I’ve just returned from a 5-day civil rights pilgrimage to Alabama and know I will be processing what I saw there for a long time. We visited Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, some of the key sites in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I learned things I was never taught in school–in depth stories about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the lifelong activism of Rosa Parks, stories of church bombings and how those churches continued to work for the freedom of every person, and much more. One of the most powerful moments was a silent prayerful group walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, as well as visiting the memorial markers for Rev. James Reeb and Dr. Viola Liuzzo, two Unitarian Universalists who answered the call to Selma and were murdered there.

One of the themes that emerged was that, as I know many of you realize, the fight for civil rights did not end in the 1960s, and in fact some of the progress made then has been lost in recent years, including the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Voter suppression is just one of the continuing challenges faced by people of color in the Deep South today.

Along with the powerful personal experiences on the trip, we were given reading suggestions in advance, and learned about more resources while in Alabama. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into civil rights history and issues, let me know and I’ll share resources with you. One I can recommend personally is the book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis, published by Beacon Press (a UUA publisher) in 2015. (There is also a documentary by that name, which I haven’t seen but plan to.)

I do also hope to plan a presentation (outside of worship so we have more time) in the next few months, drawing from both this trip and the October pilgrimage to Memphis and Mississippi, both of which were through Living Legacy Project (https://www.livinglegacypilgrimage.org) which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. In addition to these pilgrimages, they offer a wide range of online programs. I also encourage any of you who are so moved to contribute to them–they have currently been offered a $3,000 matching grant, so if you make a donation please note “for the match.”

In gratitude,

Rev. Diana