 I think we're at the point in our evening where we should pause and give some attention, some appropriate attention to the Unitarian Universalists of Birmingham, who have one of the more amazing church histories from this continent. They are impressive people. A few years ago, a New York Times reporter named Diane McQuirter started researching Birmingham history. She's from Birmingham and actually it started out as a personal quest. She was worried that her father might actually have been a member of the Klan. She started digging and she's a reporter, she made notes and so on. She produced a big thick doorstopper of a book. Confesses that the editors compelled her to leave some significant fraction of it on the cutting room floor, so it would actually be readable. And there are a few references in that to the Medical Center Liberals Unitarian Church and a couple of references to the Reverend Alfred Hobart. Now, it's sort of too bad that she didn't get more of that piece of the history in because the era she was talking about in the 1950s and 60s in particular was an era when this city, this metropolitan area, was still dominated by the steel industry. And the reality is those Medical Center Liberals and some other people changed this city. In 1950, 60, 70, the steel mills were inescapable here. You smelled when you were getting close to Birmingham. Today, they're gone. The largest employer in this area is the University of Alabama at Birmingham and its Medical Center. I believe the first president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham was Joe Volcker, who was also the first president of the Unitarian Fellowship here. So, anyhow, that's some environmental history. Birmingham was founded in the 1870s. Birmingham was not here during the Civil War, so maybe it had a chance at a fresh start. Well, no, not really, because northern industry, which founded the steel mills, did not pursue enlightened social policies. They wanted to keep the unions out or weak, and so they supported fairly repressive measures. By the Civil Rights Era, the laws were absurdly strict. For example, an interracial game of checkers was illegal in Birmingham. I don't think it was a felony, probably just a misdemeanor, but it was illegal. You can imagine what else would be illegal. Certainly it was not legally or socially favorable to have a non-segregated congregation, but they did. So, it was in that context that the later Unitarian Universalist congregation was founded in 1952. Now, those of you who've been registered for the Marching in the Ark of Justice conference have material in your packet, a brief one-page history of the Birmingham Church, and the reprint of a sermon, 16 Days of Crisis for a Group of Insiders, by Larry McGinty, who was minister of this congregation in March of 1965 when the Selma events occurred. I'm not going to repeat the material that's there. You need to read that for yourselves, particularly the McGinty sermon. But there are delicious stories that aren't there. One that has achieved legendary status involves church secretary Eve Gerard. We talked about this in a workshop yesterday. What do you do when the church phone rings? And somebody tells you with some degree, probably of profanity, that he and his friends are going to come blow up your so-called church. I'm sure that Eve had gotten messages like this previously. On one occasion, I guess she'd just had it. And I've heard different wordings of her exact message. It was something to the effect, you're going to have to take a number. There are several people ahead of you. It was that kind of spirit that these people had. And Eve told me that when there were a lot of bombings here in Birmingham, Birmingham was known as bombing ham, there were so many mysterious unsolved bombings. But when there was a spate of bombings, Eve, when she got to work at the church, would do a circuit around the building just to see if there was anything strange. That's not in the usual church secretary job description. And something tied to the Selma events that we've alluded to yesterday. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of that event. Today is the 50th anniversary to the day of Bloody Sunday. But the day before Bloody Sunday on Saturday, there was a group of Alabama citizens who were permitted to march to the courthouse. They were called the concerned white citizens of Alabama. There were 72 of them. Pastor Joe L. Wanger, who was with us briefly yesterday, organized and led that group. I have heard pretty consistently that of those 72, there were 36 unitarian universalists. I didn't know we had 50% of the Alabama population. Probably we had it only in that select segment of the population. But in a real sense, I'm, as a unitarian universalist, I'm prouder of that 36 out of 72 than I am of the hundreds of us who came from somewhere else where we faced few reprisals and showed up briefly, hi, here I am to save you. Those people did something very, very brave. And at least one of them is here with us tonight. I, too, with those of you who are here, who are among those 72, stand or at least wave. All right. All right. The other fact well-addressed in Larry McGinty's sermon is that when hundreds of us from elsewhere came to Alabama, several hundred of us, at least 200, maybe 250 or 300, were housed, fed and transported by this congregation which did not have that many members on the books. They rose to the challenge and met it gloriously. Larry's sermon, it's something we need to know. Now, we're curious, do we, by any stretch of good luck, have anyone here today who was hosted back then who was among those 200 or 300? I don't think so. Ken? Okay. You stopped here for the Montgomery March. Okay. Kenneth McLean came down from Knoxville and you were hosted here. Okay. Okay. We know Ken. Well, and I think our delegate from San Antonio couldn't make it travel impeded by ice in Dallas and that's too bad because 50 years ago this hat was left with the vultures by someone from San Antonio whose name they didn't get. So, if you know San Antonio Unitarian Universalists and this looks like their hat, Virginia still has it. There are a couple of passages that I want to share just to complete giving the flavor of what things were like here. One fuller was a young woman, a student from an activist family when her high school desegregated. She did what turned out to be unpardonable for most of her classmates. She actually spoke to the black student and became almost as isolated as he was. A few years ago she wrote me in an email about the role of the church in her life. It was