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5. Social action in the 1960s |
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The 1960s were a time of unprecedented
social action activity by the churches together through the Council. |
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| Under the guidance of Tex Sample and
then James Nash, as directors of the Department of Social Relations,
the Council was involved in a wide range of issues. The most prominent
issues were race relations and civil rights, both locally and nationally. |
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 (Click on image for full article.) |
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“If there is one area in which
we have reached a consensus religiously it is that this cause is right
and the time has come. … The struggle of Negros for freedom
in any place is the concern of Christians in every place.” |
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Activity intensified beginning in 1965. The Council President represented the member churches at the funeral in Alabama of Rev. James Reeb, a white clergyman from Boston who was killed in Selma. The member churches raised a significant amount of money for the Reeb family, and for the civil rights struggle in Alabama. Also in 1965, 100 Massachusetts Council constituents traveled by
chartered bus to Washington DC to urge Massachusetts members of
congress to vote for an equal voting rights act. |
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Later that same month, the Council chartered a plane and sent 95 people to Alabama to participate in Martin Luther King’s “March on Montgomery.” The purposes for that trip were two-fold: “(1) To identify ourselves with the Negros in the South who are
struggling for freedom; and (2) to inspire and challenge ourselves
and our fellow churchmen in Massachusetts to greater determination
and more sacrificial action in eliminating racial segregation in
our state.” |
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| In 1966, Byron Rushing, now a Massachusetts
State Legislator, was appointed Director of the newly-created Commission
on Church and Race. |
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The Council sent Rushing and three local civil rights leaders to Alabama to help with voter registration and to learn methods of community organizing. | ||||||||
| Racial justice has been one of the most dominant and consistent themes of the churches’ work together through the Council. These commitments continue today through the Council’s “Ecumenical Working Group to Counter Racism.” | |
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