The Selma Awakening and Unitarian Universalists

My friend and colleague, Mark Morrison-Reed, is a prominent scholar of African-American Unitarian Universalist history. In his book, The Selma Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian Universalism, Morrison-Reed explores our civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. He feels that this period was a turning point for Unitarian Universalists. “In answering Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to action,” he believes, “they shifted from passing earnest resolutions about racial justice to putting their lives on the line for the cause.” History, in my opinion, is not just a review of the past. When done with an open mind and heart, it places our steps on a trajectory where the past, present, and future compel us forward in some new, determined, and resilient ways.