congregations continued, Brown had met and eventually married Ella Matilda Wallace on May 5, 1898. During the following years, the couple started a family and was able to establish a comfortable albeit modest lifestyle for themselves. Despite all the apparent markers of a “good life,” Brown revealed in his memoirs that he felt there was something missing from his life. Reflecting on this period of his adult life, Brown once remarked that he had ignored “the abnormal religiousness” of his youth. Nevertheless, he believed that he had been “called by God” to enter into ministry, that is, according to the vernacular of modern Protestantism, the divinely inspired internal compulsion one feels to become a preacher of the Christian gospel. By his account, Brown failed to heed this call for twelve years of his adult life. But on April 20, 1907, he was abruptly dismissed from his position as the First Clerk of the Treasury for reasons that remain unclear. No longer bound to his civil service job, Brown now felt free to entertain the prospect of a life of ministry. At this critical juncture, Brown was struck by yet another crucial quandary. Having resolved to become a Christian minister, he had to decide which denomination he wanted to call his own. Although his service for the Spanish Town Wesleyan Methodist Church had been both diligent and dutiful, Brown still harbored many doubts about the beliefs and doctrines upheld by the denomination. At roughly the same time, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was engaged in missionary work in Jamaica. Despite the active encouragement by the local AME missionary that he petition to become a minister for that denomination, the questions that plagued Ethelred Brown as a young man continued to haunt him. Brown refused to accept a call to ministry that he believed was a compromise of his principles. Brown found himself returning to his earlier fascination with Unitarianism and seriously took steps toward making it his life’s vocation. Although he eventually did send a letter of application for ministerial training to the Bishop of the AME Church in the United States, four days later Brown drafted and sent a letter of inquiry addressed to “any Unitarian minister in New York.” That letter eventually made its way to Rev. George Badger, Secretary of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) Fellowship Committee. Moved by Brown’s plea to enter the Unitarian ministry, Rev. Badger forwarded the letter to the

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president of the Meadville Theological School, Rev. Franklin Southworth. Although it is unknown what Rev. Southworth’s views on race relations might have been during this period, it is evident that the head of Meadville seminary had a reputation within the liberal religious community in America as someone who was at least sympathetic to admitting Blacks into his seminary.7 A short time later, Brown received two replies in the mail. In a rather enthusiastic response, the AME Bishop extended Brown an invitation to begin his ministry immediately. The second letter Brown received was from the desk of Meadville’s president. The letter Rev. Southworth sent him was much more cautious in tone and sentiment. Although offering Brown an acceptance to study at the seminary, Southworth gave him several warnings. First, if Brown was serious about his prospective education, Southworth informed the candidate that Meadville did not offer any correspondence courses. Therefore, he would have to make arrangements to relocate to the United States upon enrollment. Second, since there were no Black Unitarian churches at the time and white Unitarians “needed” white ministers, Brown was told that his future career in the Unitarian ministry was uncertain at best. Third, the implicit element of doubt surrounding Brown’s application from the seminary’s perspective rested largely in the novelty of the idea. The reality was that no person of African descent had ever been ordained as a Unitarian minister. “The issue was clear,” Brown later noted, “the conflict short, but sharp” concerning what choice he was going to make. In spite of some initial doubts and general reluctance on his part, Brown finally decided to decline the offer to enter the AME ministry in favor of becoming a preacher of the Unitarian gospel. After one unsuccessful attempt to attend the Unitarian seminary in Meadville, PA, due to his immediate deportation to Jamaica as a “contracted alien” two years earlier, Ethelred Brown established a Unitarian Lay Centre in Montego Bay with the consent of the American Unitarian Association in 1909. By his recollection, the Centre “in spite of a small membership soon became vigorous.”8 The sustained momentum of Brown’s ministry in Jamaica is evinced by the fact that “street and hall meetings were held two to four meetings a week and Unitarian tracts were freely distributed.”9 Brown’s second chance to attend Meadville Theological School was stopped at the last minute by his father, James Alexander Brown, who rescinded his offer of financial support he originally gave his son for the journey. With word of Brown’s considerable accomplishments, the Meadville Theological

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School finally made the necessary provisions so that he could continue his formal study of theology. By 1912, Rev. Ethelred Brown completed his education and was ordained as an Unitarian minister at the Meadville Theological School and Meadville Unitarian Church respectively. With these credentials, Rev. Brown returned to Jamaica to begin his ministry. By most reports, Brown was notably charismatic and forthright in his self-proclaimed role as a “Unitarian missionary.” As early as 1912, however, Brown realized that “the officials of the [AUA] were not very enthusiastic over the missionary work in an island of Negroes” regardless of their intelligence, cultural background, or personal commitment.10 This negative sentiment revealed itself most obviously in the AUA’s reluctance to subsidize Rev. Brown’s ministerial efforts in Jamaica (and later in Harlem). As a newly ordained minister, Brown felt the urgency of creating a liberal Christian ministry in his hometown. Toward this end, Brown began contact with the British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA). During the same period that Brown was embarking upon his ministerial vocation, the B&FUA made claims of wanting its denomination to have a much broader and more influential presence in modern society. One statement issued by the association in 1911 spoke directly to this matter by addressing the fact that: as represented by the [B&FUA], Unitarianism is an affirmative faith—a religion of life, not a barren criticism or a negative theology. A religious movement which confined itself to protesting against venerable traditions and accepted beliefs could have no future. Men are never deeply stirred by negotiations. A religious message, thickly strewn with “but,” “if,” “perhaps,” fails to inspire mankind.11

Moreover, the B&FUA would later explain that the deliberate inclusion of the word “Foreign” in the title of the Association shows that kindred movements abroad were by no means overlooked. Unitarians recognized that a wider outlook on “the World-movement of Liberal Religion [sic] inspires and strengthens the Home work, which in turn reacts to strengthen the work abroad.”12 These statements work in tandem to outline two distinct realities driving the B&FUA during that era. On the one hand, the B&FUA was compelled by the highest principles of religious faith and moral conscience to spread the gospel and to seek fellowship with like-minded individuals who would embrace such “an affirmative religion.” On the other hand, the

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B&FUA was an organization that came into existence during the heyday of the British Empire. As such, it was somewhat complicit in the colonial/imperial project that was the main stock-in-trade of British society. Therefore, it seems quite feasible that the B&FUA’s rationale for enacting its self-avowed “foreign/colonial work” had less to do with Christian charity or altruism and more to do with participating in the same missionary spiritualism that preoccupied its other Protestant counterparts in Britain. In other words, the B&FUA implicitly wanted to take advantage of the British Crown’s global hegemony so they, too, could capitalize on the mad dash to carry out what Rudyard Kipling called “the White Man’s Burden.” That possibly racist motivation notwithstanding, Brown’s modest expectation of the B&FUA to provide him the various means of support necessary to get his fledgling ministry underway was based on the association’s overt claims to encourage the spread of Unitarianism to all peoples around the globe. Both the British and American Unitarian denominational bodies began to take notice of Brown’s movement. By 1913, the B&FUA had mentioned that “the new movement in Jamaica and its minister, can hardly be said to have taken root yet; but Mr. Brown is himself confident of success, especially if the Unitarians of America and England will provide him with a suitable hall for Sunday services and weekevening work.”13 During that same year, the AUA sent a special investigator, Rev. Hilary Bygrave, to assess Brown’s missionary efforts among the Jamaicans. Rev. Bygrave’s report to the AUA stated that Rev. Brown “is fairly well-educated, seems to be endowed with tact and great common sense, and is a speaker of considerable eloquence and force. I am happy to report that after careful investigation there is no blot or stain upon his record or character.”14 Despite his glowing praise of this new enterprise, Bygrave did express some reservations about the Jamaican ministry surrounding the Sunday services. He noted that Brown’s Sunday services were held in the preacher’s home and drew a crowd of only ten to twenty-five people, not to mention a small Sunday school operated by Ella Brown. This led the investigator to speculate that maybe Brown “like other prophets . . . suffers from the fact that one’s native place is none too eager to honour native talent.” Bygrave also suggested that the presence of Brown as a dark-complexioned Jamaican might have further compromised the movement’s possible success, although Bygrave’s comment might have been pure conjecture. In any case, despite his belief that Brown was engaged in a “genuine humanitarian work” for

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“social uplift” of his fellow Jamaicans, Bygrave remained skeptical of the ministry’s prospects for future success. Nonetheless, Bygrave was impressed by the spirited progress Brown demonstrated in forging ahead with his Jamaican ministry and made a couple of positive recommendations to the AUA. First, Bygrave implored the denomination to relocate Brown and his family from the provincial, small-town environment of Montego Bay to the thriving and more cosmopolitan capital city of the island, Kingston. This move would hopefully give Brown’s movement a fresh start in a more fruitful locale. Second and more importantly, Bygrave suggested to the AUA that the organization should help finance the construction of a “modest place of worship,” estimated to cost between $1,800 and $2,000. The investigator made the conditional statement that the AUA provide modest and decreasing assistance for another three years only to safeguard against Unitarianism becoming “a scoff and byword” on the island.15 It seems that Bygrave’s suggestions fell upon deaf ears. After the AUA’s President Southworth sent a nominal $300 to Brown, the directors of the denomination subsequently dismissed the special investigator’s directives. The lack of confidence in the new Jamaican fellowship was compounded in 1914 when the B&FUA withdrew all financial support from Brown. The association argued that it took this drastic step because Brown “was not the type of man to entrust with the organization and control of a Unitarian church” since “he acted again and again from impulse and involved himself time and time again in financial and other difficulties.”16 In the meantime, Rev. Brown almost single-handedly inspired interest in Unitarianism among the Jamaican populace. Despite many setbacks, he was able to realize what was once considered an improbable goal, namely the building of a Black Unitarian church in Kingston, Jamaica. By 1914, the Browns had moved to Kingston and devoted themselves to the project. With donated land from Mr. E. Nuttall, the son of the Episcopalian Archbishop of the West Indies, as well as the small monetary gift from the AUA two years earlier, Rev. Brown’s dream of a Unitarian church slowly started to materialize, but the funds for the building project dried up shortly thereafter. There were repeated indications that the B&FUA was removing itself from Brown’s ministerial efforts in Jamaica. The most overt as well as damaging way that the Association did this was by ending financial support for Brown’s Unitarian movement altogether. In its 1910 annual report, the B&FUA asserted that “the opportunities for

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work in other lands are so numerous and pressing that the [Colonial and Foreign Work] Committee . . . [is] compelled for financial reasons to decline assistance to many promising movements [emphasis added].”17 This succinct and seemingly reasonable statement represented the policy of neglect that circumscribed and eventually derailed the prospects of developing an indigenous Black Unitarian movement in the West Indies. By as early as 1913, the B&FUA’s lukewarm sentiments concerning Brown’s efforts suggest that the group had already concluded that Brown’s attempts in Jamaica were headed nowhere. In its 1913 annual report, the B&FUA’s Colonial and Foreign Work Committee observed that “Jamaica has proven a less than promising missionary field than was anticipated; the services at Montego Bay carried on with much earnestness by the Rev. E.E. Brown, a native preacher, failed to attract; and the outlook at Kingston did not seem to possess sufficient local support to justify the Committee in giving further financial aid.”18 Regardless of its earlier, loftier declarations about spreading the virtues of liberal Christianity to “kindred movements abroad,” the B&FUA made conscious moves to disparage and dismiss Brown’s struggling ministry. Although the B&FUA contended that it could no longer support the Jamaican Unitarian movement due to a growing concern for fiscal conservation and other institutional priorities within the Association, in hindsight, there were clearly racist undercurrents to these negative measures. For instance, when Rev. Brown solicited the B&FUA for any amount of the building funds, the Association responded that it “not only declined to co-operate but volunteered the opinion that the colored population of Jamaica was not intellectually fit to receive Unitarianism.”19 The AUA announced that as of November 1915, it “would make the last payment and withdraw from Jamaica.”20 Such open acts of disregard and indifference from these purportedly “liberal” Christian bodies stunned Rev. Brown. Furthermore, it can be reasonably assumed that the lack of sustained financial support from either the B&FUA or AUA greatly compromised the church activities on the island. These early blows to his ministry by the Unitarian associations prompted Rev. Brown to directly petition the president of the AUA, Samuel Eliot. In cutting all ties to Brown’s missionary work in Jamaica, the AUA had furnished Brown with severance pay of $100 to aid him and his family while he found new employment. However, Rev. Brown and his wife felt the money would be better served to book a roundtrip to New York to meet with Eliot personally. In 1915, Rev. Brown

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and Eliot met in the offices of the AUA with very mixed results. After their meeting, Brown surmised that Eliot and the AUA judged the “success and failure of a religious venture . . . on the number of members enrolled and the amount of dollars collected.”21 More than anything, Brown was taken aback by the fact that “such intangible considerations as the emancipating power of our message and the evidence on all hands of the effect of its leavening influence” held minimal sway with Eliot.22 Despite these realizations, Brown continued to lobby on behalf of his cause among the Unitarian ministers who assembled in New York and at the AUA’s Boston headquarters in late 1915. After a number of meetings about the future of Unitarianism in Jamaica, Rev. Brown returned to Kingston in early January 1916. In Jamaica, Rev. Brown found matters had worsened. Although he was finally able to amass the funds needed to complete the church’s construction, many Jamaicans had become disheartened about Unitarianism in his absence. Eliot delivered the fatal blow to building a house of worship for Black Unitarians. In November 1917, Eliot summarily ended all future debate and discussion of funding the Jamaican ministry as a matter of denominational fiscal policy. Eliot claimed that subsidizing churches was a “pauperizing and demoralizing” practice that made local churches weak and dependent on the denominational body. He followed this with the remark that foreign missions were “an impertinence as well as a waste of effort and money” for the AUA. Word of abandonment of Rev. Brown’s ministry by both the AUA and B&FUA soon reverberated throughout the Kingston community and effectively ended the Unitarian movement in Jamaica. The land and unfinished church building were both returned to the original donor and would later become an Episcopalian church. This proved to be a very bitter disappointment for Rev. Brown, one that would remain with him for quite some time. By 1917, the governor of Jamaica made Rev. Brown the Marriage Officer for the island. In this position, Brown was sanctioned to arrange and officiate wedding ceremonies—denominational, nondenominational, interfaith, civil, or common law services—for couples, issue marriage certificates, and handle the legal documentation and registering of marriages in Jamaica. Receiving this nod from the colonial government, the minister felt, “was tantamount to an official recognition of the permanency of the [Unitarian] movement.”23 Consequently, notable Englishmen as well as a small indigenous contingent of Jamaicans were supporting Brown’s Unitarian efforts. Although the AUA and B&FUA both continued to withhold any

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manner of financial support, Rev. Brown managed to find alternate sources of funding. For example, instead of writing to the B&FUA for money, Rev. Brown petitioned the Central Portal Mission and Union of Unitarian Women in England with much more favorable results. The women’s organization was able to grant him roughly $250 a year that, added to the local help, sustained his efforts on a minimal basis. The countless financial problems that plagued the Browns were secondary to a more grievous problem, namely Rev. Brown’s growing reputation as a religious pariah. Unable to secure the full support of the Unitarian denominations in the United States and Great Britain, Brown’s ministry floundered in every way imaginable. The major Unitarian associations’ desertion of his ministry left him a thoroughly dejected and publicly discredited man. In February 1920, after years of anguish and soul-searching, Rev. Brown left his ministry in Kingston. Rev. and Mrs. Brown were headed for New York City, leaving their six children to stay at home with their grandparents. Despite his extremely negative Jamaican experience, it “did not kill the desire to preach the gospel of Unitarianism,” so he proceeded to investigate the likelihood of establishing a Black Unitarian church in Harlem. 24 Per Rev. Brown’s assessment, Harlem truly had “room and need for a liberal church.”25 On Sunday, March 7, 1920, a group of seven members (including Rev. Brown) organized the church and named it the Harlem Community Church.

Uprooted Blacks in America: Afro-Caribbean Immigration to the United States By the time Rev. Brown had arrived in New York City, the United States had witnessed an influx of immigrants the likes of which it had never seen before. Thanks to the marked improvement in overseas transportation as well as the greater industrial employment opportunities, immigrants from various parts of the globe comprised a new pattern of international mass migration of humans with the hope of walking through the proverbial “golden door” that the poet Emma Lazarus had described so eloquently decades earlier. Roughly thirteen million immigrants, an average of about one million newcomers a year, came to the United States during the first fifteen years of the twentieth century alone. When trying to discuss the impact of immigration on American society, historian Oscar Handlin

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wrote in his classic, The Uprooted, “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.”26 Yet like other scholars and observers before him, Handlin, was largely silent regarding the presence of Black immigrants within the United States. From 1900 to 1930, more than forty thousand Black men and women immigrated to the United States, most of them hailing from the Anglophone Caribbean.27 Immigration—the very process of moving to and settling in another country—affected the consciousness of West Indians such as those who eventually formed the nucleus of the HUC. Trying to put this phenomenon in perspective, historian Winston James reports that the influx of African peoples to North America shifted from 411 migrants in 1899 to 12,243 people annually circa 1924. The bulk of Black newcomers hailed from the Caribbean archipelago and the outlying Latin American region (Panama, Guyana, etc.) with the remainder coming from the Azores, Cape Verde, and various points on the African continent. At the height of this wave of mass migration, the Black immigrant populace in America had grown from twenty thousand at the turn of the century to roughly a hundred thousand. In this lesser-known trend within the “Great Migration” of African Americans into the urban North, Afro-Caribbean peoples and Africans truly participated in making Harlem the major crossroads of the modern African diaspora. By 1930, it was estimated that more than a quarter of Black Harlemites (fifty thousand men and women, conservatively speaking) were of Caribbean or African origin. The arrival of Black immigrants during this period introduced an international aspect to race relations during the early twentieth century. Although not born and bred in the United States, Afro-Caribbean peoples were enduring severe racism and social oppression just like their African American contemporaries. Some newcomers chose to adopt an extraordinary sense of Afro-Caribbean identity rather than work toward bridging divides within the existing Black community. W.A. Domingo, a founding member of the HUC, expounded the importance of West Indian immigration to racial uplift in America. Domingo declared that the outstanding contribution of West Indians to American Negro Life is the insistent assertion of their manhood in an environment that demands too much servility and unprotesting acquiescence from men of African blood. This unwillingness to conform and be standardized, to accept tamely an inferior status and abdicate their humanity, finds an open expression in the activities of the foreign-born Negro in America. 28

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Black immigrants complicated the formative racial uplift agendas proposed by African American leaders, who hoped to Americanize immigrants. In her study of Afro-Caribbean immigration to Harlem during the early twentieth century, historian Irma Watkins-Owens asserts, “Native-born African American leaders hoped the masses as well as the poets and business people would help establish a ‘representative Negro’ in a model twentieth-century community.” In keeping with that spirit, such a community was to be patterned after “racial uplift,” largely defined by growing social-class aspirations that would lead them to engage in organized demands for social equality, as well as move toward an economic foothold in a capitalist society. Tensions ensued when, as Irma Watkins-Owens illustrates, African American leaders expected Black immigrants, as men and women of color, to “conform to the native-born Black majority’s interests and work toward the race’s directed goals.”29 Whether these expectations were instrumental or not, there is clear indication that the U.S. government sought to eliminate Black immigration into the country by the 1920s. The racist logic and intentions behind the immigration quota legislation of 1921 and the National Origin Act of 1924 were clear from the start.30 By fixing the annual quotas of immigrants to percentages represented in 1890, the new legislation gave undue preference to immigrants from northern and western Europe. But the racial prejudice demonstrated by American lawmakers ran even deeper than that. Written at the height of these debates, Maurice R. Davie’s tract, A Constructive Immigration Policy, illustrated the anti-Black dimension of the pending immigration laws quite clearly: There is a need at the present time of excluding other dark skinned races, a need which will undoubtedly increase unless some action is taken. From 1899 to 1922 there were admitted to this country over one hundred and fifteen thousand African blacks, and more than 25, 000 West Indians other than Cubans. One would think that our Negro problem was already large enough without adding to it that way. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The recently enacted 3 per cent restriction law . . . applies to Africa and allows a yearly quota of only one hundred and twenty-two, so that now there is less danger from that source. But it would seem since we have applied the principle of exclusion to such people as the Chinese and Japanese that we should go the whole way and exclude the black-immigrant aliens. The barred zone should be extended to Africa and also to the West Indies, especially to Jamaica and the Bahamas, to stop the coming of blacks from these quarters.31

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While the United States would continue to exercise unlimited power within the Caribbean without compunction or reproach, Blacks from the region were being targeted for deliberate exclusion. Sociologist Ira DeA. Reid set America’s immigration policy toward Blacks in perspective by stating that “the principles established by the act of 1921 and extended by the act of 1924 thus marked an entire change in immigration policy. Since that time the volume of immigration has not been considered too large. The quota method was used to limit the number of immigrants entering the country, and, though not specifically mentioned the ideas of racial preference and eugenic differences were implied therein. The effect of this restrictive policy has been to flexibly regulate the flow of immigration to the United States.”32 But this capricious manipulation of immigration failed to stem an already changing tide. As both public officials and private citizens moved to restrict future Black immigration into the United States, the activities of those who were able to enter the country increased. The United States demonstrated its racist bias in its immigration policies but could not steal the sense of freedom and hope that resided in the hearts of Blacks still entering the country. After coming to America, the harsh attitudes and legislation put forth against immigration had an inverse effect on America’s new Afro-Caribbean populace. An increasing number of West Indians in the United States began to mobilize to ensure that America would allow future emigration by people of color. Rather than weakening the resolve of Black people from Africa and the West Indies, discriminatory laws against immigration ignited widespread agitation by numerous groups of Afro-Caribbean immigrants. The codification of America’s racist xenophobia and paranoid isolationism led to the political and social mobilization of Black newcomers for years to come.

Realizing “The Promise of American Life”: Race, Nation, and Class during the Progressive Era During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life had a significant influence upon the reform impulse of the Progressive era’s social justice movements. After reading Croly’s The Promise of American Life, Theodore Roosevelt was inspired to borrow the term “New Nationalism” as the title of his campaign platform during his 1912 election bid. Roosevelt’s intention was to develop a political agenda that sought to establish a moderately

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socialized democracy wherein the federal government was directly responsible for guaranteeing the commonweal.33 Central to this “promise” for citizens and immigrants alike was the belief that the United States would become, in the words of Croly, an “Ideal Society” in the foreseeable future, based on its liberal democratic ideals. And, based on America’s dogged commitment to capitalism, “widespread economic prosperity as well as political freedom and equality were to be the sine qua non of this ‘Ideal Society’ [emphasis added].”34 Hence, the Ideal Society concentrated on the expectation of economic prosperity, political freedom, and social equality as the utmost realization of the promise of American life. In addition, Croly emphasized that hopes for a better future by intellectuals and experts had to be supplanted by the deliberate efforts of an activist federal government. For Blacks, of course, this notion would be sorely tested during the early twentieth century. During the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, the backlash against the civil and human rights of African Americans intensified long before the Washington/DuBois feud took shape. The end of the 1890s had largely circumscribed the overall political experience of Blacks in America and within the larger international context circumscribed by state-sanctioned racial oppression. In the United States, African Americans were forced to witness the systematic dismantling of their civil and human rights following Reconstruction. Although the years after the Civil War saw the successful passage of the Civil Rights Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments) as well as the general restructuring of the American political economic order through the abolition of chattel slavery, the actual work of Reconstruction had largely gone unfinished. Even with the gradual accumulation of property and acquisition of education by a small number of African Americans, there still existed a vast majority of Blacks that were subjected to economic privation and were largely uneducated. In other words, in the racial climate of the day, this growing disparity of educational attainment and material success did not translate into any semblance of privilege or comfort for freedpeople. During the half-century following emancipation, segregation and racial terrorism became the definitive aspect of race relations in America. For example, significant reinterpretations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments left all Blacks vulnerable to the exclusionary vision of segregationist legislatures in the South. Historian Nell Painter opines, “Beginning with the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, the Court increasingly used the due process clause of the 14th Amendment

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to protect corporations from state regulation rather than the civil rights of persons.”35 In addition, the conservative Court decisions of the day also contended that the Fourteenth Amendment only defended the rights of Blacks regarding their national citizenship. Based on this logic, the federal government allegedly could not protect men and women of color against encroachments of their civil rights on a state, much less an individual, level.36 By all accounts, Black America found itself utterly betrayed by the law of the land during the twilight years of the nineteenth century. Although Plessy v. Ferguson has become the most emblematic of a series of pejorative Supreme Court decisions that legalized the segregation of all public spaces, subsequent Court rulings such as Williams v. Mississippi (1898), Giles v. Harris (1903), Giles v. Teasley (1904) were even more instrumental in allowing the wholesale disenfranchisement of Blacks in the South. 37 As historian Mary Frances Berry asserts, “Whether its policy was action or inaction, the national government has used the Constitution in such a way as to make the law the instrument for maintaining a racist status quo.”38 The belief that the law could provide equal protection of minority rights while representing the will of the majority was proven an utter fallacy during the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, Berry adds, “In 1900, the black man’s position was not markedly improved over his status as a slave. He stood outside the law; his legal attempts to seek justice, as well as his militant enterprises were frustrated. There was no enlightened view of how to solve the problem of racial violence within the framework of the Constitution.”39 In the meantime, Blacks in the North were nearly as unfortunate as their Southern contemporaries. State laws did not deter whites from practicing residential segregation, racial discrimination in the economic realm, and segregated public and educational systems, and Blacks were frustrated in their attempts to fight Northern racism. By and large, African American political activity in the North plummeted during the early 1900s. Although Blacks in public office had become a visible minority in the North well into the 1890s, by the start of the twentieth century, however, the notion of Blacks in elected office had become all too rare. Despite partisan and biographical differences, the Progressive-era politics of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson were more similar than not with respect to the racial subordination of all peoples of color to white supremacy under the guise of American imperialism. The dramatic change in the political destiny

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of Blacks in America became most evident in the nation’s capital during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. From Washington, DC, Roosevelt spent much of his first term singing the praises of Black soldiers’ bravery during the Spanish-American War, conferring with Booker T. Washington at the White House, and making several controversial Black political appointments in the South. But by his second presidential term, Roosevelt changed his tune completely. He became increasingly linked to the conservative “lily whiteism” of the Republican Party’s southern wing, a movement that continued well into the 1920s.40 By 1905, Roosevelt was touring the states of the former Confederacy and stating his admiration for the South’s past and present leadership. He further enraged his once loyal Black constituency by his blandishment of the Black soldiers embroiled in the riots that occurred in Brownsville, Texas, that year. Moreover, the president’s comments to Congress in which he asserted that lynching was, in fact, the inevitable result of Black male sexual assaults on white femininity proved extremely disheartening. Theodore Roosevelt was hardly the only politician on the national scene during the Progressive era heaping such offenses upon America’s Black populace, however. In fact, as historian Rayford Logan has noted in his landmark study, The Betrayal of the Negro, race relations were in utter disarray during the first two decades of the twentieth century. A brief look at the policies and practices of the presidents that succeeded Roosevelt illustrates a fairly consistent strand of racial antagonism in the White House. For instance, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s handpicked successor as president, not only bent to white political pressure to deny Blacks any appointed offices, but also openly supported regulations that circumscribed Black voting rights. The racial segregation of federal offices in the nation’s capital was another of Taft’s ways of dealing with the “Negro Problem” in Washington, DC. Though Taft initiated this policy, Woodrow Wilson—his Democratic successor—actively supported, implemented, and even expanded the segregationist agenda. Under the Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson administrations, the federal government witnessed Blacks being victimized by marauding white mobs in race riots in Statesboro, GA, Springfield, IL, Brownsville, TX, Atlanta, GA, and Chicago, IL, but was not moved to action. Such racial antipathy during the height of the Progressive era is not surprising, however, since the federal government did nothing to address the ruthless lynching of Black men throughout the American South.41 By the onset of the First World War, civil rights for Black men and women nationwide had almost

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totally eroded. The demise of Progressivism was not, however, the end of Black America’s dreams about the future of the race. Even as the political terrain of America was shifting, the potential for improving the status of Black people in the United States had, in turn, begun to change the course of racial uplift.

Making of a Racial Utopia: Urban Black Community Formation in Harlem In the face of unrelenting white racism, African Americans began to forge a new way of defining their collective welfare. The transformation of Harlem into America’s foremost urban Black community was interpreted by a host of Black political leaders and intellectuals as the surest means of guaranteeing the race’s survival. In a nation undergoing enormous changes, a place like Harlem spoke to native-born and foreign-born Blacks as a space that they could call their own. Since the start of the twentieth century, Harlem has been attractive to Black people in America as the heart of Black political, economic, and social activity and as a burgeoning cultural repository. Unfortunately, it was also born from the manifestations of staunch racism of white Americans, ranging from residential segregation and exploitation to job discrimination to racially motivated violence. These factors helped create the harsh and inhospitable reality that persists in Harlem today. Black people’s basic need for security and livelihood were integral to Harlem’s conversion to a Black community, but other forces also kept that community “in its place,” both internally and externally. Nevertheless, there was clearly a deeper significance to Black people’s decision to relocate to locales such as Harlem. In his 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods, author Paul Laurence Dunbar portrayed Harlem as a veritable heaven on earth. Dunbar depicts three Black Southerners who made plans to escape to New York City. Echoing the thoughts and sentiments of countless Black newcomers, Dunbar noted that they “had heard of New York as a plan vague and far away, a city that, like Heaven, to them had existed by faith alone. All the days of their lives they had heard of it, and it seemed to them the centre of all the glory, all the wealth, and all the freedom of the world.”42 When bringing the forces of migration, immigration, and urbanization into historical perspective for Blacks, it is useful to note that, bereft of formal networks that could provide a thriving social life or secure jobs, Blacks moved somewhere else in

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pursuit of steady and gainful employment. Thus, as historian Howard Chudacoff notes, “the mix of individual choice with a community’s particular social structure determined the meaning of mobility.”43 Historian and scholar John Henrik Clarke claimed, “Harlem was the nerve center of advancing black America. Harlem is more than a community—it is a city within a city—the most famous black city in the world.”44 As the Mecca for Black artists, entrepreneurs, political and religious leaders, intellectuals, and other luminaries, Harlem became “the cultural and intellectual capital of the black race in the Western world.”45 That sentiment has been shared and expressed by many individuals such as renowned poet and writer Claude McKay, who appropriately dubbed Harlem a “Negro metropolis,” rich and thriving in its wealth of culture drawn from every corner of the African diaspora. Arguably, James Weldon Johnson was among the chief architects of racial utopianism in Harlem. Using his talents as an artist, intellectual, and political visionary, Johnson advocated a bold new interpretation of future racial uplift. During much of his career, his writings explored the dynamic wonders of the African diaspora’s convergence in uptown Manhattan. Moreover, he was among a vanguard of Black intellectuals who saw the unfolding of a better destiny for Black men and women by reshaping their urban environments to suit their needs. By articulating a concept wherein an urban community of Blacks drawn from every conceivable walk of life worked in unison to overcome their larger struggle, Johnson saw Harlem as more than a by-product of racism. Historian Cary Wintz notes that Johnson’s laudatory history of Harlem, Black Manhattan, concluded “with the claim that Harlem would prove to be the great laboratory in which all of the racial misconceptions of white America would be laid to rest.”46 For James W. Johnson, Harlem proved that Blacks could reside together in the urban North in large numbers without causing social calamity or racial disorder, demonstrating “the ability of Blacks to create a viable community which offered its inhabitants opportunity and decent conditions.”47 In Johnson’s view, racial utopianism used Harlem as a practical symbol of the ideal substance, style, and action Blacks needed to end racial oppression. By its very definition, a utopia is a fantastic and ahistorical project that literally means “no place” but also “good place.” In the most classic sense, then, utopias only exist within the human imagination. By “utopian,” I mean any social philosophy that ascribes to the promotion of certain desired (and presumably desirable) values and

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practices by presenting them in an ideal state or society. The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed a steady growth of utopian thought within Western societies. During the late 1800s, social thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Charles Fourier, Henry David Thoreau, Henry George, and Edward Bellamy among others were all quite influential in proposing utopian frameworks that they hoped would foster better, more equitable social relations.48 Although by the turn of the century, lofty visions of a perfect society free of exploitation, domination, and alienation abounded, implementation of such ideas was another question altogether. As social critic Russell Jacoby suggests, while literary and theoretical utopias introduce new and improved paradigms of how social reformers imagine “the future could fundamentally surpass the present,” they are usually much less successful in providing any systematic means of devising a new social order.49 Yet, many segments of modern American society sought to forge ahead and create intentionally idealistic communities. This utopian imperative was no less a factor for Black men and women of the day. The hope of creating an ideal community where intraracial ethnic and class diversity could enrich the welfare of the entire race was alive and well within Black America at the dawn of the twentieth century. Even as Jim Crow was becoming codified throughout white America, Blacks were transforming Harlem into the site of their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It became a crucial center of cultural, intellectual, economic, and political activity. As historian Cheryl Lynn Greenberg points out, “the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association had their headquarters in Harlem. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers began there. Black political clubs flourished, as did an outspoken and activist black press.”50 Cultural critic Harold Cruse says, “Harlem has, in this century, become the most strategically important community of black America” since it “is still the pivot of the black world’s quest for identity and salvation. The way Harlem goes (or does not go) so goes all black America.”51 But this concept of racial utopianism had its critics from its earliest development. In 1901, W.E.B. DuBois asked, “How can Negroes organize for social and economic purposes and not by that organizing draw and invite the drawing of the color line?”52 DuBois alluded to a troubling dynamic within urban Black communities such as Harlem.

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Among the residents of urban Black communities, the personal demographics of men, women, and children of African descent range as widely as their particular needs. With that in mind, each attempt to improve Black residents’ immediate environs indicates the value Black residents placed on the higher quality of and greater access to amenities believed essential to all humans. To the landlords and realtors, however, the needs of Black people are often in conflict with the perceived value of the spaces they occupy. It is in such situations that the immediate relation of Black men and women to their urban environment and the dominant power structure comes into question. From the 1870s to the 1890s, Harlem was an upper- and uppermiddle-class Manhattan suburb, the city’s very first; the community was deemed by most people of the day as a “residential heaven” that attracted the “older and wealthier New Yorkers—‘people of taste and wealth’ ” in addition to the air of respectability such residents entail. 53 From the colonial era until the nineteenth century, Harlem’s early notoriety spoke of the idyllic nature of this remote area of New York City. One author noted that: From being a remote village, self-centered, intensely individual in most of its traits, it came to take on the character of a popular, and . . . distinguished neighbor of New York. Under new distributions of its lands and beautiful estates, adorned by more modern mansions, the town began to reflect the greater culture of the neighboring city. Prosperous New Yorkers turned to the beautiful rolling land at the upper end of the island in search of summer homes, and newcomers from over the sea found within its borders scenic charms and conditions of life greatly to be desired. 54

The combined forces of the Great Migration, urbanization, and industrialization came to bear upon fair Harlem, and the upper-class whites moved out toward quieter residential areas from 1890 to 1914. Blacks migrating to New York during this time were not merely attracted to Harlem because of its newly available housing but also by the fact that “its name was a symbol of elegance and distinction, not derogation; its streets and avenues were broad, well-paved, clean and tree-lined, not narrow and dirty; its homes were spacious, replete with the best modern facilities . . . For the first and generally last time in the history of New York City, Negroes were able to live in decent homes in a respectable neighborhood.”55 Blacks seeking to occupy this grand section of New York had to pay exorbitant prices established by realtors, Black and white, who hoped to get choice properties rented or

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sold at the highest dollar values imaginable. It was generally believed that Blacks were the only ones willing to move to Harlem under such blatantly unfair conditions. In this instance, the lure of immense profits superseded class and race prejudices on the part of Harlem realtors and landlords. During the height of industrialization, the inner city was rapidly becoming an area where the land was controlled and exploited by business interests rather than those who resided and labored there. Once an urban Black community was established in uptown New York, realtors, as well as larger New York society, looked at Harlem in a radically different light. As Osofsky cites, “the community advertised as a place of exclusive residence in the 1880’s and 1890’s was now claimed to be the perfect area in which to locate factories. Land was cheap . . . transportation good, and the neighborhood overflowing with unskilled, low-income families willing to accept any kind of employment.”56 Osofsky also notes that “while intellectuals and bohemians created an image of a semi-mythical dreamland north of Central Park, Negro Harlem became the most appalling slum in the entire city; the slum that has not changed significantly since the 1920s.”57 Many scholars have employed the rhetoric of ghettoization to problematize how the Black residents transformed uptown Manhattan “from a potentially ideal community to a neighborhood with manifold social and economic problems” that only seem to worsen. 58 In this rhetoric, the urban Black community has a largely negative connotation of being a vast wasteland that destroyed the minds, souls, and bodies of African American men, women, and children and ultimately threaten the pristine sanctity of mainstream America. These assumptions made about the urban Black experience are largely focused on powerlessness, victimization, and immorality of the overall Black community, leaving aside attributes within the overall urban Black experience that may be construed as agency and determinism. The term and conceptualization of “the ghetto” has been imposed upon Black urban centers as a veritable curse and condemnation of people as a whole, residential status notwithstanding. No matter what progress Blacks living in cities across the nation make toward achieving an idealized American norm of a good community, the label of ghetto has remained attached to their urban environs. At one point or another, all other ethnic minorities in America such as the Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, and others have consolidated their respective populations into racially segregated housing areas that could be

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deemed ghettoes. But with the passage of time, in addition to the undeniable benefit of white skin privilege, they have been able to escape this term until it is presently applicable only to those urban areas where Blacks reside. Historically, the main “difference between immigrant enclaves and black ghettos is that whereas ghettos became a permanent feature of black residential life, ethnic enclaves proved to be a fleeting, transitory stage in the process of immigrant assimilation.”59 The concept of the ghetto has only become vilified and abject in its concretized association with Black America, to the point where the only examples that come to mind have Black bodies firmly ensconced within them. As a new paradigm, racial utopianism offers an alternative means of envisioning the urban Black experience, one that no longer rests solely on the pejorative connotations of the ghetto. As historian Earl Lewis suggests, “In their efforts, [Black people] modified the political language so that segregation became congregation; in doing so, they used structural limitations to achieve a certain degree of autonomy and, by extension, power.” Blacks of the period sought to redefine themselves as well as their world.60 Herein lies the crux of racial utopianism: can segregation be inverted and transformed into a means of self-determination? Black ethnic heterogeneity lent an extraordinary level of fervor and vitality to the overall development of Harlem as a seedbed for racial utopianism in uptown Manhattan during the first two decades of the twentieth century. More than anything else, social conglomeration gave Harlem its defining character. One aptly titled New York Times article of the period noted that “Colored Citizens Prospered in Little Africa.” The fact that men and women from the farthest reaches of the African diaspora could call Harlem home was a truly powerful step in developing a more complex sense of racial identity. Simply stated, Harlem’s rise as the premier urban Black community marked a shift in Black people’s understanding of group consciousness and collective identity; rather than solely concentrating on where they were from, Harlem became a true “home away from home.” As historian Earl Lewis writes, “Each group has come with its own separate motives and for its own special ends, but their greatest experience has been the finding of one another. Proscription and prejudice have thrown these dissimilar elements into a common area of contact and interaction. Within this area, race sympathy and unity have determined a further fusing of sentiment and experience. So what began in terms of segregation becomes more and more, as its elements mix and react, the laboratory of a great race-welding.”61

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The specific historicity of Harlem’s racial transformation is important in relation to the development of other urban Black enclaves in America. Ironically, the structural manifestations of racism (i.e., racial discrimination, segregation, limited employment, etc.) that sparked the necessity of Harlem and drove Black newcomers to make the city their own fueled the growing sense of racial utopianism emerging from Harlem’s most notable visionaries. For better or worse, the unfolding of race relations both in New York City and the larger American society made Harlem the litmus test of racial uplift in the United States. Countless Black newcomers from around the nation and the globe like Ethelred Brown sought to make racial utopia a reality. In this spirit, the pastor and members of the fledgling Harlem Unitarian Church concluded that Harlem was the perfect place for them and their somewhat radical beliefs. Once there, the members of this newly inaugurated Black Unitarian movement had to make sense of their place and religion in this makeshift heavenly city.

2 Building the Church of Tomorrow: Race, Religion, and Social Thought in the Harlem Unitarian Church The church of yesterday had its faults—nay more, its sins, but it fulfilled a necessary and noble function. The church of to-day [sic] has also its limitations and its faults— not the least of which is that it is out [of] tune with the ideas of the present, but it is nevertheless an institution without which the world would be ethically and spiritually poorer. And so, if the men and women of tomorrow will be fundamentally the same as the men and women of to-day—with the same longings and aspirations, the same spiritual hunger—then the church will be a necessary and useful part destined to discharge its own peculiar and distinctive functions. —Rev. Ethelred Brown, “Building the Church of Tomorrow”1 The Negro churches of Harlem are visible evidence of the struggle of an aspiring people to express the best of life within them . . . [T]hey are organizing and developing personnel and membership to conserve the spiritual and ethical values of the race. They are struggling, often against great odds, to provide an avenue of selfexpression to a people that is seeking to serve and to walk humbly with God. —George E. Haynes, “The Church and the Negro Spirit” 2

In 1938, Rev. Ethelred Brown delivered a sermon entitled “Building the Church of Tomorrow” that illustrated his vision for the future promise of Black religion. For nearly twenty years, the Harlem Unitarian Church had struggled to carve a niche for itself in uptown Manhattan’s religious scene. Since its founding in 1920, the pastor, congregation, and friendly observers of the HUC often used labels

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such as “modern,” “intelligent,” “rational,” and “liberal” to distinguish this institution from the broad spectrum of religious gatherings that generally attracted Harlemites of the day. A critic of the historic Black Church tradition, Ethelred Brown offered a strident commentary about Black religion’s shortcomings, especially attacking Black churches for being politically inert, overtly emotional, and antiintellectual in their leadership. From Rev. Brown’s perspective, these three problems arose from the growing religious conservatism within Black America. George Haynes’s 1925 article, “The Church and the Negro Spirit,” succinctly outlined the orthodox dimension of Black Christianity during the early half of the twentieth century. Haynes stated that it was “at once the most resourceful and most characteristic organized force in the life of . . . Negroes.” He further argues that its centrality within the Black experience in this country has been predicated by four major concerns. First, Haynes endorses the notion that the acquisition of church property and other capital investments were meant to be a priority for Black Christians in order to attract and serve the growing Black populace was vital. Second, Black church denominations must ensure the retention of members regardless of where those individuals relocated around America. Next, the Black religious organizations of the period, whether led by laity or clergy, had to address the increasing social concerns of those faithful men, women, and children. Finally, Haynes put members of the Black Church tradition on notice that there was an “increasing throng of intelligent people” within the Black community and the churches had to provide a satisfactory environment for the rise of an intellectually informed body. The overarching premise of the Black Church tradition from Haynes’s perspective was growing independence and voluntary separation from the religion of whites. In this quest for religious and overall social autonomy, Haynes contended that the Black churches of Harlem were rapidly setting the standard for the future. During the same era, Rev. Brown founded a church that went against the grain of many religious fellowships in Harlem. Brown felt that the Black Church tradition was losing sight of its claims to the heart and soul of Black America. The HUC was intended to merge spiritual and intellectual dimensions of Black people’s lives to make them more politically active. But the HUC would have to face many challenges en route to such a goal. The Harlem Unitarian Church arose from the desire of a small but vocal group intent on building the church of tomorrow. Such an

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institution would be a setting where individuals could embrace a religiosity that matched their closely held social values and political views. In the meantime, the choices they faced and the subsequent decisions they made marked an extreme departure within the Black religious experience in the United States. While bringing forth an interesting mix of spirituality and intellectualism in the shape of “a temple and a forum,” the HUC broke down social conventions across the racial divide. On the one hand, efforts to spread Unitarianism among Harlem’s Black populace meant the de facto racial integration of that religious denomination. On the other hand, the church posed an alternative to the prevalent trend within the Black Church tradition in America toward orthodoxy that arguably stifled the variety of Black religious expression. Hence, building the church of tomorrow was no small feat. To speak of the HUC with reference to both American Unitarianism and the historic Black Church tradition in this country requires investigating religiosity from the viewpoint of the faithful. The story of the HUC suggests a new direction in the study of American religion that I call religious relativism. Rather than narrowly defining religion by its description (formal or functional), origination (ordinary or extraordinary), or direction (“this worldly” or “otherworldly”), religious relativism enables one to assess what religion means to social and historical actors within a particular setting as they attempt to make sense of themselves and their world. 3

From Religious Dissent to Religious Liberalism: Unitarianism, Race, and the Paradox of American Liberal Christianity Embedded deep within Unitarianism is a history of ideas pertaining to how Americans understand individual liberty and intellectual autonomy as expressed in religious principles. When speaking of either concept, religion in this instance reflects how Unitarian men and women envision their spiritual, intellectual, and political realities. It is no bit of overstatement to say that Unitarians have been very prominent figures throughout American history, especially in the fields of politics, education, and literature. Aside from Channing, the most influential Unitarians from this era included Joseph Priestly, Theodore Parker, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thomas Starr King (who also identified himself theologically as a

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Universalist). Even U.S. presidents such as John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft were counted amongst the ranks of American Unitarians. Historically, Unitarians have been identified as outspoken activists on a whole host of social justice issues such as pacifism, educational reform, prison reform, orphanages, capital punishment, temperance, ministry to the poor, and the abolition of slavery. With the eventual rise of the AUA, the politically, intellectually, and theologically liberal voice of American Christianity was soon heard throughout the country. The first and most logical question for many readers may be “What exactly is an Unitarian?” Originally, all Unitarians were Christians who did not believe in the Holy Trinity of God (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). Instead, they believe in the unity, or single aspect, of God. Although Unitarian beliefs have existed probably since the crucifixion and death of Jesus, religious believers did not actually gather to form faith communities based on the ideas until the mid-1500s in Transylvania and the mid-1600s in England. The religious authorities of the times saw these early Unitarians as heretics and often persecuted them. Important figures from this period in Unitarian history include John Biddle, Francis David, Michael Servetus, King John Sigismund, and Faustus Socinus (also known as Fausto Paolo Sozzini). As stated by the AUA virtually from its inception, the doctrines of Unitarianism emphasize the oneness of God (Trinitarianism is rejected as unscriptural since the doctrine of the Trinity was not explicitly addressed in the Bible); the strict humanity of Jesus, although all persons, as children of God, are divine; the perfectibility of human character (the doctrine of total depravity that is central to Calvinism is denied in outright fashion); and the ultimate salvation of all souls. Salvation is by character; character is not an end, but a means, and salvation lies in being saved from sin here, not from punishment hereafter.4 Stated another way, scholar Louis Menand argues that “Unitarianism rescued the integrity of the individual conscience from Calvinism.”5 In addition to those tenets, Unitarianism also endorses a profoundly liberating perception of divine justice on earth and in the afterlife. According to Unitarian beliefs, heaven is understood as an ideal state rather than a place. In like manner, the Unitarians dismiss prevalent Christian notions of Hell and eternal damnation as irreconcilable with the existence of a benevolent and omnipotent deity. In essence, Unitarians have actively sought “heaven on earth.” Finally, Unitarians typically do not regard the Bible as an infallible or seamless

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written work. In discussing the origins of Unitarianism, theologian Anthony Pinn contends: Unitarianism as such was not explicitly humanistic, but its theological liberalism contained an openness to inquiry that easily incorporated the activism that marked humanism and social reform efforts of this period.6

This theological “openness” can neither be overlooked nor underestimated in explaining how Unitarianism gained traction in American soil, especially New England, still very much a renowned bastion of Calvinism during the nineteenth century. The American Unitarian movement allowed both theists and nontheists a place in the church as well as in social transformation. Thus, over time, the Unitarians in the United States began giving less attention to the absolute and sovereign concept of God, relying instead on human potential and accountability. Consequently, humans were required, then, to develop ways by which life could be lived fully and lived well strictly on their own terms. By most accounts, Unitarianism in the United States emerged from the rural, Congregationalist enclaves of New England a few decades after the American Revolution. As religious scholar Ninian Smart suggests, unlike its situation across the European continent, Unitarianism flourished in the early American republic, due in no small part to the emerging spirit of religious freedom.7 After delivering his legendary sermon entitled “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819, Rev. William Ellery Channing of Boston’s Federal Street Church became the unequivocal standard bearer of American Unitarianism. Channing’s oration basically outlined the central beliefs of Christian rationalism with its clear and poignant insights into ethics, Biblicism, theological anthropology, soteriology, and Arianism (adherence to the theological doctrines of Arius thus denying that Jesus was of the same divine substance as God and instead believing that he was simply the highest or most perfect of all created beings). Furthermore, his message served as a grand declaration of the burgeoning liberal Christian movement in the face of New England Congregationalism’s evangelical orthodoxy. On the heels of this event, there was a tragic schism that formed between the religious liberals and their evangelical counterparts, most clearly demonstrated by Channing’s key role in the formation of the Berry Street Conference in 1820 as a group of liberal Christians that was by its own description “a bond of union, a

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means of intercourse, and an opportunity of conference.” A series of informal discussions ensued over the following years with a number of the younger ministers excited about the prospects of initiating a new organization that would enable the liberal Christians to band together as a self-defined group. On May 25, 1825, a faction of 125 Unitarian churches broke away from the Congregationalists and formed a denomination called the American Unitarian Association (AUA). Since all the AUA’s churches except twenty-five were originally in Massachusetts, the impressive strength of the upstart liberal Christian movement was most evident in the eastern New England region. Most importantly, the appointment of the Unitarian theologian Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College in 1805 paved the way for the Unitarian domination of America’s foremost institution of higher learning. Ware Sr. was instrumental in the formation of the Harvard Divinity School, essentially establishing Unitarianism as the theological and intellectual mainstay at the seminary for several decades. Eager to sharpen the distinctions between their camps, he was intent upon publishing his debates with eminent Congregationalists in the 1820s, thus fomenting greater controversy between the liberals and evangelical rivals. Moreover, his son and namesake, Henry Ware Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps both as a Harvard Divinity professor and Unitarian theologian thus extending the growing impact of Unitarianism to another generation. This is most apparent in Henry Ware Jr.’s earlier role as intellectual and ministerial mentor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a result, within roughly twenty years the liberals had essentially seized control of America’s premier educational establishment and were steadily producing ministers and other graduates who would advance the cause of Christian rationalism boldly across the land. With Harvard essentially serving as the headquarters for the Unitarians, it seemed that the widespread expansion of Unitarianism was going to be a fait accompli. The liberal Christians, as they preferred to be called at the time, certainly felt that the future prospects for their church movement were bright and promising indeed. For instance, so great was the fascination surrounding the Unitarian ascendancy amongst the American intelligentsia of the era that Thomas Jefferson wrote letters to several of his colleagues such as Timothy Pickering and Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse during the last decades of his life stating that it was with great delight that he witnessed the rising tide of liberal Christianity.8 Unlike their evangelical

