Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead
28 Mugford Street Marblehead, MA 01945
The Marblehead Racial Justice Team
Invites you to the
Agnis Burial Stone
Re-dedication Old Burial Hill this Sunday, September 25 at 1:00pm
Agnis was an enslaved woman who lived and died in Marblehead. The Marblehead Racial Justice Team will host a re-dedication of her burial stone in Old Burial Hill on Sunday, September 25 at 1:00 pm. Episcopal Bishop Gail E. Harris will preside. Don Doliber, Town Historian, will also provide remarks.
Pastor Isaac Garrigues-Cortelyou of St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church will lead the singing of “Agnes’s Song: Let the Sun Begin to Shine.” The original lyric set to the African American Spiritual “My Lord What a Morning” was written by Marblehead Racial Justice Team member Dr. Cheryl Boots.
Racism and White Privilege
The Social Action Committee has been working in the area of Racism and White Supremacy for many years.
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Using the Meetinghouse Lecture series we will present on the housing situation in Marblehead.
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Recently: On February Sundays 2021, as part of our Meetinghouse Series, we showed the PBS 4 part film Series by Henry Louis Gates Jr. called Reconstruction: America After the After the Civil War. All sessions were broadcast via Zoom to the town and were followed by discussion. Ninety people registered for the series.
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The Meetinghouse Series Event ”Between the Bars” in the Fall of 2016 focused on the over-incarceration of black and brown people. We have since joined forces with ECCO to make our voices heard at the State House on issues of prison reform, policing and prosecutorial conduct.
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Several members of our church community are involved in the Marblehead Racial Justice Team and were responsible for several events including a town wide showing of the documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North wherein filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide. The Team also showed Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible with conversation facilitated by Rev. Wendy and Nikki Moore. The Team also coordinated an event where Debby Irving, author of Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race made a presentation at Marblehead High School. Currently the MRJT has a newsletter describing events, meetings, etc. in September, 2022. Click Here to see it.
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On the weekend of May 4-6 2018 the Committee invited Christopher D. Sims, poet, activist, and lay minister to speak to the community about the importance of supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. It had been decided by the Social Action Committee that we should display a Black Lives Matter banner on our church. The church's Board of Trustees invited feedback and discussion within the church community and ultimately a congregational meeting voted to display the banner. On the 6th, the banner was dedicated with participation from Rev. Andre Bennett from Zion Baptist Church in Lynn, Rev. Ross Johnson of the Marblehead Methodist Church, Fuwaz Abusharckh of the Islamic Society of Salem, in addition to Rev. Wendy and Nikki Moore. Many members of the Essex County Community Organization attended. Afterwards Christopher D. Sims led us in a conversation about the meanings, public and private, of displaying the banner on our church.This event was the culmination of a great many efforts on the part of Committee and the Marblehead Racial Justice Team members to address the issue of racism, here in town, at the high school and in the state. Sad to say, the banner has been repeatedly stolen and vandalized, but UUCM continues to display it and cooperated with police to find the culprit.
Three members of the Committee lead monthly discussions about race at the library or on Zoom, which continue to be well attended.