Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

 

 

March 7, 2004

  

 

“Mary White Ovington and Adlai Stevenson II:

20^th Century Unitarians”

 

 

Rev. Kathy Duhon

 

 

Witness: “Same Sex Marriage”

 

 

            This past Tuesday I cancelled an adult religious education class so that some of us could go hear the PFLAG speaker on “Marriage:  What Now?” and bring our UU support of ‘civil marriage for everyone’ to that event.  I brought back some of the great literature they had, which is available after service.  Bill Conley did a really good job of explaining the process that has happened so far in furthering the rights of same sex couples in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  He helped us to see the difference between civil union and marriage in terms of rights:  marriage having more rights and being better understood – the marriage word is “magic” he said.  Even before rights are fully granted, in all kinds of private encounters, privileges will be extended to married same sex couples because of the clarity of their situation.  You see, as of mid-May, about 350 protections, rights and responsibilities will be obtained by married same sex couples from the state, but over 1000 such rights at the federal level, including especially the ones about seniors, will not be available because of the Defense of Marriage Act of a few years back, and other laws.  He explained how the next step will probably take a while – it took 19 years from the legalizing of inter-racial marriages in California courts until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the final anti-miscegenation laws and allowed people of different races to marry – but when same sex marriage becomes guaranteed here, we can go ahead with plenty of small and large challenges to bring marriage rights to everyone.

            Unitarian Universalists have officially supported same sex holy unions since 1984, and same sex marriage since 1996 through resolutions at our General Assemblies and the actions of our congregations and members.   We’ve been officiating same sex holy unions even longer, and our first resolutions supporting full equality for homosexuals go back to 1970.

            Religion asks us to stand up for high moral values, no matter what popular opinion says, no matter what feels socially acceptable.  Societies can find it popular or acceptable to do all kinds of evil, but religion reminds us of our ideals.

            And yet, religions often do not agree.  In the current issue of same sex marriage, the value we must stand up for is not whether or not religiously it is deemed good for couples of the same sex to marry.  Some religions believe this is not good, and we can respect that, and even within Unitarian Universalism there may be some who do not believe that same sex marriage is good, though most of us believe that marriage is a sacred union that is entered into covenantally by any two people, whatever their gender or sexuality.  If no harm is done, then religious beliefs are generally honored in our society, for the religious ideal of acceptance of others and their beliefs is very important.

What Unitarian Universalists are advocating for is not that everyone accept the sacred institution of marriage for same sex couples, but that everyone allow for civil marriage to guarantee the rights, privileges and responsibilities to same sex couples that heterosexual couples are afforded.  We ask people to honor the religious beliefs of the same sex couples who make the sacred commitment of marriage in our religion and in other religions, and to extend them equal rights.

At the Bill Conley talk, two of our state representatives were present, Republican Shaun Kelly from Dalton and Democrat Smitty Pignatelli from Lenox.  Both had supported gay marriage and voted against constitutional amendments that try to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.  Rep. Kelly had made an impassioned speech at the State House about his colleague, a representative who is a lesbian mother and is being treated as a second class citizen – he declared that this was not right.  At our meeting, he spoke eloquently in defense of the oldest constitution in the world – our Massachusetts Constitution – a “sacred” document, as he called it.

Rep. Pignatelli had been somewhat in favor of the constitutional amendment until the last minute – he changed his mind on the day of the vote.  Jon, Marion and I all spoke directly to him on the phone, (maybe some of the rest of you did too), just before the vote, and he hadn’t changed his mind yet then.  On Tuesday, he said he listened, and was won over in the end to understanding the importance of guaranteeing the same rights to everyone.  It was so gratifying to know that lobbying can work.  He said, “shame on us” for not doing this already, and for taking time away from important matters before the legislature on health, education, etc., to try to rescind what the Supreme Judicial Court has made clear.  Bill Conley said, “It’s tough once you’ve been granted full equality to give it up.”  

Whatever you believe about marriage, I hope that everyone can stand courageously for the ideals of acceptance, equality, and religious freedom, supporting the right of civil marriage.

 

“Mary White Ovington and Adlai Stevenson II:  20^th Century Unitarians”

Today is the third and last in my monthly series of Unitarian Universalist history sermons, in which we have been examining the religious themes of a time period through the fascinating lives of a couple of notable people from our tradition.  In January we looked at early Unitarianism with Michael Servetus and Jan Hus, in February at 19^th century Unitarian and Universalism with Theodore Parker and Clara Barton, and now we will probe the 20^th century a bit with Mary White Ovington and Adlai Stevenson II.

