IT MATTERS WHAT WE BELIEVE
Rev. John T. Crestwell Jr.
December 6, 2008
It truly matters what we believe. Some of the things we hold construct, while others tear-down. Some of the things we accept allow us to be hopeful, while many other things we believe cause fear and doubt. Some of the things we believe help us to do more than we ever thought we could or to bear a heavy burden, while other beliefs castrate our sense of dignity and purpose, or push us to give up way to soon on something we want. Yes, it matters what we believe…
BEYOND BLACK & WHITE
Rev. John T. Crestwell, Jr.
http://dmuuc.libsyn.com
This reading I’m going to share are the words of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper— Unitarian, abolitionist, feminist, poet, author—just an amazing African American women in the 1800s. This reading is from her speech titled, “We Are All Bound up Together,” given before the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention held in New York in 1866.
“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the Negro. You pressed him down for two centuries; and in so doing you crippled the moral strength and paralyzed the spiritual energies of the white men of the country. When the hands of the black were fettered, white men were deprived of the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press. Society cannot afford to neglect the enlightenment of any class of its members. At the South, the legislation of the country was in behalf of the rich slaveholders, while the poor white man was neglected. What is the consequence today? From that very class of neglected poor white men, comes the man who stands today with his hand upon the helm of the nation. He fails to catch the watchword of the hour, and throws himself, the incarnation of meanness, across the pathway of the nation. My objection to [President] Andrew Johnson is not that he has been a poor white man; my objection is that he keeps “poor WHITS” all the way through. That is the trouble with him… The grand and glorious revolution which has commenced, will fail to reach its climax of success, until throughout the length and breadth of the American Republic, the nation shall be so color-blind, as to know no man by the color of his skin or the curl of his hair. It will then have no privileged class, trampling upon and outraging the unprivileged classes, but will be then one great privileged nation, whose privilege will be to produce the loftiest manhood and womanhood that humanity can attain.