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counterparts, the Unitarians sought to advance their liberal cause through reasoned disputation and rational persuasion and not through pietism and revivalism. The chief means of disseminating the ideas and concerns of Unitarianism were the sermon and all modes of the written word, including books, pamphlets, and periodicals. As a new crop of liberal Christian ministers—many of them Harvardeducated—left the New England area to find and establish new Unitarian congregations not only in Mid-Atlantic cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, but also in Louisville, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and other southern locales, thus representing a great leap forward in the spread of Christian rationalism in the early nineteenth century. Despite such a momentous start, the spread of liberal Christianity in general and Unitarianism in particular never quite lived up to the expectations of either its adherents or supporters. While the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century was vitally important to the wholesale Christianization of early America, these revivalist movements were not particularly kind to liberal modes of Christianity such as Unitarianism. For instance, although the Harvard brand of liberal Christianity had maintained dominance in Boston and eastern Massachusetts, its hegemony in both western Massachusetts and Connecticut was severely undermined by the aggressive resurgence of Edwardean Congregationalists graduating from Yale. Not only had the liberal Christian challenge forced the “Old Lights” and “New Lights” Calvinists to reconcile in a timely fashion but it also fomented among them a genuine desire to both promote revivals and pursue missionary activities. Moreover, even though there were Unitarian churches that were thriving in various parts of the antebellum South, their growth was soon thwarted by the insurgent force of revivalism representative of the Second Great Awakening as well as the rising tide of proslavery sentiment throughout the region. Oddly enough, what one generation deems liberal insurgency is often viewed as orthodox hegemony by the next. The evolution of Unitarianism circa the Second Great Awakening from an upstart local church movement to an organized national network of likeminded individuals and congregations illustrates this tendency. From its earliest days, the AUA established an interesting organizational structure in which it was a voluntary association of individuals not churches. By this virtue, membership was obtained through the coordination of auxiliaries in local Unitarian congregations. Thus, the AUA was originally a loose-knit confederation. While this eased

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initial fears of heavy-handed bureaucratic control in the AUA, this situation presented the nascent denomination in dire financial straits as well as being subject to growing theological disputes. The quest to effectively swell the numbers of Unitarian ministers and congregations was well met by the founding of Meadville Theological School in 1844. In addition to demonstrating the liberal Christians’ commitment to theological education, the new seminary in rural Meadville, Pennsylvania, could also be seen as an attempt to capitalize on America’s westward expansion. Meadville was the AUA’s attempt to tap into the nation’s spirit of Manifest Destiny by encouraging church growth in the western frontier. By the 1840s and 1850s, most of the pioneering Unitarian ministers and theologians had faded away to be replaced by a younger cohort of church leaders such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists who were dissatisfied and ultimately dismissive of what they viewed as an archaic mode of liberal theology. Unitarianism withstood these challenges but did not emerge unchanged. Even at such an early juncture in the AUA’s existence, the Unitarians had not grasped the core mission of any denomination as a growing community of faith. As historian Richard Hofstadter comments more generally about the social impulses upon denominationalism in the United States, “in a society so mobile and fluid, with so many unchurched persons to be gained for the faith, the basic purpose of the denominations, to which all other purposes and commitments were subordinated, was that of gaining converts.”9 In a paradigm that persists until now, the cool, logical detachment of Unitarian thought could not keep pace with the passionate proselytizing intrinsic to evangelical theology. Despite diligent attempts, a great passion for social justice, and extremely well-educated ministerial leadership, liberal Christians simply could not keep pace with the fervor of the evangelicals. Conversely, in the wake of the Second Great Awakening’s mass revivalism, the evangelicals such as Rev. Charles G. Finney innately understood what the liberals could never apprehend: the ultimate test of religion’s impact on the layperson has been the conversion experience while the ultimate test of religion’s impact for the minister always has been the ability to induce that selfsame experience. As such, it has been perennially proven within American society that “the minister’s success in winning souls was taken as the decisive evidence that [the minister] preached the truth.”10 By the time Rev. Brown arrived in New York City and established the HUC, Unitarianism was approaching its first hundred years in

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existence. Yet while Rev. Brown and his followers believed that Unitarianism’s modernist revision of the Christian gospel could liberate Blacks and other oppressed peoples everywhere, the AUA did not share this outlook. Despite its commitment to somewhat lofty and progressive social values, the Unitarian denomination seemed much more attached to its institutional agenda than to seeking widespread social transformation and freedom for all. Despite the long-standing commitment of Unitarians to advancing social justice, it is important to note that American Unitarianism had an uneven record on the issue of race relations. Thus, the potential for any harmonious coexistence between the HUC and the AUA appeared quite untenable to say the least. Numerous scholars have studied the rise and development of Unitarianism in the United States. This school of liberal Christian doctrine is typically considered to have had its heyday during the first half of the nineteenth century, collapsing under the pressure of its own internal limitations. Most notably, these studies represent Unitarians as a clique of elite white males from the Northeast who adhered to the Enlightenment’s models of religion and reason in an attempt to escape their discomfort with the American provincialism epitomized by the Congregationalism of their day. In his classic work, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, theologian and sociologist H. Richard Niebuhr attests to the notion that Unitarianism was especially attractive to an emerging middle-class psychology because they were considered more rational, theoretical, and reserved than the religion of the masses. Moreover, Niebuhr asserted that Unitarianism and other types of liberal Christianity presented a somewhat perfect synergy with middle-class attitudes and values because “the related doctrines of human ability and of limited divine sovereignty were combined with the teaching of self-help and with faith in human progress.”11 Niebuhr’s insinuation about the nature of Unitarianism is not terribly veiled. He sees the Unitarian church not as a religion of the disinherited, marginalized, and oppressed but rather as a religion of the privileged, comfortable, and prosperous. Taken further, in his estimable two-volume history of Unitarianism, church historian Earl Morse Wilbur identifies three guiding principles within liberal Christianity that were noteworthy: complete intellectual freedom, reason, and tolerance. While these three elements are logical and adhere quite nicely to one another, Wilbur’s elevation of these particular ideals within the liberal Christian experience belies the fact that there are general assumptions about those who “get” the religion

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and those who can never “get” it. Wilbur’s comment seems to endorse the notion that since Unitarianism is a faith for the erudite and socially conscious person driven by free inquiry and personal choice, by its very nature it cannot—and should not—appeal to everyone. Rather than eliminating obstacles that would allow liberal Christian theology to spread freely and widely to any interested party, the composite portrait provided by the observations of Niebuhr and Wilbur reflects a tacit desire to depict Unitarianism in ways that reifies social and spiritual hierarchies of haves and have nots. Meanwhile, these scholars barely, if ever, mention women, the poor, or people of color— particularly African Americans—who embraced Unitarianism. Since it was not intended for such troublesome folks, scholars of Unitarianism did not feel compelled to even make note of their presence within the denomination. By way of illustration, while Unitarians historically have lauded themselves for their ability to embrace human difference, it takes very little effort to see that they were actually just as inconsistent and insensitive on the issue of racial diversity as any of their more conservative theological counterparts. And if we try to assign a systematic analysis of enlightened religious beliefs and works of social justice within Unitarianism in order to find a consistent line of reasoning concerning the matter of race, we find that no such intentional pattern ever emerges. When trying to understand the internal divisions concerning Unitarians’ attitudes about race, it is best to begin with William Ellery Channing, its chief ministerial spokesperson. Although Channing had family ties to the upscale New England merchant class by virtue of marriage as well as birth, it was fairly common knowledge that his parents had been slaveowners. George Gibbs, who was both Channing’s uncle and father-in-law, had amassed considerable wealth by supplying slave traders with rum from his distillery, a vital commodity that kept the Transatlantic Slave Trade in operation. As tempers were more heated on both sides of the slavery debate, Channing leapt into the growing fracas with the publication of a pamphlet simply entitled Slavery in 1835. In a particularly interesting take on the situation, Channing’s Slavery literally tries to find middle ground in this incendiary moral dispute by expressing his disapproval for both the abolitionists and the slaveowners. Channing’s ultimate conclusion in Slavery is that the best strategy for convincing the South to give up slavery was not by exercising political pressure but rather to use moral suasion. It must be kept in mind, however, that within a year or so of Slavery’s publication, numerous white abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and

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James G. Birney were being deliberately targeted and threatened with grave bodily harm by angry white mobs in the North and Midwest who were incensed by the outspokenness of the antislavery advocates.12 Under such circumstances, Channing’s proposal that abolitionists should simply try to win over the increasingly rabid and violent proslavery contingent by persuading them through civil discourse that slavery is wrong appears woefully misguided. It also must be understood that Channing’s equivocation and shortsightedness on the slavery issue was not limited only to him but also served as the prevailing liberal Christian stance on the matter. As the nerve center of Unitarianism, Harvard College served as a highly contested battleground where the proslavery forces were steadily on the offensive against abolitionists in their midst. If not openly in support of slavery, the majority of Harvard’s faculty was certainly opposed to any sort of agitation by abolitionists. A prime example of this antipathy toward the antislavery movement was demonstrated by the case of Charles Follen. A German poet who became the first professor of German at Harvard, Follen was a radical abolitionist. In 1835, Follen was dismissed from his faculty position at Harvard both for his involvement in the antislavery cause as well as his defiance of the administration on the issue of free speech. Follen’s friendship with Channing drew him to the Unitarian Church and led to his eventual ordination as a Unitarian minister in 1836. After seeking employment outside the Unitarian ministry for a few years, Follen became the minister of his own Unitarian congregation in New York City that became now known as All Souls Unitarian Church in 1838. He soon lost the position a year later because of his radical abolitionist views. In 1840, while returning home to Boston to dedicate a newly constructed church that he personally designed, Follen died tragically when his steamboat caught fire en route and sank in a storm in the Long Island Sound. None of Follen’s fellow Unitarian ministers— including his close friend Channing—were able to find any church in the city of Boston willing to hold a memorial service on his behalf because the laity were so strongly opposed to his antislavery stance.13 The prospects were not any better for other Unitarians who supported the abolitionist cause during the mid-1800s. Nearly a decade after the founding of the AUA, Lydia Maria Child, a white Unitarian, wrote An Appeal in Favor of That Class of American called African in 1833 after intense reading and contemplation about slavery. A novelist who was better known for writing children’s stories,

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Child’s publication of a book in which she described the dreadful history of slavery as well as the contemporary condition of the enslaved in America proved contentious. Even more, she proposed the slavery’s end not through any of the colonization schemes debating the return of the enslaved and free Blacks to the African continent as a de facto form of exile. Instead, Child contended that the best way of ending slavery was by assimilating newly freed Blacks into American society. Additionally, she endorsed the positive potential of education and interracial marriage as means of achieving her hopes that the United States might realistically become a multiracial republic. The Appeal had two main results. First, the book was influential in convincing many Americans of the need to bring slavery to an end. Wendell Phillips and William Ellery Channing were only two of countless readers who credited Child’s Appeal with their own changing attitudes about and increased commitment to the abolitionist cause. Second, Child’s popularity as an author plummeted and even though she continued to published more antislavery works in addition to her usually lighter fare, her writing career suffered mightily as a result of her controversial views. Although many of the Christian denominations in antebellum America participated in the divisive politics of the day and were literally split along sectional lines due to contrasting views on American slavery, it was fascinating to see how central Unitarians were in helping to foment the impending national crisis on both sides of this controversial issue. As the foremost Southern political and intellectual leader of his generation, Senator John C. Calhoun was a Unitarian who hailed from South Carolina. In 1850, Calhoun successfully pressed for President Millard Fillmore, a fellow Unitarian, to sign the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of that year, a political feat often attributed with intensifying the mounting sectional crisis that would result in the outbreak of the Civil War a decade later. For Calhoun, this deed was the culmination of several decades spent leading the proslavery faction in the U.S. Senate in the mid-nineteenth century, opposing both any legislative attempts to either limit the slavery’s westward expansion or abolish slavery entirely. Needless to say, he was also a major advocate of the Fugitive Slave Law, which enforced the complicity and cooperation of quasi-free Northern states in returning African Americans who escaped from slave plantations in the South. Without the slightest hint of irony, Calhoun expressed his defense of slavery as an institution in terms of liberty and selfdetermination for white male Southerners without any regard for the

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denial of those selfsame principles for enslaved African Americans. Yet while other Southern politicians in the antebellum era couched their support of slavery alternately as a “necessary evil,” Calhoun went further. In a famous speech on the Senate floor in February 1837, Calhoun extolled that slavery was actually a “positive good,” a claim based on his adamant belief in both white supremacy and paternalism. In all great civilizations, Calhoun argued, a privileged elite ruled over and enjoyed the fruits of the labor of a disadvantaged group. Unlike in Europe and the American North, however, where the aristocracy cast aside the laboring classes to die in abject poverty once they became too old or sick to work, enslaved Blacks in the South were cared for even when no longer useful. Rather than being denounced or ostracized for his views, Calhoun was heralded as a great statesman of the highest order. During the Civil War, the Confederacy honored Calhoun on a one-cent postage stamp that was printed but never officially released. His alma mater, Yale University, also honored Calhoun by having one of its undergraduate residence halls named “Calhoun College”14 and also erected a statue of Calhoun in Harkness Tower, which still serves as a prominent campus landmark to this day. Just as proslavery Unitarians like Calhoun and Fillmore used their personal beliefs and freely chosen morality to ensure the preservation of chattel slavery, there were other Unitarians who made conscious sacrifices and took deliberate risks in their effort to bring the enslavement of Blacks to an end. In 1851, Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister, organized the rescue of a Black fugitive in Syracuse, New York. Decades earlier, while making a trip to Washington DC, Baltimore, and Richmond, he saw enslaved workers working in the field. He credits this sight with stirring his passion to fight against inhuman bondage alongside the budding abolitionist movement of his era. After listening to William Lloyd Garrison, he became involved more directly in the emancipation of African Americans as a means of undermining the peculiar institution of slavery. As a result of his militant views, May was effectively isolated from his Unitarian colleagues in Boston and was banned from preaching in their churches. In 1833, May was a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments that was put forth by the American Anti-Slavery Society. A year later, he secretly began working as a “conductor” on the legendary Underground Railroad in an effort to help provide African American fugitives with safe haven from bounty hunters, slave catchers, and vigilante mobs. In 1859, the “Secret Six” (or the Committee of Six as they were alternately known) were six wealthy and learned gentlemen—Thomas

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Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Howe, Theodore Parker, Gerrit Smith, Franklin Sanborn, and George Luther Stearns—who secretly financed the radical abolitionist John Brown’s failed insurrection. In an attempt to match the bloodthirstiness of the proslavery supporters in equal measure, Brown planned to lead a small band of armed men to the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in order to capture the weapons cache and use those firearms to lead a full-scale slave rebellion that would engulf the South in a veritable race war. Soon after commencing the raid in October 1859, things went awry and Brown’s plan failed. Four of the Secret Six who financed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry were Unitarians (including Rev. Theodore Parker and Thomas Wentworth). However, it is unclear whether these men knew of Brown’s ultimate plan. During and after his trial, the New York Times and the New York Herald began to link their names with John Brown and his exploits. On November 7, 1859, Smith had himself confined to an insane asylum in an attempt to escape public retribution. During the same period, Sanborn, Howe and Stearns fled to Canada while Parker remained in Europe, all hoping to evade any possible punishment or imprisonment. Of the Secret Six, only Higginson remained in the United States. Higginson’s commitment to the antislavery campaign was so strong that he even arranged to have Brown rescued from his jail cell but, fully intending to die as a martyr for the abolitionist cause, Brown would not participate in the escape plan. Years later, at the height of the American Civil War, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white Unitarian, became the commanding officer of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Infantry, the first regiment of African American volunteers who joined the Union Army in order to fight in the Civil War in 1863.15 Whereas many Unitarians are generally conscientious objectors to military service, Shaw is merely one example of those who could believe that the Civil War was a “just war” intended to rid the nation of a great evil such as slavery. Most liberal Christians— including Unitarians—would view war and violence as human failures of varying magnitude to resolve conflicts by more rational and moral means. Be that as it may, these illustrations represent the extreme extent to which some Unitarians were willing to take a stand for the true meaning of liberation, even if it meant bloodshed and death. In her recent historical study of American secularism, social critic Susan Jacoby has tried to address the absence of Black men and women from most discussions about the evolution of free thought

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since the American Civil War. According to Jacoby, “there were several explanations for the lack of an influential freethought presence within the black community. Christianity, melded with elements of African spiritual beliefs and customs that somehow survived among the enslaved in America, had been a profound source of strength for blacks under slavery.”16 She further explicates this point by stating, “with Emancipation, the African-American church was one institution that did not have to be created from scratch, that stood ready to offer its members old solace and a new sense of purpose appropriate to free men and women. An intellectual movement that emphasized individualism over community, as free thought did, and that challenged faith in any personal God, could not have been expected to hold much appeal for a people whose adoption and adaption of Christianity was by then inseparable from its fight for personal and communal dignity.”17 Moreover, she states that “another reason for the gap between freethought and black America was that only a miniscule proportion of blacks . . . had been exposed to the cosmopolitan educational and cultural influences that shaped the freethought movement.”18 Though Jacoby’s overall argument generally tries to be culturally sensitive in her broad treatment of the Black religious experience in America, she still misses the problem. Citing the absence of Blacks in the free thought movement as simply racial allegiance to the enduring legacy of the historic Black Church tradition, Jacoby still operates from a unilateral perspective wherein white adherents of liberal Christian movements (including Unitarianism) had no equal stake in promoting broader interracial appeal. Even so, there were a small number of African Americans who considered their furtive move toward Unitarianism as an expression of their own spiritual quest for truth and meaning. In 1860, Rev. Mr. Jackson, an African American from New Bedford MA, announced his conversion to Unitarianism at the AUA’s Autumnal Convention. According to a recount of the gathering, there was “no discussion, no welcome, no expression of praise and satisfaction was uttered, that the Unitarian gospel had reached the ‘colored.’ ” In 1870, Meadville Theological School admitted its first African American student who was pursuing ordination in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church but he did not graduate from the seminary. During the 1870s, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, a renowned African American author and activist, became a member of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1908, Lewis Latimer was a founding member of the Flushing

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Unitarian Church in Flushing, New York. As an African American inventor who had worked alongside Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, Lewis Latimer was a key figure behind two of the most revolutionary inventions of all time—the telephone and the light bulb. Born in 1848 as the son of fugitives from slavery, Latimer was a pivotal member in the founding of the Unitarian church in Flushing, New York, and, more recently, has been celebrated as a noteworthy African American pioneer in the history of American Unitarianism, no doubt due in large part to his scientific accomplishments rather than for his spiritual life. Even more unusual that the Black person who sought membership in a Unitarian church was the one who sought to pursue a career in the Unitarian ministry. In spite of Meadville Theological School President Franklin Southworth’s professed dedication to “solving the race problem” at the dawn of the twentieth century, Unitarian churches individually as well as the AUA more generally seemed to pose the greatest obstacles in placing Black ministers in congregations because they were ill equipped to address the matter of racial equality in a straightforward fashion. For all the best intentions within liberal Christian theology, there was no discernible plan on either a small or large scale for the AUA to tackle the most intractable issue facing American society, namely “the problem of the color line” to borrow W.E.B. DuBois’s apt phrase. It is unquestionable that during his twenty-seven-year presidency of Meadville, Southworth had a profound impact on theological education for Unitarians and other liberal Christians. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Southworth’s visionary leadership was demonstrated by his bold faculty appointments, greater recruitment of students, relocation of the seminary from rural Meadville to urban Chicago, and mounting successful capital campaigns to develop the seminary. During his presidential tenure, however, it seemed that “the race problem” remained an especially pernicious blind spot for him and the Unitarian denomination that he was helping to shape through the training of its future ministers. Whereas Meadville Theological School could boast of admitting and graduating more Black seminarians than Harvard Divinity and its fellow Unitarian seminaries during the early 1900s, sadly this groundbreaking effort toward racial inclusion seems more accidental than intentional. By most accounts of Meadville’s administration of the era, when Black prospective students inquired about the possibilities of attending the school for the purpose of entering the Unitarian ministry, the school’s officials often questioned the soundness of the Black person’s decision.

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In a moment in modern American history that historian Rayford Logan has famously termed “the nadir of American race relations,” it is no mystery or surprise that there would be such cluelessness and insensitivity regarding how to address matters of race in any educational context, theological or otherwise (unfortunately, nearly a century later, those dilemmas still persist). Nevertheless, it seems somewhat evident that the more progressive and forward-thinking branch of AUA represented by Meadville was no better positioned to welcome racial diversity than were their more steadfast New England counterparts. Therefore, the failure of Unitarian principles to reach any portion of the Black populace might not be summed up as destiny or dumb luck but rather as purposeful design by a “liberal” denomination that could not accommodate the unwieldy burden of history entailed by any measured steps toward racial equality. By 1906, Don Speed Smith Goodloe was the second African American enrolled in Meadville, and the first to graduate from the school. For the other Black students who followed, such as Ethelred Brown, it was Goodloe who was credited with having integrated Meadville rather than the school making any intentional effort to recruit African Americans. Although he did not encounter the angry resistance or public outrage that accompany later school desegregation efforts in a post-Brown v. Board of Education social context, there was a great likelihood that he experienced racial prejudice from at least some of Meadville’s students and faculty. In a 1903 letter, Franklin Southworth, the president of Meadville, notes that Goodloe was a “residing elder in the M.E. church” and then proceeds to mention that while “the way was open for him at two or three orthodox institutions in the South and the money would have been provided . . . he could not bring himself to accept the doctrinal limitations, so he applied to us. I endeavored before advising him to come here simply to find out what his ambition was, and it seemed to me that to satisfy that ambition it was necessary for him to choose a school like ours rather than a sectarian school.” It seems rather clear that when Goodloe came to Meadville he knew it was highly doubtful that he would be ordained by a Unitarian church presumably because none of the existing congregations would accept a Black minister. President Southworth wrote, “I find this morning in putting the possibilities squarely before [Goodloe] that he has come here with his eyes open, knowing that it is probably not a good way into the orthodox ministry, but ready to take the consequences.” Southworth continued, “What the negroes need

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in . . . [Goodloe’s] judgement more than emotionalism in religion and more even than industrialism in education, is moral teaching and preaching.” Goodloe’s expressed desire to provide moral teaching to his students rather than emotionalism in religion was consistent with the Unitarian teachings and liberal Christian perspectives of the time and after, yet Southworth found this response noteworthy. Southworth said that Goodloe “proposes with the help of his wife, to start a small school composed of carefully selected and choice students, and to run the school along with his Sunday preaching.” After graduating from both Allegheny College and Meadville Theological School in 1906, Goodloe resumed his career as a teacher and as a businessman in Danville, Kentucky, before eventually becoming the principal of the Bowie Normal School (presently named Bowie State University) in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the oldest historically Black university in the state. Despite his personal and professional accomplishments, Goodloe’s hopes for a Unitarian ministry would remain a dream deferred. Even though Goodloe had graduated from Meadville with the appropriate training and credentials, he was ultimately denied an opportunity to serve as minister of a Unitarian congregation because of his race. Although there was an uncertain position on race and racism within the early Unitarian Church in America, there were quite a few white Unitarians who were willing to break from dominant societal norms in order to make positive contributions to modern race relations. John Haynes Holmes was a prominent Unitarian minister, civil rights activist, and pacifist, most noted for his antiwar activism. Holmes was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 who worked alongside colleagues who were Black and white as well as male and female at a moment where segregation on the basis of race as well as gender was rampant throughout American society. Moved largely by his sense of racial equality, Holmes was able to later integrate the Community Church of New York. He actually left the AUA in 1918 over differences in attitude toward the First World War, but continued to preach at his church, which retained its AUA membership and accepted membership again right before the Unitarians and Universalist churches merged. In the meantime, Mary White Ovington, a Unitarian woman who was hailed as a suffragette, socialist, and journalist, was another white cofounder of the NAACP. One researcher has gone as far as to assert that Mary White Ovington was somewhat of the lynchpin of the NAACP’s founding in 1909 based on the fact that she

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almost single-handedly drew together the radicals, the socialists, the journalists, the writers, and scholars drawn from their diverse personal backgrounds—Blacks, whites, Jews, Unitarians, and so on—into confronting some the chief dilemmas of the twentieth century cause of freedom, justice, and equality for African Americans and all oppressed peoples. One of the most crucial campaigns during the NAACP’s formative years was the organization’s efforts to halt the lynching of African Americans, a cause that Ovington and others remained passionate about during their tenure with the civil rights group.19 Having been members of the Second Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, Ovington’s parents were supporters of women’s rights and abolitionism. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church. With John Haynes Holmes of Community Church as her favored conversation partner, Ovington carried on such lively written debates with him that one can only imagine what it must have been like to witness these two great minds engage each other firsthand. Holmes and Ovington also show that there were white liberal Christians of the era who found ways to build bridges rather than walls between the races. There were other, somewhat more fortunate examples of Black Unitarian leaders who made inroads into the denomination during the 1920s. In 1927, Errold D. Collymore was the first African American to integrate the White Plains Unitarian Church in New York and later became its president. While Collymore’s legacy is presently looked upon with a certain degree of pride and admiration by scholars, ministers, and other observers, the regrettable reality of the “eternally recurring firsts” for Black people in American society, especially within a denomination such as the Unitarians with their deep commitment to social justice and prophetic Christian witness emulating the lived ministry and theology of Jesus, arguably had little of which it could be proud in this instance. During roughly the same period, Lewis A. McGee approached Curtis Reese and expressed his interest in pursuing ministry in the Unitarian Church. Without hesitation, Reese told McGee, “If you want to be a Unitarian you’d better bring your own church.” During his lifetime, Reese was an educator, administrator, social activist, journalist, and Unitarian minister. He was a founder and president of the American Humanist Association, secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference (WUC), and dean of the Abraham Lincoln

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Centre, an integrated social and educational community organization in Chicago. An associate editor of Unity, he wrote influential works on religious humanism and contributed significantly to the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. Given Reese’s reputation, the rather brief and blunt response he provided to McGee’s query was probably the most honest and, ironically, kindest answer the young Black minister would have received at the time. Nevertheless, having decided that Unitarianism provided him with the theological perspective that he had sought all his life, McGee persisted in his goal in becoming a Unitarian minister. As a graduate of both Wilberforce University and Meadville Theological School who went on to be an ordained AME elder, social worker, and former Army chaplain, it would seem that McGee would have a suitable profile for the Unitarian ministry. In spite of the early obstacles he encountered, McGee eventually went on to become minister of the Free Religious Fellowship, a predominantly Black Unitarian church in Chicago by 1948, and eventually became senior pastor of a predominantly white Unitarian fellowship in Chico, California, a decade later. Despite the laudable exemplars of Black as well as white Unitarians who attempted to transgress the unwritten laws of the color line, there are almost equal number of instances wherein there were white Unitarians whose consciences were clearly being governed by the realities of racial prejudice rather than the hopes of racial progress. In 1927, William H.G. Carter was an African American minister who founded the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. White Unitarians in the greater Cincinnati area knew about the existence of the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood and its founder, the Rev. Carter, but turned their backs on the church in every way imaginable. They made no effort to forge any personal connections with either the congregation or the minister, and offered no material support to the struggling congregation aside from the donation of a couple boxes of old hymnals. More importantly, the nearby Unitarian ministers never informed the AUA of its existence and seemed to have had no intention of doing so. In 1938, when the AUA finally did discover the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood, Rev. Lon Ray Call was dispatched to Cincinnati in order to investigate the state of affairs regarding Carter’s ministry. On the whole, Rev. Call’s official report captured perfectly the tone and substance of mainstream Unitarian attitudes at the time toward African Americans. In the report, Call described Carter as “a kindly man, quite intelligent” but also noted, however, that the congregation’s storefront church’s neighborhood

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was “poor and characterized by rowdiness.” Even more damning was Call’s inclusion of remarks by two local Unitarian ministers who had spoken at the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood and agreed that the response they received was “not very intelligent.” In his final analysis, Call comments, “I do not recommend Unitarian fellowship for Mr. Carter, or subsidy for his movement.”20 Shortly afterward, the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood closed its doors and its membership of roughly sixty adherents were dispersed. By shedding light on many Black Unitarian forebears and the many social issues they dealt with during their lives, Mark Morrison-Reed’s Black Pioneers in a White Denomination takes a marked departure from typical discussion regarding Unitarians in America. MorrisonReed, an African American Unitarian-Universalist minister, examines the historic efforts of Blacks to integrate Unitarianism. In this regard, his work is equally autobiographical and biographical in nature. Concentrating largely on the biographies of two Black Unitarian ministers during the first half of the twentieth century, Rev. Ethelred Brown and Rev. Lewis McGee, Morrison-Reed demonstrates the travails endured by these men and their faithful adherents to make a predominantly white, elite denomination such as the AUA accountable to its most marginalized constituency. Morrison-Reed contends that “this impasse is particularly frustrating for those who believe that the liberal religious message proclaims values that transcend racial, cultural, and economic differences. Many expect that the substance of the liberal church to reflect its ideals of human dignity and freedom, and its failure to attract blacks challenges the notion that the liberal gospel is a universal one.”21 Morrison-Reed contends that the inclusion of African Americans into the Unitarian fellowship helped enhance the denomination in three significant ways. First, racial integration allowed social values to be freely shared and transmitted across all barriers. Next, it provided the denomination with a sharp and vital awareness of what white skin privilege means in America. Finally, such a move guaranteed that the denomination would be sensitized to the real nature of racial oppression. However, Morrison-Reed’s exploration of these issues is troublesome because it posits that race within the Unitarian movement in America as an ancillary, instead of an integral function of their religious and cultural liberalism. For instance, despite Unitarians’ historic connection to the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century, there was still a considerable distance between the group’s philosophical views about and realistic relationships with

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African Americans. Whereas nineteenth century Unitarians might have taken an antislavery position on ethical grounds, they and their successors did not necessarily become antiracist. Susan Jacoby argues that white freethinkers of the late nineteenth century such as the Unitarians “invested much more energy in their fight against repressive religion than in the struggle against repressive American racism. During the Gilded Age, the vast majority of northern whites—and freethinkers were no exception—were unconcerned about racial discrimination in the North.”22 In his history of American Unitarians, Earl Morse Wilbur notes that “the Secretary of the [AUA] complained that Boston Unitarians saw no reason for diffusing their faith, and it was reported that they did not wish to make Unitarians too common. Many felt that the liberalizing work of the denomination was done and could now better be left to others, or were waiting to see what step was to be taken next.”23 At this point, the Unitarians came to regard liberal Christianity as a white bourgeois enterprise in which they could sequester themselves away from the larger American society.

Lest We Be Scattered Abroad: The Black Church Tradition in Harlem During the 1920s, noted poet and author James Weldon Johnson was among a growing number of Harlemites intent on bashing any new religious denominations with unsound theological foundations as highly suspect. In the New York Age, Johnson wrote a particularly harsh critique of such makeshift fellowships that he called “two-byfour churches.” Johnson observed that: Harlem is becoming infested with . . . two-by-four churches which meet in some sort of hugger-mugger proceedings intended to launch a new sect of worshippers upon a world already too full of a confusion of tongues and creeds. Few of these scattered congregations have any real aim or object beyond the novelty of having offered to them a new religion, or an old creed with new frills, invented to fit the personal peculiarities of the leader or preacher. 24

Johnson’s editorial was a broadside against those alternative religions in Harlem and other urban Black communities that challenged the primacy and respectability of the Black Church tradition. Whether or not Johnson intended this commentary as a direct assault against the

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Harlem Unitarian Church, it does reflect the extremely antagonistic attitudes facing new Black religious movements that seemingly departed from the Black religious orthodoxy. Echoing an earlier statement by Booker T. Washington, renowned Harlem minister Adam Clayton Powell Sr. once commented that “when you meet [a] . . . Negro who’s not a Methodist or a Baptist, some white man’s been tampering with his religion.”25 Although Afro-Caribbean immigrants were generally given more latitude regarding their religious affiliations, Black membership in denominations or sects outside the traditional Black Church was treated skeptically. Like the ancient Israelites in the Tower of Babel parable, Black New Yorkers were so often blinded by their own zeal to achieve cultural and religious consensus that they failed to recognize the value in the growing religious diversity in their midst. Furthermore, in the opinion of folks like Ethelred Brown, such an undertaking to define religion only within the strict parameters of the historic Black Church tradition was a distraction from the larger goal of racial uplift. As minister of the Harlem Unitarian Church, Rev. Ethelred Brown contended that the Black Church needed to address the real plight of the faithful in a reasonable and active manner. By all accounts, Brown was intent upon making Black religiosity more socially relevant by investing it with considerations of human agency and critical openmindedness. But, unlike many critics of Black religiosity, Brown’s Unitarian ministry posed a religious rather than secular challenge to the Black Church. Based on self-identification, the general trend within Black Christians circa 1920 was 65.6 percent Baptist, 29.8 percent Methodist (mainly AME, AMEZ, and CME) with the remaining 4.6 percent consisting of numerous other denominations represented by the aggregation known as the “Black Church.” During this same period, Unitarians accounted for under 0.2 percent of all Black religious participants in the United States. 26 Given these numbers, it seems nearly impossible to envision the HUC as part of the larger Black religious experience. But the HUC must be gauged according to the underlying premise of the Black Church itself. Almost every systematic study of Black Christianity discusses the syncretic or hybrid nature of religion for peoples of African descent. Whether grappling with the interplay of European and African religious practices or the melding of various African belief systems upon arriving in America, the historic Black Church tradition has been inclusive and adaptive. It seems very unlikely that the syncretism

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of Black religion, on either an interracial or intraracial basis, ended once the “invisible institution” of slave religion was reincarnated into the visible institution of the modern Black Church. It is also hard to believe that a religious tradition such as Black Christianity that was inherently diverse and intent upon embracing newcomers—from various points of the nation or the globe—somehow lost these innate adaptive qualities once the HUC came into being. If anything, the emergence of the HUC suggests a destabilizing of the Black religious experience in America. By defining the modern Black Church as broad enough to encompass intraracial ethnic differences as well as denominational diversity, the HUC greatly decentered what was typically assumed about Black people’s religiosity. As this study suggests, the Black Church of the early twentieth century began to close ranks against endeavors such as the HUC, focusing more on orthodoxy and self-preservation than religious autonomy and liberation. What exactly is the Black Church? Throughout this century, the Black Church has been an enigma within African American historiography. Many scholars have discussed its more materialistic aspects. For instance, historian Gilbert Osofsky’s study of Harlem asserts that Black churches both individually and collectively provided the economic capital necessary for the maintenance of this burgeoning urban Black community. He observes that the “Negro churches played a more important role in the development of Harlem than all other institutions in the Negro community.”27 In Harlem, especially during its formative years, Osofsky emphasized that “the role of religion and the Negro church in more elementary forms of economic cooperation among Negroes may be seen” in the emergence of “mutual aid societies that . . . were inspired by the spirit of Christian charity.”28 In Osofsky’s view, the Black Church’s social role was simply a financially prudent and sound organization. While the Black Church was, and is, a great economic mainstay within the urban Black community, its significance and continued influence is more varied and far-reaching than scholars such as Osofsky profess. In fact, this view ignores the primacy that this institution has held within the Black community for most of the twentieth century. Ethicist Robert Franklin notes that “there is no monolithic, undifferentiated social institution that can be labeled ‘the Black church.’ ”29 In other words, the Black Church must be understood as a tradition, not as an institution. Moreover, as sociologist C. Eric Lincoln notes, it is necessary to understand “that there is no disjunction

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between the black Church and the black community.”30 The Black Church played an important role in the development of race relations within urban Black communities such as Harlem and redefined the nature of Black community during the early to mid-twentieth century. The Black Church tradition was not simply an African American version of mainstream white Protestantism. In pioneering social scientific works like The Philadelphia Negro and The Negro Church as well as more theoretical tracts such as The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois was among the first scholars to recognize the incalculable and historic value of the Black Church to African Americans. DuBois explains that black religion has arguably been the most enduring component of Black sociocultural development in America, even preceding the existence of the Black family on American shores.31 While chattel slavery wreaked havoc with the stability and formation of Black families in America, religious worship remained an integral part of the lives of enslaved Africans and their progeny. Much of Black religiosity’s early importance to worshippers was the reality that, even in the midst of slavery, religion was a unifying and liberating factor in their lives. For instance, DuBois’ observation in The Souls of Black Folk that the definitive elements of the Black Church are “the preacher, the music, and the frenzy” marks the most obvious signifiers of Black America’s most important institution yet remained superficial in its treatment of Black Christianity. More than a hundred years after his writing, DuBois’s tripartite typology remains a key scholarly framework for understanding the historic Black Church tradition. Moreover, DuBois asserted that, as an archetype, the Black preacher is “the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss’, an intriguer, an idealist.” In a similar fashion, DuBois describes Black sacred music as “that plaintive rhythmic melody with its touching minor cadences which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil.” Finally, he indicates that the Frenzy—alternately known as “Shouting”—is “when the Spirit of the Lord passed by and, seizing the devotee, made [the worshipper] mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest.” DuBois’ analysis of the Black religious experience, although characteristically detailed and insightful, fails to make these more immediate connections that such research demands. However, despite the flawed nature of his analysis of Black religious life, DuBois’ views are upheld by subsequent studies of the Black Church.

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The religious experience within the Black Protestant Church during the first half of the twentieth century has been subject to numerous definitions. The Black Church’s main distinction from its white counterparts, according to Mary Frances Berry and John Blassingame, has been “its adherence to a nationalistic theology of liberation, reform, and uplift” for peoples of African descent.32 While these qualities have been most fundamental to the independent Black Church movement, there are other aspects to the history of religion among people of African descent in the United States such as the persistence of racism and the exclusion of Blacks from the social and spiritual mainstream of American life.33 The Black Church has served as a bulwark against racist oppression and a source of racial pride and empowerment.34 Most importantly, the Black Church has served as a social and cultural realm in which its adherents could search for autonomy and selffulfillment in a society that otherwise circumscribed these efforts. As an institutionalized tradition, the Black Church proved instrumental in defining what it meant to be Black within a racist society. James Cone raises three points that suggest how religion helped Blacks redefine their racial identity. First, he recognizes that Blackness in America has come to represent historically “an ontological symbol and a visible reality which best describes what oppression means.” Recognizing the intransigence of white racism in American society, the Black Church has extolled the existence of a loving God who sides with the oppressed peoples of the world. Second, Cone indicates that belonging to the Black Church significantly redefines the meaning of survival. Within the Black Church tradition, “survival as a person means not only food and shelter, but also belonging to a community that remembers and understands the meaning of its past.”35 Hence, the Black Church represents a social and cultural endeavor in which the individual is able to reconnect with the previously lost sense of extended community and self-defined worldview. Finally, Cone explains that the exigencies of racial and religious identities within Black theology effectively brush aside notions of social construction or multiculturalism. He explains that while: whites may wonder how to find purpose in their lives, but [Black people’s] purpose is forced upon [them]. [Blacks] do not want to know how [they] can get along without God, but how [they] can survive in a world permeated with white racism. 36

Therefore, the theology of the Black Church has provided Blacks with a symbolic interpretation of power relations, an existential mandate, and

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a deliberate sense of purpose. This function of Black Christianity, in turn, has informed a more critical understanding of race in America. More recently, theologian Anthony Pinn examines how the Black Church has historically served as a discursive space wherein the faithful wrestle with theological questions of suffering and evil. 37 This issue of theodicy, the justification of a loving and powerful God that allows evil and injustice to exist, is an ongoing and central concern within the Black religious tradition. Embracing racial equality and social justice as gifts from God, adherents of Black Christianity utilize the church as an institutional base for political activism and social change. Furthermore, the founding of independent Black churches in America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries marked separatist efforts responding to the discriminatory practices and racist attitudes of predominantly white denominations. As political scientist John Brown Childs notes, “the separatist churches affirmed the universal meaning of Christianity by placing Black people in positions of full status within the churches. This universalism became readily linked with the struggle for freedom and equality by black people in the United States.”38 Racial socialization was another chief function of the urban Black Church during the early twentieth century. While the Black Church’s historic significance for Black people is generally assumed, its value to white America has largely gone unmentioned. As in other cities, the Black churches in New York served very pragmatic functions in maintaining the racial and social order. Initially, urban Black churches served as an informal institution to acclimate and socialize Black newcomers to life in northern cities. 39 The majority of new arrivals to Harlem were young Black men and women who were generally unskilled, unmarried, and unfamiliar with the dictates of urban lifestyles. This influx prompted many urban Black churches to establish schools, settlement houses, mutual aid societies, and other frameworks that could accommodate and, more importantly, acculturate the newly arrived Blacks. During the early 1920s, there was discussion in Harlem of establishing a “community chest” to support and develop social welfare efforts such as “the Boys Welfare Club, the Kathy Ferguson and Sojourner Truth Houses, the Hope Day Nursery, the white Rose Home, the Working Girls Home, and the Circle for Negro Relief,” among others.40 Black church leaders in Harlem enthusiastically endorsed such concerted efforts to provide for the public weal within their community. According to historian Cheryl Greenberg, Black churches, especially those in Harlem, “had long been at the forefront

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of efforts for racial uplift, establishing both philanthropic and political programs. Thus, already organized, churches simply expanded existing programs by drawing on the energies of their members.”41 While such contributions to the commonweal may be an implicit objective of all churches, these activities hold a deeper significance for the Black community. The urgency and importance of Black churches’ charitable functions in Harlem were intensified by racism, political disenfranchisement, residential segregation, economic hardship, and other disadvantages facing Blacks in America. In this fashion, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier states that the urban Black Church served as “the most important agency of social control among Negroes. The churches undertook . . . to censure unconventional and immoral sex behavior and to punish by expulsion sex offenders and those who violated the monogamous mores” of acceptable Christian society.42 Such great pains were necessary so that the newcomers could better adjust to city life before they fell prey to the New York’s harsher, more carnal elements. This rising tide of moral conservatism was representative of the Black middle-class’ desire to implement a “politics of respectability.” In this manner, they were no different than other middle-class Blacks in Harlem trying to re-create a racial identity they felt more socially amenable to. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham contends that, “by claiming respectability through their manners and morals,” many middle-class Black Harlemites truly believed they asserted “the will and agency to define themselves outside the parameters of prevailing racist discourses.” Ironically, these same proponents of social uplift campaigns “unwittingly reinforced stereotypical images of blacks” by their assumptions concerning Black newcomers’ moral and social depravity.43 For countless Black churches in New York City during this period, educational and settlement programs were primarily intended “to transmit to the Negro the religious ideas and practices of an alien culture,” namely the values and ideals espoused by the larger American society.44 At first glance, the Black Church’s impetus for educating the newly arrived masses of Black Southerners with values and mores that served the interests of mainstream American society seems paradoxical. Yet such efforts by local churches in urban Black communities in Harlem also laid a substantial foundation for the education of subsequent generations of Blacks. In essence, such measures were regarded as a cornerstone of the racial uplift ideology embraced by the Black middle-class during the early twentieth century. The Black Church has been most influential in concretizing the notion of Black people existing in a “nation within a nation.” It was

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evident that Rev. Brown believed the HUC could offer the greater Harlem community a forum in which their political ideals could be more freely exchanged and explored. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham explains that such an attitude occurred amidst the unyielding restraint of de facto segregation since “the [Black] church afforded African Americans an interstitial space in which to critique and contest white America’s racial domination.”45 Institutionalized as a separatist space, the urban Black Church became a sacred Black public sphere. Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier notes that with the exclusion of Blacks from meaningful participation in the American body politic, Black churches became the realm for their political activities and aspirations. As Frazier argues, the church was the main center of social life in which Black people aspired to become community leaders and agents of positive social change. Frazier further elaborates that although Black men and women were disenfranchised in American society, it was within their churches that they could vote on important matters, and engage in electing their officers and in other participatory functions of shared governance. In essence, the Black church community that took shape in Harlem began to participate in a democratic process that acknowledged both their inherent humanity and immeasurable worth as members of a larger society. In addition, the Black Church in Harlem was vital in providing leadership that embodied the urban Black community’s values and beliefs and was also immediately responsible and accountable to that same community. All of these factors eventually found their fullest expression within communities such as Harlem because, as Frazier observes, the Black Church provided “a refuge in a hostile white world.”46 Most notably, urban Black churches such as the HUC were the central location for fomenting and mobilizing Black people’s political energies. With the exception of Chicago, Harlem served as home to the highest number of Black churches in the North effective in politically mobilizing the Black masses. During the early twentieth century, Abyssinian Baptist, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion (Mother Zion) Church, some of the most venerable Black churches in the nation, made up much of Harlem’s Black religious and political universe. In this sense, the Harlem Unitarian Church fit well in Harlem’s religious community. During his years of ministry, Rev. Brown’s most pressing concern was to create lasting relationships among Black churches that were theologically liberal and politically radical such as the HUC with those

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churches that rooted in more literalist interpretation of the Bible yet were geared toward social activism. In Harlem, the Abyssinian Baptist Church proved not only the most ideal example of this latter sort of congregation, but also a stalwart supporter of the Harlem Unitarian Church. This was no coincidence, since Abyssinian Baptist has always been “one of the few liberal orthodox churches in Harlem.”47 In addition, its pastors, Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr., each had a distinctive popular appeal that held great sway among Harlem’s churchgoing populace. The elder Powell had been active in many pioneering civil rights and social reform campaigns in New York while the younger Powell was both politically savvy and theologically liberal. Brown and the Powells held each other in mutually high regard. This relationship was most evident by Brown’s frequent invitation to preach before the sizable congregation at Abyssinian Baptist Church during the 1930s. As demonstrated by this interesting union, Brown and the Powells believed that the pulpit of Black churches needed to be more open to the spirit of democracy and social mobilization that Black people so desperately sought in the larger American society. In her landmark study of Harlem during the Great Depression, Cheryl Greenberg further suggests, “as the community around them became more activist and concerned with secular issues of social welfare and equality of opportunity, the churches followed suit regardless of size or denomination.”48 Unfortunately, most discussions of Harlem’s Black Church tradition have seldom established any significant differences, much less tensions or dynamics, that might exist among the various arms of the Black Church tradition. But such distinctions are vital because, as C. Eric Lincoln notes, “religion is never incidental to the culture” inasmuch that “every theological formulation . . . must be seen against the culture that produced it if such a theology is to be understood” and vice versa.49 Many of the seminal studies of the Black Church tradition have failed to engage in meaningful discussions of Black theology and its primacy within Black culture. Historian V.P. Franklin offers a salient critique of DuBois as well as certain other social scientific researchers, arguing that while they emphasize the structural and institutional attributes possessed by the Black Church tradition, each researcher was slow if not altogether unwilling to emphasize the emergence of an avowedly African American theology that was separate and distinct from either European or African origins. The Black Church tradition was viewed as being “primitive” and “otherworldly” by white

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standards and these researchers substantiated such claims. Accomplishing either feat would have illustrated what Clifford Geertz regards as an ideal merger of religion and culture within a social order. Geertz holds that the religious underpinning of social interactions “tunes human actions to an envisaged cosmic order and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience.”50 The interface of religion, culture, and identity within Black America was more precious and valuable than scholars thought or realized. In both historic and contemporary terms, the Black Church tradition is a viable amalgamation of religious groups that contributes to the overall social mission of racial redemption and empowerment. To this end, the faith communities formed by Blacks who are Catholics, Muslims, Jews, or in this case Unitarians, are as vital to the social growth and development of the Black Church tradition as the more recognized Protestant denominations. Despite the existence of diverse cultural modes and religious doctrines, Robert Franklin explains that the theology of the Black Church guarantees that the “black congregations . . . share a common core culture” that is “an amalgam of symbols, practices, and ideas drawn from numerous traditions including traditional African religion, Islam, Catholic popular piety, Protestant evangelicalism, and American civil religion.”51 Given the vast array of elements from which the Black Church emerged, Unitarianism does not seem a far-fetched denominational choice for Black Christians. Although members of the Harlem Unitarian Church might have known the specific details of the denomination’s history, this knowledge alone did not compel them to become Unitarians. Inspired by Ethelred Brown’s own religious zeal, many of the Harlem Unitarian’s most steadfast members were attracted to a gospel that was perceived to be both liberal and liberating in its theology and praxis. The allure of Unitarianism, especially for these politically active Blacks, went beyond its rejection of the Trinity. Rev. Brown’s merger of Unitarianism and the Black Church tradition was a move toward overturning a pernicious brand of religious orthodoxy pervading urban Black communities such as Harlem. Like Rev. Brown, many members of the HUC had been attracted to the denomination because of its representation as an extremely rational theology with a distinguished history. During the earliest decades of the twentieth century, one might surmise that Unitarianism appealed to Blacks as a theology “stressing human freedom and intellectual capabilities in contrast to the orthodox emphasis on divine mystery

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and human sin.”52 Moreover, it can be speculated that at least some members of Brown’s church took considerable delight in being part of a religious experiment. For example, W.A. Domingo, a charter member of the church, found an odd sense of distinction in the fact that Rev. Brown led the “only modernist church among the thousand of Negroes in New York (and perhaps the country).”53 Although the central mission of the Black Church tradition was once rooted solely in the struggle to survive, it now provides the means for self-determination through self-definition for Blacks in America. For the traditional Black Church, “congregational histories are analogous to histories of cities, labor unions, and cultural institutions that illuminate broader historical phenomena by concentrating on local institutions and attending to the rank and file as well as leadership.”54 Ethelred Brown and his congregation felt that Unitarianism proved most attractive in this effort because its interpretation of the gospel emphasized the humanity and freedom of its adherents. More importantly, the minister and congregation of the Harlem Unitarian Church demonstrated that they indeed practiced what they preached.