I’m excited to have a chance to speak about Mary White Ovington because I feel such a personal connection with her.  I bet you will too.  Although she was born in Brooklyn in 1865, and mostly lived in New York, she spent part of her years in Alford and was a good friend of our native son, W.E.B. DuBois.  My other connections are that we went to the same college, and that she was a socialist at the same time as my Grandfather, in the early 20^th century, so I imagine that they either knew each other or knew of each other.  And of course, I feel connected to her because she was a Unitarian who made a difference in our world. 

She grew up in the Second Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, which had been a leader in the Abolitionist movement.  Her biographer, Carolyn Wedin, claims that the Unitarian Church taught her to think and to question.  Her minister and her parents supported women’s rights and social reform, and she went even further in her quest for equality. 

After college, she got involved in the settlement house movement, which I’ve discussed in the past regarding another famous Unitarian, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams.  Jane had started Hull House, a settlement where everything from a public swimming pool to college extension classes to day care was part of the urban housing complex.  Mary helped to found a settlement house in Brooklyn, where she stayed for about 10 years.  She said of her friend Jane Addams, “I … have never forgotten her piece of advice to me: ‘If you want to be surrounded by second-rate ability, you will dominate your settlement. If you want the best ability, you must allow great liberty of action among your residents.’”  Mary continued, “perhaps few people realize the incalculable good she has done in helping others to enlarge and glorify their own work. Many people can build their fortune by using others. Few can encourage ability without dominating it.”  They say this is true of Mary White Ovington as well.  She was a quiet presence in the background, bringing folks together to do tremendous work.

Mary Ovington was vice president of the National Consumers League, Brooklyn chapter, which was working to eliminate child labor and urban sweatshops through legislation and education.  She went to hear Frederick Douglass speak in 1890 and it changed her life.  She wrote in 1932, “I had never seen Frederick Douglass before and I was never to see him again, but that night was to me a great event. I had come face to face with one of my heroes. He was one of the great group of men and women who had risked all for freedom.”

Mary then began her studies of the situation of the American Negro and wrote about it, especially the problems with housing and employment. She met W.E.B. DuBois in Manhattan, who was interested in the same issues.  They became great friends, and he looked to her as an advisor.  Through him, she came into contact with many African American social reformers who were part of the Niagara Movement, an organization led by W.E.B. DuBois from 1905-10, which called for full political, civil, and social rights for black Americans.  She was one of the only whites.

In 1908, the Cosmopolitan Club held an inter-racial dinner in a restaurant, something Mary White Ovington suggested and attended, which created quite an uproar.  Editorials around the country blasted this event, finding it abhorrent and alarming, words we hear these days about same sex marriage.  The St. Louis Dispatch wrote, “This miscegenation dinner was loathsome enough to consign the whole fraternity of perverts who participated in it to undying infamy.”  The Savannah News was more specific, “Worst of all the high priestess, Miss Ovington, whose father is rich and who affiliates five days in every week with Negro men and dines with them at her home in Brooklyn on Sunday. She could have had a hundred thousand Negroes at the Bacchanal feast had she waved the bread tray. But the horror of it is she could take white girls into the den. This is the feature that should alarm and arouse Northern society.”

            Mary Ovington joined the Socialist Party in 1905, and began writing about the problems of class, as well as race.  She read an article entitled “Race War in the North” by William Walling, and she contacted him and they met and spoke of the challenge.  Soon after, they and others came together in 1909, including W.E.B. DuBois and Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes, to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the N.A.A.C.P.

            Her biographer, Carolyn Wedin, wrote, “… I will tell you after so very many years of ‘living’ with this remarkable woman through researching and writing her biography (Inheritors of the Spirit: Mary White Ovington and the Founding of the NAACP), I believe that not only was Mary White Ovington THE founder of the NAACP in 1909, but that she almost single-handedly pulled in and kept together the radicals, the socialists, the journalists, the writers, the newspaper owners, the Blacks and the Whites, the Jews and Unitarians into the 20th century cause of justice, freedom, and sanctuary from lynching of Black Americans.”

In 1910, Mary White Ovington became the first Executive Secretary of the NAACP.  She was white, and Black leaders soon followed.  She served as chair of the Board from 1919 to 1932.  The NAACP fought legal battles against segregation and won 3 important Supreme Court cases about voting rights and housing between 1915 and 1923.  Mary fundraised for the NAACP and remained an officer and a board member until she retired in 1947, at age 82! 