an oasis. Even though members, former members who attended my public school would avoid me. The only people I considered real friends came from that church. I'm not sure I would have survived emotionally if it had not been for the church. We were under siege which caused us to draw together very tightly. Almost all of my positive childhood memories are from the church. The Sunday school class was the only place I felt intellectually stimulated and emotionally supported. That's how important this church was. Some years later a church member and DRE wrote a seminary history paper about this church reflecting on the church. She said, and this is Alice Silte who is now my ministerial colleague in Huntsville. Alice wrote, there is a special strength and a profound connection among these people. From this experience was born a commitment and a loyalty that continues to sustain the church in times of crisis. The deeply rooted understanding of what it means to work for justice under physically demanding and emotionally challenging conditions continues to touch the life of the congregation, their dedication and continued support of each other in the church through the easy and the hard times serves as an example to all. So that's the congregation that we thought it might be worthwhile to recognize this evening to whom we thought we might say a collective thank you. So would current members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham stand as you were able? And could we add to that, former members who are present here tonight, will you please stand? And those who in other ways are part of this congregation, this religious community. To you, we give our thanks for being who you are and what you have been over the years. Thank you very much. And because thank yous spoken in rented space can be a little bit effervescent, we did prepare a token of what we're trying to express to you. So if the congregation's president and minister would come forward, Luna Jensen-Brusard, the Living Legacy Project and the Marching in the Ark of Justice conference, want to present this plaque to you. It reads, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham, born as issues of civil rights and basic justice, came to the fore, here and across America, came of age as it and its members and friends were among the necessary, but not always loved, justice seekers. It demonstrated its maturity and fortitude in the critical days and weeks around the events of the Selma voting rights campaign in 1965. Fed housed, transported and advised more than 200 Unitarian Universalists as they traveled to and from Selma and Montgomery. The Living Legacy Project and the Marching in the Ark of Justice conferees honor the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham for its contributions over many years in bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice. My name is Ruth Van Lillian and it is a tremendous honor for me to serve as president of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. I feel the need to say that I am standing here not as an elected president, but as someone who had to step in to the space when our dear friend Dory Fuchs became ill and then later passed away. She was our elected president and she would be so pleased to be here tonight. I wanted to first confess to you that I really have no right to be standing here because despite all this gray hair, in fact I was not born yet when this event took place. I was a gleam in my parents eye at that point. In fact, I'm a contemporary of the son of one of our folks whom you know well, Virginia Voker. My history with the Unitarian Church began with the Montessori School in the basement, which was the first integrated school in Birmingham by the way, and I was spinning around in the sanctuary doing creative dance lessons with another former member of ours, Laura Knox, after this event was part of history. But I felt that it would only be appropriate to recognize the few of our members who were members at that time and who were able to be here and sadly there are not many still with us and even fewer who were even able to attend. But I did want to recognize and I'm going to ask if they're able to stand, please. Janice Williams, Virginia Voker, Charles Cleveland, Jackie Mazzara. Is she here? No, she didn't make it. And Eileen Wahlbert was a member. We also have two children of members, Phyllis Bennington, the daughter of Bea and Fred Bennington, and Elise Pruitt-Mayer, who's the daughter of Ken Pruitt. I'm sorry, and Al Pruitt. Thank you. And I wanted to say one other thing. Please be seated. Thank you. Our wonderful minister here was living somewhere else in the world at the time. I was. I was born in Denmark, but at that point you were... I was in Baghdadi Rock. She was in Baghdadi Rock being a young married lady at that time. And so this was something distant, even if she'd heard of it. But she is a marvelous leader for our congregation and she is continuing to lead us in the tradition of fighting for civil rights. And while Alabama is being dragged kicking and screaming into the reality of letting all our citizens enjoy the privileges of being married legally, the day that it first became legal, and of course right now it's back in the courts, our minister was down there outside the city hall along with our intern minister, who was seated over there, Gail, and they were performing weddings as fast and furiously as they could. So I will end my remarks by saying there are some very tall shoulders that we are standing on. But oh wow, it is such an exciting time to be a Unitarian Universalist in Alabama. Amen. Well after that it's hard to imagine what else I can say, but there is something I want to say. Yes, we stand on tall shoulders and yes I did hear about the civil rights movement, even in Baghdad. And I come of course from a whole different place and our prejudices were entirely different. I'm still somewhere in the U.S. listed as an other because I had no idea what to write down when they asked me what race I was. And I knew Calcasas Mountains were in Russia, so surely I better not put that down, right? So I was left with other. It has never made sense to me for us to be separate from one another. By color, by creed, by nationality, by strange accents. It never made sense and it still doesn't. I do want to say though that Selma has to be more than a memory. It cannot just remain a memory, as wonderful as it is and as important it is to remember. We have to make the difference today, here and now. And not in the past. Yes. And so let's do it. That's the voting him spirit.