“An Emancipatory Power”: The Black Unitarian Movement in Harlem From the very start, there was keen interest in Rev. Brown’s expressed mission to project his theological doctrines into the forefront of Black religious thought. As he unequivocally endorsed Unitarian doctrine to Black men, women, and children in Harlem as well as his native Jamaica, Brown introduced Unitarianism into the Black religious experience in the hope of creating a new theological standard within the Black community. He wanted to counter the emergence of an increasingly bourgeois conservatism within numerous urban Black mainline churches during the first half of the twentieth century. Liberal observers of both races lauded the HUC. New York’s liberal religious community felt that Rev. Brown’s Harlem ministry represented a marked improvement on the ritual practices and religious ideals of contemporaneous Black theology. Black Unitarians and their supporters valued the church’s ability to combine spirituality with socially relevant discourse. But the church’s reconciliation of the mounting contention between being Black and Unitarian was a pressing concern. While these two realities are not mutually exclusive, they were never seen as readily intertwined. The religious experiment

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undertaken by Rev. Brown’s church illustrated how much the traditional Black Church and Unitarians had to learn from and offer to one another. Moreover, Brown’s efforts drew attention to the fact that the “color line” touched every aspect of American life, even religion. To a large extent, Unitarianism offered a redeeming gospel of moral agency that the aspiring Black leadership found empowering and enlightening. In one sermon, Brown declared that the “Gospel of Unitarianism” reveals to all that “religion is an emancipatory power . . . it frees men from the shackles of theologies which are both unreasonable and dogmatic and from creeds which never change.”55 Further, he preached that the character and service of Black Unitarians would serve as the basis for “an oasis of liberalism in a desert of conservatism and reaction—a light to dispel the darkness of superstition and fanaticism.”56 Rev. Brown and the members of his struggling church had a vision that Unitarianism could be successfully merged with existing Black religion to form a more befitting theology and practice. During the first six years of the Harlem Unitarian Church’s operation, Brown continually defended its existence to the AUA. The association neither acknowledged nor encouraged the Harlem Unitarian Church’s pioneering efforts in New York City’s largest Black community. Morrison-Reed suggests that the small size and relative poverty of Brown’s congregation contributed to his ongoing strife with the AUA. Moreover, since the church could not pay him an adequate salary, Brown had to work as an elevator operator to support himself and his family. The AUA’s officials therefore refused to recognize him as a legitimate minister because they felt he was not seriously engaged in his ministerial work. In his personal memoirs, Rev. Brown reflected how he “labored . . . without any financial assistance whatever from the AUA, and without even its moral support.”57 Meanwhile, despite financial hardships, an infrequent meeting schedule, and no physical gathering place, the church enrolled seventy-eight members into its fellowship. There are unofficial estimates that attendance at some of the Harlem Unitarian Church’s meetings reached four hundred to five hundred people. Despite the church’s gradual momentum within the Harlem community, Rev. Brown often stated that “the greatest disappointment” he experienced in “a life of . . . disappointment[s] . . . is the utter indifference amounting almost to hostility of the AUA to [his] efforts to establish a liberal church in Harlem.”58 This antagonism toward Brown’s Harlem Unitarian movement was most apparent in the attitudes and behavior of Rev. Walter Reed

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Hunt, the AUA’s New York City field secretary. According to Rev. Brown, Walter Reed Hunt was “unabashedly hostile to the movement,” proving himself “so afraid to have his prejudices corrected as to have refused no less than three invitations to our church.”59 Hunt’s enmity toward this Harlem congregation and its minister manifested itself in other ways besides his reluctance to attend the church’s Sunday services. Rev. Hunt made numerous attempts to remove Ethelred Brown’s name from the national roll of Unitarian ministers. Hunt refused to acknowledge the Harlem fellowship as a liberal church on the basis that, under AUA guidelines, Unitarian ministers could not be employed outside their church. Adding insult to injury, Rev. Hunt encouraged Brown to seek employment to support his family. This seemingly collegial concern had an ulterior motive behind it. The three employment opportunities Hunt made available to the struggling minister guaranteed that, if Brown accepted any of them, his participation in the church would be impossible. If successful, this measure to remove Rev. Brown’s name and church from official recognition would seriously undermine his ministerial efforts in Harlem; Brown was intimately aware of this possibility because the AUA used a similar tactic to decimate his missionary work in Jamaica. Being orphaned by the denomination was devastating to Brown and the HUC. Throughout his ministerial career, Ethelred Brown’s earnest belief in Unitarianism blinded him at critical junctures to the pervasive racism and elitism at work within the Unitarian ranks. Brown failed to notice that many of his woes stemmed from the inherent failure of these otherwise liberal whites to realize that “their understanding was limited and their vision too weak to see beyond the status quo or . . . the narrow appeal of the Unitarian church.”60 This counterproductive “liberal” racism surfaced most glaringly in Rev. Brown’s interactions with Samuel Eliot, president of the AUA. Eliot’s attitude toward Brown has been described as evidence that he viewed all Blacks “not as peers, but rather as fascinating children who unquestionably needed supervision.”61 To repair such a situation would have demanded a more thorough interrogation of the Unitarians’ contemporary notions of race and racial equality than the members were willing to pursue. Unfortunately, the Black Unitarians also received no sizable support from Black Harlemites either. Some observers such as cultural critic Harold Cruse assert that Blacks were reluctant to follow Brown’s Unitarian movement because, “joining a church outside the traditional

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black [religious experience] was a risk only a few were able to take.”62 Blacks who became Unitarians were typically well educated, middle class and often Methodist. These individuals, a fairly isolated subgroup within the urban Black community, found that the HUC’s merger of politics, religion, and communal sensibilities suited them well. But this amalgam of concerns “points to a central uncertainty in the life of the church” about whether its Sunday services should cater to those “wanting a political dialogue and wanting a religious worship service.”63 While the church’s popularity arose from its engrossing political forums, this setting “left some members desiring a service that was more religious in content and format.”64 The move to shift the church from its predominantly political orientation to a more religious focus may be indicative of Harlem’s growing aversion to radical politics in the years just prior to the Second World War. Brown’s perseverance and incredibly high level of visibility in the New York community gradually garnered the AUA’s support by the late 1930s. Between 1929 and 1934, Rev. Brown worked as the office manager of the World Tomorrow, a magazine dedicated to representing the views of “socialist and pacifist religionists and liberals.”65 Aside from his role as minister, this job allowed him the greatest sense of personal fulfillment. Brown maintained this position until the magazine merged with the Christian Century in 1934. During extended periods of unemployment, Brown and his family received public relief after Brown’s job with the magazine ended. By 1937, the AUA finally consented to recognize the church as an official Unitarian congregation, an event that Brown greeted with unsurpassed satisfaction. Although during the Second World War, funding was somewhat interrupted, the AUA’s newfound encouragement and resolve of the HUC continued. Another impediment to the Harlem Unitarian Church’s longevity and its potential success was its inability to become a formal institution. For the most part, this problem stemmed from the church’s lack of a physical space for worship services and other activities. In the 1920s, the congregation gathered in either rented or borrowed meeting halls to conduct worship services. By 1936, Rev. Brown became the chaplain for the Harlem YWCA’s weekly noon services, thus providing his congregation with a rare sense of stability and organized structure.66 However “the church never had its own space to gather” for its Sunday evening services.67 During this period, Rev. Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church had an interesting relationship with the Harlem YWCA. The Harlem

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Branch’s executive director, Cecelia Cabaniss Saunders, sought a minister who could help the YWCA regain its religious purpose and cultivate a sense of empowerment among African American women. According to historian Judith Weisenfeld, Ethelred Brown appealed to this women’s organization because his ministry diligently worked on “displacing the minister . . . as the only speaker in the church” in the hopes that “congregants would become agents in the development of their [own] faith.”68 Based on this reputation, MaBelle Williams articulated the sentiments of the branch’s executive board’s when she stated that Brown’s “emphasis on a democratic approach to religious services and on inclusivity suited the Harlem YWCA well.”69 In an urban Black experience where racism, sexism, and economic exploitation are all too pervasive, the most beleaguered position effectively belongs to the poor Black woman. Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has described the peculiar crisis confronting the average Black woman in America as “triple oppression.”70 Black women have been historically victimized and oppressed not only because of their race and economic class but also because of their gender, a reality that constitutes an altogether different perspective of urban Black communities like Harlem. Without any overt or complicated theoretical framework for understanding gender oppression, Brown was able to cultivate religious leadership among Black women as well as men by virtue of the church’s “temple and forum” dynamic. The HUC and the Harlem YWCA had a mutually beneficial relationship. For the YWCA, the Harlem branch gained a chaplain whose unwavering religious faith and commitment to social justice was largely unhindered by sexism. Conversely, Rev. Brown and the HUC were provided with a more permanent home for their ministry as well as a mandate to increase substantially the religious content of its Sunday worship services. By 1940, Ethelred Brown became eligible for a ministerial pension. At the age of sixty-five, this financial support from the AUA finally enabled him to invest his energies toward improving the church. This turn of events coincided with a change in the AUA’s administration and policies. In 1937, Frederick May Eliot had become the head of the denomination and effectively ushered forth a new era of improved relations between the AUA and the Harlem church. As the denominational representative in the New York area, Dale DeWitt was given great leeway in providing financial and other forms of support to Brown’s congregation. During these years, the HUC was under the supervision and guidance of the AUA’s Department of Extension and

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Maintenance, a relationship that greatly improved the body’s support of the church. On the whole, changing race relations in the early 1940s largely drove the association’s favorable disposition toward the HUC. The onset of the Second World War, as a conflict fueled by racism/ethnocentrism as well as fascist and antidemocratic tendencies, might have played a role in the AUA’s “change of heart” toward the HUC. In the final analysis, the AUA’s change of heart notwithstanding, the outright neglect of Rev. Brown and the HUC by the AUA demonstrates the denomination’s liberal racism. In his assessment of the Unitarianism in the United States, Earl Moses Wilbur contends: Freedom, reason, and tolerance . . . are not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but only conditions under which the true ends may best be attained. The ultimate ends proper to a religious movement are two, personal and social; the elevation of personal character, and the perfecting of the social organism, and the success of a religious body may best be judged by the degree to which it attains these ends. Only if the Unitarian movement, true to its principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance, goes on through them and finds its fulfillment in helping men to live worthily as children of God, and to make their institutions worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, will its mission be accomplished.71

For two decades, Rev. Brown worked against seemingly impossible odds to establish his fledgling Black Unitarian movement as the “church of tomorrow” with mixed results. During this twenty-year period, the HUC had to grapple with racism within the AUA, a tension that became the major element of the church’s relationship with the Unitarian denomination. In the meantime, even as Brown and his congregation sought to remain within the auspices of the whitecontrolled AUA, the church also struggled to remain a viable part of Harlem’s religious scene. Quite simply, the challenges facing the HUC at the local level were how best to realize Harlem’s potential as a racial utopia, to grow with it, and promote its racial uplift agenda in ways they felt would be significant. Unbeknownst to its members, the church was poised to witness a truly dynamic, albeit volatile, era in Harlem’s history. As they identified the future directions of social outreach for the HUC, the church’s membership had to address the rapidly changing nature of Black New Yorkers’ political and cultural traditions. In so doing, the Harlem Unitarian Church’s became a vital network for social activism and radical dissent.

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3 Against Principalities, Against Powers: Racial Uplift and Working-Class Radicalism in the Harlem Unitarian Church We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish. —Richard Wright, Twelve Million Black Voices1 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. —Ephesians 6: 11–12 KJV

The enthusiasm that emanated from Rev. Brown and the thousands of other Black newcomers to Harlem by 1920 greatly reflected Harlem’s new status as the largest, most significant Black community in America. Even now, Harlem is often fondly remembered as the home of famous authors, poets, playwrights, artists, musicians, and intellectuals, as well as a hotbed for cabarets, nightclubs, speakeasies, and all other forms of nightlife. However, amid all the glamour that made Harlem a veritable “shining city on a hill,” there was also an underside that many observers—especially the white middle and upper class revelers who crammed the streets looking to fulfill their own hedonistic fantasies—gleefully overlooked both then and now. While the splendor of Harlem has certainly been chronicled, oddly

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enough, few scholars have focused with the same intensity on the squalor that existed even before the advent of the Great Depression. 2 Looking beyond the glittering façade of the artistic enclave that Harlem became during the 1920s, one witnesses the ravages of structural inequality at work. The residential property that was generally available to Black Harlemites either for rent or purchase was, by all accounts, substandard, yet markedly overpriced. Regardless of educational achievement or professional acumen, most local residents were typically employed in dead-end jobs that were poorpaying, back-breaking, and demeaning. The majority of business owners and employers—whether engaged in legal or illegal activities—were often non-Blacks. Moreover, due to low wages and scarce amounts of leisure time, the average Harlem resident could seldom afford to spend his or her time, money, or energy in one of the community’s legendary nightclubs and cabarets. Health care and municipal services were increasingly on the decline in uptown New York not because of the slovenly living or poor work ethics of the Black populace, but because the city’s private and public sectors basically abnegated any overall responsibility to Harlem. In the major Black churches thriving during the 1920s, many of the pastors preached to packed houses but essentially viewed their congregations as if they were island communities. The realization that Harlem was a highly class-conscious urban domain should come as no great surprise. To see Harlem in the height of its glory during the 1920s was to gaze into the very soul of America. Indeed, this place was a microcosm for the growing divisions that would fuel so many of the anxieties that defined the so-called “Jazz Age.” Issues such as family upbringing, style of dress, skin color, personal behavior, etiquette, attitude, and cultural background could be subtle indicators of whether someone was deemed a success or failure in Harlem. Much like larger the American society, the working-class made sure Harlem functioned and the Black bohemians provided the entertainment, but it was the elite interests, both Black and non-Black, that constantly tried to make Harlemites conform to mainstream values and lifestyles. Sadly, as the Great Crash of 1929 revealed, when the fragile trappings of middle- and upperclass comfort suddenly vanished, a harsh reality of hard work and drudgery remained. The unseen world of Black toil and hardship as well as the need for unified racial uplift are central to noted author and Harlem resident

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Richard Wright’s remarkable 1941 work Twelve Million Black Voices. In an interesting departure from his strict use of narrative prose, Wright utilizes Depression-era photographs from the Farm Security Administration to propel his larger argument concerning the growing crisis of Black poverty. In his foreword, Wright declared that his intention was not to focus on the triumphant rise of the Black middle class. To the contrary, he operated under the assumption “that those few Negroes who have lifted themselves through personal strength, talent, or luck, above the lives of their fellow blacks . . . are but fleeting exceptions to the vast, tragic school that swims below in the depths, against the current, silently and heavily, struggling against the waves of vicissitudes that spell a common fate.”3 But neither was Wright’s intention “to celebrate or exalt the plight of the humble folk who swim in the depths that I select the conditions of their lives as examples of normality, but rather to seize upon that which is qualitative and abiding in Negro experience.”4 Although Twelve Million Black Voices demonstrates what historian Robin Kelley asserts as a surrealist, dream-like quality to Wright’s depiction of Black working-class history, 5 this work is essentially driven by its author’s quest “to place within full and constant view the collective humanity whose triumphs and defeats are shared by the majority, whose gains in security mark an advance in the level of consciousness attained by the broad masses in their costly and torturous upstream journey.”6 As one of the most poignant and lyrical works of Black protest literature, Twelve Million Black Voices raised vital concerns of racial uplift and working-class radicalism in a manner that many Americans could readily appreciate and understand. In many ways, Wright’s book epitomized the Janus-faced reality that confronted Black intellectuals and activists in Harlem. On the one hand, there was an ongoing struggle to devise narratives and notions of racial uplift that took into account the enduring legacy of slavery as well as the contemporaneous trap of segregation that was at the root of much disadvantage and despair for Black people. On the other hand, the evolution of strategies and survival mechanisms by activists and community members (many of whom were members of the HUC congregation) helped determine a more focused and earnest sense of Black working-class radicalism. This chapter seeks to address these dual developments within the Black experience as they shaped the context in which Rev. Brown and the HUC were battling with inequality and injustice.

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“The Problem of the Twentieth Century”: Black Ideological Diversity and the Politics of Racial Uplift The advent of the twentieth century gave rise to new responses to racism in America and elsewhere. In his Atlanta Exposition speech of 1895, Booker T. Washington had argued, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest of folly.” Based on this philosophy, Washington, otherwise known as the Wizard of Tuskegee Institute, “consistently counseled patience in matters of racial injustice; he pronounced protest and racial agitation ineffective tactics and advised instead that living respectable lives and acquiring wealth was a much surer route to equality. In addition, in spite of the steadily deteriorating racial situation and the upsurge in racial violence, he continually expressed faith in the good will of southern whites.”7 Furthermore, Washington’s call for Southern whites to “cast down your bucket where you are” was troubling because it reinforced the nativism as well as the racist opportunism of the day. Tapping into the xenophobia of his potential white benefactors, Washington argued that there was no need for immigration and open borders since there were plenty of African Americans ready and willing to work. The centrality of Bookerite ideology in the United States during the earliest years of the twentieth century was a dilemma of the highest order for the future prospects of racial uplift. The sad irony of the era of Bookerite hegemony, as historian John Hope Franklin indicates, was that “lynchings decreased only slightly, the Negro was effectively disenfranchised, and black workers were systematically excluded from the major labor organizations.”8 Furthermore, in an era epitomized by the flourishing of ideas about improving social relations between Blacks and whites, Washington and his associates were very reluctant to give any credence to different perspectives on race and racism. Washington and his followers had a veritable stranglehold on public attention concerning the status of Blacks in America. When William Monroe Trotter, an outspoken Black colleague of W.E.B. DuBois’ and a fellow member of the Niagara Movement, decided to openly challenge the Wizard of Tuskegee, he met with awful results. The Boston Guardian, Trotter’s newspaper, was a major platform used to decry Washington’s accommodationist philosophy. In the summer of 1903,

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Trotter and a group of his supporters confronted Washington in a Boston church while Washington was giving an address to an audience of more than two thousand people. As the small group asked Washington a series of probing questions, the animosity eventually led to a raucous commotion. Not only did the scene erupt into fistfights, but Trotter and at least one of his associates were arrested for inciting the violence. The power of Bookerites to suppress any dissenters—by force, if necessary—revealed the ugly nature of such uncontested power, which has ultimately marked the legacy of Washington’s influence over American race relations. During this awkward period, other Black intellectuals slowly started to expand and diversify. Intellectuals in modern American society were public beings whether they were academics, independent scholars, authors, or members of the leisure class—who discussed current affairs, broad social issues, and often lectured on topics of general interest in popular forums. When a new crop of Black intellectuals and their respective philosophies came to the forefront in public debates on race, those individuals became pivotal in diversifying understandings of race relations in early twentieth-century America, and, their ideas extended far beyond the boundaries of the United States.9 In 1903, noted Black historian and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois made a profound statement that would subsequently dominate thoughts and discourse on race for generations to come. DuBois wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker races to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”10 As often as these immortal words have been repeated, they have seldom been addressed in their entirety or full scope. With this one passage, DuBois brought together three disparate ideas: the ways that people thought about and dealt with race would be the definitive crisis of the future; the dilemma of racial prejudice could be described in a clear and succinct manner so that that anyone could understand it; and the problem of the “color-line” was a global one. In essence, DuBois represented the unfolding of two complementary processes within African American thought at the turn of the century that would resonate throughout the world. First, DuBois helped bring to light the strategies of Black men and women intent upon ending racism and other forms of social injustice, without surrendering to the hegemony of America’s ignorance and arrogance regarding race. Second, DuBois’ efforts to bolster a public forum for dealing with matters of race that allowed for Black ideological

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diversity would galvanize into a politics of racial uplift. As explained by historian Kevin Gaines, the political schema of racial uplift “represented the struggle for a positive black identity in a deeply racist society, turning the pejorative designation of race into a source of dignity and self-affirmation through an ideology of class differentiation, self-help, and interdependence.”11 When DuBois offered his now famous quote to the world at large, he was not only making a profound observation of the troubled state of American race relations in his own time, he also was engaged in a much greater mission: ultimately overturning the Bookerite ideology of racial accommodation that had dominated national discourses on race and racism at the turn of the century. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk is a manifesto that upset racial ontology on either sides of the proverbial color line. In a society deeply mired in the legacy of slavery, miscegenation, lynching, and other manifestations of America’s racial past, there was a deeper significance to his observation about the color line. With the publication of The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, DuBois opposed the prevalent logic of race relations in his day. Because his insurgent arguments about integrationism stood in radical contrast to Bookerite notions of racial uplift, DuBois emerged at the forefront of a more diverse Black intellectual vanguard of an anti-Bookerite consensus. As one scholar has noted, “it is difficult to define precisely the political and social ideology of Washington’s opponents . . . because the group consisted of numerous elements with divergent views who often were united only in their antagonism toward Washington and his dominance of black America.”12 In essence, DuBois’ polar opposition to Booker T. Washington provided a wedge that made a wider range of Black dissent possible as well as understandable within American society. While still representing a marginal viewpoint within the larger scheme of American race relations, DuBois ushered forth the notion that fostering a highly educated and conscientious Black leadership was more advantageous than the mass industrial training sought by Booker T. Washington. Interestingly, Frederick L. Broderick argues, “Washington’s program gave DuBois an anvil on which to hammer out his own ideas. At the core of DuBois’s philosophy was the role assigned to the Talented Tenth because, like all races . . . the Negro race would be saved by its exceptional men, trained to the knowledge of the world and men’s relation to it . . . DuBois [even] pointed to the thirty college-trained teachers on Washington’s own staff as an effective argument for training in the liberal arts.”13

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The upshot of the DuBois-Washington conflict had little to do with their divergent ideologies and clashing personal worldviews but rather DuBois’ insurgent challenge to both the Tuskegee Machine’s hegemony over American race relations as well as the Bookerites’ monopoly over the available largesse of white philanthropy. In the words of political scientist Adolph Reed, the DuBois-Washington feud resulted from their mutual realization that if broadly cultured black and white men were to be allies . . . their alliance could not be one of equals, since whites controlled the monetary and other resources necessary for social- or racial-uplift activities. Therefore, assertion of black aspirations had to come from outside the Afro-American community in general and from upper-class whites in particular. DuBois’s [sic] conflict with Washington should be considered in the context of competition for access to . . . patronage.14

Furthermore, Reed contends that the DuBois-Washington debate demonstrated a prevalent “tension between the specific agendas and the legitimacy claims of different elements of the black elite and the various support groups—New South ideologues, northern industrialists and reform intellectuals—to which those elements related for patronage and for other forms of validation.”15 In the wake of DuBois’ open animus toward Washington, the perspectives of Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Henry McNeal Turner also contributed to the ideological diversity in Black political leadership and thought during this period. For example, Anna Julia Cooper would allude to a larger, more pragmatic vision of national issues. In Cooper’s monograph, A Voice from the South, she illustrates a staunchly Black feminist posture by arguing the interlocking reality of race and gender. Her arguments are buttressed by her explication of Black women’s status within emerging discourses of race relations as well as their roles as social reformers. Through her critical gaze as a prototypical African American feminist, she renders a thorough albeit conflicted analysis of the Black political and cultural atmosphere of her day while also offering her views on American identity, the burgeoning women’s movement, organized labor, and the declining state of religious and moral authority in America. Cooper’s contribution to the growing Black intellectual ferment was even more notable because she sought to infuse the nascent Black clubwomen’s movement with an extremely practical sense of activism. Her deliberate application of racial uplift ideology to everyday life via the Black women’s club movement offered a significantly different

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framework from the economic determinism of Booker T. Washington and the philosophical invectives of W.E.B. DuBois. Although Cooper’s prospects for Black America’s future were a moderate merger of Bookerite and DuBoisian ideals, she believed that a middle-class, religious Black women’s movement could shift the state of American race relations. Viewed alongside the perspectives of their Black male contemporaries, Cooper and Wells-Barnett were very much products of their context and time. The governing sensibility of the majority of racial uplift ideology relied upon African American men and women’s ability to respond to the approval or disdain of whites. But using America’s ethnocentrism, materialism, and patriarchy as a measure for African American progress posed a thorny problem for a broad-based Black mass movement. The premise of finding worth and meaning in Blackness as a racial and historical indicator was consistently underscored by the race’s proximity or distance to Americans of European descent (most specifically “native-born” ones who claimed Anglo-Saxon descent). Simply put, acceptance or rejection of Black people rested upon how much they can appear “white” in the eyes of those around them. Such logic is maddening and is a self-defeating proposition for advancing the state of the race. Neither accommodationist, integrationist, nor proto-Black feminist positions could stir the Black masses to the fullest extent if their ultimate goal was to elevate whiteness. How can a program for ending racial oppression and establishing social justice in America and elsewhere be effective if it remains “whitewashed”? This question has plagued the history of Black resistance throughout the twentieth century. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the AME Church offered a contrasting perspective to the crisis of American race relations. Much like DuBois, Turner was highly critical of Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” and the ideals of racial accommodation it publicized. Following Washington’s 1895 speech, Turner commented that the Wizard of Tuskegee would “have to live a long time to undo the harm he has done our race.” The fiery AME bishop lambasted Washington most of all because the Bookerite ideology of racial segregation, bootstrap capitalism, and Black acquiescence to racist terror would be used by conservatives “to prove that the Negro race is satisfied with being degraded.” Although Turner was wholly opposed to accommodation, he was not altogether taken with DuBois’ call for protest to achieve greater

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integration of the races either. Turner’s particular solution to America’s racial crisis was emigration (more commonly known as the “Back-toAfrica” movement). Taking a direct cue from the proto-Black nationalism of Paul Cuffee and Martin Delany, Turner believed that African Americans should repatriate Africa and work toward restoring the continent religiously, culturally, and economically. Unlike either Washington or DuBois, Turner was utterly pessimistic about the possibility of freedom and equality as the ultimate outcome of race relations in the United States. Quite to the contrary, Turner urged African Americans not only to see themselves as a separate nation but also insisted that pursuing this nascent notion of Black nationalism was an active response to racism in America. In other words, Turner felt that the creation of an independent Black Africa was a better option than submitting to second-class citizenship or suffering the dilemma of double consciousness, denying Blacks a positive racial and national identity. Although the idea of emigration had very limited success or lasting influence among African Americans, the Back-to-Africa movement had at its core an undeniable critique of racial oppression in the United States. Turner’s efforts to encourage African American recolonization in Liberia and elsewhere on the African continent suggested yet another international dimension to Black people’s liberation from racial oppression. From Turner’s perspective, the redemption of a positive racial identity and consciousness was not possible in America. A corollary debate regarding whether racial uplift is the sole province of African Americans arose and remained dominant throughout the twentieth century. In the wake of Washington’s death, a vacuum was created within the America’s Black leadership. There was no cogent plan for racial uplift, so as the twentieth century dawned, Blacks used religion, culture, and various political ideologies as alternative means for Black liberation from oppression. Sociologist Kelly Miller summarized this notion beautifully in 1903 when he stated that: “the progress of all peoples is marked by alterations of combat and contention on the one hand, and compromise and concession on the other. Progress is the resultant of play and counterplay of these forces. Colored men should have a larger tolerance for the widest latitude of opinion and method. Too frequently what passes as an irrepressible conflict is merely difference in point of view.”16 Washington, DuBois, Cooper, Wells-Barnett, and Turner each laid claim to a notion of race that involved relative aspects of essentialism

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and cultural nationalism. Not only did each of these individuals concentrate on the hardships and limited opportunities endured by Black men and women in this country at the turn of the century, they linked the resolution of racism to the reality of race in modern society. Their diverse approaches to resolving America’s racial crisis formed the intellectual foundation for subsequent racial liberation movements in the twentieth century. Moreover, while their insights are often left unclear in general historical narratives, these intellectuals had a significant impact on the political vision and social imagination of Black America. Their notions were part of the intellectual milieu into which the Harlem Unitarian Church was born in 1920. In turn, the HUC was poised to advance another vision for improving the options of Black people.

Seeking the Heart of a Heartless World: American Socialism and Black Christianity in Early Twentieth Century In 1919, W.A. Domingo’s essay “Socialism the Negroes’ Hope” laments the dearth of Black people, especially African Americans, adopting socialism as a doctrine of working-class radicalism. His argument begins in strictly ideological terms by stating, “it is a regrettable and disconcerting anomaly that, despite their situation as the economic, political and social door mat of the world, Negroes do not embrace the philosophy of socialism, and in greater numbers than they do now. It is an anomaly because it is reasonable to expect those who are lowest down to be the ones who would most quickly comprehend the need for a change in their status and welcome any doctrine which holds forth any hope of human elevation.”17 His rhetoric soon takes a decisive turn at this point when he argues: in matters of religion [Black people] respond and react logically and naturally enough, for to them, the religion of Christ, the lowly Nazrene brings definite assurance of surcease from earthly pains and the hope of celestial readjustment of mundane equalities. Their acceptance of the Christian religion with its present day emphasis upon an after-life enjoyment of the good things denied them on the earth is conclusive proof of their dissatisfaction with their present lot, and is an earnest of their susceptibility to Socialism, which intends to do for human beings what Christianity promises to do for them in less material regions.18

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At first glance, Domingo’s willingness to link the social justice incumbent to socialism with the divine justice inherent to Christianity appears contrary to conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, he drives his point to its logical conclusion by conflating the two doctrines: “Socialism as an economic doctrine is merely the pure Christianity preached by Jesus, and practiced by the early Christians adapted to the more complex conditions of modern life. [Socialism] makes no distinction as to race, nationality or creed, but like Jesus it says ‘Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ It is to procure that rest that millions of oppressed peoples are flocking to the scarlet banner of international Socialism.”19 Roughly a year after he made this statement, Domingo became a charter member of the HUC. The establishment of the HUC embodied the potential synergy between American socialism and Black Christianity that had been raging for more than half a century. Domingo’s attempt to position socialism and Christianity as equal partners in the Black freedom struggle illuminates a facet of Black working-class radicalism that has often been overlooked, namely past efforts to galvanize a model of Christian socialism within the historic Black Church tradition. As Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn explain, such advocates of linking the moral values of the social gospel movement with working-class radicalism “argued that the Christian scriptures demand an equality and brotherhood which is best captured in the socialist appeal to collective endeavors and ownership.” In spite of this, the overwhelming majority of Black ministers and laypersons in churches “rejected socialism (and communism) because of its association with anarchy. They feared that the delicate situation of African Americans could only be harmed by such associations.”20 But some Black thinkers and activists were intent upon rethinking capitalism as an economic system. Many of these social critics, motivated by religious and moral prerogatives, considered Christian socialism a viable alternative. Although there is a vibrant scholarly research and debate regarding Black men and women who were involved in the history of American socialism, 21 little attention has been given to examples in which working-class radicalism qua socialism coexisted with various expressions of the historic Black Church tradition. While prevalent notions of socialism within the United States emphasize the secular or atheistic dimensions of radical Left, this has not always been the case within the Black experience in America. In his classic work, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, historian Gayraud Wilmore has

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argued, “Black radicalism, in contrast to the more classic model usually implied by the term, has been less political, less obsessed with ideology on the grand scale, and somewhat less committed to violence as a revolutionary strategy.”22 Though small in number—maybe reaching a few thousand by the 1920s—Black socialists have had considerable influence within the African American community in general and the Black Church in particular. The earliest known person of African descent to join the ranks of American socialists is Peter Humphries Clark. Born in 1829, he spent much of his early life struggling to obtain an education in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. By the early 1850s, he became a prominent figure in the city’s Black community as a widely respected schoolmaster. Clark achieved notoriety for more than his teaching accomplishments. During the antebellum era, he was not only a journalist for the abolitionist periodical Frederick Douglass’ Paper but also served as a conductor on the legendary Underground Railroad. In the meantime, Clark was drawn to the Republican Party largely due to their antislavery position by the 1850s. Much like Douglass, who also cast his lot with the Republicans, Clark had intense misgivings with the party’s numerous reversals pertaining to the civil rights and political interests of African Americans. His disgust with these developments led him to part ways with the Republicans and join the Workingman’s Party, the first socialist party in the United States, by 1876. Clark was especially outraged by the considerable number of wealthy robber barons who rose to power in the midst of the stark poverty and misery that abounded during the Gilded Age. His critique was simple and clear: “Capital must not rule but be ruled and regulated. Capital must be taught that man, and not money, is supreme and that legislation must be had for man.”23 Clark’s speeches and organizing efforts for the Workingman’s Party and its subsequent offshoot, the Socialist Labor Party, were steeped in his own painful personal experiences with the growing inequalities between the wealthy and the poor in addition to propagating an antiracist agenda under the auspices of socialism. By 1879, however, Clark resigned from the Socialist Labor Party because he was thoroughly disenchanted by the party’s entrenched factionalism and racism. Ultimately Clark’s attraction to socialism and antiracism vastly outpaced his commitment to American electoral politics. Aside from being a dedicated advocate of socialism, Clark was a self-avowed Unitarian. Most biographical accounts of Clark’s life and career focus on his radical politics, with little attention paid to his

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religious faith. The connection of Unitarianism and socialism in Clark’s life demonstrates the possibility of merging liberal Christianity and working-class radicalism. And, although there is no direct relationship between Peter Humphries Clark and Ethelred Brown that is immediately evident, the existence of a homegrown outspoken Black Unitarian Socialist more than a half-century before Brown is an intriguing fact that bears further examination. Nearly two decades after Clark walked away from the nascent Socialist Party, a Baptist minister named George Washington Woodbey became the most renowned African American socialist in the United States at the start of the twentieth century. He was born into slavery in Tennessee in 1854. After emancipation, he was able to attain two terms of education but eventually became an autodidact throughout the remainder of his life. Although he had lived and worked in Kansas and Nebraska, he spent most of his life in southern California. Possessing a keen analytical intellect as well as proven skills as an outstanding orator and pamphleteer, Woodbey became a towering figure within the ranks of American socialism. As evident in his impressive body of writings, he was especially heralded for his uncanny gift of rendering complex ideas of political economy in a clear and accessible manner. By 1902, Woodbey had the notable distinction of being pastor of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in San Diego, as well as serving on the executive board of the California Socialist Party and later becoming the first Black national organizer for the socialists. Perhaps more than any other socialist operating in North America, Woodbey was wholeheartedly aware that many Black Christians would be resistant toward socialism. But, as historian Winston James has acknowledged, Woodbey “never abandoned his Christian faith, for he saw no contradiction between his religious beliefs and his socialist politics.”24 In his own fashion, Woodbey professed that he was “convinced that Socialism is but the carrying out of the economic teachings of the Bible.”25 Furthermore, he held significant regard for Karl Marx, often proclaiming him as a latter-day descendant of the Hebrew prophets. Woodbey rejected the conventional wisdom of his socialist comrades that it was “necessary to make atheists, infidels, or agnostics of the professed Christian before you can make a Socialist out of him.”26 Viewing his own embrace of socialism as being akin to a religious conversion, he argued that the best way of persuading Black Christians was to demonstrate to them that the “economic teaching of the Bible and of Socialism are the same.”27

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The congregation at Mount Zion adored its pastor in spite of his radical politics and tolerated his passionate preaching of socialism alongside the Bible. Woodbey chronicled his self-styled mission to enlighten his fellow Black Christians to the virtues of socialism with some interesting results. In two of his most noted ideological tracts, What to Do and How to Do It (1903) and The Bible and Socialism (1904), Woodbey has very spirited and lucid dialogues with his mother and a local pastor, respectively, about the merits of Christian socialism for Black people. Although both texts were highly effective, informative socialist propaganda, in What to Do and How to Do It, a son’s explanation of his radical political and religious views to his worried mother is alternately humorous and touching, demonstrating the innate gifts Woodbey had as an author as well as a spokesperson for the burgeoning socialist movement in America. Ironically, Woodbey was never able to convince the worshippers at Mount Zion that Christianity and socialism could be melded together, and they eventually dismissed him after he was embroiled in a bitter and controversial free-speech legal battle in 1912. After his last article was published in the socialist press in 1915, nothing more was known about him or his whereabouts. George Washington Woodbey’s inability to convince his own congregation of the possible synergy between Christianity and socialism provided a meaningful cautionary tale if only other Black socialists who followed him (including Ethelred Brown) had heeded his example. There were other Black Christian ministers who embraced socialism in the immediate wake of Woodbey’s career. In February 1909, Rev. Richard Euell, a minister from Milford, Ohio, published “A Plan to Reach the Negro” in the Ohio Socialist Bulletin. Euell wrote that “the Negro belongs to the working class and must be taught class consciousness.”28 The heir apparent to Woodbey’s legacy, however, was Rev. George W. Slater Jr. Very little is known about Slater since there are no official records of either his birth or death. Nevertheless, he is reported to have lived in the Chicago area between 1907 and 1912 where he was the minister of Zion Tabernacle Church. It is during this period that Slater reportedly heard Woodbey speaking to a gathered crowd on a Chicago street corner where “he showed me plainly the trouble and remedy” to society’s ills. Slater became a respected pamphleteer, orator, and contributing writer to the socialist press in the United States. Like his mentor Woodbey, he saw no breach between Christianity and socialism, as illustrated in his role as pastor of the Bethel African Church in

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Clinton, IA, from 1912 to 1919. As secretary to the Colored Race for the Christian Socialist Fellowship and as a lecturer for the Socialist Party, Slater received high praise from socialist leader Eugene V. Debs in 1909, who said he was “a fine example of the educated, wideawake teacher, of his race, whose whole heart is in the work and who ought to be encouraged in every possible way to spread the light among the masses.”29 Within the AME Church, Rev. Reverdy Ransom stood as one of the foremost proponents of linking socialism and Black Christianity within the historic Black Church tradition. Caught in a period of intense labor upheavals and populist unrest, Ransom believed that the only way forward for African Americans of his generation was to focus on a new vision of society upheld by a humanistic appeal to equality and the dynamism of modern industry. Seeing Christian socialism as a logical extension of the social gospel movement, he embraced a doctrine that promoted a new social order that was driven by democracy, altruism, and the elevation of collective human potential above individualism. In his essay, “The Negro and Socialism,” Ransom offers a quintessential defense of just such a vision. “Socialism,” according to him, “in a broad and general sense rejects the doctrine of selfishness which rules the present order and affirms that altruism is a principle sufficient to govern the relations of men in the sense it is opposed to individualism and does not regard society as composed of an army of warring atoms, but believes that social system to be the best in which the interests of the individual are made subordinate to the interest of society, while allowing freedom for the highest development of his own personality.”30 When imagining the definitive virtue of socialism, he argued, “[s]ocialism places its chief value upon man. Socialism, like the inspired Carpenter of Nazareth [Jesus], places more value upon man than it does upon riches. It believes that the rights of man are more scared that the rights of property, believes . . . that the only sacred thing on earth is a human being.”31 For Ransom, Christian socialism was a hopeful antidote to virulent racial prejudice and class exploitation. By envisioning Jesus Christ as a “working-class hero”—a carpenter— Ransom subtly aligned Jesus with the poor laborers, regardless of race, who actually built and sustained this society. Ultimately, his assertion of the primacy of the human being was a profound challenge to the legacy of slavery as well as the reality of segregation. Although Ransom’s views on Christian socialism would become more moderate in the later years of his life, he never retreated from the thoroughgoing

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struggle to reform American society and economy in the hopes of making it more just and equitable. For Black socialist preachers such as Woodbey, Slater, Ransom, and others during the first two decades of the twentieth century, efforts to reach Black congregants with their message of egalitarian social relations and anticapitalist redistribution of wealth must have seemed like an uphill battle. According to historian Philip Foner, “there may have been little new for white religiously-inclined Socialists in Woodbey’s pamphlet since the Christian Socialists had already published a considerable body of literature demonstrating to their satisfaction that the Bible and Socialism were compatible. But to black church-goers much of what was in the pamphlet was new and certainly must have made an impressive impact.”32 There was cold comfort to be found in this fact. The failure of Christian socialism to take root (or at least debate its relevancy) within the Black religious experience arguably forestalled significant theological and intellectual advances in the historic Black Church tradition. One of the most salient critiques of this dilemma in this era was offered by the young labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. Whereas much scholarship has focused on his long and legendary career as a socialist to merge the struggle for civil rights and workers’ rights, here I want to discuss Randolph’s relationship with the historic Black Church tradition.33 For example, it is seldom mentioned that Randolph was born and raised in a traditional Southern Black family where his father was an itinerant AME preacher. 34 Raised in a household where matters of faith and spirituality were discussed regularly, the young Randolph’s, “rich vocabulary sometimes took on scriptural accents; a word like ‘verily’ would not come unnaturally to one who had been a Bible reader since boyhood.”35 While there is no current evidence indicating the politics of his childhood home in his native Florida, it seems possible that Randolph’s left-leaning views were bolstered by his youthful upbringing in a Black Christian home in the Jim Crow South. By the time he arrived in New York City and became wholeheartedly involved in the American socialist movement, his understanding of Black working-class life and folk culture was deeply steeped in the historic Black Church tradition. Possibly due to his intimate knowledge of the Black sacred realm, Randolph felt comfortable enough to indict the Black Church of his day. In his editorial “The Failure of the Negro Church,” he echoed the concerns of earlier Black socialist preachers who lambasted the Black Church for failing to recognize or address the economic roots of racial

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oppression and for its resistance to aligning itself with “progressive” (read radical) political allies. But, unlike his forebears, he strikes at what he sees as the corrupt core of the Black Church in modern America: emphasis on materialistic acquisition over humanistic ministry. Randolph proclaims the church to be a failure because “the church has been converted into a business and the ruling characteristic of a business is, that it is run primarily for profits. The interest is focused upon debits and credits, deficits and surpluses. This has been the Scylla and Charybdis of the Negro Church.”36 He explicates the fact that Black churches, regardless of whether they are part of independent church movements or as outposts of white mainline denominations, are all governed by “the white ecclesiastical oligarchy” in the United States. In turn, Randolph viewed this white ecclesiastical oligarchy as being inextricably linked to the “money power” of his day. Ultimately, Randolph imagined that the entire Black Church was subjugated by the hegemonic interest group that wished to maintain the racial and economic status quo thus seeing the Black Church as a practical means to those ends. Though Randolph’s argument could be dismissed as conspiracy theory, he did try to explain why and how Black Christians became so resistant to the possible resonance of socialism. Unlike his predecessors, many of whom were clergy themselves, Randolph had no qualms in suggesting that something intrinsic to the Black Church as an institution—rather than any particular confusion or shortcoming in Black people themselves—might have been the impetus for this aversion to radicalism. In the editorial, he offers numerous suggestions for ways the Black Church could possibly move forward. The first stage of Randolph’s constructive program was the development of a modern Black ministerial leadership that “must get the education of information instead of [simply] the education of inspiration,” stressing that these new ministers need “less Bible and more economics, history, sociology, and physical science.”37 Next, he proposed that the church must become an “open educational forum” wherein congregations could be alerted to problems of national and international significance by specialists. In addition, he argued that the churches of the Black community should become bases of cooperative economic activity for the Black working-class. The final stage of his vision was that a generation of forward-looking Black men, women, and children “demands a new church—a church that is the center of [their] social, economic, and political hopes and strivings.” It was his ultimate assertion that with “an educated fearless and radical ministry,” the

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Black Church “must set its face against a philosophy of profits to a philosophy of service.”38 Following Randolph’s remarks, the situation of the Black Church began to change slowly. Although it is virtually impossible to discern with any precision how many churches and their leaders actually heeded Randolph’s message to redefine the historic Black Church tradition from 1919 onward, it is safe to assume that the numbers remained relatively small. Nevertheless, the Harlem Unitarian Church embodied the kind of radical religious fellowship that was only a dream for an earlier generation of Black Christian socialists.

