Eugene Navias, consultant from the UUA Department of Education, visited the Jackson, Mississippi, fellowship on April 23–24, 1964. In his report about the visit, he wrote,

The consultant arrived in Jackson on the morning after a night of great decision in the life of the Fellowship. It would be easy for those of us who live far away to regard the debate here as a minor one, but to this small group of liberals in Mississippi, it was of paramount importance.
On Easter Sunday, the Fellowship was astonished when a woman Negro college student signed the Membership Book. The fact that she had never visited the Fellowship previously and was not known by a single person in the group complicated the feelings of the membership. It is to be noted that the Fellowship has had Negro visitors for a long time. Now, however, the group reacted with understandable fear. It is no exaggeration of the facts of life in Jackson to say that having admitted a Negro to membership could plunge this group into a reign of terror involving the loss of jobs, economic and social pressures, and even the loss of life.
The police, the Citizens Council and the State of Mississippi have infinite means of maintaining segregation. At the membership meeting, with the Negro member present, the group aired its fears and ideals and rose to the challenge in voting that membership be open, that such be stated openly, and that the membership book be kept out in the open. It is to be noted that the Negro member has attended regularly since joining and seems sincere in her choice of this church. It would also appear, however, that as an active member of CORE, she was making a test case.


On the evening of August 23, 1965, after a church board meeting, Don Thompson drove Johnny Frazier home. Frazier, a Black college student, had become an active member of the congregation and hoped in September to begin seminary studies in preparation for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. After dropping off Frazier, Thompson drove to the apartment building in which both the Thompsons and Roland Toms lived. As he walked toward the back door of the building, a car pulled into the parking lot, and two shots were fired at him. Thompson was not a small man; although of average height or less, he weighed well over two hundred pounds. The first shot missed him completely. The second shot hit his left shoulder with buckshot and probably would have been lethal had he been significantly thinner. He suffered at least two broken bones and considerable trauma to various body parts, but he survived and slowly recovered strength.


In 1960, a federal court order began school desegregation. The New Orleans and Baton Rouge congregations placed newspaper ads advocating keeping the schools open (in opposition to legislative efforts to close the schools rather than desegregate). When the schools did minimally desegregate, members of the New Orleans church helped with driving White students to school in the face of hostile mobs. And the church appealed to Unitarians far and wide to help set up a special fund to aid integration efforts.
These special funds, sometimes doled out in small amounts, helped a variety of people. One White Methodist minister and his wife who kept their daughter in school were driven out of their parsonage for doing so; and Unitarian money helped with several months’ rent for alternative housing. Other White families sticking with the public schools were also aided. The church disbursed $115.75 to house Freedom Riders before they boarded buses or trains north through Mississippi. Attorney Bill Higgs of the Jackson, Mississippi, congregation received aid when he was forced to leave that state. Some of the legal expenses while desegregating Tulane University were covered. The fund also paid for some of attorney Ben Smith’s legal expenses while taking on Mississippi civil rights cases.

Gordon Gibson has a light hand, and lets history speak to us in this rich and necessary resource. Although he clearly spent more than a decade clambering through old boxes and abandoned files, his work reads like a series of conversations with old friends. He has given us primary resources—the oral histories of many Unitarian Universalists in the south of the 1950s and 60s—but he has also created an impeccably researched history of every congregation involved in the struggle for civil rights. It is compellingly readable, and will certainly be the go-to resource for future work. His introductory and concluding chapters are interpretive, and Gibson’s clear moral and humane center shines through. He is sensitive to context and awake to the contributions of all.
—Rev. Andrea Greenwood

In the 1950s and 1960s, no part of the country challenged liberal religious values more than the South. Gordon Gibson gives remarkable examples of conflict and courage as religious liberals confronted race hatred in their own communities. This is a landmark study of Unitarian Universalism all over the South, as each city evokes diverse stories of practical applications of a lived faith, sometimes fearless and sometimes fearful.
—Rev. Mark Harris, author of Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalist History

Gibson asserts that while one can write the history of the civil rights movement without mentioning Unitarian Universalism one cannot exclude the individuals who were Unitarian Universalists and give a full account. During that era it took courage to be a UU in the South. This book captures the heroism, trepidation, and wavering of congregations and people committed to live out liberal religious values in a ferociously inhospitable climate.
—Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, author of The Selma Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian Universalism