R is for Reeb

On March 7, 1965, police on the outskirts of Selma Alabama attacked a group of civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Unitarian minister James Reeb watched the television coverage from his home in Massachusetts. Reeb had been preaching about systematic racism and segregation in churches around Boston.

When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called on clergy to join him in Selma to once again march, Reeb joined other ministers from Boston and made the trip to Alabama. While walking with two other UU ministers from a racially integrated restaurant to the chapel where Dr. King would be speaking, Reeb and his colleagues were attacked by a group of four or five white men. The UU ministers were beaten and Reeb died of his injuries 2 days later.

Dr. King delivered the eulogy for Reeb, saying, in part: “So in his death, James Reeb says something to each of us, black and white alike—says that we must substitute courage for caution, says to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy that produced the murder. His death says to us that we must work passionately, unrelentingly, to make the American dream a reality, so he did not die in vain.”

In what ways can you “substitute courage for caution” this week?

Learn More:
https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop5/175806.shtml