The Reality of Urban Surroundings: The Harlem Unitarian Church and the Black Radical Intelligentsia As uptown Manhattan transformed into an urban Black enclave during the first two decades of the twentieth century, Harlem came alive with progressive social and political possibilities. By the 1920s, organizations such as the NAACP, the UNIA, the Urban League, the Socialist Party, and the Workers (Communist) Party not only called Harlem home but helped set the standard for mobilizing Blacks throughout the United States. This particular urban Black enclave created an environment conducive to people seeking new visions of uplifting the race. In this context the HUC struggled to find legitimacy among Black New Yorkers. The 1920s witnessed a cleavage within the radical movement in the United States that played itself out within the church. The HUC was fraught with problems rooted in the embrace of radical ideology by the church’s early membership. From the church’s inception in 1920, there was a fundamental political rift that found its way into the church’s inner circle. The founding members of the HUC, Richard B. Moore, Grace Campbell, W.A. Domingo, and Frank R. Crosswaith were also Marxists. Organized American radicalism previously functioning under the guise of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) was split into two parties. The Socialists remained hopeful for the legal and peaceful reformation of American society. Meanwhile, the Workers’, or Communist, Party actively sought an aggressive campaign of organizing workers to ultimately foment a social revolution of global proportions. During this period, Crosswaith and Domingo remained loyal and active members

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of the SPA while Moore and Campbell sided with the upstart Communist Party. Ethelred Brown himself became a member of the Socialists due largely to the considerable influence of Hubert Harrison. Hubert Harrison served as a lynchpin within the burgeoning political and intellectual culture of Harlem. Harrison not only became one of America’s preeminent socialist thinkers of his day, he also articulated the rudimentary elements of modern Black nationalism, making him a forebear of such Black radicals as Cyril Briggs, A. Philip Randolph, Richard B. Moore, and Grace Campbell, as well as the nascent pan-Africanist movement that Marcus Garvey would eventually lead. Harrison’s commitment to the ideologies of socialism and pan-Africanism also predated the work of W.E.B. DuBois. Despite his lack of notoriety, Hubert Harrison’s distinction and influence was quite extensive. This was most clearly demonstrated by what historian Irma Watkins-Owens called the “soapbox brigade,” a seminal early generation of Black public intellectuals during the Progressive era. There have been a few attempts in recent years to revisit Harrison’s contributions to African American political thought but his most profound influence may be measured by the individuals he inspired. 39 The soapbox brigade was significant to both Harlem’s Black populace and the formation of the HUC. These radical organizers and orators collectively redefined public discourse in Harlem from 1917 to 1930. Although somewhat varied in their individual backgrounds and levels of education, they were clearly united in their overall purpose: to expose their fellow Harlemites to new progressive ideas that might lead them to unite, organize, and respond on behalf of all African peoples. This group consisted of such luminaries as Richard B. Moore, Frank R. Crosswaith, Grace P. Campbell, W.A. Domingo, A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, Elizabeth Hendrickson, and Marcus Garvey.40 After becoming a Socialist organizer in the late 1920s, Rev. Ethelred Brown joined the ranks of the soapbox brigade on Harlem’s street corners. Harlem’s street corner orators were engaged in directly educating the Black masses with whom they came in contact. Notwithstanding the influence of nationally recognized critics of American race relations, those men and women worked at the local level directly attuned to the specific issues most relevant to the lives of Black New Yorkers. By and large, the soapbox brigade related to the needs and interests of their Harlem neighbors because they shared the same experiences. For instance, Frank Crosswaith, Ethelred Brown, and

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other members of the soapbox brigade were employed in low-level jobs that put them on par with the average Black laborer in New York City. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, such an ability to understand the common difficulties and struggles faced by the typical Black New Yorker created an undeniable bond between these truly “public” intellectuals and their audience. Richard B. Moore was a prime example of this link between the soapbox brigade and the larger Harlem scene. Moore was a Barbadian immigrant and had a dynamic career in scope and duration. Having migrated to New York City in 1909, Moore was deeply involved in the political and social life of Harlem for almost sixty years. He immersed himself in a number of local racial uplift organizations such as the Associated Colored Employees of America (an association devoted to promote job opportunities for Blacks) and the Harlem Pioneer Cooperative Society (a race-based self-improvement cooperative) by 1915. These early activities inaugurated a life that focused upon civil rights advocacy, social justice, and self-determination for the peoples of Africa and the Caribbean. These conjoined interests eventually led to his vital contributions to the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). The ABB came into existence by 1919 on the heels of numerous national crises. As mentioned in chapter one, the twin assault of the Red raids organized by the Justice Department and the “Red Summer” race riots against Blacks were powerful and frightening turns in American society. For those Blacks with demonstrated leftist/socialist leanings, there was a growing demand for some organized response to such open terror. In the meantime, the newly formed Communist Party sought to ingratiate itself to Black America by expressing a strong commitment to struggles against racism, class exploitation, and imperialism. Moore, Cyril Briggs, and Grace Campbell were pioneering Black members of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) during this period in the hope of turning the predominantly white radical organization into an effective force against white supremacy ranging from Jim Crow segregation to lynching. The ABB was founded in 1919 to implement fully the antiracist and revolutionary aspects of the Third Comintern (Communist International). Primarily a secret fraternal order, the ABB’s aim was armed self-defense, the struggle for equal rights, and self-determination for peoples of African descent. It was one of the first Harlem-based organizations to affiliate with the new American Communist Party. Briggs and most of the ABB charter members, including Moore and Campbell, became Communists by 1922. Moore was the ABB’s

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educational director and worked with fellow travelers Briggs and Campbell among others to encourage race pride, self-determination, and armed self-defense. In the years just before the Great Depression, the ABB dissolved and left the Communist Party’s Black members adrift even as American Communists sought to expand their efforts to reach Black workers around the United States. Membership remained relatively small nationwide, though chapters were set up in major urban centers. Despite the best efforts of Briggs, Moore, Campbell, and the Supreme Council of the ABB, the organization struggled awkwardly to gain ground during the so-called Age of Normalcy. The radical Black nationalist agenda of the ABB was circumscribed by the fact that the majority of Harlem’s Black intelligentsia and political leadership were more interested in the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance and modest gains in the development of local Black businesses than in the possible growth of the Left or organized labor within the Black community. By 1925, the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC) replaced the ABB as the Communist Party’s chief front organization for Black leftist and progressive labor efforts around the country. Richard Moore was made editor of the Negro Champion, the ANLC’s main organ. Such opportunities enabled Moore to develop his own interest in pan-African history and politics. In his endless personal evolution, Moore continually strove to use such knowledge to inspire Harlem’s Black populace to become more socially conscious and politically active. He addressed international congresses on African affairs in the 1920s and worked to draft resolutions demanding the end of colonialism on the African continent. Moore was appointed the International Labor Defense (ILD) organizer for the New England region in 1935. His status as an ILD spokesperson was of great importance during this period because of his tireless campaigning on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, the nine young African American men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. With the eventual vindication of the Scottsboro Boys, Moore’s national prominence as a Communist leader reached an all-time peak. During the 1930s, Moore used his notoriety as the most well-known Black Communist to improve job opportunities for Harlemites as operators on local bus lines and in the commercial hub district located on 125th Street, Harlem’s most famous thoroughfare. Such “race first” attitudes on Moore’s part, however, were considered a betrayal of the Communist Party’s basic tenets. By 1930, there was a movement among his comrades to attack

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him for his “petty bourgeois nationalism” and “racial chauvinism” on behalf of Harlem’s Black populace. Earl Ofari Hutchinson argues that Black nationalists of the era dismissed the Communist appeal for colorblindness because they regarded any variation of Marxism as “just another white man’s ‘ism” that could not resolve the fundamental crisis of Black poverty. Furthermore, the nationalists argued that white Communists would betray Blacks the first chance they got. Therefore, Black nationalists effectively countered the Marxist call for class solidarity with their own appeal for racial harmony, insisting that Blacks must develop organizations and programs free of all white influences, including the Socialists and Communists.41 On the other hand, from the Black Marxists’ perspective, Black nationalists were teaching the Black community to hate white workers rather than the capitalists who oppressed the entire American work force. Recognizing this situation, Marxists went to great lengths to lure black workers toward class-based alliances and away from race-based nationalist movements. As Hutchinson argues, Socialist and Communist leaders “deliberately blurred the racial lines in their battle against nationalism to the point where they hurled shrill epithets at white racists and race-conscious blacks with equal abandon.”42 This increasingly antagonistic posture toward Moore’s nationalist perspective might have been instigated by international affairs of the period. The emergence of fascism in Europe and Asia provoked the Comintern to shift its overall focus. The end of the 1930s found the Comintern and the CPUSA shifting attention from antiracist and anti-imperialist activities to the Popular Front. That phase of the Communists’ policymaking sought to reconcile smoothly the Communist Party with the political cultures of the Western powers and the United States. Such a move made it advantageous for the Harlem Communist Party to marginalize and eventually expel individuals such as Moore. By 1939, the charges mounted against Moore within the Communist Party, leading to his ouster from the party. Grace P. Campbell, Moore’s brigade sister, represented a seamless merger of radical politics and social ministry. Campbell inspired many of her contemporaries such as Moore, Claude McKay, and others; she was more than able to hold her own in radical circles. Campbell was not only the first Black woman to join the 21st Assembly District Socialist Club, Harlem’s branch of the SPA, she was also the first female member of the ABB and a member of that group’s Supreme Council. During the advent of the New Negro era, Campbell demonstrated an uncompromising feminist identity in a space and time overly

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identified with the men who rose to distinction within it. For example, she was one of the first women of any race to seek political office in New York State by running for an available State Assembly seat on the Socialist ticket in 1920. Although she shifted away from electoral politics and into civil service from that year onward, it did not dampen her passion for radicalism. She changed her party affiliation from the Socialist to the Communists, a move that coincided with her influential work with the ABB. In the meantime, she began working for the city of New York in 1915, first as a probation officer, then a parole officer, and eventually became a court attendant for the Court of Sessions for New York. This latter position was secured in large part due to her superlative results on a competitive civil service examination that ranked her first among some 164 candidates. She maintained her steadfast involvement with radical politics and an impressive career in civil service, but that is only part of Campbell’s contribution to the lives of her fellow Harlemites. Grace Campbell was also unequivocally committed to social activism. As Richard Moore noted, Campbell was “a humanitarian social worker who maintained, largely from her own earnings, a needed home for deserted young mothers.”43 Although originally trained as a municipal social worker, Campbell volunteered her time, home, and money to operate the Empire Friendly Shelter for needy young women and their infants. As one scholar has noted, Campbell and her sister Mary opened the shelter in their residence at 116 West 135th Street in Harlem circa 1920 with some twenty-six people sharing the house, most notably seven children who were four-yearsold or younger.44 During this period, Campbell was also a member of the Association for the Protection of Colored Women, a predecessor of the National Urban League. Such charitable deeds represented a truly admirable devotion to the Christian ideal of “good works” on Campbell’s part. This was further illustrated by her work with the Harlem Tenants League in the 1920s and 1930s. The HUC was especially useful in helping to keep all the concerns of her life in some semblance of order. Despite her accomplishments and contributions to Harlem, little is known about Grace Campbell. She provided great service on behalf of women’s rights, racial uplift, and radical dissidence, but made a conscious effort not to pursue the spotlight. Unlike Harrison, Moore, Crosswaith, and other members of Harlem’s soapbox brigade, Campbell rarely wanted her statements to be recorded or appear in print. So great was Campbell’s disdain for creating a proverbial

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“paper trail” that she never wrote a substantive tract documenting her ideas for historical record. With no article, essay, book, or official correspondence to her credit, Campbell’s role in the earliest and most radical years of the New Negro era has been lost to memory and myth. Grace Campbell’s relative invisibility within the broad scope of Harlem’s early Black radical intelligentsia was also linked to a pervasive and persistent strain of sexism. Recent studies have illuminated how the rhetoric and aesthetic of the New Negro era’s Black intellectuals, artists, and political leadership adopted an overwhelmingly masculine tone.45 In the earliest decades of the twentieth century, Black political thought remained fixated on the range of issues most vital to the men of the race such as lynching, police brutality, guaranteed Black male suffrage, and an integrated military. Even the most progressive and/or radical segments of Black life affiliated with the American labor movement and the American Left were deeply mired in the same shortsightedness concerning gender. In the pamphlets and other missives promoting interracial unity and class solidarity, the operative concepts are always those of universal brotherhood seeking the God-given rights of all men. Such doggedly masculinist rhetoric and its underlying logic demonstrates, as historian Kevin Gaines asserts, that masculinity was not only becoming a staple of modern Black militancy but also “became synonymous with the progress of the race and thus extended its mission of social control to the lives and sexuality of black women in the name of protection.”46 In spite of her work to mobilize Harlem’s rank-and-file, Campbell was permanently excluded from the ideological “brotherhood” of Black political leadership. But Campbell’s challenge to conventional class norms and gender roles has also kept her outside the purview of Black women’s history as well. Because of her relatively comfortable salary as a civil servant, Campbell was easily considered upwardly mobile in Harlem during this period. Her adherence to revolutionary Marxism and her belief in direct political action and the administration of public relief illustrated that she was cut from a different cloth than others in her socioeconomic strata. Furthermore, during the course of her life, Campbell remained unmarried and never had children of her own, circumstances that put her even farther outside the realm of respectable Black middle-class womanhood during this period. Ironically, in a generation in which the Black women’s club movement was best represented by the National Council of Negro Women and other

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middle-class organizations (ladies’ auxiliaries, Black sororities, etc.), there was no neat or easy category for Campbell alongside contemporaneous women of the same racial and class background. Had she been born in the latter half of the twentieth century, she might have been rightfully embraced as a Black feminist icon in the ongoing struggles for women’s rights. In sum, Campbell’s invisibility has been intensified because she was too unconventional for her contemporaries and lived before the advent of the modern feminist consciousness especially in terms of Black feminism and womanism, in the latter half of the twentieth century. Lastly, and I believe most importantly, Campbell was keenly aware of the possible consequences of being too visible or vocal. The federal government immediately recognized Harlem’s Black dissidents who rose to significant levels. By virtue of her nationality and her civil service career, Campbell might have been mindful of what was at stake if word of her radical activities caught the attention of the federal authorities.47 In the aftermath of both the Russian Revolution and the First World War, America was a veritable powder keg as far as radicalism was concerned. Marked by the hysteria and bona fide paranoia that ensued from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s “Red raids,” the Justice Department’s next established the Bureau of Investigation, a precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Bureau of Investigation, under the ruthless and quixotic guidance of the Justice Department’s rising star, J. Edgar Hoover, devoted incredible amounts of time, energy, and other resources to federal surveillance and infiltration of radical groups. By the dawn of the 1920s, the Bureau’s focus came to bear most heavily on Black militant organizations such as the ABB and UNIA. Unlike her Afro-Caribbean peers, Campbell’s connection with groups deemed as “Negro agitators” would have attracted heavier penalties than brief imprisonment and subsequent deportation (as in the case of Marcus Garvey in 1925). It appears that Campbell’s fears were well deserved. Whereas the federal government’s ongoing surveillance of certain segments of Black America has recently become more widely known, the case of Grace Campbell is peculiar.48 The investigative reports and surveillance files on Campbell are so extensive, especially during the heyday of the first Red Scare, that they are the most comprehensive chronicle of her life and activities presently available. The HUC was an important venue for like-minded and enthusiastic individuals to have truly heated debates. Brown encouraged and

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moderated the most volatile discussions as a fundamental part of the church’s ministry. In turn, the HUC created a network that bridged ideological divisions. By most accounts, the theoretical schism between Harlem’s leading Black Socialists and Communists during this era did not serve as the central focus of the HUC meetings. Oddly, the HUC’s Sunday services were occasions where fierce political rivals were able to associate with one another in relative peace. In 1928, Frank Crosswaith had the chance to deliver a sermon and lead a subsequent discussion on the topic “Jesus as I Like to Think of Him.” This harkened back to his days as a godly and churchgoing youth when, in his attempt to migrate to the United States, he had received a letter of sponsorship from his local minister in his native Virgin Islands. Yet, such political content during the HUC’s services, even at its most subdued, might have been too overpowering for the average Harlemite, thus leaving many wanting more religion emphasized. Frank R. Crosswaith represented a radical organizer of a somewhat different stripe. Beginning in his adolescent years in St. Croix, Crosswaith had a lifelong fascination with socialism, which eventually led him to become a labor union organizer of national renown. He was hailed alongside A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen as one of the premier organizers of Black laborers in New York, if not the entire United States. This comparison was made more evident since Crosswaith and Randolph were often invited to participate at the same roundtable discussions or speaking engagements. His connections to both Harlem and the American Left led colleagues and observers to call Crosswaith “the Negro Debs.” In 1923, this nickname took greater significance when he served as chairperson for a meeting to honor Eugene V. Debs in Harlem. Crosswaith differed from his fellow HUC members in a number of ways. First, his educational background was much more formal. Although he toiled at many low-level occupations during his early years in New York—his first job was an elevator operator—he had the opportunity to attend the Rand School of Social Science in New York City. As a Marxist school for the working-class Left, the Rand had been the old stomping grounds of Hubert Harrison, among others in New York’s burgeoning radical intellectual circle. This sort of training in strict Marxism was lacking in the lives of Brown, Richard Moore, and others. Following Crosswaith’s training, the Rand School retained his services as a lecturer. In addition, he became the secretary of the People’s Educational Forum in 1922. The forum was yet another venue in which Black New Yorkers were exposed to well-known leftist

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speakers from around the United States, such as George S. Schuyler, A.J. Muste, and Louis Waldman. Another important difference between Crosswaith and his peers in the HUC concerned his citizenship status. While Crosswaith was an Afro-Caribbean immigrant, he was granted U.S. citizenship by virtue of his origin in the Virgin Islands. This generally tended to complicate his political outlook as well as his relationship with his contemporaries in the HUC. He took advantage of his citizenship to become directly involved in American electoral politics, effectively parlaying his role as the Socialist Party’s leading Black spokesperson into the American Labor Party and Socialist Party candidacy for various public offices. He sought the office of Congressman various times from the 1920s to the 1930s, as well as lieutenant governor (1932), city councilman (1939), and president of New York City’s Board of Alderman. Crosswaith’s political aspirations peaked in 1924 when he served as Norman Thomas’ running mate on the Socialist ticket. He sought the office of Secretary of State while Thomas ran for the governor of New York State. Whereas his political ambitions met with middling success at best, Crosswaith enjoyed opportunities for social activism and political mobilization that were not readily available to his fellow church members. In the intervening years, the civil rights and labor movement had come to a considerable point of convergence. A. Philip Randolph transformed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters into the strongest union among Black laborers in the United States. In turn, Randolph emerged as an elder statesman in the American labor movement culminating in his vice presidency in the the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the only Black to hold such a position. He was able to utilize his prominence to forge a coalition of the radical, labor, and civil rights organizations during the Second World War to lobby the Roosevelt administration for open hiring practices in industries with government contracts. Holding the threat of a protest march in the nation’s capital, as a trump card against the White House, Randolph was able to coax the president to push forward plans for a Fair Employment Practices Commission. With this development, the nation made considerable gains toward attaining greater racial equality in the postwar years. During the Eisenhower era, Frank Crosswaith reflected on the intersection of race and class in postwar America. Since the formation of the Negro Labor Committee in 1935, Crosswaith had been the chairman of the committee. In 1952, Crosswaith commented on this

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change with great enthusiasm by stating that “the Negro is now a part of the organized labor movement, but many of the problems which have haunted him down through the ages, during and after chattel slavery are still to be met and solved. He can only meet and solve such problems as lynching, segregation, race prejudice, inadequate educational facilities and opportunities, et cetera, if and when organized labor recognizes its common interest with the Negro and through education and organization joins with him to meet and solve them.”49 As he viewed the matter, the time was ripe to cultivate “the machinery and the movement that spell victory for all of us as workers in our desire to justify our birth, justify our common divine origin and common destiny.”50 An issue that captured the attention of many HUC members was the struggle for decent, affordable housing in Harlem. Among Black residents of Harlem, there were patently different responses to the poor housing conditions, mainly shaped by class concerns. Aspiring middle-class Harlemites appealed for the creation of new local housing on moral grounds. Working-class and poor Blacks used subletting, hotbed systems, and rent parties to meet high rents. Conservative, middle-class Blacks alleged that such activities caused decent tenants to encounter individuals “whose manners and morals [were] a source of danger” to their hopes for respectability.51 These critics saw dependence on these survival tactics as demeaning. They argued that this situation could be rectified by increasing the quality and quantity of housing available in Harlem. The pleas of Black middle-class Harlemites went out to both the private and public sectors with mixed results. In the late 1920s, the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Apartments were an initial response to this Black bourgeoisie’s cry for public housing. The Dunbar Apartments were initiated and sponsored by John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a housing cooperative for middle-class Black Harlemites. Although the Dunbar met the aesthetic needs of its tenants, residential management “operated with a severe condescension” that demonstrated that “[p]aternalism remained an integral part” of these privately funded housing reforms.52 By the 1930s, the establishment of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) introduced a new reformist dynamic in the schema of Harlem’s public housing that sought to be more responsive and accountable to the needs of residents. However, the NYCHA’s involvement in Harlem’s housing shortage was also problematic. By late 1935, race played a central role in both tenant and site selection for the Harlem River Houses to a large degree. Racial policies for the

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housing authority demanded that “projects built in white areas were expected to go to whites, and projects for Blacks were to be built in already Black areas” thereby “ ‘threatening’ no neighboring white community.53 In contrast, the working-class and poor Black tenants organized to realize their self-interests. For instance, the members of the United Harlem Tenants and Consumer Organization (UHTCO) contested the horrid conditions in their violation-filled house at 21 W. 111 Street. Initially, the UHTCO came together after the tenants suffered without heat for a week during the winter. They shortly “formed a cooperative, stopped paying rent and bought their own coal.”54 This tenant organization subsequently filed a lawsuit against their floating landlord, or “floater.” As UHTCO’s leader Bonita Williams stated, “[t]he landlords are busy thinking up new ways to trick the people of Harlem. The only way to defeat them is to have them arrested like the common criminals they are.”55 The major drawback to the steps taken by groups such as UHTCO is that, while they achieved improvements on a local or individual basis, they lacked a more formal agenda for systemic housing reform. Making Harlem a more livable social environment ultimately involved the synthesis of middle-class self-interest and an en masse commitment to action on the part of the Black populace. Meanwhile, the notion of homeownership within an expressly urban context became more remote for both the middle class and working poor. The premium prices placed on land were often unfathomable to the average urban citizen. Urban renters of all types were victims. The Harlem Tenants League, another Communist organization headed by Moore and Campbell, demonstrated yet another facet of the complicated politics and social activism in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s. The main function of the League was to organize tenants’ committees in residential buildings throughout Harlem to coordinate rent strikes and protests against unfit living conditions and exorbitant rents. The League augmented these regular grassroots demonstrations with increased agitation before New York City’s Board of Aldermen, demanding that the municipal government recognize the grievances raised by the poor and people of color. Due to its high visibility, practical approach, and proven success, the Harlem Tenants League was the best organizing vehicle and chief means of recruiting Blacks during the earliest years of the Depression. As historians have noted, Black Communists in other parts of the United States drew extensively upon the Black Christian experience to support their radicalism. For example, in his study of Black

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radicalism in Alabama during the Great Depression, historian Robin Kelley explains that the “radical, prophetic tradition of Christianity was a major factor in drawing Blacks into the Communist Party and its mass organizations.”56 Much like their contemporaries elsewhere, the pastor and congregation of the Harlem Unitarian Church did not necessarily find any contradiction between religion and radical politics. However, the Black Church in America has been involved in a particularly adverse struggle with the American Left for most of the twentieth century. In keeping with the prevalent American views, the mainline Black Protestant denominations promoted the notion that communism and socialism were antithetical to the Black community because they were unpatriotic and atheistic. How did Harlem Unitarian Church quell this tension within its own congregational body? Oddly enough, Hubert Harrison, one of the most influential figures in the history of Rev. Brown’s Harlem ministry, was not even an official member of the congregation. Harrison exemplified bold Marxist fervor that Brown and the Unitarian congregation found most appealing. Delivering his engrossing and enlightened public lectures from soapboxes on uptown Manhattan’s street corners, Harrison sought to develop among his fellow Harlemites “a civic consciousness” that could be realized through increased levels of selfexpression, self-governance, educated citizenship, and social activism among New York’s growing masses of Blacks. 57 As historian Kevin Gaines asserts, Harrison helped to usher in an era of racial selfdeterminism and New Negro militancy during the 1920s. 58 This impressive array of attributes fueled the overwhelming admiration and respect Brown and the members of the church had for not only who Harrison was but also what he came to represent: the popular voice of Harlem radicalism. When Harrison died in December 1927, the congregation moved to rename their church “The Hubert Harrison Memorial Church.” In his memoirs, Rev. Brown noted that the congregation did this as “a means of commemorating [Harrison’s] invaluable work of enlightenment, emancipation, and inspiration” that they wholeheartedly shared. Brown notes, however, that there was another motive behind this sincere gesture. The church members assumed that naming the church after this beloved popular figure would attract a sizable number of his students, friends, and admirers to the church. Much to the congregation’s dismay, however, this move totally backfired; those who knew Harrison railed against the church for naming itself after a

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man who was both an avowed agnostic and Marxist. Brown later recorded that “[h]ow much we suffered because of this mistake cannot be assessed. For nine years we bore the name of a man who in his lifetime showed no real interest in our [religious] work” and consequently lost a significant number of potential supporters.59 From the early 1920s until the advent of the Second World War, the Communist and Socialist parties engaged in aggressive campaigns within urban Black communities such as Harlem to solicit support for their respective causes. The members of the local community, however, remained wary of the radical ideologues who continued to invade uptown Manhattan. As Jacqueline Jones indicates, although the Communist Party waged successful efforts to win jobs for Harlem residents, the results “both fulfilled and fell short of community expectations during the depression. Black women and men embraced the Party when it responded to their needs for jobs and better housing—a conditional form of support that inspired mixed feelings in Party members.”60 The general consensus among Black workers in communities such as Harlem held that if joining in solidarity with white Communists and Socialists could accomplish the same ultimate goals, then it was a beneficial avenue to pursue. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, faced with this growing skepticism as well as the proven reluctance of white radicals to promote Black causes, members of the Harlem Unitarian Church became involved in autonomous Black political organizations. Rev. Brown was committed to issues of political activism and social justice as a member of the Harlem Job Committee, Harlem Tenants League, and the Colored Socialists of America. Moreover, Brown steadfastly advocated the promotion of cooperative rather than profit-making enterprises for the economic empowerment of Harlem. Such involvements on the part of Brown, Moore, Campbell, Crosswaith, and others were very integral to the overall social outlook of Harlem Unitarian Church, offering a political and social vision that could actually promote the issues of race and class oppression as interconnected and equally important throughout the African diaspora during the early half of the twentieth century.61 The American Left’s failure to establish a more substantial base within Harlem had very little to do with the perceptions of Blacks as selfish or opportunistic. Instead, Harlemites became disaffected by the Party’s cultural insensitivity toward the integral role the church played in Black political mobilization. In his study of Communists in Harlem, Mark Naison describes how the Communist Party’s

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Popular Front phase brought to the surface the underlying tensions that mitigated the Party’s appeal to Blacks. Naison suggests that, by this time: Communists had come to recognize that church participation was essential in community struggles and had developed close working relationships with Harlem ministers. Yet while Communists praised the black church as a repository of black traditions and a center of resistance, their official ideology . . . was militantly secular.62

The Communist Party remained reluctant to incorporate elements of Black Christianity into the life of its Party branches despite the efforts of radical ministers such as Brown. As historian Jacqueline Jones notes, “despite its reliance on charismatic leaders . . . [the Communist Party] remained dominated by white men and estranged from the intense religious devotion of the black masses.”63 Also, V.P. Franklin emphasizes that during the 1920s and 1930s the Black Church tradition was essentially lambasted by Black progressive radicals, liberal white intellectuals and philanthropists, and interracial coalitions of Communists for being overly conservative, anti-intellectual, and politically apathetic. Leading Black radicals of the day such as A. Philip Randolph and Cyril Briggs remained quite critical of the Black Church during this period in light of its wholesale lack of participation and endorsement in their socialist-influenced campaigns. Meanwhile, white liberals such as Howard Odum and Robert Parks regarded the Black Church as archaic and unsuitable for assimilation into dominant white society. In this regard, Franklin insightfully notes that these critics “all characterized Afro-American religion for their own particular reasons,” ranging from latent racism and cultural insensitivity to personal resentment. Regardless of intentions, however, there was no effort during this period to clearly “separate the political position assumed by Afro-American religious institutions and the belief-system within Afro-American Christianity.”64 The Harlem Unitarian Church represents a direct challenge to the thought that radical politics and religion cannot mix. The HUC’s embrace of leftist politics defied popular notions regarding the Black Church tradition in America. One of the most popular criticisms of the American Left within the Black community has centered on the antireligious stance of Marxist thought. Within his Unitarian ministry, Rev. Brown directly challenged the most misconstrued critique of religion as attributed to Karl Marx, most specifically the oft-quoted

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statement that “religion is the opium of the masses.” Yet, that infamous quote by Marx, when viewed in its entirety states as follows: “Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”65 Although Marx most certainly had his deeply held problems with spirituality and religion, his argument in this instance illustrates a more sensitive and nuanced reading by him regarding matters of faith.66 Moreover, despite the depiction of Marx rendered by many die-hard anticommunists is greatly betrayed once this quote is read in its larger context and the reader can behold that, rather than simply reducing religion to a narcotic for making the people numb, he seems to allude to religion’s greater ability to humanize people in ways that political economy never can. Likewise, empowered by the Black Church tradition’s implicit mission of social justice, Brown expressed his adamant belief that theology and political ideology could be regarded as one and the same. This point is made most poignantly when the minister insists that “religion really is . . . not an opiate, but a stimulant . . . an incentive to noble deeds and a sustaining power in the hour of crisis.”67 For Brown and his congregation, being Black Unitarians who ascribed to radical political ideology did not hamper their passion but actually augmented it. In sum, the merger of religion and radicalism in Harlem provided a greater sense of meaning and cohesion to the Black community’s urgent struggles for fair and equal treatment in Black America.

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4 In the Shadow of Egypt: Racial Consciousness and Pan-Caribbean Nationalism in the Harlem Unitarian Church The Negroes of America—those of them who think—are suspicious of everything that comes from the white people of America. They have seen that every movement for the extension of democracy here has broken down as soon as it reached the color line. Political democracy declared that “all men are created equal,” meant only all white men; the Christian church found that the brotherhood of man did not include God’s bastard children . . . So that they can hardly be blamed for looking askance at any new gospel of freedom. —Hubert H. Harrison, When Africa Awakes1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. —Isa. 30:1–3 AV

Following America’s brief but significant military adventure in the First World War, the nation was abuzz with an odd and dizzying energy. On the cusp of a new decade, the United States had become a major world power that had, to paraphrase President Woodrow Wilson’s famous quote, allegedly made “the world safe for democracy.” In the process,

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American society was thrust into the heady realm of world politics without the benefit of fair warning or adequate preparation for such a transition from its long tradition of isolationism. Nevertheless, the United States was now responsible for charting the course for a “new world order.” Despite the unabashed failure of Wilson’s political maneuvers during the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations, America’s role as a global leader was firmly in place by the start of the 1920s. Domestic affairs, however, were a different matter altogether. Aside from the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment establishing women’s suffrage in 1920 and the great successes of the War Industries Board in coordinating the nation’s wartime needs, the United States was experiencing some frightening tremors in the postwar years. Dealing with the newly created “Red Scare” and its assault on all domestic dissent on one hand, while also seeing the utter collapse of positive race relations following the “Red Summer” of 1919, the virtues of American democracy seemed to be falling on hard times. As mentioned earlier, these factors combined with a mounting wave of rabid xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment to end the Progressive era and give rise to a new era of Republican conservatism. But despite the GOP’s much-ballyhooed claims to usher forth an “Age of Normalcy” under the leadership of Warren G. Harding and his successor, Calvin Coolidge, the 1920s were anything but normal. With these changes underway, Hubert Harrison served as the strident voice for a new brand of Black militancy. Laying claim to the political insurgency of the New Negro radicalism long before Alain Locke bastardized the term for mainstream popularity and consumption, Harrison promoted a racial uplift program that merged revolutionary Marxism and Black nationalism at a time when both were highly taboo. His thoughts on the global experiences and concerns of African peoples are most poignantly encapsulated in his landmark text, When Africa Awakes. Published in 1920, When Africa Awakes was a visionary work even by today’s standards. Harrison fused the boundless energy of his intellectual curiosity with a fervent rhetorical style that made him a legendary orator in New York during this era. But Harrison’s influence extended far beyond the written or spoken word. Harrison was a lightning rod for the manifold ideological trends that had taken root in Harlem since the First World War. Notable Black radicals such as A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, Cyril Briggs, W.E.B. DuBois, Ethelred Brown, Richard Moore, and Frank Crosswaith among countless others, were enthralled by his

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mastery of Marxism and his application of it to the “Negro problem.” Likewise, his boldness and genuine race consciousness underscored the creative impulses that defined the early Harlem Renaissance. In addition, Harrison literally introduced Marcus Garvey and his particular brand of pan-Africanism to the world. In fact, it can be argued that Harrison’s work in founding the Liberty League and The Voice, the first Black radical organization and first militant Black newspaper in the United States, laid the foundation for Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), and later Black radical and/or nationalist enterprises. Lastly, as an Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Virgin Islands, Harrison inspired members of the newly formed HUC and other Harlemites with Caribbean roots to consider the role of Black ideological diversity within their congregation, helping to foster the “temple and forum” format that the church sought to make a reality. For these reasons among others, noted historian J.A. Rogers proclaimed that “Harrison was not only perhaps the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time, but one of America’s greatest minds. No one worked more seriously and indefatigably to enlighten his fellowmen [sic].”2 For his fellow Harlemites, Harrison seemed to have a firm grasp on local, national, and international crises simultaneously, integrating them without fuss or strain. Harrison not only predicted the collapse of the new order of things instituted by Wilson domestically and internationally, he also envisioned the “awakening” of the African diaspora’s revolution against imperialism. Moreover, he presaged the shift toward expanded educational opportunities and guaranteed power in electoral politics as the definitive goals of the American civil rights struggle in the early 1920s.3 In spite of such keen insight, Harrison was a restless and irrevocably divided soul. As a political agitator and activist, he was overshadowed by individuals he trained and encouraged. Randolph and Garvey were prime examples. This led Harrison to a more pragmatic model of grassroots, political organizing; he later rationalized that his role was to call attention to the troubling times ahead but to have no mass following or substantial means to confront said crises. He was also disillusioned by this realization that not all his socialist comrades were evenly yoked or truly dedicated to the doctrines of socialism. All of these issues were compounded by his literal crisis of faith. Although Harrison attested to being a spiritual person who pondered metaphysics at length, he was suspicious and generally repelled by any and all forms of organized religion. The confusing

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mood of this supposed Age of Normalcy for Black America was epitomized by Harrison’s inner anguish. Much like Harrison and the rest of Harlem, the members of the HUC were so intent on seizing a proud and distinctive racial identity that they invariably displayed the most fearsome manifestations of W.E.B. DuBois’ paradigm of double consciousness. DuBois argued that Blacks in America possessed “a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness . . . two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”4 How could the members of this church, collectively or individually, achieve the ultimate goal of racial uplift and social justice for people of African descent here and elsewhere when they had not fully come to terms with the burdens imposed upon them by modern white society and culture? To echo the sentiments of Isaiah 30:1–3, to linger and actually trust in “the shadow of Egypt,” meant charting new directions without redressing the obscured yet omnipresent injuries of race, class, and gender oppression. Therein lies the constant source of shame and confusion within the Black intellectual tradition: the critical tensions of dwelling in the shadow of Egypt. A new political ideal for Black America was taking shape by the 1920s. More than fifty years after emancipation, the first generations of Black men and women after the abolition of slavery wanted to seize liberty as well as appreciate the fullness of life. Heralded by authors such as Booker T. Washington’s New Negro for a New Century (1900) and William C. Pickens’ The New Negro (1916), this more outspoken and sophisticated racial perspective of Black people was steadily gaining momentum. In his own tribute to the New Negro, Alain Locke noted in 1925 that: the Negro mind reaches out as yet to nothing but American wants, American ideas. But this forced attempt to build his Americanism on race values is a unique social experiment, and its ultimate success is impossible except through the fullest sharing of American culture and institutions. 5

As native- and foreign-born Blacks poured into America’s urban industrial centers, however, they were not automatically radical. As Locke intimated, New Negro militancy was born of a straightforward

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mix of Black people’s desire for first-class citizenship and middleclass notions of the American Dream—social freedom, economic opportunity, and other democratic values. 6 The intractable nature of racial discrimination and prejudice intensified the very nature of the New Negro movement. Faced with the exigencies of white supremacy, New Negro militancy became increasingly radical and reinvented the Black experience in the United States from the 1920s to the 1940s. During the years between the two World Wars, Black New Yorkers attempted to chart a new direction for their own corner of the urban American landscape. Although operating within the same chronological period, these two viewpoints of being either African or American (but never both simultaneously) were often kept separate in the investigation of Harlem’s place in the overall Black experience, but such an approach fails to encompass properly the complexity of a place like Harlem. Despite his notable reputation as the archetype of the Progressive politicians, Herbert Hoover proved himself incapable of devising a strategy to counteract the severity or longevity of the Depression. His chief attempts, devising a “trickle-down” economic scheme and seeking the creation of an associative state, floundered and led to popular outrage. F.D.R.’s election in 1932 must be viewed as the ultimate result of a rabidly anti-Hoover sentiment rather than any abiding prima facie faith in Roosevelt’s abilities to undo the ravages of the economic crisis. Various studies of Blacks in the 1930s illustrate how the dual situation of the Great Depression and the New Deal influenced Black communities such as Harlem. Rather than expert planning or bold embrace of social democracy, Roosevelt’s New Deal was an opportunistic response to this global economic/fiscal crisis. The greatest concern of the Roosevelt years was the restoration of national economic vitality, not the establishment of the American welfare state. Public expectations of relief from the ravages of the Depression vastly exceeded the State’s capacity to handle the scope and breadth of the economic crisis. This greatly contributed to the slew of legislation and organizations that arose during the New Deal. As a result of the severity of the Depression and the political flexibility of F.D.R., the New Deal era witnessed the emergence of brokerage politics from various social sectors. The incentive for the multiplicity of “alphabet soup” programs came largely from F.D.R.’s attempt to address the needs of increasingly diversified constituencies.

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By early 1939, F.D.R. called an end to the New Deal era in order to focus on international affairs. This turn of events could very well represent Roosevelt’s realization that the broad spate of legislation and programs of the 1930s were proving only nominally effective, and the realization as well that the burgeoning worldwide conflict offered the only real hope for America’s ultimate economic recovery. Within the HUC, the combination of ideas and viewpoints that took shape reflected some of the most troubling dimensions of the Black intellectual tradition in America. Amid claims of Unitarianism, Marxism, bohemian intellectualism, pan-Africanism, and pan-Caribbean nationalism, the question was, could the men and women of the HUC translate these ideas in a fashion that was meaningful and relevant to the Black experience in the United States? In my view, these different perspectives were loosely bound together by the HUC’s focus on how to uplift the race. Relying on this diverse range of ideas to make sense of their world, HUC members moved fluidly among ideas to work toward levels of social justice and civil rights in America previously unknown. Amid this culture of opposition, Black women and men formed social movements, political organizations, and even more informal collectives to overturn the racist status quo and meet the ultimate goal of racial uplift: the establishment of an empowered and positive Black racial identity. However, the dialectical extremes that defined the church, temple, and forum, were never far from the congregants’ minds. Aware of the gap that existed between these opposed ideas, the various members of the HUC used religion, culture, and politics to varying extents and degrees to bring about whatever synthesis was possible.

When the New Negro Was In Vogue: The Harlem Unitarian Church’s Response to the Harlem Renaissance and Garveyite Pan-Africanism Despite the popular attention presently given to the Harlem Renaissance and the Garveyite pan-African movements in recent years, it would be a mistake to assume that Harlem’s populace or its intelligentsia universally lauded these movements. For instance, a stark divide existed between the average Harlemite and the flurry of artistic and intellectual production associated with the Harlem Renaissance. More often than not, as historian David Levering Lewis

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explains, great numbers of Black men and women “never saw the interior of a night club. Many would have spurned a free night on the town from religious and moral certainty that the devil himself was the club proprietor. Like any young immigrant community, most of Harlem was sober and hardworking.”7 Although he was not an outright critic, Rev. Brown distanced himself from the Harlem Renaissance. Brown’s sermons illustrated no reference to or acknowledgment of the leading African American writers of his day. With the notable exception of author, poet, and fellow Jamaican Claude McKay, Brown’s sermons and lectures had no mention of the Harlem Renaissance writers. Going farther than the most relentless critics of the Harlem Renaissance such as William Stanley Braithwaite, Benjamin Brawley, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey, Ethelred Brown essentially found the movement irrelevant and ignored it. The rationale for Rev. Ethelred Brown’s disconnection with the burgeoning literary and arts movement in his own backyard remains unclear. As an advocate of racial uplift and a nascent sense of cultural nationalism, one would assume Brown to be naturally predisposed toward such an outpouring of Black cultural creativity. This, however, was not the case. Brown utilized quotes and insights from Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thomas Jefferson within his sermons rather than Black America’s new wave of authors and intellectuals. The same individual who sought to promote “Negro curriculum” in New York City public schools during the interwar era kept this prolific spate of Black cultural production at arm’s length. Morrison-Reed suggests that Brown’s avoidance of the Renaissance might be due to the fact that the pastor “did not appreciate the black American psyche,”8 but this seems much too simplistic an assessment. More than anything, Brown’s reluctance to embrace the Harlem Renaissance was not a lack of appreciation but rather strict adherence to a sense of respectability. Based on his apparent preferences, Brown deliberately upheld a clear division of “high” and “low” culture that reflects a split in the larger Black culture of the era. The periodization of the Harlem Renaissance offers a prime example of the commodification of urban Black culture. The notion that people of color demonstrated cultural, intellectual and artistic accomplishment, but only in Harlem during the Roaring Twenties, is highly problematic. The general assumption of the Harlem Renaissance as a revolution of racial norms and values was a flawed one, both then and now. It has recently been argued that if “white New Yorkers were

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engaged in a struggle to liberate themselves from their Victorian predecessors, the younger blacks of the Harlem Renaissance were rebelling against the rules of polite and well-spoken [black respectability] laid down by their most distinguished elders.”9 The logic behind such a perspective effectively compromised the insurgent nature of the New Negro era. In an attempt to capture the zeitgeist of Black America during the 1920s, The New Negro, Alain Locke’s acclaimed 1925 anthology, promised to showcase the purest representation of the Black aesthetic. The essence of Locke’s volume, later popularized by Carl Van Vechten’s fictional portrait of Harlem, emphasized a Black racial identity that was premodern, spontaneous, natural, and exotic, demonstrating uninhibited passion and untutored creativity.10 Such an intellectual project arguably stereotyped Black identity and ultimately led to the commodification of modern Black culture. But, if it was Locke who neutralized New Negro militancy in the minds of white Americans, thus making it palatable, it was Carl Van Vechten who helped commercialize and exploit the movement for mass appeal. The emphasis on the artistic and cultural productions of Black New York fed into white escapism. The publication of Carl Van Vechten’s sensational book, Nigger Heaven, inspired a veritable feeding frenzy among whites for alleged “ghetto realism” in urban Black America. Van Vechten’s voyeurism, though widely condemned by critics of both races, captivated the imagination of mainstream America by reducing the Harlem Renaissance to its basest nature. The images and ideas illustrated in Van Vechten’s text were intended to depict the “squalor” and “vice” (Van Vechten’s terms) of the Black experience in a manner accessible to a broader white audience.11 After the release of his novel, Van Vechten assumed the role of cultural intermediary and financial benefactor for the subsequent Black artists and authors who ascribed to the expectations of white patronage. Even though he was very comfortably nestled amidst the wealthy, privileged bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village, Van Vechten seemed entirely at ease in his dealings with the upper echelons of Black New York. As such, when Van Vechten went “slumming” in Harlem nightclubs and hotspots, he was not simply being a voyeur or dilettante. In many ways, Van Vechten functioned as a cultural mediator between Harlem and Greenwich Village by transcending (or maybe transgressing is more appropriate in this case) the socially imposed boundaries of race, class, and culture. It is illuminating to contrast the development of historic circumstances in Harlem with its downtown counterpart, Greenwich Village.

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In many respects these two distinct areas of Manhattan serve as prime examples of what Robert Wiebe terms “island communities.”12 Even as the likes of John Reed, Max Eastman, and Hutchins Hapgood flocked to the Village seeking to escape from bourgeois respectability, mass culture encroached on this bohemian community’s liberal agenda. “By the 1920s the Village had become a tourist trap” as the bohemian candor, with its incumbent sense of personal liberation and self-expression, “had become popular among the urban middle-class.”13 Meanwhile, the popularity of Harlem nightlife was posing a threat to the legitimate efforts of many Harlem progressive and radical ideologues, ranging from James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. DuBois to Marcus Garvey and Hubert Harrison, to maintain Harlem’s status as a racial utopia. Ironically, a decadent culture of consumption directly assaulted these two urban regions striving to “displace the values sustaining civic consciousness and a democratic public.”14 It has been argued elsewhere that, by the late 1920s, “while the Cotton Club and its many imitators attracted the socialites and celebrities from Park Avenue who wanted to experience Harlem without confronting the dangers, they remained the staple entertainment for the majority of the black working class, and it also became a favorite hangout for many of the writers of the Renaissance.”15 Herein lies the irony of a distinctly American culture industry. Even as Blacks were marginalized from mainstream society, the American culture industry is able to employ these tropes to simultaneously manipulated and expanded consumption amongst the marginalized. Therefore, Black men and women were commodities and consumers to be exploited, but rarely fellow citizens.16 In his study of Harlem during this period, historian Nathan Huggins illuminates how whites used the Black experience in America as a means to negotiate their own racial and national identity crises as well as their own frustrated sense of creative expression. The Harlem Renaissance was contemporaneous with the Americanization program, the rise of Jim Crow terrorism, and the “Lost Generation” for white (and those hoping to be considered white) Americans. As Huggins clearly states, these efforts of whites to extol the virtues of whiteness are extremely troubled by the simple truth that “Americans have been a provincial people, forever self-conscious of themselves and their society in the making, and pulled by the powerful gravity of the European civilization to which they are heir and, despite claims to independence, which they emulate.”17 Huggins’s description of the Harlem Renaissance suggests a nascent bourgeois humanism that

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dealt primarily with race, class, and social position. While the New Negro movement ostensibly dealt with reformulating a redemptive concept of Africanity, the chief proponents and practitioners of the Harlem Renaissance’s agenda were chiefly concerned in courting the acceptance of Europeans and white Americans, an acceptance that was alternately capricious and fleeting. Despite their efforts to boldly redefine themselves and understandings of race and culture overall, many Black artists, activists, and intellectuals were once again seen as the perennial Other. Once the Jazz Age was in full swing, however, caste formation in America became more nuanced. According to Huggins, the 1920s found white Americans not only attempting to define the temporal and spatial parameters in which urban Black culture and its subsequent productions existed, but also seeking to subsume said cultural productions. Therefore, it appears that the Harlem Renaissance’s full potential was strategically curtailed by the creation of a culture industry with urban Black cultural output serving as the chief commodity. Such a culture industry, as described by cultural theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, operates within a market economy that assumes that a particular location, such as Harlem, could be designated as the source of novel and profitable cultural output and energies that could be harnessed and utilized to supplement what is considered a more fixed and immutable “high” white culture.18 To use Adorno and Horkheimer’s vernacular, those elements of Black culture, such as painting, music, and literature, become products “tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan” rather than by providence. Huggins’s depiction of the Harlem Renaissance also reveals that the catastrophic collapse of consumerism marked by the Great Depression inherently demands the death of a doggedly self-defined Black culture. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry intentionally integrates its customers from above with no regard for those people who subsequently displaced. In the case of the Harlem Renaissance, those customers were invariably whites who saw Blacks and their activities as existing only to entertain the larger white society. This triumph of consumerism disintegrated local life, sense of place, and presence among Black Harlemites. In sum, an understanding of this crass commodification of Black culture during the Harlem Renaissance might suggest why Rev. Brown found the artistic movement devoid of merit.

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Another source of contention within the fledgling church was the rise of Garveyism in Harlem during the 1920s. With the advent of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and its corresponding pan-African philosophy, heated debates ensued concerning the viability of such an enterprise to truly achieve racial uplift. The concept of pan-Africanism that underscored Garvey’s UNIA was rooted in the belief that African heritage was a fundamental source of racial pride and solidarity uniting men and women throughout the diaspora.19 The true genesis of Garveyism per se occurred after Garvey’s return to Jamaica and subsequent founding of the UNIA in 1914. Although he did not enjoy immediate success in his native island, Garvey coupled pan-Africanism with bootstrap capitalism inspired by Booker T. Washington to form the governing philosophy of the UNIA and its economic arm, the Black Star Line, Inc. After two years of dismal efforts to create a Tuskegee-style industrial school in the Caribbean, he traveled to the United States on a fund-raising mission.20 Garvey’s desperate efforts eventually paid off. As a result of his promotional campaign, UNIA membership soared from roughly a hundred members to an estimated four million internationally within a few years. Despite Garvey’s endorsement of racial unity and pride as well as collective economic development for African peoples, his social philosophy made quite a stir within the already volatile climate in 1920s Harlem. One popular view on Garveyism during its heyday considered this “new internationalism [as] primarily an effort to recapture contact with the scattered peoples of African derivation. Garveyism may be a transient, if spectacular, phenomenon, but the possible role of the American Negro in the future development of Africa is one of the most constructive and universally helpful missions that any modern people can lay claim to.”21 To the other extreme were those who found the inherent flaw of Garvey’s pan-Africanism intent upon fashioning one unified African “nation” that would ostensibly mimic the nation-building processes adopted by the European powers. The constellation of programs and organizations that existed under the Garveyite banner was regarded as troublesome if not altogether controversial to the potential Black America. At the peak of such an intraracial controversy, several of the church members took sides. W.A. Domingo, Hodge Kirnon, and others were avid Garveyites who openly embraced the UNIA’s prototypical Black nationalism. Within a relatively short time, however, Domingo, Moore, Crosswaith, Campbell, and Thomas Potter proclaimed themselves to be bitterly opposed to Garvey and his ideas.

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This antagonism was also evident in Rev. Ethelred Brown’s attitude toward Marcus Garvey. In February 1915, Rev. Brown was an invited speaker at a Garveyite forum in Kingston, Jamaica. Brown’s address before the newly formed UNIA was on the topic of “cooperation” as one of the most urgent needs for reforming the island. In his treatment of the subject, Rev. Brown discussed how a oneness of aim and purpose, mutual confidence among cooperating persons, absence of envy and jealousy, and unwavering loyalty and obedience to the association were vital to the success of any racial uplift venture. 22 In light of the particularly ugly turn to come in Brown’s relationship with Garvey in the 1920s, Brown’s remarks seem ironic. Garvey and Brown remained associates in Jamaica but parted ways shortly after Garvey’s arrival in America. On May 12, 1916, Garvey sent a letter to an early Jamaican UNIA follower regarding Brown that sheds some insight on the depth of their animosity. In the letter, Garvey issues a warning that opponents of the UNIA were “trying to form, an association through E. E. Brown to befool the negro and make selfish capital of him.”23 As an official of the Jamaica League, Ethelred Brown suggested the formation of the Progressive Negro Association (PNA) in April 1916. The first meeting of the PNA was held in the Unitarian Hall in Kingston, Jamaica, on June 20, 1916. Adopting the motto “Progress and Dignity; Justice and Fraternity,” the PNA reflected an organizational agenda comparable to that of Garvey’s UNIA. The declared aims of the upstart PNA were to foster race pride; to improve the economic, social, intellectual, and moral conditions of Blacks in Jamaica; and to secure rights for all Blacks.24 This early competition for the attention and loyalty of their nation’s Black populace may have been the root of the animosity between Brown and Garvey. Another facet of the HUC’s tension with Garveyism can be found in the frustrated friendship between W.A. Domingo and Marcus Garvey. The two men met in Kingston and were both members of the National Club, a political organization in their native island in the early 1900s. During their years of friendship and collaboration, Domingo introduced Garvey to the works of nineteenth-century proto-Black nationalist and immigrationist Edward Wilmot Blyden. Consequently, Blyden’s classic text, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, had tremendous influence on Garvey’s fundamental program concerning racial uplift. Although Domingo left Jamaica in 1910 for the United States, he and Garvey remained in contact. Garvey wrote to Domingo in 1915 to inform him that Booker T. Washington, Garvey’s idol, had invited the future UNIA leader to visit the United

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States. Delayed by his efforts to secure funds for his travels, Garvey arrived in New York and promptly reunited with Domingo in 1915. A year after relocating from Boston to New York in 1912, Domingo had immersed himself into a politically active circle of Black radicals; Domingo, in turn, introduced Garvey to Hubert Harrison, A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, Richard B. Moore, and several other significant members of Harlem’s formative radical Black intelligentsia. The working relationship between Domingo and Garvey underwent a profound transition from 1917 to 1919 concerning the rise of the UNIA in America. During this period, Domingo attended early meetings of the New York branch of UNIA and aided Garvey in implementing parliamentary procedure during the proceedings. Despite his level of involvement and visibility within the organization, Domingo never officially joined the UNIA. In the meantime, as Garvey set out to establish the UNIA’s main publication, Negro World, Domingo arranged for local printer Henry Rogowski to publish the periodical. In turn, Garvey made Domingo the founding editor of the Negro World from August 1918 to July 1919. Given great liberty by the UNIA leader, the Negro World served as a forum for Domingo’s socialist perspective. It became evident, however, that the airing of socialist views within the UNIA’s main organ troubled Garvey greatly for two reasons: his avid devotion to Bookerite bootstrap capitalism and his desire to avoid the dreadful onslaught of the Red Scare of 1919. In June of that year, the Lusk Committee raided the Rand School and seized many socialist texts including a work-in-progress by Domingo titled appropriately enough Socialism Imperilled. This negative attention directed toward New York’s radical intellectuals and social activists seemed to force Garvey to take decisive action against his closest compatriot. The growing rift in the Garvey-Domingo collaboration came to an acrimonious end in 1919. For publicizing views and ideas inconsistent with Garveyite thinking, Garvey and the UNIA’a executive committee put Domingo “on trial.” In response, Domingo abruptly ended his tenure as editor of the periodical in July 1919. In 1925, Domingo commented about his split with Garvey in an open letter to the editor to the Jamaican Gleaner. In his public statement, Domingo denounced Garvey’s practices as “medieval, obscure, and dishonest” and also assailed the Black Star Line as a shambling enterprise “bordering on a huge swindle.”25 As a former assistant treasurer for the Black Star Line and previous associate of Garvey, Ethelred Brown used his particular experience

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with Garvey’s business operations to scrutinize the problems plaguing the Black Star venture. In Brown’s estimation, the public allegations of Garvey’s misappropriation of funds and the blind allegiance of Blacks to Garvey’s pan-Africanist program were misguided. In a newspaper article entitled “Garveyism, A Dispassionate, Unprejudiced Appraisement [sic],” Brown addressed these matters as a point of clarity. His observations of the Black Star Line’s pending bankruptcy focused on the poor fiscal management and overall business sense of the organization’s leadership. Garvey and the corporation’s officers, Brown explained, due to poor capital investments as well as their exorbitant salaries and expense accounts, were at fault for the organization’s financial collapse. At the core of his remarks, Brown asserted, “The chief cause of the failure of this venture, is its too close association with a mad anti-white [sic] propaganda.”26 The concept of Garveyism as “anti-white propaganda” became an omnipresent fixation for Rev. Brown during this period. From the outset, Brown attested that Garvey’s pan-Africanism was a “bitter” campaign “which was diametrically opposed to the principles of the Community Church of which I am the minister.”27 This critique was qualified by the Unitarian minister’s argument that: Garvey is a propagandist of the first order. He has done a remarkable piece of work in getting together so many negroes, and in my opinion he deserves credit for wakening in thousands of negroes that race consciousness and personal self-respect which have been for too long obviously and painfully lacking and which are so necessary for the advancement of any people. Thousands of these awakened negroes believe that Garvey is their God—appointed deliverer—the Moses of their race. Their confidence in him is unbounded and unshakable. In this blind uncritical confidence lies the tragedy.28

The trenchant problem for Brown was rooted in the overwhelming mass appeal of Garveyism. Brown offered the following statement about the UNIA’s pan-Africanism as an ideology as well as a specific racial uplift program: “Garveyism aims to free Africa from European domination and to hand it over to negroes for the establishment of a negro republic. Let me say only this in reference to this aim that it can only be accomplished by force of arms, and to this Garvey has not proved his seriousness of purpose by even beginning to make the most elementary preparations for this invasion of Africa.”29 Looking to the millions of faithful Garveyites in the United States, Brown evoked sacred rhetoric saying that the Black masses “believe that the only

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remedy for all their troubles is a redeemed Africa, and they as truly believe that Marcus, their Moses, will somehow and somewhen lead them out of this land of Egypt into the promised Canaan of a redeemed Africa.”30 Garvey, however, had betrayed the supreme trust and amazing potential of Blacks of the day leading to “failure and bitter disillusionment,” in Brown’s opinion. A year later, Rev. Brown expressed a more urgent problem concerning Garveyism’s sweeping influence in Harlem during the interwar years. The minister bemoaned the dilemma in 1923 during Sunday worship. In a sermon entitled “Garveyistic Devotion,” he plainly stated that Garvey “has indeed divided this little church; and I regret to say that there is in discussing Garvey—his activities and his downfall—an amazing exhibition of intolerance and an unnecessary expenditure of passion and heat, which is tending to create enmities among members of this church. I take this opportunity of appealing to our members to be liberal to the limit of their liberality . . . There is room, abundant room, for a difference of opinion, and as you have and forcibly express your views on the differing phase of this question . . . permit others to hold and forcibly to express their views even though they be opposed to yours. Let not Garvey destroy the harmony of this little family.”31 Seen in this regard, Brown saw Garveyism as a direct threat to the Black Unitarian movement he was building in Harlem. Directly or indirectly, Garveyism had invaded and threatened to undermine the delicate balance of the fledgling church. “As for me,” Rev. Brown told his congregation, “I do hope no attempt directly or indirectly will be made to influence me to express here or elsewhere any opinion but my own.”32 The antagonism between the two men lasted for more than ten years and seemed to coincide with the meteoric rise of the Garveyite movement around the globe. During the early 1920s, despite the combined onslaught of the Justice Department’s surveillance and prosecution, and the “Garvey Must Go” campaign organized by his embittered rivals amongst Harlem’s Black leadership, Garvey still remained a demagogue to reckon with. Brown, much like other anti-Garvey dissenters of the period, feared the considerable sway Garveyism held over America’s Black populace. In spite of his legal and financial crises, the lure of Garvey’s vision of a unified Black nation-state on the African continent continued to attract countless men and women to the UNIA. Furthermore, the very basis of UNIA’s pan-African program that purportedly sought to stop white supremacy imbued Garvey with a quasi-messianic appeal to the masses of

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working-class Blacks. In turn, Garvey’s plight at the hands of the federal government ultimately rendered him, in the words of Rev. Brown, a “martyred saint” or a “ ‘crucified saviour.” The UNIA’s sustained popularity with the Black masses vastly outstripped virtually any other Black mobilization effort of that era (or since). The rancor that existed between Garvey and Brown came to a violent climax. In January 1928, during a Sunday evening service, Rev. Brown denounced Garvey publicly as a bad leader and applauded his deportation as a positive step for Black America. In the spirit of promoting an open exchange of ideas, Rev. Brown allowed an African Garveyite equal time to speak on behalf of the UNIA’s fallen leader. The speaker incited such uproar within the assembly that Rev. Brown suppressed any further time for the pro-Garvey contingent. According to an article in the Amsterdam News, Brown abruptly ended the church meeting and retired to a nearby room where an unidentified assailant struck him in the head.33 Although it has never been confirmed, it was widely suspected that the attack was linked to the pastor’s earlier altercation with the Garvey followers. Scenarios such as this cast a dark cloud over the public image of the Garveyites in the late 1920s. In the years after Garvey’s deportation by the federal government, the pan-African movement he initiated began to implode. For instance, there was an outburst between rival Garveyite factions in June 1929 over the possession of Liberty Hall. Both the Marcus Garvey Club and the UNIA, having split a year and a half earlier over “a disagreement in leadership,” believed they had genuine claims to the use of this “low-roofed, hot, zinc-covered building that held 6000 persons.”34 Members of the UNIA stormed the hall while the Garvey Club was having a social function and a riot nearly erupted. The UNIA sought to take control, by force if necessary, of the building to legitimize itself within the surrounding Black community. However, these rival groups warred over a rented property that had virtually no intrinsic or aesthetic value. It was the memory of Garvey’s earlier presence in that building that provided the edifice’s main redeeming quality for either organization. Ironically, the internecine discord between these groups dedicated to racial uplift had the most direct and negative effects on the surrounding Black community. Rather than functioning as sources of racial pride and empowerment, in the true spirit of Garveyism, these factions left the surrounding neighborhood in utter disarray after their melee. After the fracas was quelled, local residents were

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extremely unsettled and remained in “an air of nervous tension” especially since “the police were still on guard.”35 Moreover, the white press gave the story front-page coverage, emphasizing the most negative facets of the conflict for maximal sensationalist value. Therefore, both Garveyite organizations compromised their political agendas, social missions, and reputations for the sake of claiming this meeting place as their own. With his deportation in 1927, Garvey’s influence waned considerably but did not disappear. He and those who followed him became severely hostile to critique and embittered by the general mistreatment of Garvey by rivals of either race. Despite the declining significance of Garveyism and the UNIA by the 1930s, it provided an unforeseen twist of fate. It was noted, “as the movement grew in the United States, it had serious repercussions in the West Indies” as an underground phenomenon among the poor and alienated classes throughout the islands. 36 This development created the conditions that made it possible for the emergence and evolution of a movement to promote a new nationalist agenda that united all Afro-Caribbean peoples.

