I want to thank the members of the First Unitarian community who reached out to me, as news of the latest murder in Minnesota spread and news coverage of it surpassed even that of the Chauvin trial.
There is no surprise in that news for me, and therefore little shock. ”Open Season” on Black and Brown bodies seems never to end in the land of the free.
Part of our religious calling is to tell that truth. The religious voice needs to speak for the world that can be, as faith’s contribution to bringing that possible world into being. The Beloved Community must be built and “ours are the only hands on earth.”
This morning I am wrestling with how long, and how many times that truth must be told, when that truth seems so resistant to change.
Earlier this winter, I received a copy of the Journal of Caribbean History for 2020. That is not a publication on my normal reading list. But this issue contained an article, written by a Unitarian Universalist, about Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown, one of the very first UU ministers of color.
Brown was Jamaican born, became a church organist and choir director in a Methodist church on the island. He described being struck by the illogic of the Trinity one Easter morning and, on that same day, discovering some Unitarian literature that his uncle had collected.
He eventually completed Meadville Theological School, was the first Black man ordained in the Unitarian faith, and returned to found a Unitarian Church in Jamaica. The American Unitarian Association under President Samuel Eliot (yes, the same Eliot family as First Unitarian’s Thomas Lamb Eliot) ended the denomination’s modest support for Brown. Sam Eliot also ended support for the first women Unitarian ministers of what was called the Iowa Sisterhood. His leadership entrenched much of the racism and patriarchy that we are working to dismantle today. But I digress.
Brown moved to the U.S., to Harlem in 1920, where he created the Community Church of Harlem which functioned until 1956.
Ethelred Brown’s ministry is described by Rev. Mark Morrison Reed in Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, still required reading for UU ministers. But the article I mentioned was written by a woman who was raised in Brown’s store front church in Harlem, Joyce Moore Turner.
Her article locates Brown not only within Unitarian history, but within the history of the Harlem Renaissance. That was a time of artistic flourishing, of Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and so many more.
Ms. Turner also forwarded the text of one of Brown’s sermons, preached in 1950, entitled “Police Brutality in Harlem.” It tells the story of John Derrick, a wounded Korean War veteran:
“Three discharged Negro soldiers, one of who was Derrick, were walking on the morning of December 7 either on 119th St. or 8th Ave. At the corner they were suddenly accosted by a police patrol car in which were Patrolman Louis Palumba and Basil Minakakis. One of the patrolmen ordered ‘hands up.’
“John Derrick did not go up fast enough. A shot rang out from the car and according to witnesses this was quickly followed by another and John Derrick fell, with outstretched hands, dead. This murdered boy was the eldest of 14 children. He came home from the war wounded, but he was alive, and he looked forward as his family down south did to a glad reunion at Christmas time. … Derrick went home before Christmas, but he went home dead. His grief-stricken parents received his lifeless body as a gruesome gift from the Police Department of New York.”
Ethelred Brown called for an investigation, a Grand Jury. He asked many questions, including why, during an initial search of Derrick’s body, no gun was found, yet, minutes after, a gun was “discovered” in his possession?
He preached about the number of Black men killed by police in Harlem during his 31-year residence in the US. And that 31 years was too long to wait for justice.
I read that sermon twice this week, 71 years after Egbert Ethelred Brown preached that sermon and told Derrick’s story.
For those who believe that our structures of policing and punishment are salvageable, for those who argue the progress has been made and that the coming of the Kingdom, the Beloved Community, is only a matter of time…
I ask, how long should we wait?
As we await the verdict in the Chauvin trial,
How long, O Lord, how long?
Bill