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The Massachusetts Conference Edition of the United Church News is published 10 times a year by the Massachusetts Conference, United Church of Christ.
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Editor:
Tiffany Vail
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Conference to host Amistad’s visit to Boston
January-February,
2003 The Massachusetts Conference will be the chief sponsor of the Freedom Schooner Amistad’s visit to Boston Harbor in October. The visit is likely to be a major event in the life of the Conference, offering a chance to educate the public and church members about the Amistad Incident of 1839, an important part of the heritage of the United Church of Christ. The Amistad, which acts as a floating civil rights museum and classroom, has attracted as many as 22,000 visitors in large cities such as Baltimore. During port visits, the schooner is open for tours, school trips, excursions and corporate events. It is expected to be docked in Boston Harbor October 15–21 [Ed. note: Dates extended to Oct. 14-26]. “This is a wonderful opportunity to bring the UCC into greater prominence in Massachusetts, and to raise awareness and foster discussion about overcoming racism in the Commonwealth,” said Nancy Taylor, Conference Minister and President. The Amistad is a recreation of the ship La Amistad, a cargo vessel on which 53 Africans, who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, mutinied and seized the ship. They attempted to sail home but were captured, jailed in Connecticut and put on trial for charges of mutiny and murder. Abolitionists from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York – many of them Congregationalists – took up the Africans’ case and defended them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they won their freedom in 1841. A group of those abolitionists went on to form the American Missionary Association, which founded hundreds of schools and colleges for blacks in the south. The AMA later became a part of the former United Church of Christ Board for Homeland Ministries. The Freedom Schooner Amistad was launched from Mystic Seaport in 2000. It is operated by the non-profit organization AMISTAD America, Inc. The United Church of Christ was a major sponsor in the construction of the Amistad. Two committees are being formed to coordinate the activities and events that will surround the visit: a main Host Committee and an internal Conference committee. The Host Committee will be preparing for and organizing the visit and associated events, and will be in charge of scheduling, corporate fundraising and distribution of the Voices of Freedom curriculum to public, private and parochial schools. Two UCC members, Beverly Morgan-Welch, the Executive Director of The Museum of Afro-American History in Boston, and Richard Harter, a partner in the Boston law firm of Bingham Dana LLP, have agreed to serve as co-chairs of that committee. Morgan-Welch said she was thrilled to take on the project. “This will be quite an important opportunity for the church to be engaged in the secular world,” she said. “We need to embrace this American history. We’ve got to know who we are and where we’ve been. It is important for people to understand how people then incorporated their religious beliefs into their actions and convictions, while it’s also important to understand the separation of politics and government and the church.” Morgan-Welch said she was confident that city and state
leaders would welcome the Amistad. Harter has long been active in the UCC. He served for 12 years on the former UCC Board for Homeland Ministries, including four years as president, and was also vice moderator of the last General Synod. At the Conference setting, he co-chaired The Gift and The Promise Campaign and is active in the Just Peace Players. Harter said the Amistad visit will be an opportunity for people in Boston to focus on race relations in a productive, honest way. And, he said, It is a chance for Conference members to do the same. “The Conference has so many good things about it,
but it is pretty white,” he said. “It’s possible
for people
to
live in
Boxford
or Ware for weeks
on end without dealing with racial issues. The
Conference needs some way to elevate our consciousness.” “A lot of the good things that happened were done by New England Congregationalists. We can own that with some pride,” he said. “We should also be thinking about it in terms of ‘okay, that’s what they did – what are we going to do today.’” The internal Conference committee will be chaired by Peter Southwell-Sander, a member of Grace Congregational Church UCC in Framingham. That committee has the goal of raising $50,000 to cover the berthing costs of the Amistad. The committee will also work to inform churches about the visit and to organize at least one major Conference event to coincide with the it. “We will be communicating with the churches about the opportunities this presents to discuss justice and race issues. We will make them aware of the curriculum, which can be used in the churches,” Southwell-Sander said. “And we’ll be talking about the opportunity for churches to send groups to visit the ship – to have children, teenagers and adults learn the history together.” > Return to United Church News front page> Return to Massachusetts Conference home page |
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