West Indies Unite: The Evolution of Pan-Caribbean Nationalism in Harlem During the first four decades of the twentieth century, Harlemites contended not only with racial discrimination but also political disenfranchisement and economic adversity. These combined issues were challenged by a sense of Black nationalism that underwent several organic transformations from the Progressive era until the end of the Second World War. To understand this trend of cultural nationalism amongst people of African descent, particularly in the Caribbean, I believe we need to consider key elements of nationalism. The basis of nationalism, the idea that peoples are naturally and unequivocally divided into nations, has its roots in European thought, as theorist Elia Kedourie has illustrated.37 The general premise of nationalist ideology was codified by the Treaty of Westphalia and came to dominate post-Enlightenment political theory. This became most evident in the American and French Revolutions since their most overt emphasis was the creation of a sovereign albeit secular nationstate. But the ability or desire to create social and political aggregations comparable to the nation-state has not been outside the scope of African people. The Haitian Revolution of 1804 was the first and

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arguably most successful embrace of both nationalism and selfdetermination on the part of Black men and women.38 Within the African diaspora, the tenor and focus of nationalism has been dynamic and mutable. In its original and most classic permutation in the nineteenth century, Black nationalism was devoted to the premise of Blacks creating an autonomous nation-state via their emigration to the African continent and self-governance as a result of their reparation to their ancestral homelands. By the twentieth century, however, Black nationalism splintered into a myriad of ideological camps such as pan-Africanism, cultural nationalism, African civilizationism, Afrocentrism, emigrationism/repatriationist, and so forth. While the “back-to-Africa” thesis remained implicit throughout its variants, modern Black nationalism has shifted its practical focus to issues of endorsing group solidarity, racial pride, and self-segregation. These measures have been a vital means of advancing the economic, political, and spiritual concerns of African peoples worldwide. Nationalism, in any manifestation, tends to be quite messy and unclear. In recent years, there has been a deluge of studies addressing the problems and complexities of Black nationalist ideology. 39 This new body of research on the nation-state and the larger nationalist phenomenon has begun reevaluating the meaning and significance of the nation in light of the fact that political, economic, and cultural dynamics are rarely confined to strict geographical borders. But while the literature on Black nationalism is lively and diverse, discussions of Black nationalism have unfortunately been hampered by fundamental misconceptions about the very essence of the concept.40 Much of this problem rests on the following three factors. One, Black nationalism in the American context is and always has been ambiguous, escaping any concise definition. Second, there is the question of what a functional Black nation-state looks like. In spite of revolutionary decolonization movements amongst the Third World nations during the latter half of the twentieth century, these movements have yet to produce an independent Black nation-state that is both politically stable and economically viable. Lastly, popular as well as academic perspectives have become disdainful of and jaded toward Black nationalism, so that the very notion is currently addressed in a puerile and one-dimensional fashion. As sociologist Paul Gilroy observes, “consider for a moment the looseness with which the tern ‘Black nationalism’ is used by its advocates and by skeptics. Why is a more refined political language for dealing with these crucial issues of identity, kinship, generation, affect, and affiliation such a long time coming?”41

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Black nationalism must first be an assertion of a positive racial identity and consciousness that places the culture and collective experiences of a self-identified group at the center of its own history. For Black nationalists, this means an essentialism that depends upon normalizing, rather than normative, standards of Blackness, which can even be transhistorical and cross-cultural. Second, Black nationalism necessitates the development of a unified political/economic/ cultural/quasi-religious approach to establishing an ideal or utopian state that overcomes the ravages of past domination. Third, regarding the development of race-based institutions and other resources, a conservative outlook toward social organization must be cultivated. Fourth, the core activities of Black nationalist ideology (transmission of ideas and values, selection of leadership, recruitment/initiation of devotees, etc.) should be autonomous of larger societal control; separation is one but not the only expression of this characteristic. Finally, Black nationalism as a school of thought has an applied sense of social justice that not only marks the resolution of oppression (gender, class, race, etc.) but also has a humanistic and global dimension to it. This means that many advocates of Black nationalism see that the validation of peoples of African descent in their quest for freedom, justice, and equality must lead to the redemption of all humanity. In trying to understand the HUC’s involvement in fomenting a pan-Caribbean nationalist movement in Harlem, questions arise. Why did a group of radical Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the world’s quintessential Black metropolis find it necessary to be involved in a momentous decolonization effort? Furthermore, what was at stake for them in the prospective nation-building project that inevitably accompanied any successful strides toward Caribbean independence? These individuals plainly chose to leave their native islands and adopt Harlem as their home. Why, then, is there a need to look backward, or homeward as the case might be? To begin with, it appears that the church’s pastor and key membership had an attenuated understanding of the nation and nationality during this period. After decades spent living and working in the United States, the majority of the church’s membership never turned their backs on the wider world. Prior to his arrival in the United States, Brown was committed to a nascent vision of racial uplift and social activism in Jamaica. By 1919, he was steadily involved in organizing the Liberal Association and the Negro Progressive Association, two groups designed to develop increased racial pride,

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economic progress, and equal rights. Furthermore, he rose to local prominence a forthright spokesperson for Jamaican workers during a wave of labor disruptions that rocked the island. Brown’s analysis of the woes of Jamaica’s working class was documented in an essay on the topic that was published in the October 1919 issue of the Journal of Negro History.42 Before he claimed any ideological adherence to Marxism and anti-imperialism, Brown demonstrated a social critique that would govern his outlook during his later years. Throughout his ministry, Brown focused much time and energy on matters related to his native Jamaica. In the 1930s, his organizational affiliations included being chairman of the Jamaica Benevolent Association, cofounder and president of the Jamaica Progressive League, and vice president of the Federation of Jamaican Organizations. These associations enabled Brown to express his loyalty and interest in the social and political affairs of his homeland to an extent that equaled his devotion to Unitarianism as well as his acceptance of socialism. Within these groups, Brown assumed an activist posture directly aimed at helping individuals besieged by immigration problems. Moreover, these organizations maintained an ongoing communication between Jamaican immigrants in New York City and their fellows back home in the West Indies. Domingo and Brown were cofounders of the Jamaica Progressive League (JPL), an association comprised of Jamaican nationalists in Harlem and the greater New York City area, protesting on behalf of selfgovernance and autonomy for their native island in 1936. A year later, Domingo was part of a JPL delegation to Jamaica. Arriving prior to the waves of labor upheaval that rocked the island in May 1938, Domingo’s six-month long visit was to determine the needs and living conditions of the Jamaican populace. The strikes and riots that ensued upon the delegation’s return to New York City were extremely fortuitous inasmuch as the public attention to that turn of events greatly aided the JPL’s fundraising situation. Not only was the League able to provide necessary funds for legal assistance for laborers arrested during the uprising, through the JPL’s Jamaican branch, the organization also contributed to creating a new political infrastructure on the island. By 1939, members of the Harlem branch of the JPL were key advisors and promoters of the emerging People’s National Party (PNP) in Jamaica headed by Norman W. Manley. Ethelred Brown was pivotal to the fundraising efforts of the PNP during the late 1930s. Brown’s work on behalf of the PNP in his native land was a vital step

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toward cultivating a postcolonial democratic republic there. In 1938, Rev. Brown returned to Jamaica to represent the League’s case before the West Indian Commission Royal (also known as the Moyne Commission) concerning independence and self-government for the island. This event caused a great stir in Harlem as well as in the island nation as a means of maintaining a strong and vibrant connection between the expatriate Jamaican contingent and their native land. After the official formation of the PNP, Domingo was invited to serve as the organizing secretary of the new party. Domingo entertained and eventually accepted the offer on a temporary basis. This condition was shortly undone by the colonial Jamaican government. Sir Arthur Richards, colonial governor of Jamaica, issued a warrant for Domingo’s arrest as an enemy of the British colonial government. These charges were based to a certain extent on his previous work with the international arm of the JPL as well as the potential influence he might have on organizing efforts for the PNP. Once he arrived in Jamaica, Domingo was arrested while he was still aboard his ship, and detained in an interment camp for twenty months. After a protracted legal campaign to gain Domingo’s release from imprisonment mounted by his Harlem and Jamaican associates and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) proved successful, his efforts to leave the island were further blocked. From 1943 to 1947, the U.S. government refused to issue Domingo a visa to return to America, thus forcing him to remain in Jamaica during this period. Despite such efforts to break the ties that bound the Harlem expatriates to their native land, the anti-imperialist struggle for Caribbean self-determination remained intact. For example, following his release from the local internment camp, Domingo took a very active role in the PNP and regularly wrote articles on the topic of Jamaican self-governance for the local press. During his lengthy detention, he was surrounded by a number of Jamaican labor activists and insurgents, enabling Domingo to develop a more thorough assessment of local conditions on the island. Following his return to New York City in 1947, Domingo continued his personal campaign for Jamaican independence from the British Crown. The issue of Americanization further complicated the nationalistic efforts during this era. For instance, Frank Crosswaith illustrated the assimilationist vein of the Americanization process. Although he was a Black man from the Virgin Islands, he had virtually every right that any native-born American citizen had. Another crucial difference that separated Crosswaith from his counterparts in the Black Unitarian

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movement was his avoidance of nationalist movements. During the interwar years, his deliberate focus remained squarely on developing interracial trade unionism in the United States. This goal was first attempted by his role as founder and executive secretary for the American Federation of Labor (AFL) Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers in 1925 and its successor the Harlem Labor Committee in the late 1930s. These organizations not only addressed the need to secure better employment and positive economic gains for Blacks, these respective Committees also worked toward galvanizing workers of all races. Despite the ardent racism of the AFL during this period, Crosswaith and his fellow Socialists sought to organize all skilled and unskilled Black laborers under its banner. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Richard Moore who, in a period spanning roughly twenty years, reinvented himself a number of times. During the Progressive era, Moore was seen as the chief model of Americanization among Harlem’s immigrant populace. As his politics and overall interests turned more radical, his assimilationist tendencies receded greatly. By the 1930s, with his growing disenchantment with and imminent ouster from the Communist Party, Moore remade himself as a pan-Africanist intellectual. His informal studies during the 1930s with the likes of anthropologist Louis Leakey and historian William Leo Hansberry brought on much of this later transformation; such opportunities allowed Moore to attain a much broader worldview. He lectured on all matters related to history and political affairs within the African diaspora during the 1940s in conjunction with his heightened race consciousness. After his departure from the Communist Party, Moore was left to his own devices concerning what he wrote and why. Free from the strict directive of the Party, he was now able to concentrate on public speaking and grassroots organizing. In a more pragmatic vein, Moore formed a partnership with Angelo Herndon and started Pathway Press in 1940. The imprint specialized in racially conscious text such as a commemorative edition of The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. As a bibliophile of the same order as Arturo Schomburg, Moore acquired more than fifteen thousand books on the experience of Black people around the world. This estimable collection is currently housed in his native land, Barbados. He was directly involved with developing curriculum to promote greater racial sensitivity in the greater New York City educational system. Moreover, he was able to focus his formidable energies on issues surrounding decolonization efforts and total liberation of African peoples without the censure of

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the Communist Party. This would explain Moore’s prolific writing and lecturing from the 1940s onward. His participation in Caribbean advocacy organizations also became more visible and consistent during the 1940s and 1950s. Moore and his associates desired the establishment of a federation of West Indian nations. The growing internationalism of the 1930s deeply affected the development of pan-Caribbean nationalism. The ideological structure of Black nationalism, much like mainstream notions of nationalism itself, was radically altered by the implementation of Wilsonian democracy following the First World War. In one fell swoop, the Great War remade the very idea of what constituted a nation around the globe. In 1935, Richard Moore, in the midst of his negative experiences with the Communist Party, strove to mobilize Harlem efforts to end European colonial rule in the Caribbean archipelago and the African continent. His earliest foray into the decolonization movement was his effort to spearhead mass demonstrations and largescale relief support in the wake of the Italian-Ethiopian Crisis of 1935. Rallying support in defense of Africa’s only uncolonized nation-state was a pivotal step forward for Moore. Imagining pan-Caribbean nationalism as a means of ending white supremacy conjoined the race, class, and national questions of this period. Labor strife had rocked the Caribbean islands throughout the 1920s, accompanied by the international economic downturn that helped bring forth the Great Depression. Afro-Caribbean workers were subjugated by collapsed export economies especially the plummeting sugar prices and the evaporation of wages and emigration opportunities. Between 1935 and 1938, labor upheavals reached a critical peak in the islands of St. Vincent, Barbados, Trinidad, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica that quickly brought international attention.43 In 1937, Richard Moore founded the American-West Indian Defense Committee. The declared purpose of the committee was “to acquaint the American public with the true situation in Barbados and the other West Indian Islands [sic]” at the height of local disturbances especially due to “the lack of activizing organizations in America for the assistance or the workers in the Islands.”44 One thinker who meditated on this issue was Marxist theorist C.L.R. James. “The race question,” James observed in his masterful study of the Haitian Revolution, “is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only

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less grave than to make it fundamental.”45 Odd as it might seem, the move toward pan-Caribbean nationalism in the early twentieth century was based in equal part in the unexpected popularity of Garveyism and the eruption of a West Indian movement in the region. Blacks in the United States and in the Caribbean had to wrestle with the same issues but they met with starkly different results. Race, class, and nationality mixed in an unclear fashion for Blacks in America, with each element becoming more polarized the more one focused on it. Conversely, race consciousness clearly served as a springboard for a greater sense of worker solidarity for AfroCaribbean peoples, whose self-determination movement swept throughout the islands. The pan-Caribbean nationalist movement promoted a subversive political, economic, and cultural phenomenon akin to Western imperialism. Harlem, as the chief site of grassroots mobilization supporting West Indian independence, became the “center” of an insurgent world-system, to which an increasing proportion of the African diaspora became attached as its social “periphery.”46 In its basic formulation, the “center-periphery” paradigm was the fundamental arrangement of classical imperialism. But, unlike its European analogue, the center-periphery equation emanating from Harlem to the West Indies and beyond was not dependent upon the exploitation of global markets, raw materials, and expansive state bureaucracies. Instead, Harlem’s stock in trade was the steady generation of Black radical leadership. Ironically, however, America’s premier Black metropolis was not able to liberate itself from its own problems with white domination. The efforts by Harlem’s soapbox intelligentsia to coordinate the mounting insurgency of their folks back home in the Caribbean was, interestingly enough, very much in keeping with a rising sense of international commitment emerging in American foreign policy by the late 1930s. Whether one paid specific attention to the rising tide of totalitarianism in Europe and Asia or the decaying colonial order elsewhere, this interwar era announced another new world order. Again, the American people were being thrust into a cataclysmic conflict that profoundly reshaped political, economic, and ideological structures concerning the nation-state. By way of illustration, Cordell Hull, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, endorsed the concept of multilateralism during the 1930s in an attempt to create a world with open borders.

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Taking a cue from Wilsonian democracy, Hull saw the reduction of trade barriers and militaristic spheres of influence as a cardinal precondition for international peace and cooperation. Such thinking might have worked for a major world power like the United States but that bold vision held little promise for those people of color who were colonial subjects. Instead, with the Second World War gaining momentum in Europe, Secretary Hull proposed that the United States establish a system of trusteeship for the colonized regions of the globe. This policy was contingent upon the eventual return of the colonies to their “original sovereign” or declared independence once deemed “able to establish and maintain stable self-government.” For staunch supporters of the pan-Caribbean nationalist movement like Richard Moore, such a prospect was completely untenable. The question that looms over the permutations of pan-Caribbean nationalism is: did the disparate and often-competing societies of this region want to devise such an agenda that unified them in spite of specific linguistic, ethnic, and historical differences? According to historian Wilson J. Moses, the goal of Black nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to create “a black nation-state or empire with absolute control over a specific geographical territory, and sufficient economic and military power to defend it.”47 Black nationalism in the American experience, as another scholar has noted, “from early in the nineteenth century . . . had, paradoxically, an international character.”48 The extent of the West Indian National Emergency (WINE) Committee’s resolve was unquestionable. Since 1937, based on the inspiration of Reginald Pierrpoint, a small group consisting of AfroCaribbean immigrants and radicals had been actively lobbying and protesting on behalf of Caribbean independence. In July 1940, in anticipation of the Havana meeting, Moore drafted “The Declaration of Rights of the Caribbean Peoples to Self-Determination and SelfGovernment” on behalf of the WINE Committee. Hull and the assembled foreign ministers tried to disregard the document and push forward their prepared agenda. The WINE Committee was not so easily deterred. In a heartfelt reply to Cordell Hull’s address to the Pan-American Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Havana, Cuba on July 22, 1940, Richard Moore outlined the position of the West Indies National Emergency Committee in the clearest manner possible. Moore asserted, “in the name of justice and democracy, this Committee must firmly oppose any plan whereby the Republics of the Americas, at the behest of the United States of America, shall act as custodians,

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receivers, and bailiffs for European Empires now tottering, bankrupt, or definitely fascist. For such ‘collective trusteeship’ qualified with an undertaking that ‘the region should be restored to its original sovereign,’ as an unacceptable policy since the Caribbean peoples have long been prepared and have practically demonstrated their complete competence and present readiness for full self-government.”49 In no uncertain terms, Moore denounced the whole proposal as an old device of tyrants to traduce the peoples whom they oppress and seek to justify their predatory domination over these down-trodden peoples by declaring them to be unfit to govern themselves. The whole specious theory of modern Empire, of spurious trusteeship, and indeed of fascist domination, is founded upon this false and monstrous denial of the fitness of people to govern themselves.50

Moore derived his thoughts on galvanizing the countries of the Anglophone Caribbean into a federation of West Indian nations from four very distinct sources. The first was the classical natural rights philosophy that inspired the formation of democratic republics in Western civilization during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second source was the emergence of supranationalism that took hold of world politics during the early half of the twentieth century and culminated in the First World War. A parallel perspective that emerged during the same era is the Marxist-Leninist analysis of imperialism and the national question. Finally, Moore’s earnest hope was to end the historic oppression of Blacks throughout the African diaspora. The amalgamation of these varied notions within Moore’s thoughts and writings reflected the eclectic nature of Black nationalism in general and this pan-Caribbean variant in particular. That notwithstanding, Moore devoted his considerable energies to promoting this self-governing federation as a potential source of racial pride, a symbol of progressive economic and political development in the Western hemisphere, and a bulwark against future encroachments by European powers. Following earlier disappointments with organized Marxism, the Harlem Renaissance, and Garveyite pan-Africanism, pan-Caribbean nationalism represented a unique opportunity for the HUC members. For those who dedicated themselves to liberation and self-determination of West Indian peoples, pan-Caribbean nationalism allowed this group of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to oppose white supremacy while also adopting a redemptive sense of Black racial identity. The

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idea of race consciousness and political insurgency based on their connections to the Caribbean during the advent of a global decolonization movement offered the HUC a collective concern. Unlike the Black experience in the United States, advocacy of pan-Caribbean nationalism suggested an alternative that was both rational and understandable in its practical ends: the creation of Black independent nations with their cultures and histories intact. By the late 1940s, however, this alternative had run its course. The pan-Caribbean nationalist movements finally generated a proposal for a federation of island nations within the archipelago. After nearly two decades of lobbying and political mobilization, the West Indian Federation took shape among the Anglophone Caribbean nations in 1958. But the coalition fell apart in a relatively short period of time. One notable critic of the short lived West Indian Federation was W.A. Domingo. Railing against his former associates such as Moore as well as the leadership of the PNP, Domingo denounced the prospective formation as a betrayal of the work of countless years and individuals. Upon closer examination, it is evident that the move to form a pan-regional political entity was an ill-fated endeavor. The most glaring failure of the federation was its myopic coordination process. The exclusion of former Hispanic, French, and Dutch colonies greatly inhibited the potential stability of the region. Moreover, the federation among English-speaking islands was compromised by the early withdrawal of Guyana and British Honduras, as well as the eventual loss of Jamaica and Trinidad in the 1960s. So great was the desire to obtain political independence and economic sovereignty within the region that interested parties followed a program with more flash than substance. In 1953, Richard Moore delivered a pivotal speech before British representatives concerning the proposed West Indian Federation. Gathered together in Harlem’s Hotel Theresa, an overwhelming crosssection of Harlem’s politically active populace came out to support the cause of pan-Caribbean nationalism. “The right of the Caribbean people, as indeed of all peoples,” Moore declared, “that to have selfdetermination and self-government is an inalienable, human, democratic right.” He further elaborated by stating that “this fundamental right is deemed to be most vital for themselves by powerful nations which proclaim democracy while imposing imperial rule upon other peoples. Clearly, there is a gap and a contradiction between the theory and the practice.”51 Such high-minded remarks did not, however, translate into an effective program for successful self-determination

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and self-governance for the West Indian nations. Although there was neither a failure of nerve nor imagination, the lack of a comprehensive plan of action among the nations themselves forestalled any major changes in the international power relationships and the existing racial order. Because of their varied struggles for social justice in Harlem and in the Caribbean, the members of the Harlem Unitarian Church identified very closely with the cause of ending all forms of oppression. Their contributions on the local, national, and even international levels tend to be overlooked but they worked ceaselessly to make a difference. They used all the means at their disposal to generate possible solutions for changing the status quo. Even their critiques, as in the case of the Harlem Renaissance and the UNIA, raised points of dissent that questioned the level of social responsibility found within those movements. As part of Harlem’s radical intelligentsia, the Black Unitarians proposed diverse and provocative approaches that brought Harlem and Blacks everywhere a new sense of group identity. Having existed in the shadow of Egypt for so long, however, none of them realized exactly how difficult a task overcoming domination was.

5 The Price We Pay: The Demise of the Harlem Unitarian Church Even . . . a free liberal church must pay the price. There is the price of tolerating all the different types of persons all the varying types of minds which are attracted by the word liberal. It must pay the price of a small following while it slowly, painfully builds up itself without compromise, without the shadow of a turning either to the right or the left. We here know it is a hard price to pay, for we all have a liking for the crowd. . . . And at our best we thank God that we are willing to pay the price, if this is the price which loyalty to Truth demands—believing that the day will come when real success will crown our efforts, and that in those days we shall realize that the success attained at last has fully paid us for the price we paid in heart-breaking toil and in faith disturbing patience. —Rev. Ethelred Brown, “The Price We Pay”1

The 1940s and 1950s were especially tumultuous years for the Harlem Unitarian Church. Although Rev. Brown invested heart and soul in his efforts to make this church a reality, he saw himself as the only person able to bring this to fruition. Consequently, Rev. Brown’s personal determination and enthusiasm regarding his ministry took its toll on those around him. Although Brown was able to keep his church movement going for over three decades, his personal life deteriorated as a result of his stubbornness. From 1922 until 1942, Ella Matilda Brown, Rev. Brown’s wife, suffered a series of debilitating nervous breakdowns. She finally recovered in 1942 but died on November 1, 1947. As can be imagined, her mental collapse was a considerable hardship on the Brown family. Of their six children, one

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son, an alcoholic, was sent to an asylum while another son committed suicide. Tragically, Brown died at the age of eighty without building the edifice for the Harlem Unitarian Church. The church Rev. Brown loved so dearly folded shortly after his death in 1956. Having always struggled with a small number of attendees, the Harlem Unitarian Church was now fighting for its very survival. No stranger to marginalization, Rev. Brown speculated that the Harlem Unitarian Church and the liberal religion it embodied had fallen out of favor with its neighbors. In September 1947, Rev. Brown addressed this dilemma as a twofold crisis during a Sunday service. First, there was a “menacing tide of fanaticism and superstition and ignorance wrongly labeled as religion” that had to be stopped. Second and more importantly, Brown contended that “the youth of Harlem . . . have intellectually outgrown the popular teachings of the orthodox churches” that dominated the local scene. With indefatigable zeal, Brown reassured his congregation that in spite of those dual trends there was still a disaffected contingent in Harlem that might receive the Unitarian movement as “a type of religion which appeals to and satisfies both mind and heart,” rather than merely being a compromise “between a discredited orthodoxy and a sterile materialism.”2 But Brown’s defiant proclamations about the end of religious orthodoxy were a bit premature. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Black population in the United States was between estimated twelve and fifteen million individuals during the 1940s with eight million claiming membership in one of the mainline Black Church denominations. The statistics concerning Black religious self-identification vary somewhat due to the numerous Black alternative religious movements (the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Peace Mission, the Black Jews, storefront evangelicals, etc.) that lacked denominational associations. Nevertheless, these estimates reveal that about half of Black America was not gravitating toward liberal Christianity. Undeterred by this realization, Brown became more dedicated that ever to finding a home for his church in Harlem. In addition to the transformations occurring on a national and international level, the church’s situation in Harlem also changed profoundly during this period. The core membership of the Harlem Unitarian Church departed from the church for various reasons. Socialist leader Frank R. Crosswaith became wholeheartedly devoted to the struggle of organized labor. Richard B. Moore’s involvement in the Harlem Unitarian Church gradually waned as he focused on a public campaign to abolish the common usage of the term “Negro”

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within the English language. Others, most notably Grace Campbell, died during this time. Since the late 1930s, the HUC had used the chapel of the Harlem YWCA as the site for its worship services. Whereas this arrangement was convenient at first, the church suffered from low attendance and even lower morale due to its lack of a physical space to call its own. In his eagerness to attract more people and possibly build a church of his own, Brown began to betray the values he held so dearly for so long. After the Second World War, the insurgency of the church’s early years was replaced by the unfulfilled longings of its pastor. In the 1950s version of its bylaws, the Harlem Unitarian Church outlined its guiding principles as follows: The purposes of this church shall be to maintain regular services of worship in the community, to conduct educational meetings and to engage in all other activities tending to upbuild in the hearts of the people the high ideals of a practical, rational, liberal, progressive and exalting religion which shall prove itself in the love of God and the service of man. We know not sect, class, nationality or race in welcoming each to the service of all. 3

This statement illustrates some noticeable changes in the scope and direction of the church. Gone was the insistence upon an insurgent and polemical “religion for the Negro” in lieu of a church that recognized no sect, class, nationality, or race. The language contained herein assumed a much more euphemistic tone by emphasizing its “love of God” and commitment to “the service of man.” This differed from an earlier statement of purpose that stated that the Harlem Unitarian Church was “an institution of religion dedicated to the service of humanity. Seeking the truth in freedom, it strives to apply it in love for the cultivation of character, the fostering of fellowship in work and worship, and the establishment of a righteous social order which shall bring abundance of life to man.”4 When one compares the two statements, it becomes evident that the church’s sentiment during the postwar years was much less dogmatic.

The Struggle for Equality: Unitarianism and the Advent of the Civil Rights Era In the half-decade following the Second World War, the AUA’s move toward greater racial equality continued in fits and starts. During the

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late 1940s, because of the presumed lack of opportunities for Black Unitarian ministers within the denomination, potential African American ministers such as Alvin Neeley Cannon and Eugene Sparrow were either refused fellowship in an outright fashion (as in Cannon’s case) or more subtly discouraged from seeking a ministerial placement (as in Sparrow’s case). In 1947, however, Rev. Lewis McGee established an interracial Unitarian congregation named the Free Religious Fellowship. This was a huge leap forward for McGee who was told two decades earlier that the only way he would fulfill his call to ministry within the AUA was to bring his own church. It is interesting to note that a year after the founding of the Free Religious Fellowship, Chicago’s First Unitarian Society moved toward desegregation well in advance of any federal mandate or denominational imperative to do so. By the end of the 1940s, despite the hundreds of Unitarian churches that existed in the United States at the time, the AUA could only lay claim to five Black Unitarian ministers within the entire denomination. Three of these Black ministers were settled and another one was given a student pastorate. The last Black minister, Eugene Sparrow, had sought a Unitarian congregation to serve, yet felt that the AUA was stalling in its efforts to settle him in a church. Fearing that he was not going to be allowed a chance to pursue a life of ministry, Sparrow decided to become a college professor. Several years later, when there was an opportunity to become an assistant minister at a Unitarian church in the Detroit area in 1956, the call was not extended to Sparrow. Improving liberal perceptions of race relations during the Second World War seemed to permeate the AUA’s relationship with the Harlem Unitarian Church. To some extent, this attempt to mend past mistreatment toward the Harlem church might have been influenced by two formidable developments in the collective psyche of liberal white Americans. The first of these factors had to be the impact of the Second World War on how America understood its own racial crisis. Combating a host of fascist enemies whose worldwide tyranny was fueled by their nationalist rhetoric of being the “master race,” the United States became more self-conscious about its own woeful record of de jure segregation, lynching, and other expressions of racial prejudice. The Black intelligentsia, artists, press, and civil rights organizations increased their efforts to bring the race question to mainstream national attention during the war years.5 By the early 1940s, three key sources of initial civil rights agitation were: the trade unionist/ organized labor movement among Blacks led chiefly by A. Philip

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Randolph; the rise of the “Double-V” campaign by African Americans seeking victory against white supremacy both internationally and domestically during the Second World War; and the pioneering legal strategies of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall. Although they varied in theory as well as practice, these three movements laid the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. The second, interrelated factor that affected white racial liberalism was the public reception of Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma by Black and white middle-class Americans. Conducted on behalf of the Carnegie Foundation, Myrdal’s study was an interesting social experiment itself. Extensive in its scope and detail, Myrdal’s research, as a white, foreign-born scholar, was considerably augmented by the scholarship of Black scholars across the nation. The result of this collaboration was an extensive two-volume treatise on American race relations that indicted racism as the cardinal sin in the nation’s history. As such, the study implored concerned whites to reconcile this crisis of conscience within mainstream American society in order to guarantee the future wellbeing of the country. The influence of the Second World War on the Black experience was explained thus: “What has actually happened within the last few years is not only that the Negro problem has become national in scope” and “has also acquired tremendous international implications . . . The situation is actually such that any and all concessions to Negro rights in this phase of the history of the world will repay the nation many times while any and all injustices inflicted upon him will be extremely costly.”6 This work essentially remade the accepted beliefs among members of the liberal intelligentsia on racial justice that defined middle-class Americans’ response to the mounting civil rights struggle.7 Based on the changing outlook on race among America’s white liberals, the AUA was compelled to address its prior unfairness to the Harlem church. The former leadership of the denomination had been mired in the racial atmosphere of the day. Samuel A. Eliot, AUA president during the earliest decades of the twentieth century, was a key example; as his biographer observed, “Eliot’s attitude toward Negroes reflects the pre-World War position of many American liberals.”8 Eliot’s insensitivity toward the conditions of Rev. Brown was evident in the denomination’s reluctance to support the minister’s efforts to establish Unitarianism among Blacks. The existing historical record of the AUA’s policies and programs clearly indicate that the

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matter of church extension and maintenance did not encompass the Harlem ministry.9 Instead, the Unitarian body was making deliberate overtures to extend its reach to the American South during this era. By the AUA’s annual meeting in 1938, sparked by successes in establishing new churches in Dallas and Miami, the call went forth to bolster the church’s outreach and development in the region. Not only was the South proving fruitful for the AUA’s initiatives but it was also decided that “Unitarianism was desperately needed in the South.”10 Toward that desired end, the Unitarians were encouraged by their leadership to begin a capital development drive. The newly inaugurated AUA’s Department of Extension and Maintenance, formed in May 1937, became expressly responsible for coordinating the resources and services provided by the association to its ministers and churches everywhere. Despite its previous neglect of the Harlem ministry, the AUA began to voice its desire to participate in the burgeoning national discourse of race relations. Formulated by Rev. Karl Chworowsky, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, New York, a resolution pertaining to the race problem was put on the agenda for the Association’s 1942 annual meeting. As a friend and supporter of Brown’s Harlem ministry, it appears that Chworowsky’s thoughts were a clarion call for the denomination to demonstrate its theological claims of equality for all people. Among a host of concerns covered within the resolution was an insistent demand that the AUA “implement this declaration of principle by effective action in promoting inter-faith and inter-racial solidarity.”11 This resolution called for a very open and aggressive effort on the part of the association to combat prejudice and intolerance. Interestingly, as one key point of this proposed resolution, it was suggested that a “special study of the sociological, psychological, and religious factors involved in racial discrimination” be employed as a possible means to their proposed goal.12 This recommendation arose contemporaneously with the groundswell of the nationalization of American racial discourse discussed earlier in this chapter. During the AUA annual meeting for that year, the resolution was approved unanimously with only minor changes. This decision marked a new willingness and ability to discuss race at all within the confines of the association’s gatherings. Two years later, a cursory debate about the segregation of “Negro blood” by the American Red Cross provided a window of opportunity for the association to wrestle with another statement regarding all forms of prejudice. This resolution was further enhanced by the group’s support of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fair

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Employment Practices legislation in 1944. It seems likely that the Association was attempting to reposition itself as a true bastion of American racial liberalism. This convergence of national discourses about race and the AUA’s internal debate suggest that the Association was at best only keeping pace with the larger social and political trend. Many of the AUA’s measures during the 1940s resonated with Myrdal’s observation that the Negro problem is not only America’s greatest failure but also America’s greatest opportunity for the future.13 By the end of the decade, the Association had come to adopt the views of the larger American society on race rather than the other way around. From 1947 to 1949, the AUA’s focus turned to the promotion of an “unsegregated church and unsegregated society.” In 1947, the critical point of this discussion centered on whether the regional and national Unitarian meetings should boycott locales that enforced Jim Crow segregation of public accommodations.14 Rev. Robert Lawson, a minister from Pittsburg, PA, put the source of white liberal angst into clear perspective. He stated that “after 122 years of meeting together as Unitarians and being traditionally all that time committed to carrying out our policy of the brotherhood of man in vigorous action, we have merely reached the point where we will carry out this action.”15 Lawson’s position was clear: the AUA must make a conscious move to combat Jim Crow wherever Unitarians encountered it. The spirit of liberal religion, according to Lawson’s logic, must not be complicit in the policy of racial discrimination in any capacity. This statement was met with two responses that seemed to detract from the correction Lawson attempted. One delegate, referred to as Mr. Peters from North Marshfield, upheld a strictly segregationist line. Peters argued that such a show of support chipped away at states’ rights in addition to the individual liberties of Blacks. He therefore dissented against the proposed resolution on the premise that “the original Unitarianism is supposed to be a religious, not a political organization and we’re supposed to stand for individual freedom. I’m going to vote against anything of this kind.”16 Mr. Foster, a lay delegate from Washington DC, took a more utilitarian view of the matter. He contended that implementing such a mandate as denominational policy would have an adverse effect upon the strides made by Unitarianism in the “Jim and Jane Crow” belt in the American South. By standing on the principle of racial equality, Foster implied that the southernmost wing of the denomination might have considerable obstacles and hardships in finding locations

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that met such an antiracist agenda.17 Both perspectives severely undermined the possibility for consensus. A year later, a comparable debate occurred at the annual meeting with much better results. Rev. Robert Lawson put forth a resolution pertaining to segregation and discrimination in the national functions of the AUA. To forestall repeating the prior year’s problems, Lawson sent a petition to the AUA’s Minister’s Association, a move that garnered an estimated two hundred signatures by Unitarian ministers nationwide. With such advance preparation, the resolution went forward with relatively little rancor. The assembled body upheld the resolution in 1948 to deal only with those venues and locales that neither segregated nor discriminated on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin.18 By 1949, the Association went ahead with a resolution to have the AUA congratulate and support the NAACP in its efforts in the civil rights struggle. During the late 1940s, the Harlem Unitarian Church had a difficult time in its efforts at racial integration. During this period Rev. Brown noted that numerous Sunday evening services “found many whites but few blacks in attendance.”19 In 1945, Brown wrote a scathing open letter to Harlem’s Black religious liberals in the Amsterdam News in which he lambasted these Harlemites “for being so unresponsive” to his ministry.20 Although responses to Brown’s vitriolic attack are unavailable, it appears that, by the end of 1945, this reproach had a doubly negative effect: it hampered the HUC’s appeal to the larger Black community in Harlem, and it did not generate a critical mass of white congregants. Whereas it is unclear how large a white audience he was attempting to reach, it is evident that Brown’s ministry proved itself unable to bring his Unitarian message to a sizable number of white Americans beyond the occasional visitor or curious guest. Although whites such as Jan Rozendaal and his wife attended Harlem Unitarian’s services occasionally, the church had a peculiar problem enticing native-born whites to come uptown to worship. In one letter to Rev. Brown, Rozendaal suggested that the minister compose a small pamphlet and distribute it to other Unitarian churches to make them aware of Harlem Unitarian’s efforts, accomplishments, and aspirations.21 Meanwhile, external pressures from the Community Church of New York worked against the Harlem Unitarian Church in an unexpected fashion. By 1946, the Community Church as a predominantly white liberal church taking steps toward racial integration posed a serious threat to the Harlem Unitarian Church’s existence by making

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active overtures to bring Blacks into its congregations. The greatest sign of Community Church’s openness to interracial cooperation came about in 1948 when Maurice Dawkins became the first African American to serve as minister of education at the church. To forestall any possible hurt feelings regarding the matter, Rev. Donald S. Harrington, pastor of the Community Church of New York, personally assured Rev. Brown that this open invitation to Black religious liberals was not a deliberate move to steal members from the Harlem Unitarian Church. Nevertheless, the Community Church readily absorbed the Black members from the HUC into its congregation. The opportunity to become members of a well-known and affluent predominantly white church proved quite enticing to many of Brown’s former congregants. For the AUA, the transition from overlooking racism in the United States to initiating an active program to pursue an antiracist agenda was neither quick nor easy. The association had to overcome its internal strife over ideas about race and liberal Christianity while also adjusting the changing racial climate of the day. More than that, the overwhelming demand faced by the AUA was the preservation of organizational unity in light of the most divisive matters in the nation’s history. In the wake of the 1948 annual meeting, AUA president Frederick May Eliot sent a letter to Rev. Brown that attempted to address some of the past ruptures within the Association. Eliot commented that the AUA’s annual meeting ended in an upbeat fashion, emphasizing that “there was ‘a right spirit’ among us, that gave promise of ‘advancing together’ in the years ahead.”22 Within the same letter, Eliot indicated that the price for such a bright and optimistic future was recognition by all concerned parties that “there [was] need for more conscious and united effort to build up our common loyalty to a steadfast purpose.”23 Goading his fellow minister even further, Eliot concluded his missive by stating that they remained mindful that the shared faith “serve as a basis for loyalty to our Unitarian fellowship as a whole, with which no lesser loyalty should be allowed to interfere.”24 Eliot’s tactic of trying to mollify Black members with nominal fellowship while not actually offering any real concession on their behalf unfortunately mirrored the overall logic of Jim and Jane Crow within the American body politic. In accordance with the mounting civil rights struggle in the United States, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court represented a turning point. Reversing the 1896 “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court held that

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compulsory segregation in public schools denied Black children equal protection under the law. It later directed that desegregated educational facilities be furnished “with all deliberate speed.” The Warren Court’s unanimous decision that the intentional segregation of African American children in public schools was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s promise of “equal protection of the laws” was a major blow against racial discrimination on both a local and national level. Despite the AUA’s troublesome past regarding race and racism, the denomination seized onto the idea of desegregation with great ardor and speed in the postwar era. There were a number of instances in the early 1950s that showed the great potential for Unitarians to make considerable advances regarding race relations. In 1950, the Unitarian Service Committee supported a measure calling for the Boys’ Club in Washington DC to desegregate, an effort in which All Souls Unitarian Church in that city became involved. Within three years, finding that the leadership of the Boys’ Club program much too intractable on the issue of racial segregation and discrimination, All Souls Unitarian Church took the bold step of evicting the segregated Boys’ Club and creating an integrated version of the program. By 1954, the minister of All Souls, A. Powell Davies, provided his members a list of restaurants in the Washington DC area that were racially integrated and requested that they only patronize those approved eateries. Whitney M. Young, an African American educator and civil rights activist, became a member of the Atlanta Unitarian Church in 1954. As dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work and future president of the National Urban League, Young was certainly no stranger to the reality of racism in the American South, but he found that his church membership was going to force him and his fellow Unitarians to deal with racial prejudice more directly in unexpected ways. In the summer of 1955, as the Atlanta Unitarian Church was making plans for its annual church picnic, the members in charge of coordinating the event had designated a local park that did not allow entrance to Black people. Once he was aware of this policy, Young addressed this matter with the church. He was somewhat startled to find that the white church members simply never thought about the discriminatory public ordinance or its possible implications for Young and his family. Outraged by this show of racial insensitivity, Young protested the choice of venue as a means of opening a debate about the larger issue of racial segregation in the city. Although the white members of Atlanta Unitarian Church did not amend their plans for

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the church gathering that year, they ultimately heeded Young’s complaint and promised to locate an alternate site that was racially inclusive from that year forward. In spite of such a wistful experience, Young not only remained a Unitarian for the rest of his life but also became a member of the church’s Board in an effort to promote a greater level of social awareness amongst the Unitarian membership. 25 Unfortunately, despite the efforts of some local Unitarian churches to confront issues of racism on an external as well as internal level, the organizational structure of the AUA as a national entity had neither the means nor the wherewithal to make itself openly amenable to Blacks and other racial minorities. During this period, the association formed a commission on Unitarian Intergroup Relations, a group responsible for making recommendations to increase the Unitarian outreach to prospective Black members. This commission led by Rev. Alfred McClung Lee was notable for the presence of Rev. Howard Thurman, the great African American theologian and mystic. According to the commission’s report, 176 churches— approximately a third of the AUA’s congregations—responded to the commission’s inquiries about race relations in Unitarian churches. Of the churches that responded, fifty-two churches reported having Black members in their congregations while only thirteen of those churches had more than five Black members. As an upshot, the commission offered as one recommendation that the AUA should meet at a predominantly Black college or university following its yearly Race Relations Conference as a demonstration of good faith in its outreach efforts toward the Black community. Records of the AUA’s annual meetings from subsequent years indicate that no action was taken on this recommendation. Nevertheless, in 1955, Errold D. Collymore of the White Plains Unitarian Church in New York became a member of the AUA’s Board, marking another shift in outlook in the highest echelons of the denomination. Greatly encouraged by this turn of events, Rev. Brown renewed his ministerial work in Harlem during the late 1940s, asking the Unitarians to rally to make the dream of building a physical edifice for the Harlem Unitarian Church a reality once and for all. But racial integration of the Harlem Unitarian Church became a thorny and ultimately disastrous issue as Brown became obsessed with the creation of an interracial congregation as the most urgent direction for the Harlem Unitarian Church’s growth. It must be noted that this heightened interest in racial integration on Rev. Brown’s part did not occur within a social vacuum. Interestingly, it coincides with Howard

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Thurman’s highly successful pioneering work to foster a new paradigm within liberal Christianity. In 1944, Thurman left his prestigious tenured position as Professor of Theology and the Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University to work alongside Dr. Alfred G. Fisk, a white Presbyterian clergyman and professor of philosophy, in a team ministry to establish the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California. The congregation they cofounded was so notable because it was the first intercultural, interracial, interfaith, and interdenominational church in the United States. From its very inception, Fellowship Church brought together people of various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds with a shared commitment of working toward human unity and peaceful coexistence. 26 In 1948, Time magazine published an article focused on the Fellowship Church, calling special attention to its matchlessness on the American theological landscape. Subsequently, Thurman was being heralded by major periodicals such as Ebony and Life as one of the most influential leaders of African American religious thought. 27 Whether Thurman’s notable accomplishments in the Bay Area had any direct influence on Rev. Brown is unknown but it is highly improbable that, once aware of Thurman’s successes, Brown would take such a development lightly. Above all else, Rev. Brown saw himself as the leading light of Black liberal religiosity and social progress. His temperament and pride would not allow him to exist outside the religious vanguard of the Black community. By 1954, Thurman left Fellowship Church in order to become chairman of the board of ministers of Boston University and the first African American to serve as dean of Marsh Chapel at the university. In that regard, he provided a great deal of national recognition and credibility to the AUA’s efforts (and those of other liberal Christian denominations) toward racial integration. Such thoughts and actions, however, proceeded without any significant recognition of Rev. Brown and the Harlem Unitarian Church’s past struggles with the association. Even as the 1954 annual meeting of the AUA worked to crystallize a plan of action for all its affiliated ministers and churches fresh on the heels of the Brown decision, there was no mention of Brown’s ministry. 28 As the AUA became more aware of the national mandate to end segregation with “all deliberate speed,” there was no overt attempt to reclaim the Harlem church as one of its own. Instead, the association pursued the integration of its predominantly white congregations, especially those in the South. There is no extensive written record regarding the rationale behind this exclusion but there is room for

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speculation. The Unitarian churches, controlled as they were at the congregational level, had enough problems seeking compliance among the established churches. In addition, it seemed quite apparent that to mention the HUC as an early experiment to spread Unitarianism to Blacks throughout the United States was an indictment against the association at large. Having ignored the Harlem Unitarian Church for much of its existence, the AUA was in a precarious situation. Rather than admit to past misdeeds and neglect, the association decided to render the Harlem Unitarian Church invisible. In his novel, Invisible Man, author Ralph Ellison captures the essence of this willful ignorance on the part of organizations such as the AUA regarding race. Using his titular character as a metaphor for the modern Black experience, Ellison writes: I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed everything and anything except me. 29

Ellison’s powerful imagery illustrates the dilemma faced by Rev. Brown and his congregation. Whether because of convenience, guilt, fear, or some combination of all these factors, the Harlem Unitarian Church was overlooked by the AUA.

