Book Talk with the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed: The Selma Awakening

Rev.
Mark Morrison Reed will talk about his new book. About the Book:
 In "The Selma
Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian
Universalism,"
Rev.
Mark Morrison-Reed (the foremost scholar of African-American Unitarian
Universalist history) presents his long-awaited analysis of the denomination's
civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Selma represented a turning
point for Unitarian Universalists. In answering Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to
action, they shifted from passing earnest resolutions about racial justice to
putting their lives on the line for the cause.

Morrison-Reed traces the
long history of race relations among the Unitarians and the Universalists
leading up to 1965, revealing the disparity between their espoused values on
race and their values in practice. In 1965, their activism in Selma-involving
hundreds of ministers and the violent deaths of Rev. James Reeb and Viola
Liuzzo-at last put them in authentic relationship with their proclaimed
beliefs.