For many years, whenever she herself, or a fellow worker was getting too stressed, they went to her home in Alford, to Riverbank, for a rest in the Berkshires.  James Weldon Johnson liked his visits so much that he bought a home in Great Barrington too.  He is the one who wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.  She also brought the African American women students, whose education she sponsored at Smith, to come for a break to Riverbank.  By the way, local historian Bernie Drew notes that all these interracial activities in Alford did not seem to bother her neighbors, but she was well accepted, and for a time became president of the Alford Garden Club.

She was a pacifist during World War I.  Toward the end of the suffrage movement, she advocated strongly for African American women to be included in the leadership.  She wrote several books and articles, including the important history of the NAACP, called The Walls Come Tumbling Down.  The NAACP board gave Mary the honor of being called “Mother of the New Emancipation.”  After such a full life, she died in 1951.

Adlai Stevenson II was younger than Mary White Ovington – he lived from 1900 to 1965.  He is better known than she because of his political career.  In his first bid for public office, he was overwhelmingly elected governor of Illinois, and served from 1949-1953.  Adlai Stevenson reorganized the state police, cracked down on illegal gambling and improved state highways – he was a good civic statesman.  Adlai was drafted to run for President in ’52 and ran again in ’56, being defeated both times by the even more popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  President Kennedy appointed him ambassador to the U.N., which was very appropriate, since he had been an advisor at the original conference which founded the United Nations after World War II. 

You might have realized that Adlai Stevenson II’s grandfather was Adlai Stevenson I and served as Vice President of the United States from 1893 – 1897 under President Grover Cleveland, but I bet you didn’t know that his cousin was McLean Stevenson, who acted in the role of Colonel Henry Blake on the T.V. show “MASH”.  Quite the family.

Adlai Stevenson advocated supporting the economies of Africa and Asia and halting the arms race.  He said, “Making peace is harder than making war.”  He played a critical role at the U.N. during the Cuban Missile Crisis, showing the aerial photography of weapon sites, similar to what Colin Powell did a year ago.  In a famous meeting at the Security Council, Adlai Stevenson demanded that the Soviet Ambassador Zorin admit to placing offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba, and famously declared he was prepared to wait “until Hell freezes over” for Zorin’s answer.  I don’t know what sounds less Unitarian, a reference to Hell, or the absolute forcefulness of his diplomacy, but Stevenson’s actions did help to prevent war by showing factual evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Adlai Stevenson said, “We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy—for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals—than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.”  While he was at the UN during the early Johnson administration, in late 1964 and 1965, Adlai met with U.N. Secretary General U Thant to discuss negotiating an end to the war in Vietnam, but Johnson disagreed with that approach.  U Thant had this to say about Ambassador Adlai Stevenson:  “he stood as the embodiment of dedication to the principles of the United Nations.  His many speeches, which expressed so well his whole mental and intellectual approach, in the championship of fundamental rights, in defence of the dignity and worth of the human person, in support of the equal rights of nations large and small, were cheered and applauded by all sides of the house.  He not only spoke with a rare gift of phrase, but with such an obvious sincerity that his words carried conviction.”

Adlai Stevenson was a principled man, but he admitted, “It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”  But he was quite respected for his honesty and decency, and he was very popular too. 

His popularity had to do in part with the fact that Adlai Stevenson was an excellent speaker.  In 1956 when he was campaigning for president, a woman called out to him, “You have the vote of every thinking person!”  He answered her, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

Adlai Stevenson believed in our democracy.  He found his ideas to be unpopular at times, but he said, “A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.”  He spoke about the importance of sacrifice and said, “There are no gains without pains."

One final Adlai Stevenson quote, one that sounds like wisdom for today:  “What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times?  I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”  Adlai Stevenson gave a lifetime of dedication to this country.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Mary White Ovington’s life was filled with struggles for equality – women’s rights, suffrage, desegregation, and anti-racism work.  She stayed behind the scenes, building up and sustaining important organizations, especially the NAACP.  Adlai Stevenson II was up front, beginning his public life not long before Mary Ovington was winding hers down.  As we moved beyond the precipice of World War II and the dawn of the nuclear age, Adlai stood before the people of this country and the world and spoke eloquently for peace, diplomacy, responsibility, sacrifice, and disarmament.  They both drew religious inspiration from their Unitarian churches.  Their fellow 20^th century Unitarians were also working hard for equality and for peace, both in the background and in the forefront of the social movements of the time.  A great band of witnesses has come before us, and we do not so much follow them, as pick up the banner where they left off, and move forward for equality and peace and justice in whatever way we are called.  Amen.