Black Humanism and the Red Scare: Rev. Brown in Cold War America Another aspect of life in postwar America that had increasing significance to the Harlem Unitarian Church was the Cold War. By 1945, anti-Communism in United States had become an extension of the Red Scare of 1919. This unresolved negative sentiment was exploited by the Truman administration to initiate the Cold War. The dominant trend in American foreign policy of “containment,” although it undergoes a number of revisions during this period, was largely focused on bolstering international economic systems to buoy American capitalism. However, every U.S. president after Truman

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had to contend with the largely paranoid and unpredictable manifestations of Cold War ideology as the chief restriction on political autonomy. The Cold War also ensured that Third World nations were the future sites of all military contests between the world’s superpowers. Invariably, the physical terrain of the Cold War era were locales where indigenous conflicts were depicted as mere extensions of ideological skirmish between United States and Soviet Union (i.e., the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War). Henceforth, the localized politics, economics, and cultural dynamics of emerging Asian, African, or Latin American republics were given little if any credence in U.S. foreign policy. Following the Truman Doctrine, the McCarthy/HUAC anti-Communist frenzy of the late 1940s and early 1950s served as a means of assaulting any political program or social movement deemed leftist or radical. Moreover, the “dynamic conservatism” realized during the Eisenhower administration—most evident in the rise of the militaryindustrial complex of the Cold War era—allowed the United States to maximize and extend its unparalleled economic and commercial position to protect its political, military, and cultural hegemony worldwide. Whereas Truman’s Fair Deal promised full employment, higher minimum wages, national health insurance, and greater federal involvement in housing and social welfare, he was ineffective and unwilling to work on behalf of racial justice or organized labor. The rudiments of the New Deal era’s makeshift welfare state remained intact until the 1960s (even in the midst of the Eisenhower presidency) but never evolved into a full-blown social democracy. Fearful of possible communist expansion internationally as well as the menace of racial, political, and economic upheavals domestically, many white Americans considered the social justice movements to be inexorably linked to communism. The deterioration of international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union had a direct influence on domestic race relations. The impact of the Cold War, according to historian Manning Marable, “had a devastating effect upon the cause of blacks’ civil rights and civil liberties” due to its “anti-communist purges and near-totalitarian social environment.”30 The postwar era was notable for the conflation of racial segregation and anti-communism among conservative Americans. Following the Democratic Party’s decision to add a civil rights plank to its 1948 party platform, the Dixiecrat leader and segregationist governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond declared that such a measure was “made to order for Communist use in their designs upon national

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security.”31 In one fell swoop, Thurmond and other racist reactionaries of the era merged the American public’s fear of the Communist menace with a bizarre facet of Southern racism that fears the infiltration of the region by “outside agitators” intent upon inciting Black Southerners to rebel against the status quo. With the onset of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), numerous organizations devoted to racial uplift such as the Civil Rights Congress, the National Negro Congress, CORE, and the NAACP32 as well as such notable Black luminaries as W.E.B. DuBois, Mary MacLeod Bethune, Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer, Paul Robeson, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown among others were subject to the tyranny of the U.S. government’s Red Scare investigations for their civil rights activism on behalf of the race as well as their Marxist affiliations. In the combination of mainstream anti-communism and antagonistic state sanctions, even moderate, nonviolent civil rights strategies such as the NAACP’s legal battles for desegregation and the Montgomery Bus Boycott were seen as pro-Communist ploys. The prospect of immigration as a source of social disruption was particularly frightening during this period. In 1952, Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, also known as the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Echoing the immigrant quota policy of 1924, this new law set an incredibly low yearly quota of one hundred persons per country from areas outside northwestern Europe. This law, however, barred the entry of suspected radicals as well as allowed for the deportation of any and all naturalized citizens accused of subversive activities that might threaten national security. Despite President Truman’s veto, the McCarran-Walter Act was instrumental in the government’s assault on radical dissent in America. By 1946, the American Unitarian Association debated the morality of the postwar immigration policy. The AUA’s discussion of the immigration quota restrictions became an ongoing dialogue about the broader circumstances of the proposed legislation. The 1953 annual meeting proved enlightening in this regard. Following the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act, the association wanted to reflect on the social and moral implications of the elements of the immigration policy. Of particular interest during this exchange was the implicit racial bias of the law. The immigration quota outlined the specific restriction of peoples from Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. Although cloaked in the language of national security and anti-communism, the exclusions remained centered on the racial and national origin.

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Rev. Ethelred Brown emerged during the debate to offer key insights into the restrictions of the McCarran-Walter Act. Taking an opportunity to speak before the assembled Unitarian body, Brown linked his personal struggles, contributions to the pan-Caribbean nationalist movement, and the racist intent of the McCarran-Walter Act. “Mr. Moderator, may I take just a minute to do something I should like to have done in 1951 but I lost my courage,” Brown said, “and, at 78, I may never have the chance to do it again.”33 Based on his experiences as secretary of the Jamaica Progressive League, Brown recognized that the JPL and other Caribbean advocacy groups had to stress the detrimental nature of such a harsh limit on West Indian immigration. Aware of the federal government’s general unwillingness to repeal the law, Brown sought the AUA’s assistance in issuing a recommendation to modify the McCarran-Walter Act. Brown suggested that the law “should be so amended to permit the inhabitants of the British West Indies to come . . . under the quota granted to the British Empire.”34 The purpose of this amendment belied the urgency of the situation. With the drastic reduction of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to one hundred persons per country, the United States clearly indicated a negative disposition toward the continued influx of Black newcomers. In addition, the notion of addressing a religious organization to negotiate a political crisis of this magnitude might seem ironic. On this one occasion, more than forty years after his ordination as a Unitarian minister, Brown was finally able to integrate all of the concerns relevant to his life’s vocation. To implore the association to act on behalf of West Indians reflects an odd circularity of events. Unitarianism had made Brown’s journey to America possible in the early half of the twentieth century. To call upon the Unitarianism to guarantee open borders and the free flow of people into the United States seemed a fitting end to the minister’s relationship with the denomination.

6 A Unique and Significant Religious Experiment: Rev. Ethelred Brown and the Legacy of Black Humanism At the beginning of my ministry it was my task to keep the flag of Unitarianism flying in a segregated city-within-a-city—to prove not to the world, but to Unitarians, that Negroes are capable of becoming Unitarians and that therefore Unitarianism is a universal religion. What we had to do was to show that the principles of our free faith are understandable and acceptable to all men, regardless of race. Negroes are not committed to voodoo, fundamentalism, the drum of the jungle: they are thinking, critical, exacting men in their religion—just as some white men are. Negroes are human beings, normally blessed or cursed with the same aptitudes familiar to other men, with no inherent mental or emotional deficiency which prevents them from being Unitarians. —Ethelred Brown, “I Have Two Dreams”1

Ethelred Brown’s contributions to American religion have largely been obscured in the postwar era, especially among many scholars and practitioners of Black religion. Despite (or maybe, because of) his visionary stance on Unitarianism as a means to inform a sense of Black humanism, little has been done to reconstruct the close relationship of theology and social activism that was promoted by the likes of Ethelred Brown. There were many significant, meaningful dimensions to his theology, however. Brown developed a theological perspective that is fuller and richer than most observers might have previously believed.

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The resources for a studied analysis of Brown’s theology are seldom explored and somewhat scattered. Unlike many of his contemporaries in modern American religious liberalism such Reinhold Niebuhr and Howard Thurman, Brown never wrote a treatise on his far-reaching theological views about issues such as the proper relationship between religion and science or the historic significance of Jesus for humanists. Also unlike liberal religious visionaries such as Harry Emerson Fosdick’s role as founding pastor of the Riverside Church in the City of New York or the A.J. Muste’s cofounding of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Brown was never able to create an institutional base that could properly serve as a platform for his theological vision. Nevertheless, it is the contention of this text that many of the issues and concerns that Brown advanced in the first half of the twentieth century have the same, if not greater, relevance in the beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of how Rev. Brown’s efforts to create “a temple and a forum” sheds new light on how religious experience, cultural self-determination, and radical ideology were defined, debated, and disseminated within Harlem during its most formative era as an urban Black community. By looking at his sermons and other writings, it is clear that Brown is very much rooted in a tradition of Black protest thought and prophetic witness that stands as his contribution to the articulation of Black humanism illustrates how he and the HUC consciously worked to challenge and change the status quo by bringing a new, more complex understanding of black religiosity and social justice in the United States. Furthermore, this chapter examines subsequent manifestations of Black humanism that has emerged since Rev. Brown’s death in 1956 as it has been expressed most notably by the likes of William R. Jones, Anthony B. Pinn, Norm R. Allen Jr., Alice Walker, Mark MorrisonReed, and William G. Sinkford. Central to this endeavor is an attempt to explore the core of Ethelred Brown’s religious convictions in order to gather up lessons and sources for a constructive Black theology of liberation befitting today’s world. I would like to delve into the elemental issues that they allude to through the lens of Black humanism—a canon of philosophical, historical, and religious knowledge by, for, and about people of African descent with the ultimate goal of achieving social justice for all people. This is a perspective drawn from the broad spectrum of African diasporic thought and experience, most evident in the writings and activism of such forebears as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick

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Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Henry Highland Garnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Anna Julia Cooper, Henry McNeal Turner, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, C.L.R. James, Aime Cesaire, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Howard Thurnan, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Frantz Fanon, and Walter Rodney, as well as the ongoing scholarship of James Cone, Charles Long, Cornel West, William R. Jones, Angela Davis, Lewis Gordon, bell hooks, Anthony B. Pinn, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Robin D.G. Kelley, and others. Whether focused on sacred or secular principles and practices, the Black humanist tradition invariably has one penultimate goal: the redemption and liberation of Black people and thereby all humanity.

To Create a Temple and a Forum: Ethelred Brown as Black Humanist Theologian Throughout his lengthy career, Rev. Brown provides not only a compelling historic defense of Unitarianism but also a provocative modern blueprint for Black humanism. “Unitarians believe that religious faith or religious beliefs must square themselves with established truths. They believe that facts must never be tampered with to accommodate our theories, but the theories must be corrected to agree with the facts.”2 “Unitarians do not believe in a static but in a progressive mind. There is really no finality. Knowledge grows from more to more.”3 “These Unitarians believe truth should be taken for authority, and not authority for truth.”4 In the face of myriad social forces that conspired to mentally constrain people of African descent, Brown’s advocacy that a search for truth is incontrovertibly wedded to freedom in its absolute form. As a direct extension of this sensibility, Brown hoped to transform superstition within the historic Black Church tradition into a quest for scientific reasoning within the Black religious thought and experience. “Unitarians are persons who believe that Science and Religion are not contradictory but complementary. For them true science is religious and true religion is scientific . . . Science deals with the facts of nature. Religion develops the ideals, the conscience, and the aspirations of mankind.”5 The ever-expanding, stunning discoveries of science that took shape during the early twentieth century—notably the harnessing of atomic energy, the curing of polio, and the development of jet travel, as well as the onset of rocket technology—represented a quantum leap

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that probably confirmed Ethelred Brown’s desire to evoke greater awareness and regard for modern technological advances among Black ministers and laypeople. In another sermon, Brown advanced a more strident argument by claiming that science has created a new world in which orthodox Christianity cannot for long survive. The three-storied universe of our forefathers is gone and we live today in a world incomprehensibly vast. The world of miracles is also gone, giving place to a world in which the law of cause and effect operates with regularity and certainty. And to climax all the doctrine with its gradual growth and development of all things from simple to compound has made untenable the many dogmas which grew out of the belief in Special Creation. In another sphere, Biblical Criticism has once and forever exploded the idea of a complete final and infallible revelation of God.6

In developing an overview of Brown’s religious thoughts, the following themes are most clearly evident: theology (doctrine of God and God-talk); Christology (doctrine of Jesus Christ); ecclesiology (doctrine of the church); and theological anthropology (divine nature of human purpose/divine purpose of human nature). Theologian Dwight Hopkins suggests that a constructive Black theology of liberation is essentially based on a systematic tradition of God-talk that self-consciously struggles to define Black people’s full humanity in God’s divine realm while also serving as a meditation what Black people believe and do by force of habit and will.7 Preaching a sermon entitled “Unitarian Aroused” in advance of the 150th anniversary of the AUA’s founding as well as his twenty-eighth year of ministry, Brown once again articulated his views on Unitarianism for his gathered audience. He asserted that Unitarianism was determined by: “complete mental freedom in religion rather than bondage to creeds or confession”; “the unrestricted use of reason in religion, rather than reliance upon external authority or past tradition”; and “the generous tolerance of differing religious views and usages [sic], rather than insistence upon uniformity in doctrine, worship, or polity.”8 His distillation of Unitarian thought was a forthright and unwavering as anything he ever professed during his decades of ministry and activism. What is more important about this sermon, however, is how he constructed an ardent defense of Unitarianism. First, he asserts that Unitarianism—as he understood and embraced it during his lifetime—was a bona fide expression of Christianity. When Brown

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advances his theology, he contends that Unitarianism is “that form of Christianity which holds to the faith in the simple Unity of God—that God is One, not a Trinity.”9 Whereas Brown’s refutation of Trinitarian doctrine within Christianity would be considered jarring and disruptive within the historic Black Church tradition, most critics and opponents would overlook the rhetorical core of his statement indicated in his use of the modifier simple to explain the concept. Instead of looking upon this as an assumption of God that lacks complexity or intricacy, Brown’s comment refers to the singular, integrated nature of God. By this token, Brown’s view of God was driven largely by a rational dismissal of the Trinity as an illogical formulation. Standing in defense of this key principle of Unitarian belief, Brown alludes to the often-overlooked reality that the doctrine of the Trinity was and has always been a disputed, controversial concept in Christianity. As such, Brown and the larger body of Unitarians he represented were challenging the hegemony incumbent within post-Nicene Christian theology that seriously and legitimately boggles the minds of many faithful believers.10 It is not at all possible or easy at this present moment to offer a full and fair articulation of Christian heterodoxy (including Unitarianism) since it has been historically dismissed as heretical. Even as orthodox Christian theology began its ascendancy in the post-Nicene world, the literary traces of dissenting voices of religious heterodoxy have been largely destroyed, leaving behind scattered remnants of theological fragments that must be cobbled together before their views could even be addressed. Moreover, what scattered literary evidence remains within the broader canonical views of Christianity consists of texts and interpretations that were overtly and unconditionally hostile to opposing views. As a result, this contrary cloud of witnesses, of which Brown is plainly representative, remain shadowy figures in the broad sweep of Christian theological discourse. Even as Brown and other contemporary advocates of liberal religion tried to raise their concerns during the early half of the twentieth century, it was the historic objective of orthodox Christianity to ensure that any repudiation of Trinitarianism remains exceedingly nebulous and vague. Simply put, the historical record of modern religion will remain imbalanced until there is a comprehensive history of “heresy” or heterodoxy that fully acknowledges the genuine opinions and insights of religious dissenters. Next, Brown summarizes his notion of Christology focused on the humanity rather than the divinity of Jesus. In a rhetorically artful sermon, Brown declared that the HUC must be the vanguard that

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would “Christianize Christianity.” Expounding the fact “that not one of the fundamental doctrines of orthodox Christianity was ever taught—not one,” there is further illustration of how Brown was adept at raising key questions that inherently challenge the foundations of Christian thought. As Brown would repeat on numerous occasions, he adhered to Unitarianism because it “looks upon Jesus as the greatest and holiest of religious teachers, but not God.”11 It is important to understand that Brown was very explicit about the personality of Jesus throughout much of his ministerial career. Given the intense level of Christological debate that raged amongst Christian theologians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he offered a very clear and coherent reflection of his views. In true Unitarian fashion, he did not accept the notion of Jesus as God or Savior but did acknowledge Jesus as the greatest religious and moral exemplar of the human experience. In keeping with the broad sweep of liberal Christian theology, Brown’s views shared common ground regarding the belief that Jesus represented the supreme ethical standard for humanity by being a noble, humble, and loving man whose ideals and actions should be a guide to modern people. Thus, Brown was very much in accordance with these notions of Christology prevalent amongst adherents of liberal Christianity. Given the current state of theology and Christology within the study of Black religion, what is most surprising in Brown’s formal writings is the absence of overt racial essentialism. For instance, Brown expressed throughout his sermons and writings a form of Christology in which he considered the ethics and humanity of Jesus but did not specify Jesus’ race very closely. This, however, should not be confused with a lack of racial identification, a concept that Brown had no problem expressing during his career. Brown did not hesitate to express a genuine sense of Black cultural pride that was often poignant, or provide a defense of racial equality that was unequivocal, but he could also be excruciatingly harsh—on the verge of being intolerant—to Blacks who individually or collectively acted or believed in a fashion different from himself. Although this might seem odd, at least irascibility might have been a function of both his advancing age and growing frustration over his circumstances. By all estimation, one could clearly imagine that, even as optimistic and energetic a person as Brown was during much of his lifetime, it would be understandable to imagine how he could become both more outspoken and more impatient in making criticisms that he might have otherwise been more reluctant in his earlier years.

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Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century Black religious thinkers ranging from Henry McNeal Turner, George Alexander McGuire, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Albert Cleage, and James Cone have insisted in their respective ways that God was Black and that the historical Jesus had physical features in addition to cultural traits characteristic of African peoples. Despite this ferment of racial identity and consciousness within the Black religious experience, Brown did not stress race in relation to his image of either God or Jesus. As mentioned earlier in this book, the fact that Brown did not tap more directly into the cultural tropes of the Harlem Renaissance is bewildering at first glance. Upon further reflection, however, this situation might have been more indicative of Brown’s general presumption of Blackness as a basis for understanding Black reality as lived experience. The overwhelming response to theologian James Cone’s classic text Black Theology and Black Power in 1969 certainly demonstrated the intense social upheavals bred by the twin thrust of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements brought about an ostensibly Black theology of liberation is an undeniable truth. That notwithstanding, Brown’s bold stances against segregation, racial discrimination, police brutality, lynchings, and exploitation presaged many of the initiatives that would be the mainstay of the more activist vision of Black Christianity in the postwar era. Since the prospects (as well as perils) of integration remained largely beyond view for Brown, it quite honestly could have remained a more idyllic, romantic notion for him and his congregation. What is most striking about the schism within Brown’s ecclesiology is that the same adventurous, experimental religious vision that led him to imagine the possibility of creating a church that was equally “a temple and a forum” most definitely strained the practicality of such a creation. Quite frankly, he was always trying to build a “people’s church” without the people. In light of his struggle to both gather a congregation and build it up, Brown was unable (or possibly unwilling) to acknowledge that he was living in a period wherein the very nature of the church in America was changing profoundly. By his later years, despite the marked increase of religious affiliation and church-going practices by Americans in the early postwar era, there was conversely a growing sense of individualization, lack of strict denominationalism, and dwindling church membership based exclusively on personal demographics and physical proximity.12 It is possibly in Brown’s ecclesiology that most clearly reflects the clash between his religious sensibilities and rationalistic concerns

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freely come to the surface. Formative Christian theologians such as Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin all discuss a bifurcated distinction between a visible church comprised of half-hearted, nominal believers as opposed to a hidden church replete with truly convinced and convicted Christians. Considering this ecclesial divide, much of Brown’s condemnation of churches that maintained the status quo as opposed to his own conviction to establish the HUC as his ideal vision of a church took on a phenomenological tone. In his view, he felt that Black ministers and the churches they led “must at once set out to cleanse their religious meetings from the overemotionalism which dangerously borders on fanaticism and from the vulgar commercialism which transforms the temple of worship into a house of merchandise.”13 As mentioned earlier in this book, there were a considerable number of scholars, activists, and leaders drawn from diverse corners of the Black community who criticized the historic Black Church during this era for giving itself over to pietism and materialism. During most of his years in ministry, Brown was incessantly struggling to provide “high church” rationalism to the historic Black Church tradition while also bringing “low church” folk theology to the Unitarian denomination. At another point in his career, Brown asserted, “Unitarians are not frivolous, sacrilegious critics” but rather “they are deeply religious persons who because they are thus religious protest against any presentation of religion which is fantastic or unintelligible or nonsensical; and for the same reason they object to ecclesiastical mountebanks who turn our churches into a marketplace or a vaudeville show.”14 Having structured his thoughts in such a fashion, Brown’s worldview with regards to his doctrine of the church did not attain the sort of resolution evident in either his theology or Christology. Finally, Brown had an immanent sense of theological anthropology that definitely influenced his concern for “this-worldly” activism. Brown’s idea of theological anthropology emphasized that every person “is a child of God, not fallen and totally depraved but growing ever upward and onward towards the realization of his potential divinity.”15 The focus of Brown’s concern about the humanistic facets of religiosity melded thoroughly with his sense of social activism. What is stunning about Brown’s sense of humanity is the shining thread of perfectionism that runs through his thoughts and writings. In his sermon “Predestination and Determinism,” Brown railed mightily against the most mundane expression of this doctrine “stated almost every day in the streets in terms of Fate or Destiny.”16 He refutes any vision of human nature that is remotely akin to inevitability by arguing

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that sheer experience when measured through reason illustrates that “we do [refine] we do feel regrets and we do have an immediate consciousness that between two alternatives we do have the power to choose.”17 As he develops his argument, his vision of humankind’s purpose and potential is propelled by moral agency. Brown’s humanistic sensibilities cannot be more clearly stated than as follows: “the question in the last analysis resolves itself into a moral and ethical one. If there is no freedom of the will, there is no personal responsibility, and if there is no responsibility, there can be no morality.”18 While acknowledging humans as a part of the divine creation, Brown relentlessly affirmed that human beings are essentially accountable for shaping their own futures. “Unitarians do not interpret religion as a matter of church and creeds and ceremonies but as a matter of life—of character and of service. The supreme test for them is not so much what you believe as how do you live.”19 Over the three decades of his ministry and activism in the United States, Rev. Brown found a way to chart an independent and idiosyncratic path to formulate his own sense of Black humanism. Ironically, Brown continually faced a persistent tension wherein he tore down markers of racial prejudice and social exclusion while he concurrently sought to build new, hopeful movements that would allow all people to reach their fullest potential. Regardless of this seeming paradox, Brown was very much a central albeit overlooked figure within Black humanism, a historic tradition that begs further analysis. As such, ultimately indicative of philosophical and religious sensibility that he unfortunately did not have the opportunity to fully articulate during his lifetime. With this brief glimpse into Brown’s legacy as a visionary leader of Black religious thought, it becomes evident that his intellectual and spiritual output was deeper and richer than originally has been assumed. Now, more than a half-century after his death, it is hopeful that a new generation will explore the broad scope of his thought to find new relevance and inspiration in his visionary words. In the pages that follow, some effort has been taken to illustrate the varieties of Black humanism as an evolving religious and intellectual endeavor in the wake of Rev. Brown’s pioneering efforts.

Confronting Divine Racism and Human Suffering: The Humanist Challenge to Black Theology In nearly four decades as a teacher, philosopher, theologian, civil rights activist, and Unitarian Universalist (UU) minister, Dr. William R. Jones,

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professor emeritus of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, Florida, has dedicated his life and career analyzing various modes of oppression and the development of strategies to overcome social inequality in its myriad forms. Central to this work has been the critical investigation of liberation theology, religious humanism, and theories of culture. Prior to accepting his position at FSU, he was a member of the faculty at Yale Divinity School and served as the Coordinator of African American Studies. He has also held visiting professorships at Brown University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, Iliff School of Theology, and the Humanist Institute in New York. As a native son of Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Jones received his B.A. with highest honors in philosophy from Howard University, his M.Div. from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University. While at Brown, he completed his doctoral dissertation on the utility of Jean-Paul Sartre’s critical methodology within the philosophy of religion. Ostensibly, the core of Jones’s analytical framework centered on the belief that oppression must be surmounted but that was impossible without a clear-eyed critical assessment of human exigency. In this regard, he took very seriously the existential insight that struggle involves negotiating the relationship between institutions and situated human beings. Most directly influenced by the work of W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, Frederick Douglass, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, H. Richard Niebuhr, Simone de Beauvoir, and Peter Berger, Jones’s theological perspectives have been keenly targeted toward the intersection of religion, education, empowerment, and social justice within the African American experience. While teaching philosophy of religion as a member of the Yale Divinity School’s faculty, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, Jones’s masterful treatise on Black humanisms, was published in 1973 and soon became a classic text within the study of African American religion. According to Jones, the book “personified [his] plan for black liberation and [his] uncommon religious conversion from black Christian fundamentalism to black religious humanism.”20 Merging innovative theoretical perspectives, rigorous methodological formulations, and incisive theological argumentation, Is God a White Racist? was a relentless yet brilliant challenge to the key Black liberation theologians of his era, namely Joseph Washington, Albert Cleage, J. Deotis Roberts, Major Jones, and James Cone, so that they might consider the likelihood that the signs and symbols of the

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Western Christianity (or “Whiteanity” as Jones calls this religious construct) upon which they proved so dependent and committed may also be the source of their own oppression and ultimate destruction. Instead, Jones asserted that the only way that Black liberation theology could truly pursue its professed goal of assessing and ultimately eliminating Black people’s oppression and misery was to lend itself to a deeper consideration of human agency’s potential of radical transformation in African American experience and thought. From Jones’s perspective, while the historic Black Church tradition may have helped Black women, men, and children survive the plights of slavery and segregation, achieving the goal of liberation was going to involve more drastic measures than his peers in Black liberation theology were either willing or able to make due to their commitments to their strict adherence to theism. Reflecting upon his own move toward Black humanism (or humanocentric theism as Jones originally called it), Jones wondered: “should I make the final and fateful break and abandon the black Christian faith and embrace the apostate credo of black humanism—a theological pariah and prodigal in black religion?”21 Unlike many humanists, regardless of racial or ethnic background, Jones did not reject and/or repudiate theism (in this case, Black Christianity) in a manner of visceral revulsion or volatile antipathy. To Jones, his contention was purely based on discerning the best, most reasonable path to Black liberation and the end of inhumane suffering produced by other humans. When Is God a White Racist? was originally published, Jones asserts that “given this understanding of the options, I reached the erroneous conclusion that to get rid of oppression you had to put religion out of business. It was erroneous because it assumed that there was one and only species of religion or theology, a guardian religion that conserves and preserves the status quo.”22 Jones’ deeper consideration and reflection on the work of African American historian Carter G. Woodson on the diametric opposition of education and mis-education—distinctions best reflected in Woodson’s classic text, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933)—provided Jones another option than the strict binary of either accepting or rejecting theism. Instead, Jones’s thinking is now shaped by the need to make distinctions between religion and mis-religion as a means of analysis and correction intended to retain what is liberating and redeeming and subsequently dispose of whatever is enslaving and stultifying within the Black religious experience. In this fashion, Jones attests “the remedy for oppression was not to eradicate religion—my earlier

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mission and motivation—but to construct an apparatus, a theological litmus test, that unerringly predicts which of these two slots any particular religious or moral category fits.”23 Despite the convictions of his many critics, Jones no longer advances a notion that “we must burn the Black Church in order to save the Black Church” mentality. To the contrary, Jones’s approach to Black theology has been twofold: make the Black Church tradition more self-reflective and, by extension, self-correcting in order to better serve the Black community; and to legitimate a more expansive and ostensibly pluralistic view of the Black religious experience that could not only encompass the prevalent tradition of theism (both Christian and non-Christian) but also the less visible yet equally significant tradition of humanism (whether atheist, agnostic, skeptic, or other variants of nontheism). As such, Jones asserts that his career has been “to enhance the prospects for black liberation by initiating an intra-family dialogue between black liberation theologians in the black church and black liberation philosophies outside its stained-glass walls—recognizing clearly that this also constituted a debate between proponents of black Christian theism and its critics.”24 Sadly, it seems that many Black liberation theologians viewed Jones’s humanist critique of the innate problems of Black Christian faith without attempting to even discern the merits of the overall arguments. In other words, Jones’s many critics wanted to talk about his theological perspective rather than look inward to what he was saying about their God-talk in a serious, systematic manner. The Black humanist challenge that Jones offered to the mainstream circle of Black liberation theologians, however, can be seen in hindsight as an attempt to move Black religiosity away from being merely a system of survival toward serving as a strategy for liberation. In light of Black liberation theology’s dominance within Black religious discourse, Jones’s Black humanist agenda was a bold articulation. Practicing what he preached, Jones felt that there was (and continues to be) no logical reason to proceed in either an intellectual or theological enterprise if one is not committed to the beliefs and values represented therein. By this token, Jones’s scholarly integrity was most evident in his willingness to not only profess the revolutionary nature of his ideas and their possible impact on Black religion and culture, but also possess them as well. This concern about the theist/nontheist divide within African American religious thought can be best demonstrated by Dr. Jones’s dialogical engagement with his friend and key interlocutor, Dr. James H.

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Cone, the progenitor of Black liberation theology. In conjoining both Jones and Cone, we must approach the Black theological project with a different method as well as orientation. In Is God a White Racist?, Jones asserts that “God is the sum of his acts.”25 Jones postulates that Black people cannot simply comprehend based on what we have been taught and/or told to believe. In fact, according to Jones, it is inappropriate to assert any traits or attributes to God on a priori basis of blind faith. To the contrary, Jones challenges us to hold regard for the God of our choosing by discerning the historical acts on our behalf that allow us to more fully understand the Divine. Some years earlier, in his classic text, Black Theology and Black Power, James Cone declared, “If God has made the world in which black people must suffer, and if he is a God who rules, guides, and sanctifies the world, then he is a murderer.”26 Cone goes even further by having the audacity as a human being to actually impugn God’s acting maliciously toward Black people based on empirical evidence in a mode very much akin to that provided by Jones. More than that, no one—especially a Black person—should ever dare speak an ill or unfavorable word condemning a God that upholds white supremacy. But, in truth, Cone goes beyond that bold critique of theism by contending that, if God is a murderer, “we had better kill him.”27 In both cases, Jones and Cone force the serious reader to recognize that everyone should not conform themselves to strict readings of the Bible, fundamentalist Christian faith, or any rendition of Black religious thought and tradition that upholds a vision of the Divine that works against the best interests of Black people. In grappling with this dilemma, Jones and Cone reveal two possible options to the question of what to do with the concept of a murderous, low-down, racist God. On the one hand, when faced with the awesome task of subjecting God’s activity (or inactivity, as the case may be) in the overall welfare and protection of Black people to a test, Jones feels that if God is and/or has been adverse to Black people perennially, it is more important to free ourselves from all manner of supernatural orientation, superstitious beliefs, illogical concepts, hermeneutical inconsistency, and ultimately theism in order to remake ourselves anew. In other words, once he found that God demonstrably to be practicing racism, Jones embraced the most vital core of Black liberation theology—how can Black people’s God get them free?—and resulted in the unintended conclusion—how can Black people get free of their God? Whereas this stance won him few friends in Black theological circles, it was the sole position he could assume with any modicum of moral and intellectual integrity. Most

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importantly, when all of the apologetics and God-talk jargon have been stripped away, the true Black liberation theologian must ask the hard question: What is God doing for Black folk? Jones’s willingness to ask this hard question and accept the perceived answer, no matter how hurtful or damaging, is an invaluable yet unenviable contribution to Black religious thought and tradition. On the other hand, Cone’s provocative statement marked a deeply reflective and eventually transformative phase in his own thought as a Black Christian thinker. Although he did not reject his earlier statements uttered at the height of the Black Power era in an outright fashion, it is evident that Cone’s engagement with Jones’s humanist critique had left an indelible impression on the need to go further in reconstituting Black liberation theology. Cone was now challenged to work past the problems and paradoxes of a God that could hate Black people in spite of our existence as part of the Divine scheme of Creation. As a means of combating the inevitable downward spiral toward atheism that would accompany such a realization, Cone found an equally legitimate alternative: destroy the God of the oppressor and rebuild the God of the oppressed. In this fashion, due to their critical engagement across the theist/nontheist divide and the great challenge provided by Jones’s humanist insights, Cone took up more fully the mandate of Black liberation theology and, rather than making Black people conform in light of God’s presumed malign intent, he actually asserted Black theological perceptions of the Divine to more closely fit the exigent circumstances and real needs of “the least of these.” His recent work has been dedicated to conflict reduction. Since 1990, Jones has made yearly research trips to the Republic of South Africa in order to conduct extensive field research on social change in the post-apartheid era. He has lectured widely on the changing face of apartheid and the dynamics of liberation movements. More recently, the Black humanist challenge that was initiated by William Jones has been ushered forth with great fervor by Dr. Anthony B. Pinn. As the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies, Dr. Pinn has become a force to reckon with in a relatively short time. At the time of this writing, Pinn has either authored or edited about twenty texts ranging from scholarly monographs, anthologies, biographies, documentary readers, and survey textbooks as well as serving as coeditor of numerous book series dealing with various aspects of the Black religious experience. As one of the most prominent and prolific theologians of this

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generation, it is also noteworthy to mention that he has not allowed himself to be alienated or pigeonholed in the development of his theological voice and vision. Perhaps best known for his work, Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology, Pinn’s inquiry into why myriad forms of Black oppression and misery cannot be readily dismissed or taken lightly with the concept of a perfect, benevolent God serves as his point of departure rather than his final destination. Whereas all too many theologians find themselves trapped and confined by the ultimate dilemma of theodicy so that the issue is to be puzzled over or bemoaned but never, ever resolved, Pinn’s approach to humanism within the African American religious experience seems committed to moving through pain, suffering, and oppression beyond Black liberation toward the prospect of living with moral integrity, human dignity, and a shared sense of community. A central focus of Pinn’s humanist vision is that in the perceived absence of divine or supernatural intervention, “Humanity is far better off fighting with the tools it has—a desire for transformation, human creativity, physical strength, and untapped collective potential.”28 This dimension of Pinn’s humanist thought takes shape in numerous ways. In works such as Why, Lord?, Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music, and Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion, Pinn explores how secular African American art forms such as literature, visual arts, and music (especially the blues and hip hop) at their best often pose critical questions and raise concerns about humanocentric notions of accountability, responsibility, and opportunity that is sympathetic to, if not actually representing, a Black humanist perspective. In texts such as Varieties of African American Religious Experience and The African American Religious Experience in America, Pinn uses these texts to survey the richly dynamic diversity of Black religious realities in which humanism is included within a larger sacred Black universe of Christian and nonChristian faith traditions. More recently, much like philosopher Paul Kurtz’s adoption of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus as an illustrative symbol of Eurocentric humanism, Pinn has initiated an effort to reclaim the biblical figure of Nimrod as Black man who was not only a descendent of Ham but also a great hunter, mighty ruler, and builder of the Tower of Babel. In so doing, Pinn imagines that it serves “as a powerful mode of existential and epistemological reformation for African American humanists,” as well as providing the world with a representative image of Black humanism’s desire to cultivate the fullest possible expression of personal integrity, collective

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effort, communal accountability, and realization of our maximal human potential with great zeal and purpose. 29 Like many humanists before him, Pinn had a personal background steeped in a very traditional Black Christian upbringing. While he presently identifies himself as a UU, Pinn is in no way shy about not only being raised and educated in a deeply Christian context but eventually accepting his call to preach in the AME tradition as a youth in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. 30 Even with his turn away from Christian ministry toward what he calls “strong humanism” during his years of graduate study at Harvard, he has retained deep connections to his religious roots and attends to these exigencies in interesting ways. Pinn has penned several texts focusing on the historic as well as contemporaneous developments of Black Christianity in the United States.31 Additionally, he has edited works on the AME Bishop Reverdy Ransom and Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray as two of many provocative yet woefully overlooked exemplars within the history of modern Black Christianity. Moreover, he has partnered with fellow theologian Dwight Hopkins for the coedited volume Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic in order to examine the significance of physicality and sexuality within the Black Church tradition as a means of overcoming the silence and shame incumbent within Black culture in both sacred and secular terms. Even in his work entitled African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod, Pinn engages very intently in the presentation of Black humanist principles and perspectives that represent “an undeniable system of ethics and . . . moral code” that arguably shares common ground with more theistic frameworks such as Christian social ethics and liberation theology in their common desire to move human beings in toto toward a better future. Even though he rejects Christian notions of eschatology and divine involvement in human affairs, Pinn—much like Brown and Jones before him—seems eager and willing to wrestle with as well as work with more traditionally theistic efforts to move Black people toward a more positive destiny, apparently a statement of faith in its own regard. In the words of British novelist Graham Greene, “If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”32 In light of this query, Black humanists such as Jones and Pinn are performing some of the vitally important work that many Black church leaders and Christian theologians have not been willing, able, or even inclined to pursue. While it is beyond the scope or intent of this book, it will be

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interesting to see how Black liberation theology will respond to this Black humanist challenge in truly meaningful ways.

In a State of Unbelief: Norm R. Allen Jr. and Humanism in the African Diaspora Another example of Black humanism in the era following Rev. Brown’s death is Norm R. Allen Jr. and his effort to create a Black humanist organization that has begun to expand national borders into an entity reflective of the African diaspora. Much like his predecessors in the Black humanist enterprise, Allen asserts the fact that the existence of Black atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and humanists of every stripe have been present within the Black religious experience, yet grossly overlooked in the scope of religious and intellectual history. More importantly, Allen asserts that at best there have been faltering, unsophisticated attempts to galvanize any sort of visible and cohesive movement of Black nontheists. He remedied this situation through his founding of African Americans for Humanism (AAH) in 1989. Operating as an ancillary project of humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz’s Council for Secular Humanism, the AAH is a groundbreaking initiative for Black humanists to organize themselves not only in the United States but also across the African diaspora. Another key interest of the AAH is the investigation and reconstruction of humanist contributions to the history of Black experience in terms of art and literature, academia, politics, science, medicine, business, and virtually any other human enterprise imaginable. This organizational objective is achieved through its sponsorship of lectures, published research, and a regularly published newsletter. This goal to disseminate greater insights and discoveries of Black humanist history is also apparent in Allen’s many published works, most notably his edited volumes, African American Humanism: An Anthology (1991) and The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion (2002). Most notably, Allen and the AAH have reached beyond the North American context in order to establish a truly transnational Black humanist network. The results of this effort are most evident in the burgeoning example of humanist thought developing on the African continent. By the AAH’s estimate, there are nearly fifty groups identified as humanist or free thought collectives in African nations in Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Congo, Tanzania,

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Uganda, and South Africa to name only a few. The increased recognition of humanism on the African continent has been accentuated by the advocacy of secular humanism by the late educator and activist Tai Solarin as well as author and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, both of whom are Nigerians. Also hoping to extend its reach into other parts of the Americas, the AAH envisions the possibility of making inroads into the Caribbean. As demonstrated earlier in this text and elsewhere, the early twentieth century had witnessed considerable interest in secular humanism developing especially among Afro-Caribbean radical intellectuals of the era. Toward that goal, the AAH has expressed interest in forming a Black humanist group in Barbados in addition to reconnecting with the vestiges of preexisting humanist groups in Haiti, Jamaica, and other nations in the region. Even now, the emergence of humanist circles throughout the African diaspora is view by Allen and others as proof that “rationality and secularism are not exclusively Western values.”33 Allen has attributed much of his ability to explore humanist thought to his own intellectual grounding in Afrocentric scholarship that developed in the wake of the Black Power era. He comments that he later rejected Afrocentrism because he felt that it promulgated “irrationality, pseudoscience, and dubious scholarship” as well as its sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic overtones amongst its adherents.34 Allen’s efforts through the AAH have resulted in the creation of a Black humanist collective that not only has a sound foundation but also demonstrates remarkable possibilities for future growth and development. In many regards, Allen’s repudiation of theism, especially in terms of Black Christianity, resides in a functionalist reading of the faith: it has failed to work on behalf of believers. He contends, “Many Black religionists . . . are still attracted to a quietistic eschatology. Rather than seek rational solutions to the world’ s problems, they prefer to wait for the apocalypse and the divine rapture. In reality, however, they have been victimized by one failed prophecy after another.”35 A key component to Allen’s vision for the AAH is his critical disdain for Marxism. In an autobiographical essay in his edited volume, The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion, Allen discusses his encounter with Marxist ideology while he was an undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he exposed himself to Marxism through direct engagement by reading Marxist periodicals and publications as well as participating in

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events and other gatherings organized by socialists, with time, however, he became disheartened by Marxism for very concrete reasons. First and foremost, he comments, “I eventually rejected Marxism . . . because I realized that most Americans would never accept it. It sounded great in theory, but it has never worked for the masses” in any practical sense. 36 Seeing Marxist ideology as yet another failed ideological system that pitted the impoverished masses against the privileged classes, Allen saw it as simply repackaging the same old modes of oppression. Second, he argues that his Marxist comrades were presenting their dream of a workers’ utopia alongside the worst depictions of capitalism. As Allen states, “Marxism certainly looks better from that perspective,” but questions whether Marxism’s merits ever were sufficient in absolute terms to promote the most ideal quality of life for all people?37 The answer to that question both in abstract and real terms seemed to be “No.” Whereas Allen states that humanists run the political economic gamut from communists and socialists to capitalists and libertarians, they are united by their overarching desire to be able to pursue happiness. 38 By this token, Allen indicates that the obliteration of any barriers to allowing each individual to live up to his/her fullest potential is a core belief of humanism. Therefore, this creates an interesting tension for Allen, especially as the AAH extends its influence throughout the African diaspora. On the one hand, Allen’s familiarity with and ultimate dissatisfaction with Marxism may hold considerable sway particularly in the “Two Thirds” world context where great frustration and unfound memories persist due to Marxist social experiments in Africa and the Caribbean that went awry. In a sense, the dramatic failure of Marxism in the societies in question might actually serve as an essential precondition for some form of Black humanism to fill the ideological void. On the other hand, closer to home in the United States, where a strong, fully developed Left has yet to materialize, the reality of the Black working poor and even middle class is such that, while aspiring to a life free from state intervention in the American political economy, the majority of Black women, men, and children in the United States are still most dependent not upon the kindness of their fellow citizens but rather on the power of the government to serve guarantor and guardian over Black people’s freedoms and opportunities. In light of that situation, Allen’s powerful and provocative articulation of Black humanism must never uncouple itself from the hard truths of Black history in the United States.

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Creating Her Own Gardens: Alice Walker as Womanist Muse and Humanist Icon Award-winning author/poet Alice Walker is another purveyor of the Black humanist tradition in the decades since Rev. Brown died. Although most renowned for her novel The Color Purple, Walker’s perspective on the human experience has always been infused with deeply sophisticated and largely sympathetic readings of issues of race, gender, nationality, sexuality, and spirituality that hinted at her untraditional personal belief system. It has been in recent years, however, that Walker has expressed her humanistic sensibilities in a more open and vocal manner. A prime example of Walker’s articulation of a humanist perspective is illustrated in her essay “The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind.” This document originally served as her acceptance speech when Walker received the 1997 “Humanist of the Year” award from the American Humanist Association. She expressed a conceptualization of human existence and experience wherein nature was life’s chief organizing principle rather than dependence of human beings on more theistic beliefs and traditions. Beginning that essay with an excerpt of Genesis 3:16, Walker illustrates how God uses “the Curse of Eve” to condemn “the woman” to servitude of her husband who, in turn, is given mastery over her. Walker uses a considerable portion of the essay to assail so-called men of God who often praise and worship a God that endorses patriarchal domination, misogyny, and violence toward women. Furthermore, as indicated elsewhere in her literary corpus, Walker is critical of the anthropomorphic depiction of Jesus as blond and blue-eyed white man who was presented in home church as “the only good one besides Santa Claus and Abraham Lincoln they ever heard of.”39 Yet, in her reflections, Walker wonders whether this white Jesus would prove to be a racist once Black folk began appearing in heaven. She argues that Black Christians have been caught in a perennial trap wherein they loved and worshipped a Divine Being that does not reciprocate their adoration and devotion. More plainly, she asserts that “it is fatal to love a God who does not love you . . . We have been beggars at the table that has sanctioned our destruction.”40 To counter this, Walker expressed that she prefers to worship Nature, personified for her as Mother Earth, because “all people deserve to worship a God who also worships them. A God that made them and likes them.”41

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Walker’s articulation of a Black humanist vision is not altogether surprising because there is evidence of her critical views of traditional religion in her writings. One need look no further than her best known work, The Color Purple, to see a very intense and rigorous examination of Black Christian theology through the eyes of Black female protagonists such as Celie and Shug who had been either betrayed by or denied a faith tradition to which they should have been natural heirs and benefactors. The greatest and most intriguing development in Walker’s humanism is her relationship with the womanist movement within religious studies and theological education. With the publication of her landmark text, In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden, Walker provided the definitive criteria and core premise for the womanist movement that subsequently emerged. Walker defines “womanist,” as both individual and movement, as 1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A Black feminist or feminist of color. From the Black folk expression of mothers to female children, “You acting womanish,” i.e. like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another Black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious. 2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural and counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of the entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: “Mama why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans.: “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of slaves with me.” Replay: “It wouldn’t be the first time.” 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves the struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. 4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.42

Although the various nuances of Walker’s four-part definition of womanism have been dealt with in longer and better fashion elsewhere,

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it is important to note why these guidelines must be dealt with in order to more fully understand womanism as a movement and ideology. Womanism finds its basis in notions inherent in African American theology and ethics such as a sense of community, a longing for justice, and a deep and personal love of oneself, of others, and of God. In combination, these elements not only make a complete and fully realized womanist but also a holistic and integrated women of African descent. Taken individually, the elements of the womanist definition involve an epistemological as well as vocational transformation that is both challenging yet life-affirming. The Black woman’s ability in womanism to self-define and self-determine herself and thereby choose her own identity and destiny is tantamount. This ensures that their will be a multitude of voices and views within womanism that have been homogenized or suppressed in feminism. The womanist also has an intrinsic love of scholarship because she seeks knowledge in the hope of not merely being informed by her context or given reality but of this context as well. With this newfound knowledge of herself and her reality, the womanist makes an informed choice in how she is going to improve both her life and the lives of loved ones. By defining herself as a womanist, the Black woman takes on the responsibility of dealing with the Other that Audre Lorde discusses, especially because, as a Black woman, she is the Other. The womanist is ultimately able to improve her life and create positive change in the community and institutions in which she is involved. Unlike feminism, womanism is not an overarching paradigm that all women must ascribe to but a guide to self-definition and selfdetermination that the Black woman chooses to adhere. Womanism is not a form of revolutionary asceticism nor does it impose intellectual or moral superiority, but is a means of putting Black women in contact with a more spiritual, Afrocentric, and personal means of dealing with her reality, within both the African American community and American society. The personal and spiritual qualities of womanism can be attributed to the fact that “the confesssional element of ‘womanist’ means that it is a term which cannot be imposed, but must be claimed by the black woman who is engaged in the eradication of oppression from her own faith perspective and academic discipline.”43 The definition of womanist Alice Walker presents is a prototypical and evolving one, obvious as womanist scholars seek to revise and redefine the real-life applications of womanism. The term and concept of womanist began to take on a life of its own. Delores S. Williams’ 1987 article, “Womanist Theology: Black

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Women’s Theology,” is attributed as the first work to employ the term. In 1988, Katie G. Cannon’s groundbreaking Black Womanist Ethics and Toinette Eugene’s “Moral Values and Black Womanists” were both early works that provided a concrete basis regarding the rationality of a womanist movement, as well as the methodologies and resources that could be readily utilized. Subsequent womanist publications, such as Renita J. Weems’s Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible (1988), Jacquelyn Grant’s White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus (1989), Delores S. Williams’s Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (1993), Emilie M. Townes’s Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope (1993), and Kelly Brown Douglas’ The Black Christ (1994) emerged from the theological disciplines to add to the range of issues to address in regards to the context of the Black Church and the greater realities of African Americans in American society. The first anthology of womanist religious thought edited by Emilie M. Townes, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering (1993), addresses the question of theodicy employing a critical, deconstructive methodology that integrates race, class, and gender analysis of the issue of evil and suffering in a manner that traditional white feminist and Black male scholars have often missed. Most recently, the publication of womanist ethicist Stacey M. FloydThomas’s Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics and edited volume Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society (both in 2006) possibly marks a new horizon for the womanist movement. With her text Mining the Motherlode, Floyd-Thomas has attempted to not only demonstrate how womanist approaches to Christian social ethics and the broader study of religion and society have contributed much to our understanding of Black religious life, social activism, and women’s liberation, but also how these various elements can be incorporated into the research perspectives and classroom pedagogy of men and women who are not womanists. Likewise, more than simply revisiting Alice Walker’s initial definition of womanism for its ongoing significance of the theoretical approaches and critical discourses of Black female scholars in religion, Deeper Shades of Purple explores the achievements of the womanist movement that has evolved and expanded over the last twenty years as well as evaluates how different perspectives (Christian and non-Christian, male and female, Black and non-Black, etc.) have been influenced by this burgeoning field. It is in such a manner that womanist scholarship will continue to challenge existing epistemological methods as

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well as confront and eradicate the injustice and oppression facing Black women, men, and children in America. In addition to being religious scholars, womanists are also predominantly ordained Christian ministers, which means they have direct contact with those in great need of their inspiration, support, and strength, both in the academy and the Black community. This belies a great importance to organized womanism’s roots in theological studies and religious ministry, because “whether urban or rural, the Black Church was the only institution totally controlled by Blacks. It was the only place outside the home where Blacks could express themselves freely and take independent action. The Church community was the heart, center and basic organization of Black life.”44 Once womanists emerged within academia and the Black Church tradition, it became necessary for these self-avowed women to center their written works upon the Bible and the writings of Black women for a number of reasons. Aside from revisionist Biblical scholarship, the literary tradition of African American women writers serves as a constant resource and means of discourse in womanist studies and theology. The wealth of writings found in “the Black woman’s literary tradition documents the ‘living space’ carved out of the intricate web of racism, sexism and poverty. The literary tradition parallels Black history. It conveys the assumed values in the Black oral tradition. And it capsulizes the insularity of the Black community.”45 The works of African American women writers, such as Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker among others has served as both a rich, unexplored repository of experience and knowledge to be studied and an untapped inspiration for present and future womanists. Womanists’ deconstructive analysis of the Bible takes one of the most important tools of Eurocentric patriarchal oppression, Christianity, and extracts its positive and liberating elements. Both textual sources can be employed to deal with the reality of sexual politics as they relate to Black women. Womanists’ use of these texts are an innovative and effective means of addressing issues such as domestic violence, prostitution, sexual abuse, and rape that prove to be increasingly pressing concerns in the lives of Black women. Once brought to light, these problems can be dealt with realistically and constructively. The womanist movement is going to have a great impact upon all activism and scholarship striving for universal human rights and equality, especially Black feminism; in years to come, womanism, as a movement and an ideology, will be a model to other oppressed peoples to look internally, toward their own culture, institutions, and concerns,

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in order to improve their external conditions. In their constant quest for liberating knowledge, “womanists in the religious academy make great use of and have ongoing conversations with other academic disciplines.”46 Such interdisciplinary discourse and analysis will, in turn, provide the means for the edification and quickening of all oppressed peoples. The inclusion of gays and lesbians, the elderly, the physically disadvantaged, indigenous people, and the poor are also present in Alice Walker’s vision of womanism but it still remains to be seen if the actual embodiment of her vision will do the same. Based on the sense of compassion and accountability that emerges from womanist ethics and theology, womanists will not allow the same kind of oversights that occurred in either white or Black feminism such as heterosexism, ageism, or classism to persist within their own camp. More importantly, how does Walker’s critical posture as a humanist presently resonate with a theological awakening of Black female scholars and ministers (the majority of whom are Christian) in academic and ecclesial settings? Although there is some initial work being done in addressing the possibility of womanist humanism, more extensive work has to be done in order to see what the further implications and future impact of such a development would mean for the study of Black religion in American society.47

Black Presence in a White Denomination: The Quest for Racial Justice in the UUA On August 28, 1963, president of the recently formed Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), Dana Greeley, led more than 1,500 Unitarian Universalists to the 1963 March on Washington to join the more than 250,000 other civil rights supporters gathered on the National Mall that day. A few months earlier, the UUA established a commission on Race and Religion at the General Assembly (GA) in June 1963. At that same GA meeting, however, the delegates had defeated a motion that would have required open membership without regard to race, nationality, and so on as a requirement for all societies applying to the UUA. This was defeated on the grounds of noninterference in congregational polity. Yet the delegates wanted to address the issue of segregation in some congregations directly and also begin to respond to civil rights issues with resources and programs. Walter Royal Jones was the chair of the new commission. The task force tried to address the issue of open membership.

