Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations
Committee for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ
In 1963, the United Church of Christ (UCC) established the Committee for Racial Justice as the Committee for Racial Justice Now at its Fourth General Synod in Denver. The UCC launched the committee in response to the heightened racial tensions that followed the assassination of Medgar Evers, president of the Mississippi National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the bombing deaths of five African American schoolgirls who were killed while attending Sunday school in a Birmingham, Alabama, church. Authorized to work for a two-year period, the committee was charged with eliminating “racial segregation and discrimination in the life of our churches; and in securing justice for Blacks and other minorities in our society.” Dr. Gary Oniki of the Council of Christian and Social Action and the Board for Homeland Ministries served as the committee’s first executive coordinator. Until 1966, several interim executives succeeded him, including the Reverends Dr. Truman Douglas, Dr. Ray Gibbons, Dr. W. Sterling Cary, and Dr. Charles Cobb. Under their leadership, the organization worked through and with existing UCC boards and agencies.
The committee was reconstituted in 1965 for an additional two-year period at the Fifth General Synod in Chicago. Moreover, a UCC subcommittee recommended:
1. That the mandate to the Committee for Racial Justice Now be addressed to the entire United Church of Christ, including all its instrumentalities, conferences, associations, and churches.
2. That the Committee for Racial Justice Now be reconstituted by the Sixth General Synod, 1967, as a four-year committee, with smaller membership, to be appointed by the president; and that the committee advise and support the executive coordinator and that he be responsible to it.
3. That the Committee for Racial Justice Now renegotiate and communicate with various conferences, instrumentalities, and associations with the aim that its executive coordinator will have access to, and hopefully influence upon, the decision-making process of the United Church of Christ.
4. That the Committee for Racial Justice Now continually analyze and seek to change the structure, policies, and practices of the United Church of Christ toward the establishment of racial justice within the United Church of Christ and its work in the world.
On January 25, 1967, the above recommendations were accepted at the regular meeting of the committee.
Meanwhile, the thrust of the civil rights movement had shifted from nonviolent protest marches to militant black-power rhetoric. In an effort to remain abreast of these changes, the committee decided to broaden its focus and started to advocate economic, political, and educational improvements among African Americans. Explaining its decision, the committee stated that racial justice could be achieved only if the black community gained “enough political power to effect change whereby racial justice could be demanded.” Acknowledging that the depth of the U.S. racial problem was so severe that any hopes for an immediate solution were unrealistic, the committee dropped the appendage “Now” from its name following the Fifth Synod.
The most decisive turning point in the committee’s history occurred at the Seventh Synod, which convened in Boston on June 25, 1969. In response to an appeal from the Ministers for Racial and Social Justice, the synod decided that the UCC president would appoint committee members based on the recommendations of the church’s black constituency. Following this decision, African Americans represented a majority on the fifteen-member committee. Moreover, the UCC agreed to change the status of the committee, providing for guaranteed funding. The committee became a commission and held its first meeting on December 11,1969. The Reverend Albert Cleage Jr., minister of the Shrine of the Black Madonna of Detroit, Michigan, became the first elected chairman of the newly empowered commission.
As the national civil rights agency of the UCC’s 1.5 million members, the commission has been involved in various efforts. In the 1970s, the commission addressed injustices in the judicial and prison system and led a successful campaign to free the Wilmington Ten, political activists for African-American rights whose arrest was the first official case of political prisoners in the United States cited by Amnesty International. In the 1980s, the commission supported the fight against apartheid in South Africa and challenges to voting rights in Alabama and Chicago, and it led a fact-finding mission to Angola and brought children from that nation to the United States for medical treatment. During the 1990s, the commission helped disseminate the UCC’s Pastoral Letter on Contemporary Racism and the Role of the Church. In October 1991, it helped organize the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and published the proceedings to heighten public awareness and to increase the interest and involvement of minorities in environmental issues. The commission sponsored its first Annual National Racial Justice Awards Dinner, which honored those who have made an outstanding contribution to the progress of racial justice.
In addition, commission programs have embraced a wide range of issues, including African American family life, capital punishment, racially motivated violence, child abuse, displaced homemakers, battered wives, teenage pregnancy, welfare hotels, homelessness, persons with disabilities, computer literacy, and African American, Hispanic American, and Native American church empowerment. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, the commission also operates offices in Enfield, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Since its founding, the commission has published books, conference proceedings, reports, and the weekly Civil Rights Journal.
FURTHER READINGS
Cobb, Charles E. History of C.R.J. Cleveland: United Church of Christ, n.d.
United Church of Christ. Racism and the Role of the Church. Cleveland: United Church of Christ, 1991.
——. Commission for Racial Justice. Cleveland: United Church of Christ, 1993.
Betty Nyangoni
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