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A galvanizing event for all of America occurred in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. On March 8, Martin Luther King Jr. sent telegrams to many religious groups, including the UUA, calling upon them to come to Selma, where he was trying to stage a march, and join him in the struggle against racism and for the survival of democracy. The march was organized in rapid response to the murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson, an African American, in Marion Alabama by a local state trooper. Members of the UUA participated in the protest march from Selma to Montgomery led by Dr. King the next day. The two thousand marchers (including about fifty UU clergy) were turned back by state troopers, and King decided to complete his fight in the courts. On the night of March 9, Rev. James Reeb, a white UU minister, was viciously beaten by a group of white men and died two days later. The UUA Board had adjourned its Boston meeting and voted to travel en masse to Selma to attend Reeb’s memorial service. On March 17, the courts ordered that a march between Selma and Montgomery be permitted. The march began on March 25 with three hundred marchers, but by the time the state capitol was reached, there were forty thousand marchers, including hundreds of UU ministers and laypeople. On the last day of the march to Montgomery, Viola Liuzzo, a white UU layperson from Detroit, Michigan, was chauffeuring civil rights workers back and forth between Selma and Montgomery. Liuzzo was captured by local white supremacists who shot her as she drove along Alabama’s Highway 80 en route to Montgomery to pick up more civil rights marchers. Many observers are of the opinion that the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed at least in part due to the murders of Reeb and Liuzzo at the hands of racist white Southerners. In many regards, they are rightfully considered among the civil rights movement’s pantheon of martyrs who, in their willingness to risk everything by aligning themselves with the Black freedom struggle, chose conscience over comfort in order to make a supreme sacrifice for others. In response to urban uprisings that erupted in numerous cities nationwide, the UUA called for an Emergency Conference in response to the Black Rebellion in 1967. Out of this conference, the UU Black Caucus was formed, which demanded the creation of a Blackcontrolled Black Affairs Council (BAC). The BAC leaders argued that Black members needed to make their own leadership and financial decisions. This development of the BAC reflects the ascendency of what sociologists C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya refer to as the “Black Consciousness Movement” within the broad scope of

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American Christianity during the late 1960s and early 1970s.48 There are several examples of this tremendous shift within the context of the Black Church tradition. A prime example of this phenomenon is illustrated by the increasing numbers of young Black church leaders of the National Council of Black Churchmen (NCBC) castigated mainline white Christian denominations in the United States for their historic as well as contemporaneous complicity with racism. What made this movement so profound was the NCBC’s coordinated efforts of the Black Churchmen to demand reparations and agitate for substantive power or leadership roles within the governing structures of American society, both sacred and secular. As a result of this interracial conflict and tension reflected by the NCBC, various Black theologies emerged that critiqued white supremacy and other social injustices within modern American society. The foremost leader in this regard was theologian James H. Cone whose early works including Black Theology and Black Power (1969), A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (1972), and God of the Oppressed (1975) laid the foundation of Black Liberation Theology. In countless university and seminary classrooms since the evolution of the Black Consciousness Movement, Black liberation theology asserted the urgent need of the oppressed masses to merge Christian faith and prophetic witness with political activism and social change for the overall advancement of the Black community. Meanwhile, the Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (formerly Reverend Albert Cleage Jr.), the pastor of Shrine of the Black Madonna—also known as the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church—in Detroit, Michigan, became a passionate advocate of Black Christian Nationalism articulated in his books, The Black Messiah (1969) and Black Christian Nationalism (1972). Reminiscent of the theological innovations of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X in earlier periods, both Black liberation theology and Black Christian nationalism argued for the religious significance of envisioning Jesus Christ as a Black Messiah rooted in their reality of Black Christians and working providentially for their freedom and empowerment. In light of this situation, an integrationist group, Black and White Action (BAWA), tried to develop its own programs as a counterbalance to the Black Consciousness Movement, and they received some UUA Board support. While BAWA sought a more moderate course of action, the BAC sponsored many Black controlled projects throughout the country under the auspices of the UUA, but eventually

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denominational funding for BAC’s programming was cut amidst a schism within BAC that undermined its ultimate effectiveness. After the painful debacles of the BAC/BAWA controversy, the UUA had no major initiatives on racial justice until 1980 when an institutional racism audit was undertaken. As a result of this completed audit report in 1981, an affirmative action plan was undertaken by the denomination. A Unitarian Universalist minister who has played a key role in helping the denomination confront issues of racism was Rev. Dr. Mark D. Morrison-Reed. He was born Mark Reed in Chicago, Illinois, on June 16, 1949. Raised in Chicago, his parents were among a small cohort of African Americans who attended the First Unitarian Church of Chicago. Consequently, as a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, he and his siblings were the first Black children ever dedicated there. He sang in the famous Chicago Children’s Choir. After what he describes as a circuitous journey through several colleges, Reed worked as a volunteer for Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a program created by President Lyndon Johnson’s Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and envisioned as the domestic counterpart of the Peace Corps. He later taught in Europe before finally deciding upon a career in Unitarian ministry. He was trained for the ministry at Meadville Lombard Theological School. He first received an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1977 and then earned a D.Min. from Meadville Lombard in 1979. His thesis there was developed into an important book examining the roots of racism in Unitarian Universalism, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination (1980). The book examines the story of two black ministers, Rev. Ethelred Brown and Rev. Lewis McGee, and their efforts to bring the Unitarian message to Black communities despite blatant denominational racism. On the day after he and his fiancée received their M.A. degrees in 1977, Reed was married to Donna Morrison, a native of Canada and a ministerial colleague with whom he took a joint name. They have two children and have shared in co-ministry throughout their careers with both being fellowshipped and ordained in 1979. Their first settlement was at the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York, from 1979 to 1988, and presently they serve the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, Ontario, where they were called in 1989. Morrison-Reed’s book Black Pioneers eventually evolved into an adult religious education curriculum, How Open the Door? (AfroAmericans’ Experience in Unitarian Universalism) (1989). At that time he served on the denominational Curriculum Team, which

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developed ways to strengthen Unitarian Universalist identity. When he was minister in Rochester, Morrison-Reed wrote, “One of my visions has been for that church to become fully integrated.” Remembering the rare UU congregation he grew up in and a few others that were thoroughly integrated in every aspect of their programs, he said, “I have always hoped that more of our churches could be like them, including my own.” Morrison-Reed went on to say that diversity can come in many forms. In 1991, Morrison-Reed coedited a meditation manual with Jacqui James entitled Been in the Storm so Long. Morrison-Reed has also published “A Fear of Mass Appeal: Religious Liberals in Retreat” in Unitarian Universalism (1984) in which he calls for the Unitarian Universalist church to have a vision with a broader, more universal appeal. He has served on several Unitarian Universalist Association committees, including the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) and the Commission on Appraisal. He was a founding member of the African American Unitarian Universalist Ministries. He has also been president of the Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC) and has been active for many years as a volunteer with the Family Service Association. As a minister, Morrison-Reed has tried to build communities where people are accepted as they are and that the church “assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community.” Within the past few decades, the UUA has reached the goal of 20 percent of the headquarters staff being people of color. In 1985, the UUA established the Black Concerns Working Group (BCWG) to help congregations battle racism. That same year, Yvonne Seon became the first African American woman to be fellowshipped as a UU minister. In 1984, the Whitney Young Jr. Urban Ministry Fund was started. The GA of 1992 adopted a long-range plan to become more racially and culturally diverse, and the UUA board appointed a Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force. In January of that year, the UUA Board had already affirmed the Ten Year Plan for Racial and Cultural Diversity. A new UUA Office for Racial and Cultural Diversity began to work with the task force and the BCWG to develop resources and programs. Most UUs in the 1950s and 1960s longed to bring justice to Blacks in America and participated in a unified response in Selma, only to see it dissipated in battles over white middle-class leadership and fears of “Black Power” in the late 1960s. Recent history has seen many efforts to heal the wounds of the Black Empowerment Controversy. The most definitive leap forward

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in terms of racial progress for Black Unitarian Universalists was witnessed in June 2001 when Rev. William G. Sinkford was elected as the first African American to be president of the UUA. As president of this predominantly white liberal religious association, Sinkford was responsible to the UUA Board of Trustees for administering staff and programs that serve its more than thousand member congregations. In like fashion, he also acted as principal spokesperson and minister-at-large for the Association. As a Boston-based, Harvard-educated minister and former businessman who declared himself “a card carrying atheist” prior to his call to ministry more than a decade ago, Sinkford has been a particularly vocal and forthright proponent of legalizing same-sex marriage, a position in keeping with his organization’s historical support of gay and lesbian couples and their families, yet a very controversial topic in many traditional Black Christian communities. Whereas marriage equality has been one of the most divisive theological and political issues to surface on the American social landscape in several decades, the UUA’s public stance on same-sex marriage might create a barrier rather than a bridge for greater racial inclusion for any number of Blacks who might welcome the social justice orientation of the UUA but cannot embrace this aspect of group’s prophetic social witness is a sad fact. During Sinkford’s tenure as UUA president, the denomination has increased its efforts to advance social justice and racial inclusion both in American society and within its own circle. In his address to the UUA General Assembly meeting held in Fort Worth, Texas, Rev. Sinkford states: it is still the case that the most frequently asked question I receive as I travel the country is how we can become more racially and culturally diverse. My response, always, is that the objective of finding a few more dark faces to make our white members feel better about themselves is not spiritually grounded. Nor will it be successful. Racial and cultural diversity will, I pray, come to Unitarian Universalism. But it will come as we become known as a faith community that strives to live our open hearted theology, and a faith community that is willing to be an ally in the struggle for justice.49

This directive from the highest echelon of the UUA has allowed the denomination to exercise a more prophetic social witness, thus bringing antiracism more squarely in keeping with the denominational

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view on a whole range of other progressive social issues such as feminism, gay and lesbian rights, environmentalism, economic justice, pacifism, and anti-imperialism that have been so central to the collective identity of the UUA, particularly during the postwar era. Whether speaking out against the duplicitous hypocrisy of the Religious Right and the bloody, unnecessary U.S. war in Iraq or speaking in support of women’s leadership in society, greater ecological awareness, and marriage equality, it only makes sense that ending racism be considered an equally vital and urgent concern in the present day rather than a “dead issue” from some mythical bygone era. In the ongoing battle for racial justice and social equality— much like the philosophy of twelve-step substance abuse recovery programs— admitting there is a problem is the first and most necessary step toward finding resolution to the problems we face either on an individual or societal level. Ironically, despite the plethora of religious debates and social issues that the Unitarian Universalists have confronted in their history both before and after the formation of the UUA, the most intense crisis of Rev. Sinkford’s presidency has had to do with the matter of faith. In a May 17, 2003, New York Times article entitled, “A Heated Debate Flares in Unitarian Universalism,” it was argued that, shortly after assuming the UUA presidency, Sinkford has gradually unveiled his interest in starting a preliminary process of reclaiming what he calls a “vocabulary of reverence” within the UUA. Among other things, this new religious language would entail incorporating direct mention of “God” in the association’s Purposes and Principles, a move that generated widespread ire from atheists within the UUA who see such a measure as the encroachment of theism upon their lives and worldviews. Even though the association’s regulations demand a five-year process be undertaken before any considerable change to the bylaws, such as the infusion of overtly theistic language, can happen, Sinkford’s mere suggestion of incorporating God-talk into the UUA’s core documents and, more importantly, its religious outlook may mark yet another transformation within liberal Christian theology in America. In his own words, Sinkford cautiously yet clearly notes that while the use of spiritual or theological language or even mentioning God will not be mandatory within the UUA, nevertheless, he challenges the UUA to consider this vocabulary of reverence as it “allows us to capture the possibility of reverence, to name the holy, to talk about human agency in theological terms.”50 Whereas this debate has not been fully resolved at the time of this writing, the larger repercussions

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of this latest conflagration not only within Black humanism but also in the overall scope of American liberal religion will be most fascinating. It seems that so many decades after Rev. Brown initiated his unique and significant religious experiment, yet another Black humanist was once again pushing the boundaries of liberal religion toward new and greater vistas.

Notes

Introduction 1. Egbert Ethelred Brown, “A Liberal Church for Negroes,” The World Tomorrow 12:9 (September 1929). 2. Brown, “The Religion of the Negro.” 3. During the course of this church’s existence, it underwent a number of name changes. It began in the early to mid-1920s as the Harlem Community Church and was later dubbed the Hubert Harrison Memorial Church in 1928. Upon its recognition by the American Unitarian Association (AUA) in 1937, the church subsequently renamed itself the Harlem Unitarian Church in its later years. 4. Anthony B. Pinn, Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum, 1995), 139. 5. Norm R. Allen Jr., ed. The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 9. 6. Anthony B. Pinn, ed. By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 1–21; Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 1–40. See also Norm R. Allen Jr., African American Humanism: An Anthology (New York: Prometheus, 1991) and Mark D. Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination 3 ed. (1980; Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994). 7. William R. Jones, “Religious Humanism: Its Problems and Prospects in Black Religion and Culture,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 7:2 (Spring 1980), 180. 8. Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982), 47. 9. It should be noted that this estimate does not take into account any enslaved Africans captured, bought, sold, or bartered by European pirates or privateers. 10. Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself. Edited with an Introduction by Robert J. Allison. 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 56.

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11. Charles H. Long, “Passage and Prayer: The Origin of Religion in the Atlantic World,” in Quinton Hosford Dixie and Cornel West, eds. The Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 14. 12. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in EighteenthCentury Virginia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs (New York: New York University Press, 1988); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974; New York: Norton, 1996). 13. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Edited with an Introduction by David W. Blight. 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 119–120. 14. See Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 15. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Edited by Nellie McKay and Frances Smith Foster (New York: Norton, 2001), 62–63. 16. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. Rev. 3rd ed. (1973; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 163–221. 17. Benjamin E. Mays, “The Negro’s God, As Reflected in His Literature: Ideas of God Involving Frustration, Doubt, God’s Impotence, and His NonExistence,” in Pinn, ed. By These Hands, 139. 18. Ibid. 19. Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928; New York: Penguin, 2002), 131. 20. Ibid., 134. 21. Ibid. 22. Richard Wright, Black Boy, 60th anniversary ed. With New Foreword by Edward P. Jones (1944; New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 102. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 103. 25. Ibid., 115. 26. William R. Jones, “Religious Humanism,” 175–180. 27. Allen, ed. The Black Humanist Experience, 9–10. 28. Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness (New York: The New Press, 2006), 117. 29. Alice Walker, “The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind.” in Pinn, ed. By These Hands, 297. 30. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles, xxi. 31. Ibid., 169. 32. Ibid., 170. 33. Harrison observes “anger is a mode of connectedness to others and it is a vivid form of caring.” Bev W. Harrison, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love: Christian Ethics for Women and Other Strangers,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 36 (1980–1981 supplement), 49.

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1 Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow 1. “A City Called Heaven,” in Songs of Zion (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1982), 135. 2. James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, 6:6 (March 1925), 635. 3. Cary D. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Houston: Rice University Press, 1988), 20. 4. James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), 82. 5. Ethelred Brown, “The Harlem Unitarian Church,” (n.p., n.d.), 2, Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 6. Heeding the call for greater dispersal of the nonconformist gospel and morality, Robert Hibbert, a British Unitarian merchant and slave owner, sent a young Unitarian minister named Thomas Cooper to serve as a missionary to the enslaved Africans on his Jamaican plantations in 1817. Cooper only stayed until 1821 and achieved little success in the mission field. Upon his return to England, Cooper wrote a controversial and unfavorable report about his missionary work on the Hibbert estates that generated much ire from his former benefactor. Following Cooper’s departure from the island, no lasting Unitarian movement existed during the years Ethelred Brown underwent his own religious transformation. 7. An African American had been admitted to Meadville for training in the Unitarian ministry at the turn of the century but he did not complete training. 8. Ethelred Brown, “The Harlem Unitarian Church,” 8. 9. Ibid., 8. 10. Ibid., 12. 11. British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 87th Annual Report (May 30, 1912), 9. 12. One Hundred Years, 1825–1925, British and Foreign Unitarian Association Centenary (London: Lindsey Press, 1925), 14. 13. British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 88th Annual Report (June 6, 1913), 19. 14. Cliff Reed, “Unitarianism in Jamaica: A Blighted Flower,” The Inquirer 17 (January 1998), 6. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. “Colonial and Foreign Work,” British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 86th Annual Report (June 8, 1911), 22–23. 18. British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 89th Annual Report (June 4, 1914), 19. 19. Ethelred Brown, “The Harlem Unitarian Church,” 30–31. 20. Ibid., 31. 21. Ibid., 34–35. 22. Ibid., 35. 23. Ibid., 39.

206 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

Notes Ibid. Ibid., 45. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1951), 3. Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1996), 1. Wilfred A. Domingo, “Gift of the Black Tropics,” in Alain Locke, ed. The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (1925; New York: Atheneum, 1992), 349. Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations, 2. See also John A. Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (1955; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001); David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005); and Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). Maurice R. Davie, A Constructive Immigration Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), 7. Ira DeA. Reid, The Negro Immigrant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 34. Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 1–26. Wilfred A. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917–1929 (Boulder, CO: Belmont Books, 1977), 1. Nell I. Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: Norton, 1987), 8. Paul S. Boyer, Clifford Clark, Sandra M. Hawley, Joseph Kett, Neal Salisbury, Harvard Sitkoff, and Nancy Woloch, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, vol. 2, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 466. August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 69–82, 161–63; Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage, 1979); Joel Williamson, A Rage for Order: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1970; Penguin Books, 1994), xii. Ibid., 96. “Negro Republicans of Virginia Plan National Protest against Lily Whiteism as Practiced by Republicans,” New York Age, August 6, 1921.

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41. See also Ida B. Wells-Barnett, On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans (New York: Arno Press, 1969); William M. Tuttle Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1970); Mark Bauerlein, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001); and Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Random House, 2002). 42. Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods (1902; Miami: Mnemosyne, 1969), 77–78. 43. Howard P. Chudacoff, “Success and Security: The Meaning of Social Mobility in America,” Review in American History 10:4 (December 1982), 107. 44. John Henrik Clarke, “Introduction,” in John Henrik Clarke, ed. Harlem: A Community in Transition (New York: Citadel Press, 1970), 3. 45. Ibid., 4. 46. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 23–24. 47. Ibid. 48. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848; New York: International Publishers, 1948); Charles Fourier, Designs for Utopia (New York: Schocken Books, 1971); Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879; New York: Robert Scholkenbach Foundation, 1937); William Dean Howells, Traveler from Altruia (Edinburgh: Douglas, 1894); Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1887; Boston: Houghton, 1926). 49. Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), xi. 50. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?”: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford Press, 1991), 13. 51. Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967; New York: Quill, 1984), 12. 52. W.E.B. DuBois, The Black North: A Social Study (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 41. 53. Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 79. 54. Carl Horton Pierce, New Harlem, Past and Present (New York: New Harlem Publishing, 1903), 129. 55. Osofsky, Harlem, 111. 56. Ibid., 122. 57. Ibid., x. 58. Osofsky, Harlem, 135. 59. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), 33. 60. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 90. 61. Ibid., 6–7.

208

Notes

2 Building the Church of Tomorrow 1. Ethelred Brown, “Building the Church of Tomorrow” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, 1938), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 2. George E. Haynes, “The Church and the Negro Spirit,” Survey Graphic 6:6 (March 1925), 709. 3. Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism. Rev. 3rd ed., 253–281; Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986); Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). 4. Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 350; Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States. Samuel S. Hill. Rev. 9th ed. (1951; Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990), 232. 5. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 18. 6. Anthony B. Pinn, Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 159. 7. Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind. 3rd ed. (New York: Scribners, 1984), 458. 8. H. Shelton Smith, Robert T. Handy, and Lefferts A. Loetscher, American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, 1607–1820, vol. 1 (New York: Scribners, 1960), 485; 513–516. 9. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 84. 10. Ibid., 85. 11. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929; New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 103. 12. Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 12. 13. Thomas S. Hansen, “Charles Follen: Brief Life of a Vigorous Reformer, 1796–1840,” Harvard Magazine (September–October 2002) . 14. In recent years some students have called for the residence hall to be renamed, either by dropping the name of the slavery defender entirely or by hyphenating Calhoun’s name with the name of a civil rights leader. Their efforts have not been successful, but the issue flares periodically. 15. The 1989 award-winning movie “Glory” starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman is a dramatization of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment’s efforts. 16. Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Henry Holt Books, 2002), 189. 17. Jacoby, Freethinkers, 190. 18. Ibid., 191. 19. Caroline Wedin, Inheritors of the Spirit: Mary White Ovington and the Founding of the NAACP (New York: Wiley, 1999).

Notes 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

209

“A Step toward Racial Reconciliation,” UUWorld (May/June 2002), 26. Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, xiv. Jacoby, Freethinkers, 191. Earl Moses Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 465. James Weldon Johnson, “Two-By-Four Churches,” New York Age, July 30, 1921. “Churches Prove Great Factor,” New York Herald Tribune, February 11, 1930. George E. Haynes, “The Church and Negro Progress,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 140, The American Negro (November 1928), 265–266. Osofsky, Harlem, 113. Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 42. Robert M. Franklin, “The Safest Place on Earth: The Culture of Black Congregations,” in James P. Wind and James W. Lewis, eds. American Congregations: New Perspectives in the Study of Congregations, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 259. Lincoln, Race, Religion, 96. W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 201. Mary Frances Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 92. Albert J. Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Lincoln, Race, Religion; David Howard-Pitney, The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Charles H. Long, “Perspectives for a Study of Afro-American Religion in the United States,” History of Religions 11:1 (August 1971), 54–66; Preston N. Williams, “Toward a Sociological Understanding of the Black Religious Community,” Soundings 54:3 (Fall 1971), 260–270; R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 173–200; James M. Washington, Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Quest for Social Power (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986); Wilson J. Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982); Judith Weisenfeld, “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Margins, Center, and Bridges in African American Religious History,” in Harry S. Stout and D.G. Hart, eds., New Directions in American Religious History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 417–444; David W. Wills, “Beyond Commonality and Plurality: Persistent Racial Polarity in American Religion and Politics,” in Mark A. Noll, ed., Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 199–224; V.P. Franklin, Black SelfDetermination: A Cultural History of African-American Resistance (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1984), 27–68.

210

Notes

34. For examples of the Black Church as a bulwark against racist oppression in America, see DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 197–206; Frazier, The Negro Church in America, 40–49; Lincoln, Race, Religion, chap. 1; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1–18. More complete discussions of the black Church as a site for racial empowerment can be found in Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1984), chap. 4; Franklin, Black Self-Determination, chap 2. 35. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1970), 27, 37. 36. Ibid., 120. 37. For more detailed examination of the role of theodicy in Black theology, see Pinn, Why, Lord? 38. John Brown Childs, The Political Black Minister: A Study in Afro-American Politics and Religion (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980), 1. 39. Examples of this socializing function of Black churches can be found in Michael W. Harris, The Rise Of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Robert Gregg, Sparks From the Anvil of Oppression: Philadelphia’s African Methodists and Southern Migrants, 1890–1940 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Milton C. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). 40. “Essential Community Work,” New York Age, February 26, 1921. 41. Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?,” 103. 42. Frazier, The Negro Church in America, 40. 43. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 186, 192, and 195. 44. Frazier, The Negro Church in America, 44. 45. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 10. 46. Frazier, The Negro Church in America, 48–50. 47. Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 82. 48. Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?,” 103. 49. C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church Since Frazier (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 137. 50. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 90. 51. Robert M. Franklin, “The Safest Place on Earth: The Culture of black Congregations,” 259. 52. Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Reformation to the Present Day, vol. 2 (New York: Harper Collins, 1985), 240. 53. Domingo, “Gift of the Black Tropics,” 347. 54. James P. Wind and James W. Lewis, “Introduction,” in Wind and Lewis, eds. American Congregations: Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities, vol. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 10.

Notes

211

55. Ethelred Brown, “What Has Unitarianism to Offer” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, n.d.), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 56. Ibid. 57. Ethelred Brown, “The Harlem Unitarian Church,” 61–62. 58. Ibid., 46. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 53. 62. Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 162. 63. Brown, “Fifteen Years in the Unitarian Ministry [1927],” (photocopy), 91–2. 64. Ibid., 92. 65. Among the editors and contributing writers for this organ were the Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard, John Haynes Holmes, Paul H. Douglas, Norman Thomas, and A.J. Muste. 66. Judith Weisenfeld, “The More Abundant Life:” The Harlem Branch of the New York City Young Women’s Christian Association, 1905–1945 (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1992), 153. 67. Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 97. 68. Weisenfeld, “The More Abundant Life,” 153. 69. Ibid., 153–154. 70. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Random House, 1981). 71. Earl Moses Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 487.

3

Against Principalities, Against Powers

1. Richard Wright, Twelve Million Black Voices (London: Thunder’s Mouth, 1941), 146. 2. One can certainly argue that Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: Making of a Ghetto serves as a critical study of urban Black poverty during the period in question but that text’s “ghettoization” thesis is much too pejorative and deterministic to remain viable in constructive debates on this topic today. A much more useful and insightful book that addresses both the causes and effects of economic privation on Harlem’s Black populace during this era is Cheryl Greenberg’s “Or Does It Explode?” 3. Wright, Twelve Million Voices, xx. 4. Ibid. 5. Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 183–184. 6. Wright, Twelve Million Black Voices, xx–xxi. 7. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 37. 8. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988), 250–251.

212

Notes

9. See William B. Banks, Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (New York: Norton, 1996); and Ross Posnock, Color & Culture: Black Writers and the Making of Modern Intellectuals (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998). 10. W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Random House, 1994), 12. 11. Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Early Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 3. 12. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 40. 13. Francis L. Broderick, “The Fight against Booker T. Washington,” in Hugh Hawkins, ed. Booker T. Washington and His Critics (Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1974), 77. 14. Adolph Reed, W.E.B. DuBois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 60. 15. Ibid. 16. Kelly Miller, “Washington’s Policy,” in Hawkins, ed. Booker T. Washington and His Critics, 94. 17. W.A. Domingo, “Socialism the Negroes’ Hope,” Messenger 1 (July 1919) as quoted in Sandra Kathryn Wilson, ed. The Messenger Reader (New York: Random House, 2000), 332. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 333. 20. Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, ed., Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 311. 21. Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1983); Mark I. Solomon, Red and Black: Communism and Afro-Americans, 1925–1935 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988); Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Earl O. Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict, 1919–1990 (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995); Kornweibel, Theodore Jr., “Seeing Red:” Federal Campaigns against Black Militancy, 1919–1925 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998); Winston A. James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America (New York and London: Verso, 1998). 22. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism. 2nd ed., 197. 23. Winston A. James, “Being Black and Red in Jim Crow America: Notes on the Ideology and Travails of Afro-America’s Socialist Pioneers, 1877–1930,” Souls 1:4 (Fall 1999), 47; Philip Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1977), 49; Herbert G. Gutman, “Peter H. Clark: Pioneer Negro Socialist, 1877,” Journal of Negro Education 34, no. 4 (Fall 1965), 414. 24. Winston A. James, “Being Black and Red in Jim Crow America,” 48.

Notes

213

25. Philip S. Foner, ed. Black Socialist Preacher: The Teachings of Reverend George Washington Woodbey and His Disciple, Reverend G.W. Slater, Jr. (San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1983), 201. 26. Foner, ed. Black Socialist Preacher, 260. 27. Ibid., 261. 28. Quoted in Philip S. Foner, “Reverend George Washington Woodbey: Early Twentieth Century California Black Socialist,” Journal of Negro History 61:2 (April 1976), 136. 29. Foner, ed. Black Socialist Preacher, 346. 30. Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, ed., Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 336. 31. Ibid., 338. 32. Philip S. Foner, “Reverend George Washington Woodbey: Early Twentieth Century California Black Socialist,” Journal of Negro History 61:2 (April 1976), 146. 33. See also Cynthia Taylor, A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 34. Cary D. Wintz, “Introduction,” in Cary D. Wintz, ed. African American Political Thought: Washington, DuBois, Garvey, and Randolph (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 14. 35. Benjamin Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph: Labor Leader at Large,” in John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 141. 36. A. Philip Randolph, “The Failure of the Negro Church,” Messenger 2 (October 1919), 5. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Jeffrey B. Perry, “Hubert Henry Harrison, ‘The Father of Harlem Radicalism’: The Early Years–1883 Through the Founding of the Liberty League and The Voice in 1917” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1986); Gaines, Uplifting the Race; and Winston A. James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia (New York: Verso, 1998), 122–184. 40. Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations, 92; Turner and Turner, Richard B. Moore: Caribbean Militant in Harlem, 217. 41. Earl O. Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 131. 42. Ibid., 139. 43. Richard B. Moore, “Afro-Americans and Radical Politics,” March 19, 1969, manuscript, Richard B. Moore Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 44. Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, 326, fn. 152. 45. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 100–127, 234–246; Martin A. Summers, “Nationalism, Race Consciousness and the Constructions of Back MiddleClass Masculinity during the New Negro Era, 1915–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, 1997); Deborah Grey White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves,

214

46. 47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

Notes 1894–1994 (New York: Norton, 1999), 110–141; Gerald Early, “Introduction,” in Gerald Early, ed., My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Anchor, 1991); and Hazel Carby, Race Men: The W.E.B. DuBois Lectures (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998). Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 200. Although Grace Campbell had West Indian roots—her father was a Jamaican immigrant and her mother was an African American from Washington, DC—she was born and raised in the United States. Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The F.B.I. Files, ed. David Gallen (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994); Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, eds., The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars against Domestic Dissent (Boston: South End Press, 1990); and Kornweibel Jr., “Seeing Red.” Frank R. Crosswaith, speech delivered before the Negro Labor Committee, March 6, 1952. Frank R. Crosswaith Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Ibid. “Selective Renting,” New York Age, March 19, 1921. Joel Schwartz, “Tenant Unions in New York City’s Low-Rent Housing, 1933–1949,” Journal of Urban History 12:4 (August 1986), 415–416. Peter Marcuse, “The Beginnings of Public Housing in New York,” Journal of Urban History 12:4 (August 1986), 369. John Hudson Jones, “The Floating Landlord—Now You See Him . . .,” Daily Worker, January 21, 1948. Ibid. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 107. “Harlem’s Neglected Opportunities,” Amsterdam News, November 30, 1927. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 236. Brown, “Brief History of the Harlem Unitarian Church” (n.p., n.d.), 5–6. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (1985; New York: Vintage, 1995), 215. Cedric J. Robinson’s Black, Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: Zed, 1983). Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression, 282. Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 215. Franklin, Black Self-Determination, 47. Karl Marx, “Toward the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, Lewis Feuer, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 263. Howard L. Parsons, “The Prophetic Mission of Karl Marx,” The Journal of Religion 44:1 (January 1964), 52–72. Brown, “Building the Church of Tomorrow.”

Notes

4

215

In the Shadow of Egypt

1. Hubert H. Harrison, When Africa Awakes (New York: Porro Press, 1920; Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1997), 41. 2. J.A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color 2 (New York: 1947), 611. 3. As John Henrik Clarke astutely noted, Harrison’s general knowledge was as expansive as his specific knowledge about his own people and the role they have played in the world and should play in the future as noted in John Henrike Clarke, introduction to When Africa Awakes by Harrison, vi (page citations are to the reprint edition). 4. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 8. 5. Locke, “The New Negro,” in Locke, ed., The New Negro, 12. 6. Ibid., 9–12; Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917–1929, 35; Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 30. 7. David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was In Vogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 211. 8. Mark Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 89. 9. Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995), 82. 10. Andrew Ross, No Respect Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 74; Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 81–82. 11. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 154–189; Douglas, Terrible Honesty, 83, 288. 12. Robert H. Weibe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), xiii. 13. Mattson, “The Struggle for an Urban Democratic Public: Harlem in the 1920s,” 310. 14. Ibid., 311. 15. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 91. 16. Chip Rhodes, “Writing Up the New Negro: The Construction of Consumer Desire in the Twenties,” Journal of American Studies 28:2 (August 1994), 199. 17. Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 8. 18. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; New York: Continuum, 1994); Deborah Cook, The Culture Industry Revisited: Theodor W. Adorno on Mass Culture (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 27–50; Tommy L. Lott, The Invention of Race: Black Culture and the Politics of Representation (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 67–83; Ellis Cashmore, The Black Culture Industry (New York and London: Routledge, 1997). 19. Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1976), 22–40; Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism,

216

20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

Notes 296–297; Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 45; Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 38. “Along the Color Line,” Crisis, May 12, 1916. Locke, “The New Negro,” 14–15. E. Ethelred Brown, address to the UNIA, 9 February 1915, as quoted in Robert A. Hill, ed. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 111. Marcus Garvey to T.A. McCormack, May 12, 1916, in Hill, ed. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 529. Hill, ed. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 194, n. 3. W.A. Domingo to the Editor, “Mr. W.A. Domingo’s Connection with the UNIA,” Daily Gleaner, June 15, 1925. E. Ethelred Brown, “Garveyism, A Dispassionate, Unprejudiced Appraisement,” Jamaica Times, May 20, 1922 as quoted in Robert A. Hill, ed. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vol. 4 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 635. Ibid. Ibid., 636. Ibid. Ibid., 637. E. Ethelred Brown, “Garveyistic Devotion” (sermon on August 12, 1923, n.p. New York), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Ibid. “Harlem Preacher Hit on Head at Sunday Service,” Amsterdam News, January 11, 1928. “Sabers Used in Fight of Negro Factions,” New York Times, June 24, 1929; Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982), 125. Ibid. Eric Williams, The Negro in the Caribbean (New York: Haskell House, 1942), 92–93. Elia Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson, 1960). W.E.B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America (1896; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 70–74, 80–85, 92–94; Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the New World (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1979); David Patrick Geggus, “The Haitian Revolution,” in Franklin W. Knight and Colin A. Palmer, eds. The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 21–50; James, The Black Jacobins; David Patrick Geggus, “Slavery, War, and Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, 1789–1815,” in David Barry

Notes

39.

40.

41. 42.

217

Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 1–50; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) 31–107; Carolyn E. Fick, “The French Revolution in Saint Domingue: A Triumph or a Failure?” in Gaspar and Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time, 51–77. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. (New York and London: Verso, 1991); John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1788 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed, 1986); Robin D.G. Kelley, “ ‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950,” Journal of American History 86:4 (December 1999), 1045–77; Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Press, 1993); John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (New York and London: Verso, 1991); Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States and Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); David Thelen, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History,” Journal of American History 86:4 (December 1999), 965–75; and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Rodney Carlisle, The Roots of Black Nationalism (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975); John H. Bracey Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970); Wilson J. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (Hamden, CT: Anchor Books, 1978); Theodore Draper, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (New York: Viking, 1969); Leon Trotsky, On Black Nationalism and Self-Determination (New York: Pathfinder Books, 1978); E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Frances Berry and Blassingame, Long Memory, 388–423; Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 11–63, 420–497, 544–566; William L. Van Deburg, ed., Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997). Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 31. E. Ethelred Brown, “Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917,” Journal of Negro History 4:4 (October 1919), 349–360.

218

Notes

43. Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 290–292; Eric Williams, The Negro in the Caribbean (1942; New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1971), 93–98. 44. Vivienne France, Minutes of the American-West Indian Defence Committee, July 5, 1938, 1, Richard B. Moore Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 45. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 283. 46. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974); Woodruff D. Smith, European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982), 4–5; Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism 2nd ed. (New York: Hollmes and Meier, 1983), xv. 47. Wilson J. Moses, “Introduction,” in Wilson J. Moses, ed., Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996), 2. 48. Rodney Carlisle, The Roots of Black Nationalism (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975), 5. 49. Richard B. Moore, Statement of the West Indies National Emergency Committee on the Address delivered by Cordell Hull, Secretary of State of the USA, to the Pan-American Foreign Ministers’ Conference at Havana, Cuba, July 22, 1940 in Respect to the Status of European Possessions in the Western Hemisphere, Richard B. Moore Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 50. Ibid. 51. Richard B. Moore, Speech on Caribbean Federation at the Luncheon Meeting for Lord Listowel, February 3, 1953, Hotel Theresa, New York.

5

The Price We Pay

1. Ethelred Brown, “The Price We Pray” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, 1947, 26–29), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 2. “Asks Unitarians to Grow Strong,” Amsterdam News, September 27, 1947. 3. Harlem Unitarian Church, “By-laws of the Harlem Unitarian Church” (n.p., n.d.). Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Section I, Article 2. 4. Harlem Unitarian Church, “The Statement of Purpose of the Harlem Unitarian Church,” as quoted in Mark D. Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination (1980; Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994), 95. 5. Barbara D. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Ben Keppel, The Work of Democracy: Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, Lorraine Hansberry and the Cultural Politics of Race (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1995), 52–60; William M.

Notes

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

219

Banks, Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (New York and London: Norton, 1996), 110–117. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 2 (New York: Harper, 1944), 1015. Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations: The Use and Abuse of “An American Dilemma,” 1944–1969 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 21–49; and Peter J. Kellogg, “Northern Liberals and Black America: A History of White Attitudes, 1936–1952” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University; 1971). Arthur C. McGiffert, Pilot of a Liberal Faith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), 293. The papers of AUA president Louis Cornish, Samuel Eliot’s successor during the late 1920s and early 1930 were lost due to fire. American Unitarian Association, 113th Annual Meeting of AIA. May 26, 1938, 45. American Unitarian Association, Agenda of Resolutions for Discussion, 117th Annual Meeting of AUA, May 21, 1942, 8. America Unitarian Association Papers, Harvard-Andover Theological Seminary, Cambridge, MA. Ibid. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 2 (New York: Harper, 1944), 1021. American Unitarian Association, Minutes of 122nd Annual meeting May 22, 1947, 122–129. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 127–128. Ibid., 128. American Unitarian Association, Minutes of 123rd Annual Meeting, May 25, 1948, 296–303. Ibid., 102. “An Open Letter to Harlem’s Liberals,” Amsterdam News, August 14, 1945. Jan Rozendaal to Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown, February 26, 1943, transcript in the hand of Jan Rozendaal. Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Frederick May Eliot, Cambridge, MA, to Ethelred Brown, New York, May 31, 1948, transcript in the hand of Frederick May Eliot, Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Ibid. Ibid. Whitney M. Young Jr., Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society (New York: McGraw, 1969); Dennis C. Dickerson, Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young, Jr. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998).

220

Notes

26. Howard Thurman, Footprints of a Dream: The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959). 27. Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1979); Alton B. Pollard III, Mysticism and Social Change: The Social Witness of Howard Thurman (New York: Peter Lang., 1992). 28. American Unitarian Association, Minutes of the 129th Annual Meeting of the AUA, May 25, 1954, 103–128. 29. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952; New York: Vintage Press, 1990), 3. 30. Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990. Rev. 2nd ed. (Jackson, MS and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 18. 31. Jack Bloom, Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 94. 32. Gerald Horne, Communist Front?: The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988); Manning Marable, W.E.B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne, 1987). 33. American Unitarian Association, Minutes of the 128th Annual Meeting of the AUA, May 26, 1953, 98. 34. Ibid., 100.

6 A Unique and Significant Religious Experiment 1. Ethelred Brown, “I Have Two Dreams,” The Christian Register (n.d.), 471. 2. Ethelred Brown, “Who Are These Unitarians?” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, n.d.), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ethelred Brown, “Whither Religion?” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, n.d.), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 7. Dwight N. Hopkins, Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 213. 8. Ethelred Brown, “Unitarianism Aroused” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, n.d.), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 9. Ibid. 10. David Chidester, Christianity: A Global History (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2000), 68. 11. Brown, “Unitarianism Aroused.”

Notes

221

12. Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Gibson Winter, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Gibson Winter, Religious Identity (New York: Macmillan, 1968); Andrew M. Greeley, Religious Change in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 13. Ethelred Brown, “The Religion of the Negro,” Amsterdam News, January 2, 1926. 14. Brown, “Who Are These Unitarians?” 15. Brown, “Unitarianism Aroused.” 16. Ethelred Brown, “Predestination and Determinism” (sermon preached at the Harlem Unitarian Church, n.d.), Egbert Ethelred Brown Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Brown, “Who Are These Unitarians?” 20. William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (1973; Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), vii. 21. Jones, Is God a White Racist?, ix. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., xi. 25. Ibid., 10–15. 26. James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (1969; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 124–125. 27. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 27. 28. Pinn, Why, Lord?, 158. 29. See Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Dwight Callahan eds., African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 30. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles, xiii–xvi. 31. See Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, eds. Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939. 1st ed. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000); Anne H. Pinn and Anthony B. Pinn, Fortress Introduction to Black Church History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001); and Anthony B. Pinn, The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002). 32. Graham Greene, The Comedians (New York: Penguin, 1966), 286. 33. Allen Jr., ed. The Black Humanist Experience, 10. 34. Ibid., 11. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 153. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 153–154. 39. Walker, “The Only Reason,” 295. 40. Ibid., 297.

222

Notes

41. Ibid. 42. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1983), xi–xii. 43. Emilie M. Townes, “Voices of the Spirit: Womanist Methodologies in the Theological Disciplines,” The Womanist 1:1 (Summer 1994), 1. 44. Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 19. 45. Ibid., 7. 46. Townes, “Voices of the Spirit,” 1. 47. See Melanie L. Harris, “Womanist Humanism,” in Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, ed. Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 211–225. 48. C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 164–195. 49. “Many Paths, One Journey,” Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, Multicultural (ARAOMC) Resources, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations website . 50. Richard Higgins, “Religion Journal; A Heated Debate Flares in Unitarian Universalism,” New York Times, May 17, 2003.

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Index

abolitionism, 64–68 Abraham Lincoln Centre, 73 Abyssinian Baptist Church (Harlem), 83, 84 Adams, John, 58 Adams, John Quincy, 58 Adorno, Theodor, 136 Africa, 187–188, 189 African American Humanism (Allen), 187 African American Humanist Principles (Pinn), 19 African American Religious Experience in America (Pinn), 185 African American Unitarian Universalist Ministries, 199 African Americans for Humanism (AAH), 17, 187–188, 189 African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 112–113, 114, 115, 117, 129 African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church Brown and, E. Ethelred, 34, 35 in Jamaica, 34 McGee and, Lewis A., 74 Pinn and, Anthony B., 186 Randolph and, A. Philip, 108 Ransom and, Reverdy, 107 Turner and, Henry McNeal, 100 African Methodist Episcopal Zion (Mother Zion) Church (Harlem), 83

Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Harlem, 42, 44, 77 agnosticism, 2 Alcott, Louisa May, 57 All Souls Unitarian Church (New York City), 65 All Souls Unitarian Church (Washington DC), 164 Allen, Norm R., Jr., 17, 28, 187–189 American Anti-Slavery Society, 67 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 147 American Dilemma (Myrdal), 159 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 148 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 119 American Humanist Association, 73, 190 American Labor Party, 119 American Left, 122, 123–124 American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC), 113 American Red Cross, 160 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 157–167 Autumnal Convention (1860), 69 Badger and, George, 34 Black ministers, 70, 158 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 35, 36, 37–38, 39–40, 88, 91, 174 Bygrave and, Hilary, 37

242

Index

American Unitarian Association— continued Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood, 74–75 churches having black members, number of, 165 Department of Extension and Church Maintenance, 90–91, 160 Fair Employment Practices legislation (1944), 160–161 finances, 62 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 26–27, 63, 87–91, 90–91, 158, 159–160, 166–167, 203n3 Holmes and, John Haynes, 72 immigration quotas, 169–170 liberal Christianity, 26 McGee and, Lewis A., 158 Meadville branch, 71 Meadville Theological School, 62 Minister’s Association, 162 NAACP, 162 organizational structure, 61–62, 165 race relations, 63, 157–167 Southern expansion, 160, 161–162, 166 subsidies to local churches, 40 theological disputes within, 62 Unitarianism, 60 American-West Indian Defense Committee, 149 Amsterdam News (newspaper), 1, 142, 162 Angell, Stephen W., 103 anger, 204n33 anti-Communism, 167–168 antiauthoritarianism, 15 Appeal in Favor of That Class of American called African (Child), 65–66 Associated Colored Employees of America, 112

Association for the Protection of Colored Women, 115 atheism, 2, 184 Atlanta, Georgia, 47 “Atlanta Compromise,” 100 Atlanta Unitarian Church, 164–165 Atlantic slave trade, 6–9 Augustine, 177 “Back-to-Africa” movement, 101 Badger, George, 34–35 Baptists, 9 Beauvoir, Simone de, 180 Been in the Storm so Long (Morrison-Reed and James), 199 Bell, Alexander Graham, 70 Bellamy, Edward, 50 Berger, Peter, 180 Berry, Mary Frances, 46, 80 Berry Street Conference (1820), 59–60 Bethel African Church (Clinton, Iowa), 106–107 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Harlem), 83 Bethune, Mary MacLeod, 169 Betrayal of the Negro (Logan), 47 Bible Ephesians 6:11–12, 93 Genesis 3:16, 190 Isaiah 30:1–3, 127 Unitarianism, 58–59 womanist movement, 194 Bible and Socialism (Woodbey), 106 Biddle, John, 58 Birney, James G., 65 Black Affairs Council (BAC), 196, 197–198 Black and White Action (BAWA), 197–198 Black Baptists, 9 Black Boy (Wright), 14 Black Christ (Douglas), 193

Index Black Christian nationalism, 197 Black Christian Nationalism (Cleage), 197 Black Christianity, 102–110 activist vision, 177 Black Communists, 121–122 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 56 choice among faith traditions, 9 Communist Party, 124 early twentieth century, 56 inadequacies of, 16 socialism, 102–110 syncretism, 77–78 as system of survival, 9, 86, 181 white Christians, 9–11, 56 white supremacy, 16 Black Church tradition, 76–86 1920s and 1930s, 124 alternative religions in, 76–77 as an amalgamation of groups, 85 American Left, 122 antagonism toward new Black religious movements, 77 apathy and inertia, 11 Black liberation theology, 181 Black working class radicalism, 103–104 Briggs and, Cyril, 124 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 56 Christian socialism, 103–104 church as discursive space, forum, 1–2, 81, 109 common core culture, 85 communism, 122 deradicalization of, 11 destabilization of, 78 differences among arms of, 84 dignity, personal and communal, 69 DuBois on, W. E. B., 79 early twentieth century, 77–78 economic activities, 109 emancipation, 69 the Frenzy (“Shouting”), 79 God in, 80–81

243

“great cloud of witnesses” making up, 28 in Harlem, 81–82 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 57, 77–78, 124–125 Haynes on, George E., 56 as a hybrid form, 9 lambasting of, 124 mainstay of urban Black communities, 78 membership of mainline denominations, 156 music, 79 orthodoxy, 78 political activism, 81, 83–84 preachers, 79, 109 racial pride, 80 racial socialization, 81–82 racial uplift, 80, 82 Randolph and, A. Philip, 108–110, 124 self-determination through self-definition, 86 self-preservation, 78 social justice, 125 social role, 78, 80 socialism, 122 syncretism, 77–78 theodicy, 81 theology of Black churches, 80–81, 84–85 Trinitarian doctrine, 175 twentieth century, 11–14 Unitarianism, 26, 85–86, 87 in Walker’s Color Purple, 191 white ecclesiastical oligarchy, 109 white Protestantism, 79–80, 99 womanist movement, 194 Black Communists, 121–122 Black Concerns Working Group (BCWG), 199 Black Consciousness Movement, 197–198 Black humanism, 2–21, 179–195 in Africa, 187–188

244

Index

Black humanism—continued Afro-Caribbean intellectuals, 188 agnosticism, 2 Allen and, Norm R., Jr., 28, 187, 189 apostle of, 21 atheism, 2 Atlantic slave trade, 6–9 Black liberation theology, 182, 187 Black religion, 16, 17, 20–21 since Brown, E. Ethelred, 179–195 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 21, 179 in Caribbean region, 188 Christian underpinnings, 3 constitutive humanism, 16–19 contextual humanism, 6–11 contractual humanism, 11–15, 20 definitions, 3–4 emphasis on supersensible rather than supernatural, 21 faith, 4 forms, 2 free thought movement, 2 goal, 173 Harlem Renaissance, 12 historicity of, 17 Jones and, William R., 16, 19, 20–21, 28, 180, 181, 184 Mays and, Benjamin, 12–13 misinterpretations, misunderstandings of, 20 Morrison-Reed and, Mark, 28 origins, 4–5 phases, 6, 19–20 Pinn and, Anthony B., 19, 28, 185–186 pioneer of, 19 roots of, 9 secularism, 2 Sinkford and, William G., 28 skepticism, 2 social justice, 172–173 strong vs. weak, 5–6 theism, 6, 11

theodicy, 6 transnational network supporting, 187 Walker and, Alice, 19, 28, 190–191 white humanism compared to, 4–5 womanist movement, 191–195 Black Humanist Experience (Allen), 187, 188 Black humanity, 5 Black intellectuals Black working class radicalism, 95 cultural nationalism, 101–102 Harlem Renaissance, 113 ideological diversity, 99 Leftism, lack of interest in, 113 race relations, 97 racial essentialism, 101–102 racial integrationism, 98 Black liberation theology Black Church tradition, 181 Black humanism, 182, 187 Civil Rights and Black Power movements, 177 Cone and, James H., 180, 183, 197 forerunners of, 197 God-talk in, 174 hard question of, 184 Hopkins on, Dwight, 174 Jones and, William R., 180–182, 183–184 Black Manhattan (Johnson), 49 Black Messiah (Cleage), 197 Black Methodists, 9 Black nationalism African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 113 Black Christian nationalism, 197 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 25 Communist Party, 114 eclectic nature, 152 goal, 151 group solidarity, 144

Index Harrison and, Hubert, 111, 128 literature on, 144 misconceptions about, 144 proto-Black nationalism, 101, 137 racial essentialism, 145 racial harmony, appeal for, 114 racial pride, 144 self-segregation, 144 transformations of, 143–144 Turner and, Henry McNeal, 101 Black Pioneers in a White Denomination (MorrisonReed), 3, 17, 75–76, 198 Black pride. See racial pride Black religion Baptists, 9 Black humanism, 16, 17, 20–21 Black theology of liberation, 174 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 77 “dirty little secret” of, 16 faith traditions within, 16 hunger for liberation, 8 importance to worshippers, 79 Methodists, 9 Middle Passage, influence of, 8–9 nontheism in, 6, 187 theism, 12, 16 Unitarians. See Black Unitarians Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Wilmore), 11, 103–104 Black socialism, 103–109, 111, 139 Black Star Line, 137, 139–140 Black Theology and Black Power (Cone), 177, 183, 197 Black Theology of Liberation (Cone), 197 Black Unitarians, 69–77, 85–91 churches in United States, 35 demographic characteristics, 89 in Harlem, 86–91 late nineteenth century, 69–70 ministers, 35, 70–72, 73–74

245

in Morrison-Reed’s Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 75–76 as percent of Black religious participants in United States (1920), 77 in Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 17 Unitarianism’s appeal to Blacks, 85–86, 156 Black Womanist Ethics (Cannon), 193 Black women Brown and, E. Ethelred, 90 as engines of wealth generation, 10 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 2 religious leadership, 90 “triple oppression” of, 90 womanist movement, 191–195 women’s club movement, 99–100, 116–117 Black working class dependency on government, 189 Garveyism, 141–142 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 2 Black working class radicalism, 111–119 Black Church tradition, 103–104 Black intellectuals, activists in, 95 Campbell and, Grace P., 114–117 Crosswaith and, Frank R., 118–119 dechristianization of, 11 DuBois-Washington feud, 98–99 liberal Christianity, 105 masculinist rhetoric, 116 Moore and, Richard B., 112–114 reluctance of white radicals to promote, 123 soapbox brigade (street corner orators), 111–112, 115–116 surveillance of, 117

246

Index

Black working class radicalism— continued Twelve Million Black Voices (Wright), 95 “Blackness,” 23 Blacks early twentieth century, 31–32 free thought movement, 68–69 late 19th century, 45–46 liberal Christianity, 75, 156 Blassingame, John, 80 Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 138 Bookerite ideology, 96–97, 98, 100–101 Boston Guardian (newspaper), 96–97 bourgeois humanism, 135–136 Boys’ Club (Washington DC), 164 Braithwaite, William Stanley, 133 Brawley, Benjamin, 133 Briggs, Cyril African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 112–113 Black Church tradition, 124 Communist Party, 112 Harrison and, Hubert, 111, 128–129 Moore and, Richard B., 112–113 British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA), 36–41 Broderick, Frederick L., 98 Brookes (slave ship), 6–7 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 50, 119 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 169 Brown, E. Ethelred, 21–41, 83–90, 173–179 Brown, E. Ethelred—complexion, 37 Brown, E. Ethelred—cultural life, views Black humanism, place in, 179 cultural nationalism, support for, 133

Harlem Renaissance, avoidance of, 133, 136, 177 “Negro curriculum” in New York City public schools, promotion of, 133 racial essentialism, absence of, 176–177 racial pride, 176 Brown, E. Ethelred—death, 28, 156, 172 Brown, E. Ethelred—family children, 41 father (James Alexander), 35 uncle, 33 wife. See Brown, Ella Brown, E. Ethelred—finances, 38 Brown, E. Ethelred—in Jamaica, 32–34, 35, 36–41, 145, 146, 147 Brown, E. Ethelred—in New York City, 29–30, 133 See also Harlem Unitarian Church Brown, E. Ethelred—in Pennsylvania, 35–36 Brown, E. Ethelred—influences on him Black nationalism, 25 Black protest tradition, 28, 172 Channing, William Ellery, 33 Fellowship Church’s successes, 166 Harrison, Hubert, 128–129 liberal Christianity, 25, 39 Marxism, 25, 27, 118 pan-Africanism, 25 progressivism, 25 prophetic witness tradition, 28, 172 racial integrationism, 25 uncle, 33 Brown, E. Ethelred—jobs, occupations Anglican Church organist, 33

Index assistant treasurer for Black Star Line, 139–140 civil servant, 33–34 elevator operator, 87 Harlem YWCA chaplain, 89–90 Marriage Officer for Jamaica, 40 office manager of World Tomorrow magazine, 89 ordained Unitarian minister, 36 unemployment, periods of, 89 Brown, E. Ethelred—opinions, his of American Unitarian Association (AUA), 36 Biblical criticism, 174 Black Christianity, 56 Black masses, 140–141 Black ministers and their churches, 178 Black Star Line, 140 Blacks’ religious needs, 1 church of yesterday and today, 55 divine involvement in human affairs, 186 freedom of will, 179 Garvey, Marcus, 138, 140–141, 142 Garveyism, 140, 141 God, 174, 175, 176, 177 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 1, 123, 155, 162, 175–176 Harlem’s youth, 156 Hunt, Walter Reed, 88 Jesus, 176, 177 miracles, 174 Negroes, 171 pan-Africanism, 140 science and religion, 173–174 theology and political ideology as one and the same, 125 Trinitarian doctrine, 32–33, 175 Unitarianism, 40, 87, 156, 171, 173, 176, 178, 179

247

Brown, E. Ethelred—opinions of him British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA)’s, 37 Domingo’s, W. A., 86 Morrison-Reed’s, Mark, 133 Brown, E. Ethelred—personal relationships Badger, George, 34–35 Bygrave, Hilary, 37 Eliot, Frederick May, 163 Eliot, Samuel A., 39–40, 88, 159 Garvey, Marcus, 138, 141–142 Harrington, Donald S., 163 Harrison, Hubert, 122 Hunt, Walter Reed, 88 Nuttall, E., 38 Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 84 Powell, Adam Clayton, Sr., 84 Southworth, Franklin, 35, 38 Brown, E. Ethelred—personality apostate, 21 blasphemous, 21 challenger of the status quo, 4, 172 comfortable in his own skin, 23 commitment to social justice, 28, 123, 172 common sense, 37 cosmopolitan, 22 determination, 155 dignified, 22 double consciousness, 23 eloquent, 37 enthusiasm, 93, 155 faith, 23–24 giving, 28 heretical, 21 honesty, 28 irascibility, 176 long-suffering, 28 outrage at injustice, 22 passionate about empowering oppressed, marginalized people, 24

248

Index

Brown, E. Ethelred—personality— continued perfectionism, 178–179 pride, 166 racial pride, 176 reformer, 21 religious pariah, 41 sacrilegious, 21 secular, 21 self-sacrificing, 28 sense of respectability, 133 spiritual anger, 22–23 tactfulness, 37 uncompromising stance on religious questions, 24–25 well-educated, 22, 37 Brown, E. Ethelred—political life, views Black struggle for freedom, 11–12 challenger of the status quo, 4, 172 Colored Socialists of America, 123 cooperative enterprises, promotion of, 123 Federation of Jamaican Organizations, 146 Harlem Job Committee, 123 Harlem Tenants League, 123 immigration quotas, opposition to, 170 Jamaica Benevolent Association, 146 Jamaica League, 138 Jamaica Progressive League (JPL), 146–147 Jamaican independence and self-government, 147 Jamaican workers, spokesperson for, 146 Liberal Association, 145–146 Negro Progressive Association, 145–146 People’s National Party (PNP), 146–147

racial uplift, 145 soapbox brigade member, 111–112 social activism, 145, 177, 178 social justice, commitment to, 28, 123, 172 socialism, 106 West Indian Commission Royal (Moyne Commission), 147 Brown, E. Ethelred—religious life, views, 173–179 AME Church in the United States, 34, 35 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 35, 36, 37–38, 39–40, 88, 91, 174 apostle of Black humanism, 21 on Biblical Criticism, 174 Black Church tradition, 56 on Black ministers and their churches, 178 Black Protestantism, strained relationship with, 2 British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA), 36–37, 38–39, 41 “called by God,” 34 Central Portal Mission (England), 41 chaplain for Harlem YWCA, 89–90 Christian heterodoxy, his place in, 85, 175–176 Christology of, 174, 175–176 church as “a temple and a forum,” 129, 172, 177 contractual humanism, 20 contributions to American religion, 171–172 creation of new Black theological standard, 86 cultivation of religious leadership among Black women, 90 divine involvement in human affairs, 186 ecclesiology of, 174, 177–178

Index end to religious orthodoxy, 156 eschatology, 186 establishing relationships between liberal Black churches, 83–84 faith, 23–24 on God, 174, 175, 176, 177 on Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 1, 123, 155, 162, 175–176 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC) and, 32, 83, 117–118, 122–123, 178 interracial congregation, desire for, 165–166 on Jesus, 176, 177 Meadville Theological School, 35–36 Meadville Unitarian Church, 36 merger of “high church” rationalism and “low church” theology, 178 merger of Unitarianism and Black Church tradition, 85–86 ministry in Jamaica, 30, 36–41, 88 on miracles, 32–33 Montego Bay Episcopal Church (Jamaica), 32 Montego Bay Wesleyan Methodist Church, 33 ordination as Unitarian minister, 36 on science and religion, 173–174 social relevancy of Black religiosity, 77 Spanish Town Wesleyan Methodist Church, 33, 34 themes, 174 theological anthropology of, 174, 178–179 theology of, 174–175 on Trinitarian doctrine, 32–33, 175 uncompromising stance on religious questions, 24–25

249

Unitarian Lay Centre (Montego Bay), 35 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 2 on Unitarianism, 40, 87, 156, 171, 173, 174–175, 176, 178, 179 Unitarianism and, 34, 41, 86 Brown, E. Ethelred—sermons, writings in Amsterdam News, 1 “Building the Church of Tomorrow,” 55 “Garveyism, A Dispassionate, Unprejudiced Appraisement,” 140 “Garveyistic Devotion,” 141 “I Have Two Dreams,” 171 in Journal of Negro History, 146 “Predestination and Determinism,” 178–179 racial essentialism lacking, 176–177 “The Price We Pay,” 155 “Unitarian Aroused,” 174–176 in World Tomorrow, 1 Brown, E. Ethelred—works about him Morrison-Reed’s Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 17 Brown, Ella (nee Ella Matilda Wallace), 29–30, 34, 37, 155–156 Brown, James Alexander, 35 Brown, John, 68 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 163–164, 166 Brownsville, Texas, 47 “Building the Church of Tomorrow” (Brown), 55 Bureau of Investigation, 117 Bygrave, Hilary, 37–38 Calhoun, John C., 66–67 Calhoun College, 67, 208n14

250

Index

Call, Lon Ray, 74–75 Calvin, John, 177 Calvinism, 58, 59, 61 Campbell, Grace P., 114–117 African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 112–113, 114, 115 Association for the Protection of Colored Women, 115 birth, 214n47 Black working class radicalism, 114–117 Communist Party, 111, 112–113, 115 death, 157 Empire Friendly Shelter (Harlem), 115 Garveyism, 137 in Harlem, 30 Harlem Tenants League, 115, 121 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 110, 115 Harrison and, Hubert, 111 McKay and, Claude, 114 Moore and, Richard B., 113 Moore on, Richard B., 115 political activism, 123 soapbox brigade member, 111 upbringing, 214n47 West Indian roots, 214n47 Campbell, Mary, 115 Camus, Albert, 180 Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC), 199 Cannon, Alvin Neeley, 158 Cannon, Katie G., 193 Caribbean region, 188, 189 See also pan-Caribbean nationalism Carnegie Foundation, 159 Carter, William H. G., 74–75 “center-periphery” paradigm, 150 Central Portal Mission (England), 41 Channing, William Ellery, 33, 59–60, 64–65, 66

Chicago, Illinois, 47 Child, Lydia Maria, 65–66 Childs, John Brown, 81 Christian Century (magazine), 89 Christian socialism, 103–104, 108 Christianity Black Consciousness Movement, 197–198 Douglass on, Frederick, 9–10 heterodoxy, 175–176 Jesus, 176 of slaveholders, 9–11 Trinitarian doctrine, 175 “Whiteanity,” 181 See also Black Christianity; Liberal Christianity Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (Blyden), 138 Chudacoff, Howard, 49 “Church and the Negro Spirit” (Haynes), 55, 56 Church for the Fellowship of All People (Fellowship Church, San Francisco), 166 Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood (Cincinnati), 74–75 Chworowsky, Karl, 160 “City Called Heaven” (traditional gospel song), 29, 31 civil rights 1940s agitation for, 158–159 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 163–164 Cold War anti-Communism, 168, 169 Democratic Party, 168–169 “Double-V” campaign, 159 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 132 Houston and, Charles Hamilton, 159 late nineteenth century, 45–46 March on Washington (1963), 195

Index Marshall and, Thurgood, 159 Myrdal’s American Dilemma, 159 Randolph and, A. Philip, 158–159 Selma to Montgomery march (1965), 196 Civil Rights Amendments, 45 Clark, Peter Humphries, 104–105 Clarke, John Henrik, 49, 215n3 Cleage, Albert (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman), 177, 180, 197 Cold War, 167–170 Collymore, Errold D., 73, 165 Colonial and Foreign Work Committee, 39 Color Purple (Walker), 190, 191 Colored Race for the Christian Socialist Fellowship, 107 Colored Socialists of America, 123 Commission on Appraisal, 199 Committee of Six (“Secret Six”), 67–68 Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 113 American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC), 113 Black Christianity, 124 Black Communists, 121–122 Black nationalism, 114 Briggs, Cyril, 112 Campbell and, Grace P., 111, 112–113, 115 cultural insensitivity to Black Church, 123 Harlemites, 123–124 Moore and, Richard B., 111, 113–114, 148, 149 Popular Front, 114, 124 racism, 112 Community Church (New York), 72, 73, 162–163 Cone, James H.

251

Black liberation theology, 180, 183, 197 Black Theology and Black Power, 177, 183, 197 Black Theology of Liberation, 197 Blackness of God, 177 on God, 183, 184 God of the Oppressed, 197 on heaven to Blacks, 31 Jones and, William R., 182–184 religion and Blacks’ racial identity, 80 The Spirituals and the Blues, 197 Congregationalism, 59, 60, 61, 63 constitutive humanism, 16–19 Constructive Immigration Policy, A (Davie), 43 contextual humanism, 6–11 contractual humanism, 11–15, 20 conversion experience, 62 Coolidge, Calvin, 128 Cooper, Anna Julia, 99–100, 101–102 Cooper, Thomas, 205n6 Council for Secular Humanism, 17, 187 Croly, Herbert, 44–45 Crosswaith, Frank R., 118–120 American Labor Party, 119 Black working class radicalism, 118–119 candidacy for political office, 119 citizenship status, 119, 147 education, 118 Garveyism, 137 in Harlem, 30 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 110, 156 Harrison and, Hubert, 128–129 as labor organizer, 118 Marxism, training in, 118 National Labor Committee, 119–120 nationalist movements, avoidance of, 148

252

Index

Crosswaith, Frank R.—continued nickname, 118 occupations, 118 People’s Educational Forum, 118–119 political activism, 123 Rand School of Social Science (New York City), 118 soapbox brigade member, 111–112 Socialist Party, 119 Socialist Party of America (SPA), 110 Thomas and, Norman, 119 Cruse, Harold, 50, 88–89 Cuffee, Paul, 101 cultural nationalism, 101–102, 133 culture industry, 136 David, Francis, 58 Davie, Maurice R., 43 Davies, A. Powell, 164 Davis, Angela, 90 Dawkins, Maurice, 163 Debs, Eugene V., 118 “Declaration of Rights of the Caribbean People to Self-Determination and Self-Government” (Moore), 151 decolonization movement, 149 Deeper Shades of Purple (Floyd-Thomas), 193 Delany, Martin, 101 Democratic Party, 168–169 DeWitt, Dale, 90 Domingo, W. A. arrest, 147 on Brown on, E. Ethelred, 86 Garvey and, Marcus, 138–139 Garveyism, 137 in Harlem, 30 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 42, 86, 110 in Jamaica, 146, 147 Jamaica Progressive League (JPL), 146

Jamaican independence and self-government, 147 Moore and, Richard B., 153 Negro World (newspaper), 139 People’s National Party (PNP), 153 refused reentry to United States, 147 soapbox brigade member, 111 “Socialism and Negroes’ Hope,” 102–103 Socialism Imperilled, 139 Socialist Party of America (SPA), 110 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 139 on West Indian contribution to American Negro Life, 42 West Indian Federation, 153 double consciousness, 23, 130 “Double-V” campaign, 159 Douglas, Kelly Brown, 193 Douglas, Paul H., 211n65 Douglass, Frederick, 9–10, 73, 104, 180 DuBois, W. E. B. on Black Church tradition, 79 cultural nationalism, 101–102 double consciousness, 130 dynamic within Black communities, 50 Franklin on, V. P., 84 Harlem as racial utopia, 135 Harlem Renaissance, 133 Harrison and, Hubert, 111, 128–129 investigations of, Cold War, 169 Jones and, William R., 180 The Negro Church, 79 Niagara Movement, 96 The Philadelphia Negro, 79 problem of the color-line, 97–98 racial essentialism, 101–102 racial integrationism, 98, 100 racial uplift, 97–98

Index racial utopianism, 50–51 racism, 97 social injustice, 97 The Souls of Black Folk, 79, 98 Talented Tenth, 98 Trotter and, William Monroe, 96 Turner and, Henry McNeal, 100–101 Washington, Booker T., feud with, 45, 98–99 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 48 Eastman, Max, 135 Ebony (magazine), 166 Edison, Thomas, 70 Eisenhower administration, 168 Eliot, Frederick May, 90, 163 Eliot, Samuel A., 39–40, 88, 159 Ellison, Ralph, 167 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 57, 60, 62, 133 Empire Friendly Shelter (Harlem), 115 Engels, Frederick, 50 Enlightenment, 8 Equiano, Olaudah, 7 eschatology, 186 essentialism. See racial essentialism Euell, Richard, 106 Eugene, Toinette, 193 evangelical religion, conversion experience in, 62 “Failure of the Negro Church” (Randolph), 108–109 Fair Deal, 168 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 119 Fair Employment Practices legislation (1944), 160–161 faith Black humanism, 4 Brown’s, E. Ethelred, 23–24 choice among faith traditions, 9

253

faith traditions within Black religion, 16 Family Service Association, 199 Fanon, Frantz, 180 “Fear of Mass Appeal” (Morrison-Reed), 199 Federal Street Church (Boston), 59 Federation of Jamaican Organizations, 146 Fellowship Church (Church for the Fellowship of All People, San Francisco), 166 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 172 Fifteenth Amendment, 45 Fillmore, Millard, 66, 67 Finney, Charles G., 62 First Unitarian Church (Philadelphia), 69 First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, New York, 160 First Unitarian Congregation (Toronto), 198 First Unitarian Society (Chicago), 158, 198 First Universalist Church (Rochester, New York), 198 Fisk, Alfred G., 166 Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M., 193 Flushing Unitarian Church (Flushing, New York), 69–70 Follen, Charles, 65 Foner, Philip, 108 Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 172 Foster, Mr., 161 Fourier, Charles, 50 Fourteenth Amendment, 45–46, 164 Franklin, John Hope, 96 Franklin, Robert, 78, 85 Franklin, V. P., 84, 124 Frazier, E. Franklin, 82, 83 Frederick Douglass’ Paper (periodical), 104 Free Religious Fellowship (Chicago), 74, 158

254

Index

free thought movement, 2, 68–69, 76, 187–188 Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 66 Gaines, Kevin, 98, 116, 122 Garrison, William Lloyd, 64–65, 67 Garvey, Marcus Black liberation theology, 197 Blackness of God, 177 Blyden’s Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, 138 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 138, 141–142 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 138, 140–141, 142 deportation (1925), 117, 142, 143 Domingo and, W. A., 138–139 Harlem as racial utopia, 135 Harlem Renaissance, 133 Harrison and, Hubert, 129, 139 Moore and, Richard B., 139 Owen and, Chandler, 139 pan-Africanism, 111 racial uplift, 138 Randolph and, A. Philip, 139 soapbox brigade member, 111 Washington and, Booker T., 137, 138–139 Garveyism, 137–143, 150 See also Universal Negro Improvement Association “Garveyism, A Dispassionate, Unprejudiced Appraisement” (Brown), 140 “Garveyistic Devotion” (Brown), 141 Geertz, Clifford, 85 George, Henry, 50 Gibbs, George, 64 Gilded Age, 45, 76 Giles v. Harris (1903), 46 Giles v. Teasley (1904), 46 Gilroy, Paul, 144 God in Black Church tradition, 80–81

Blackness of, 176–177 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 174, 175, 176, 177 Cone on, James H., 183, 184 contractual humanism, 12–13 God-talk in the Unitarian Universalist Association, 201–202 Jones on, William R., 183 as racist murderer, 183 Unitarianism, 59 Walker on, Alice, 190 God of the Oppressed (Cone), 197 Goodloe, Don Speed Smith, 71–72 Grant, Jacquelyn, 193 Great Depression, 27, 94, 131, 149 Greeley, Dana, 195 Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, 50, 81–82, 84, 211n2 Greene, Graham, 186 Haitian Revolution (1804), 143–144 Ham, 185 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 169 Handlin, Oscar, 41–42 Hansberry, William Leo, 148 Hapgood, Hutchins, 135 Harding, Warren G., 128 Harlem, 48–54, 86–91, 143–154 1870s to 1890s, 51 1890 to 1914, 51 1920s, early 1930s, 27, 31–32 African immigrants, 42 Afro-Caribbean immigrants, 42, 44, 77 alternative religions in, 76, 156 American Left’s failure in, 123–124 Black Church tradition, 81–82 Black churches in, 55 Black ethnic heterogeneity, 53 Black intellectuals, activists in, 95 Black migrations to, 30–31, 42–43, 48–49, 81 Black Unitarians in, 86–91

Index business owners, employers, 94 “center-periphery” paradigm applied to, 150 churches, 94 complexity of, 131 Cruse on, Harold, 50 “culture” in, 27 dynamic within, 50–51 as “ghetto,” 52–53 Greenwich Village compared to, 134–135 Harlem River Houses, 120 as headquarters, 50, 110 as “home away from home,” 53 housing, 120–121 housing, residential properties, 94 importance, 50, 54 industrialization, 52 “Jazz Age,” 94 Johnson on, James Weldon, 29, 49 Liberty Hall, 142–143 McKay on, Claude, 49 middle-class Black Harlemites, 82, 120 necessity of, 54 pan-Caribbean nationalism in, 143–154 pastors, 94 Paul Lawrence Dunbar Apartments, 120 poverty, 211n2 racial pride, 32 racial uplift, 32, 43, 77, 82, 94–95 racial utopianism, 32, 49–51, 53, 91, 135 radical politics, aversion to, 89, 123–124 rent strikes, 121 rents, 51–52 slums, 52 soapbox brigade (street corner orators), 111–112, 115–116, 150 social welfare efforts, 81

255

in Sport of the Gods, 48 squalor, 93–94 as symbol of elegance and distinction, 51 transformation into foremost urban Black community, 48, 50 West Indian independence, support for, 150 West Indians in, 42, 44 white domination, 150 Harlem: Making of a Ghetto (Osofsky), 211n2 Harlem Job Committee, 123 Harlem Labor Committee, 148 Harlem Pioneer Cooperative Society, 112 Harlem Renaissance, 133–136 Black humanism, 12 Black intellectuals, 113 bourgeois humanism, 135–136 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 133, 136, 177 commodification of urban Black culture, 133–134, 135, 136 as a culture industry, 136 DuBois and, W. E. B., 133 Garvey and, Marcus, 133 “ghetto realism,” frenzy for, 134 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 154 Harrison and, Hubert, 129 humanist tendencies, 12 nightlife, popularity of, 135 white escapism, 134 to younger Blacks, 134 Harlem Tenants League, 115, 121, 123 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 110–125 1940s to 1950s, 155–156, 162 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 84 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 26–27, 63, 87–91, 158, 159–160, 166–167, 203n3

256

Index

Harlem Unitarian Church— continued appeal to members, 85 attendance at meetings, 87 Black Church tradition, 57, 77–78, 124–125 Black radical intelligentsia in, 110–125 Black struggle for freedom, 11–12 Black women, 2 Black working class, 2 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 32, 83, 117–118, 122–123, 178 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 1, 123, 155, 162, 175–176 Campbell and, Grace P., 110, 115 challenges to status quo, 4, 172 Chworowsky and, Karl, 160 civil rights, 132 Cold War period, 167–170 Community Church (New York), 162–163 contractual humanism, 20 Crosswaith and, Frank R., 110, 156 dissolution, 1, 156 Domingo and, W. A., 42, 86, 110 double consciousness, 130 financial difficulties, 87 as forum for debate, 1–2, 83, 89, 117–118, 129 founders, 26, 32, 42, 110 founding, 55, 102 Garveyism, 137–138, 142 Harlem in early twentieth century, 31 Harlem Renaissance, 154 Harlem YWCA, 89–90, 157 Harrison and, Hubert, 122–123 housing in Harlem, 120 Hunt and, Walter Reed, 87–88 importance, 2 inability to become formal institution, 89 liberal Christianity, 58 liberal observers of, 86

Marxist bent of members, 27, 110 meeting place, lack of regular, 87, 156 meeting schedule, 87 membership, core, 27, 87, 95, 110, 154, 156, 163 mixture of spirituality and intellectualism, 56–57 Moore and, Richard B., 110, 156–157 Morrison-Reed on, Mark, 87 name changes, 122–123, 203n3 organization, founding, 41 pan-Caribbean nationalism, 145, 152–153 place among Black Unitarian congregations, 26 political activism, 56, 123 popularity, 89 purpose, 157 racial integrationism, 162–163, 165 racial uplift, 130, 132 racial utopianism, 91 radicalism, 91. See also Black Communists; Black socialism; Black working class radicalism religious relativism, 57 renamed “Hubert Harrison Memorial Church,” 122–123 social activism, 91 social justice, 27, 130, 132, 172 story of, 29 Sunday services, 118, 162 synergy between socialism and Black Christianity, 103 Union of Unitarian Women (England), 41 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 2 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 154 West Indians, 42 white congregants, 162

Index Harlem YWCA, 89–90, 157 Harper, Francis Ellen Watkins, 69 Harpers Ferry raid (1859), 68 Harrington, Donald S., 163 Harrison, Bev, 22, 204n33 Harrison, Hubert, 128–130 African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 129 Black nationalism, 111, 128 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 122 death, 122 Garvey and, Marcus, 139 Harlem as racial utopia, 135 Harlem Renaissance, 129 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 122–123 influence, 111, 128–129 knowledge, extent of his, 215n3 Liberty League, 129 Marxism, 128–129 organized religion, 129 pan-Africanism, 111 racial self-determinism, 122 racial uplift, 128 socialism, 111 Voice (newspaper), 129 When African Awakes, 127, 128 Harvard College, 65 Harvard Divinity School, 60, 70 Haynes, George E., 55, 56 heaven, 31, 58 Hendrickson, Elizabeth, 111 Herndon, Angelo, 148 Hibbert, Robert, 205n6 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, 82, 83 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 67–68 Hofstadter, Richard, 62 Holmes, John Haynes, 50, 72, 73, 211n65 Hoover, Herbert, 131 Hoover, J. Edgar, 117 Hopkins, Dwight, 174, 186 Horkheimer, Max, 136

257

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 169 Houston, Charles Hamilton, 159 How to Open the Door? (Morrison-Reed), 198 Howe, Samuel, 68 Huggins, Nathan, 135–136 Hughes, Langston, 169 Hull, Cordell, 150–151 humanism bourgeois humanism, 135–136 as intrinsic in African worldview, 16 white humanism, 4–5, 46–47 womanist humanism, 195 See also Black humanism Humanist Manifesto (1933), 74 Hunt, Walter Reed, 87–88 Hutchinson, Earl Ofari, 114 “I Have Two Dreams” (Brown), 171 immigrations 1920s immigration policy, 43–44 African immigrants in North America, 1899–1924, 42 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 169–170 Black immigrants in United States (1900–1930), 42–43 Black migrations to Harlem, 30–31, 42–43, 48–49, 81 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 170 A Constructive Immigration Policy (Davie), 43 McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act, 1952), 169–170 mobilization of Black immigrants, 44 In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden (Walker), 191 integration. See racial integrationism International Labor Defense (ILD), 113

258

Index

Invisible Man (Ellison), 167 Is God a White Racist? (Jones), 180, 181, 183 Italian-Ethiopian Crisis (1935), 149 Jackson, Jimmy Lee, 196 Jackson, Rev. Mr., 69 Jacob, Harriet, 10 Jacoby, Russell, 50 Jacoby, Susan, 68–69, 76 Jamaica African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, 34 Brown in, E. Ethelred, 32–34, 35, 36–41, 145, 146, 147 Domingo in, W. A., 146, 147 labor unrest (1930s), 146, 149 Unitarianism, 33, 38, 39, 40–41, 205n6 Jamaica Benevolent Association, 146 Jamaica League, 138 Jamaica Progressive League (JPL), 146–147, 170 Jamaican Gleaner (newspaper), 139 James, C. L. R., 149–150 James, Jacqui, 199 James, Winston, 105 “Jazz Age,” 94 Jefferson, Thomas, 60, 133 Jesus, 176, 177, 190 Jim and Jane Crow, 13, 50, 161–162, 163 Johnson, James Weldon, 29, 49, 76, 135 Jones, Jacqueline, 123, 124 Jones, Major, 180 Jones, Walter Royal, 195 Jones, William R., 179–184 on Black Church tradition, 182 Black humanism, 16, 19, 20–21, 28, 180, 181, 184 Black liberation theology, 180–182, 183–184 Cone and, James H., 182–184

divine involvement in human affairs, 186 eschatology, 186 on God, 183 influences on, 180 Is God a White Racist?, 180, 181, 183 on major faith traditions within Black religion, 16 oppression, overcoming, 180 on origins of Black and white humanism, 4–5 Sartre and, Jean-Paul, 180 South African trips, 184 theism, 181, 182 “Whiteanity,” 181 Woodson and, Carter G., 181 Journal of Negro History, 146 Just a Sister Away (Weems), 193 Kedourie, Elia, 143 Kelley, Robin, 95, 122 Kierkegaard, Søren, 26 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 12, 196 King, Thomas Starr, 57–58 Kipling, Rudyard, 37 Kirnon, Hodge, 137 Kurtz, Paul, 17, 185, 187 Larsen, Nella, 13–14 Latimer, Lewis, 69–70 Lawson, Robert, 161–162 Lazarus, Emma, 41 Leakey, Louis, 148 Lee, Alfred McClung, 165 Left, the, 122, 123–124 Lewis, David Levering, 136–137 Lewis, Earl, 53 liberal Christianity American Unitarian Association (AUA), 26 Black working class radicalism, 105 British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA), 36

Index Brown and, E. Ethelred, 25, 39 conversion experience in, 62 evangelical fervor, 62 failure to attract Blacks, 75, 156 God-talk in the Unitarian Universalist Association, 201–202 Goodloe and, Don Speed Smith, 72 guiding principles, 63–64 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 58 Harvard Divinity School, 60 Jefferson and, Thomas, 60 race relations, 65 Second Great Awakening, 61 Unitarianism, 59–61, 76 Wilbur on, Earl Morse, 63–64 liberation theology. See Black liberation theology Liberty League, 129 Life (magazine), 166 Lincoln, C. Eric, 78–79, 84, 196–197 Liuzzo, Viola, 196 Locke, Alain, 128, 130–131, 134 Logan, Rayford, 11, 47, 71 Long, Charles H., 8 Lorde, Audre, 192 Loving the Body (Pinn and Hopkins), 186 Luther, Martin, 177 lynching, 73 “Making of Harlem” (Johnson), 29 Malcolm X, 177, 197 Mamiya, Lawrence H., 196–197 Manifest Destiny, 62 Manley, Norman W., 146 Marable, Manning, 168 March on Washington (1963), 195 Marcus Garvey Club, 142 Marshall, Thurgood, 159 Marx, Karl, 50, 105, 124–125

259

Marxism in Africa, 189 Allen and, Norm R., Jr., 188–189 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 25, 27, 118 in Caribbean region, 189 Crosswaith and, Frank R., 118 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC) members, 27, 110 Harrison and, Hubert, 128–129 Moore and, Richard B., 118 May, Samuel J., 67 Mays, Benjamin, 12–13 McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act, 1952), 169–170 McGee, Lewis A., 73–74, 75, 158 McGuire, George Alexander, 177 McKay, Claude, 49, 114, 133 Meadville Lombard Theological School, 198 Meadville Theological School (Pennsylvania) American Unitarian Association (AUA), 62 Black seminarians, 70 Blacks in, 35, 205n7 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 35–36 first Black graduate, 71 first Black student, 69 Goodloe and, Don Speed Smith, 72 McGee and, Lewis A., 74 racial diversity, 71 relocation to Chicago, 70 Meadville Unitarian Church (Pennsylvania), 36 Menand, Louis, 58 Methodists, 9 Middle Passage, 6–9 Miller, Kelly, 101 Mining the Motherlode (Floyd-Thomas), 193 Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC), 199

260

Index

Mis-Education of the Negro (Woodson), 181 Montego Bay Episcopal Church (Jamaica), 32 Montego Bay Wesleyan Methodist Church (Jamaica), 33 Moore, Richard B. African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), 112–113 American-West Indian Defense Committee, 149 assimilationist tendencies, 148 Black working class radicalism, 112–114 book collection, 148 Briggs and, Cyril, 112–113 on Campbell, Grace P., 115 Campbell and, Grace P., 113 Communist Party, 111, 113–114, 148, 149 curriculum development for NYC schools, 148 “Declaration of Rights of the Caribbean People to Self-Determination and Self-Government,” 151 decolonization movement, 149 Domingo and, W. A., 153 federation of West Indian nations, 149, 152 Garvey and, Marcus, 139 Garveyism, 137 in Harlem, 30 Harlem Tenants League, 121 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 110, 156–157 Harrison and, Hubert, 111, 128–129 International Labor Defense (ILD), 113 Marxism, 118 Negro Champion (newspaper), 113 pan-Africanism, 148

Pan-American Foreign Ministers’ Conference (Havana, 1940), 151–152 pan-Caribbean nationalism, 151–152, 153 political activism, 123 Scottsboro Boys, 113 “Moral Values and Black Womanists” (Eugene), 193 Morgan, Jennifer, 10 Morrison, Donna, 198 Morrison-Reed, Mark, 198–199 African American Unitarian Universalist Ministries, 199 Been in the Storm so Long (with James), 199 Black humanism, 28 Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, 3, 17, 75–76, 198 Black presence within Unitarianism, 17 Brown’s avoidance of Harlem Renaissance, 133 Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC), 199 Commission on Appraisal, 199 Family Service Association, 199 “Fear of Mass Appeal,” 199 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 87 How to Open the Door?, 198 Meadville Lombard Theological School, 198 Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC), 199 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), 198 Moses, Wilson J., 151 Mount Zion Baptist Church (San Diego), 105, 106 Moyne Commission (West Indian Commission Royal), 147 Murray, Pauli, 186

Index Muste, A. J., 119, 172, 211n65 Myrdal, Gunnar, 159 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), 50, 72, 110, 162 Naison, Mark, 123–124 National Council of Black Chruchmen (NCBC), 197 National Council of Negro Women, 116 National Labor Committee, 119–120 National Origin Act (1924), 43 National Urban League, 50, 110, 115, 164 nationalism, 143–144 See also Black nationalism; Cultural nationalism; Pan-Caribbean nationalism “Negro and Socialism” (Ransom), 107 Negro Champion (newspaper), 113 Negro Church (DuBois), 79 Negro God as Reflected in His Literature (Mays), 12–13 Negro Progressive Association, 145–146 Negro World (newspaper), 139 New Deal, 131–132, 168 New Negro (Locke), 134 New Negro (Pickens), 130 New Negro for a New Century (Washington), 130 New Negro movement, 130–131, 134, 136 New York Age (newspaper), 76 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), 120 New York Herald (newspaper), 68 New York Times (newspaper), 53, 68, 201 Niagara Movement, 96 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 63–64, 172, 180, 211n65

261

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 211n65 Nigger Heaven (Vechten), 134 Nimrod, 185 Nineteenth Amendment, 128 Noise and Spirit (Pinn), 185 Nuttall, E., 38 Odum, Howard, 124 Ohio Socialist Bulletin (magazine), 106 “Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind” (Walker), 18–19, 190 Or Does it Explode? (Greenberg), 211n2 Osofsky, Gilbert, 52, 78, 211n2 Ovington, Mary White, 72–73 Owen, Chandler, 111, 118, 128–129, 139 Painter, Nell, 45–46 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 117 pan-Africanism Brown and, E. Ethelred, 25 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 140 Garvey and, Marcus, 111 Harrison and, Hubert, 111 implosion of, 142–143 Moore and, Richard B., 148 racial pride, 137 racial uplift, 137 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 137 Pan-American Foreign Ministers’ Conference (Havana, 1940), 151–152 pan-Caribbean nationalism, 143–154 Parker, Theodore, 57, 68 Parks, Robert, 124 Pathway Press, 148 Paul Lawrence Dunbar Apartments (Harlem), 120 People’s Educational Forum (New York City), 118–119

262

Index

People’s National Party (PNP), 146–147, 153 Peters, Mr., 161 Philadelphia Negro (DuBois), 79 Phillips, Wendell, 66 Pickens, William C., 130 Pickering, Timothy, 60 Pierrpoint, Reginald, 151 Pinn, Anthony B., 184–187 African American Humanist Principles, 19 African American Religious Experience in America, 185 African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, 186 Black church as discursive space, 81 Black humanism, 19, 28, 185–186 Loving the Body (with Hopkins), 186 Nimrod as symbol of Blacks, 185 Noise and Spirit, 185 on origins of Unitarianism, 59 prominence among theologians, 184–185 synergy between socialism and Black Christianity, 103 Terror and Triumph, 185 theocide experience, 19 Varieties of African American Religious Experience, 3, 185 Why, Lord?, 5–6, 185 “Plan to Reach the Negro, A” (Euell), 106 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 46, 163 political activism Black Church tradition, 81, 83–84 Campbell and, Grace P., 123 Crosswaith and, Frank R., 123 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 56, 123 Moore and, Richard B., 123 See also Brown, E. Ethelred— political life, views

Popular Front, 114, 124 Potter, Thomas, 137 Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 84 Powell, Adam Clayton, Sr., 77, 84 “Predestination and Determinism” (Brown), 178–179 “Price We Pay” (Brown), 155 Priestly, Joseph, 57 Progressive Negro Association (PNA), 138 progressivism, 25, 44–48 Prometheus, 185 Promise of American Life (Croly), 44–45 Quicksand (Larsen), 13–14 Raboteau, Albert J., 9 race relations, 64–72, 157–167, 195–202 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 63, 157–167 Black intellectuals, 97 changing outlook among white liberals, 159–162 liberal Christianity, 65 Second World War, 158–159 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 195–202 Unitarianism, 64–72 Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force, 199 racial essentialism, 101–102, 145, 176–177 racial integrationism Black intellectuals, 98 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 25 DuBois and, W. E. B., 98, 100 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 162–163, 165 racial pride Black Church tradition, 80 Black nationalism, 144 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 176 Harlem, 32

Index pan-Africanism, 137 Progressive Negro Association (PNA), 138 racial uplift Black Church tradition, 80, 82 Bookerite ideology, 96 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 145 DuBois and, W. E. B., 97–98 Garvey and, Marcus, 138 Harlem, 32, 43, 77, 82, 94–95 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 130, 132 Harrison and, Hubert, 128 pan-Africanism, 137 white money, 99 racial utopianism alternative to “ghetto” paradigm, 53 DuBois on, W. E. B., 50–51 in Harlem, 32, 49–51, 53, 91, 135 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 91 Johnson and, James Weldon, 49 racism American Federation of Labor (AFL), 148 British and Foreign Unitarian Association (B&FUA), 39 Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), 112 DuBois and, W. E. B., 97 free thought movement, 76 Harlem’s necessity, 54 immigration policy, 43–44 impossibility of transcending within Western society, 6 last nineteenth century, 45–46 liberal racism, 91 progressivism, 47 Socialist Labor Party, 104 Unitarianism, 91, 198 radicalism of Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 91

263

See also Black Communists; Black socialism; Black working class radicalism Rand School of Social Science (New York City), 118, 139 Randolph, A. Philip Black Church tradition, 108–110, 124 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 119 civil rights activism, 158–159 “Failure of the Negro Church,” 108–109 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 119 Garvey and, Marcus, 139 Harrison and, Hubert, 111, 128–129 as labor organizer, 118 radical religious fellowship, 110 soapbox brigade member, 111 Ransom, Reverdy, 107–108, 186 Reconstruction, 45 “Red Scare,” 128 Reeb, James, 196 Reed, Adolph, 99 Reed, John, 135 Reese, Curtis, 73–74 Reid, Ira DeA., 44 religious relativism, 57 Renaissance, 8 Republican Party, 47, 104 revivalism. See Second Great Awakening Richards, Arthur, 147 Riverside Church (New York City), 172 Roberts, J. Deotis, 180 Robeson, Paul, 169 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 120 Rogers, J. A., 129 Rogowski, Henry, 139 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 131–132

264

Index

Roosevelt, Theodore, 44–45, 46–47 Rozendaal, Jan, 162 Sanborn, Franklin, 68 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 180 Saunders, Cecilia Cabaniss, 90 Schomburg, Arturo, 148 Schuyler, George S., 119 Scottsboro Boys, 113 Second Great Awakening, 61, 62 Second Unitarian Church (Brooklyn), 73 Second World War, 158, 159 “Secret Six” (Committee of Six), 67–68 secularism, 2 Selma to Montgomery march (1965), 196 Seon, Yvonne, 199 Servetus, Michael, 58 Shaw, Robert Gould, 68 Sigismund, King John, 58 Sinkford, William G., 28, 200–202 Sisters in the Wilderness (Williams), 193 skepticism, 2 Slater, George W., Jr., 106–107 Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), 45–46 Slavery (Channing), 64–65 Smart, Ninian, 59 Smith, Gerrit, 68 Sobel, Mechal, 9 social activism Brown and, E. Ethelred, 145, 177, 178 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 91 theology, 171 social justice Black Church tradition, 125 Black humanism, 172–173 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 28, 123, 172 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 27, 130, 132, 172

socialism, 103 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 2 Unitarianism, 58, 63 Social Sources of Denominationalism (Niebuhr), 63–64 socialism, 102–110 Black Christianity, 102–110 Black Church tradition, 122 Black socialism, 103–109, 111, 139 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 106 Christian socialism, 103–104, 108 Domingo’s “Socialism and Negroes’ Hope,” 102–103 Domingo’s Socialism Imperilled, 139 Harrison and, Hubert, 111 Ransom’s “Negro and Socialism,” 107 social justice, 103 Unitarianism, 105 “Socialism and Negroes’ Hope” (Domingo), 102–103 Socialism Imperilled (Domingo), 139 Socialist Labor Party, 104 Socialist Party of America (SPA), 107, 110, 114, 119 Socinus, Faustus (Fausto Paolo Sozzini), 58 Solarin, Tai, 188 Souls of Black Folk (DuBois), 79, 98 Southworth, Franklin, 35, 38, 70, 71–72 Soyinka, Wole, 188 Spanish Town Wesleyan Methodist Church (Jamaica), 33, 34 Sparrow, Eugene, 158 spiritual anger, 22–23 Spirituals and the Blues (Cone), 197 Sport of the Gods (Dunbar), 48

Index Springfield, Illinois, 47 Statesboro, Georgia, 47 Stearns, George Luther, 68 Taft, William Howard, 46, 47, 58 Talented Tenth, 98 Ten Year Plan for Racial and Cultural Diversity, 199 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 133 Terror and Triumph (Pinn), 185 theism Black humanism, 6, 11 Black religion, 12, 16 contractual humanism, 12–14 definition, 6 denial of, 13–14 Jones and, William R., 181, 182 meeting material or structural needs, 14 theodicy, 6, 81 theology, social activism and, 171 See also Black liberation theology Thirteenth Amendment, 45 Thomas, Norman, 119, 211n65 Thoreau, Henry David, 50 Thurman, Howard, 165–166, 172 Thurmond, Strom, 168–169 Time (magazine), 166 Townes, Emilie M., 193 Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers, 50, 148 Transcendentalism, 62 Triangle Trade, 8 Trinitarian doctrine, 32–33, 58, 175 Trotter, William Monroe, 96–97 Troubling in My Soul (Townes), 193 Truman, Harry S., 169 Truman Doctrine, 168 Turner, Henry McNeal, 100–101, 177, 197 Twelve Million Black Voices (Wright), 93, 95

265

Underground Railroad, 67, 104 Union of Unitarian Women (England), 41 “Unitarian Aroused” (Brown), 174–176 “Unitarian Christianity” (Channing), 33, 59 Unitarian fellowship (Chico, California), 74 Unitarian Lay Centre (Montego Bay), 35 Unitarian Service Committee, 164 Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 195–202 Black Affairs Council (BAC), 196, 197–198 Black Caucus, 196 Black Concerns Working Group (BCWG), 199 Black Empowerment Controversy, 196, 199 Blacks within, 17 Brown and, E. Ethelred, 2 Commission on Appraisal, 199 Emergency Conference (1967), 196 first African American president, 200 first African American woman fellowshipped, 199 gays and lesbians, support for, 200 God-talk in, 201–202 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 2 headquarters staff, 199 March on Washington (1963), 195 Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC), 199 Office for Racial and Cultural Diversity, 199 race relations, 195–202 Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force, 199

266

Index

Unitarian Universalist Association—continued racial inclusiveness, 2 religious language, 201–202 same-sex marriage, 200 Selma to Montgomery march (1965), 196 Seon and, Yvonne, 199 Sinkford and, William G., 200–202 social justice, 2 Ten Year Plan for Racial and Cultural Diversity, 199 Whitney Young Jr. Urban Ministry Fund, 199 Unitarianism, 64–72 abolitionism, 65–68 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 60 Black Church tradition, 26, 85–86, 87 Black Unitarians. See Black Unitarians Brown and, E. Ethelred, 34, 41, 86 Brown on, E. Ethelred, 40, 87, 156, 171, 174–175, 176, 178 Clark and, Peter Humphries, 104–105 Congregationalism, 59, 60, 63 God, 59 Harvard Divinity School, 60 heaven, 58 heyday, 63 individual liberty, 57 influential Unitarians, 57–58, 66 intellectual autonomy, 57 internal limitations, 63 Jamaica, 33, 38, 39, 40–41, 205n6 Jesus, 176 liberal Christianity, 59–61, 76 liberal racism, 91 middle-class values, 63–64 Niebuhr on, H. Richard, 63–64

origins, 58, 69–60 proslavery advocates among, 66–67 race relations, 64–72 racism, 198 Second Great Awakening, 61 social justice, 58, 63 socialism, 105 spread, 61 tenets, 58–59, 86 Trinitarian doctrine, 58 West Indies, 39 Wilbur on, Earl Morse, 91 Young and, Whitney M., 164–165 United Harlem Tenants and Consumer Organization (UHTCO), 121 Unity (magazine), 74 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 137–143 Black Star Line, Inc., 137 bootstrap capitalism, 137, 139 Domingo and, W. A., 139 founding, 137 Harlem Unitarian Church (HUC), 154 Harrison and, Hubert, 129 headquarters, 50, 110 Liberty Hall, 142–143 membership, 137, 141 pan-Africanism, 137 popularity, 142 surveillance of, 117 Uprooted (Handlin), 41–42 utopianism, 49–50 See also racial utopianism Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Pinn), 3, 185 Vechten, Carl Van, 134 Voice from the South (Cooper), 99 Voice (newspaper), 129 Voting Rights Act (1965), 196

Index Waldman, Louis, 119 Walker, Alice, 190–192 Black humanism, 19, 28, 190–191 The Color Purple, 190, 191 on God, 190 on Jesus, 190 nature, reverence for, 18, 190 “Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind,” 18–19, 190 religiosity, 18 In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden, 191 womanist movement, 191–192, 193, 195 Wallace, Ella Matilda. See Brown, Ella Ware, Henry, Jr., 60 Ware, Henry, Sr., 60 Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise,” 100 Atlanta Exposition speech (1895), 96 Bookerite ideology, 96–97, 98, 100–101 cultural nationalism, 101–102 death, 101 DuBois, feud with, 45, 98–99 Garvey and, Marcus, 137, 138–139 New Negro for a New Century, 130 racial essentialism, 101–102 Roosevelt and, Theodore, 47 Trotter and, William Monroe, 96–97 Washington, Joseph, 180 Waterhouse, Benjamin, 60 Watkins-Owens, Irma, 43, 111 Weems, Renita J., 193 Weisenfeld, Judith, 90 Wells-Barnett, Ida, 99, 100, 101–102 West, Cornel, 5

267

West Indian Commission Royal (Moyne Commission), 147 West Indian Federation, 153 West Indian National Emergency (WINE) Committee, 151–152 West Indians, 42, 44 West Indies, 39, 143, 149, 152 See also pan-Caribbean nationalism Western Unitarian Conference (WUC), 73 What to Do and How to Do It (Woodbey), 106 When African Awakes (Harrison), 127, 128 white humanism, 4–5, 46–47 White Plains Unitarian Church (New York), 73, 165 white Protestantism, 79–80, 99 white supremacy Black Christianity, 16 Calhoun and, John C., 67 critical Black theologies, 197 “Double-V” campaign against, 159 pan-Caribbean nationalism, 149, 152–153 White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus (Grant), 193 “Whiteanity,” 181 Whitney Young Jr. Urban Ministry Fund, 199 Why, Lord? (Pinn), 5–6, 185 Wiebe, Robert, 135 Wilbur, Earl Morse, 63–64, 76, 91 Williams, Bonita, 121 Williams, Delores S., 192–193 Williams, MaBelle, 90 Williams v. Mississippi (1898), 46 Wilmore, Gayraud, 11, 103–104 Wilson, Woodrow, 46, 47, 127–128, 129 Wintz, Carl, 30, 49 womanist humanism, 195

268

Index

Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope (Townes), 193 womanist movement, 191–195 “Womanist Theology” (Williams), 192–193 women. See Black women Woodbey, George Washington, 105–106, 108 Woodson, Carter G., 180, 181 Workers (Communist) Party, 110 Workingman’s Party, 104

World Tomorrow (magazine), 1, 89, 211n65 Wright, Richard, 14–15, 93, 95 X, Malcolm, 177, 197 Yale University, 61, 67 See also Calhoun College Young, Whitney M., 164–165 Zion Tabernacle Church (Chicago), 106