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In the early years of CCI, when salary was minimal, I sought income in other places. For twenty years I taught part-time at the Andover Newton Theological School, assisting in the Church and Ministry Department, teaching a course on Church Adminis-
tration. Some of the students knew of my work at Community Change, and when they were in a course on the Abolition Movement, they asked me to meet with their class to talk about the Abolition Movement. I declined because I knew nothing of that history; they insisted. We agreed that they would talk about the Abolition period, and I was to reflect on my work against racism today. After a session with that class, they astounded me, proclaiming that I was an “Abolitionist”! The Professor, Earl Thompson, then gave me the opportunity to co-teach with him for two semesters. I was launched into a study of history that was new and exciting.

There was still that need to “understand the history in which we were trapped”. Where did racism come from? What are the seeds of its origin? How did we get into this mess? Came a week-end workshop with faculty and students at Boston College, and then the invitation to teach. Thus began, in 1980, the semester-long course, The History and Development of Racism in the USA. I was launched into a new career as an untrained historian. Understanding history as the context of our present condition became an extension of the “dis-ease”. A beginning recognition of decades of deferred dreams which threatened to break the wings by which we might fly through and above the storm. The spirits of Baldwin and Hughes pushed me further into the past and beckoned me to a new future.

Understanding the history of racism in the United States is a kind of “flying goal”, an ever-engaging process of “Sankofa”, looking back to find guidance for the forward look. In 2006 I left that course, having seen 2197 students engaged with the History and Development of Racism in the United States. Each completed fifteen weeks of reading, discussing, researching, engaging in sometimes painful discussion, discovering the depth and breadth of the institutionalized, politicized racism endemic in a “dis-eased” culture. For about half of those years at B.C., Paul Marcus, friend, colleague, from Community Change joined with me in teaching. A gifted teacher, Paul has provided many students and me with what he likes to call a new “lens” for viewing our world. The primary teachers have been the students; listening to, watching, observing their growth, has nurtured my understanding and hope. About one-third of those students have been students of color, a number which far eclipses the proportion of white/color enrolled at B.C. It continues to be a remarkable experience, revealing for me what Baldwin means, what Bell means, why I, like Eliot’s Magi, am “no longer at ease here” in the old dispensations, by which this racist system regulates human affairs.

We continued with suburban efforts wherever we could during those years, and were involved with local groups such as the Dorchester Task Force, a South Shore Coalition, the South County Coalition in Rhode Island, and others. At the same time there was an emphasis on working with people in the places where they were employed.

The CCI office and library gradually became a meeting place, and as our rooms grew in size, the frequency of groups and individuals using them also expanded. Don West, a local black community photographer, was, I think, the first to call our library meeting space an “oasis” or “watering hole” in the desert of racism. A Puerto Rican man, emerging as a community leader, said he just liked to come by the office to regain perspective and hope. Increasingly the library became a lively facility for creating community. In later years, when staff from the Library Science Department of Simmons College gave assistance to improve our library, they shared the concept of “library” which was expanding nationally, to include much more than a resource bank of information. The way we thought about our library space fit neatly into that new idea.

The library remained also the place for books, and increasingly there came a period when I found myself turning to the shelves to find inspiration in the great Langston Hughes. His “dream deferred” joined Baldwin’s insistence that whites must understand the history in which he claims we are trapped. How long has the dream been
deferred? Who has deferred the dream? How has the dream been deferred? How can we hold fast to the dream? History plagued for attention. It became urgent to find ways to make the resources of the library more readily available, to assist understanding, commitment, and community.

A big boost for the library came in 1980. Aided by a lively committee of librarians, teachers, and community folk, they installed new methods of catalouging of resources, including video tapes, books, and written records. A few years later, additional help came from the Library Science Department at Simmons College, and today the on-line catalogue is appropriately “user-friendly”. The library became the Yvonne Pappenheim Library, named for the one, who in the process of its growth, has become one of the greatest of CCI supporters and “inspiriters”.

Perhaps I was beginning to understand the practical meaning of the Niebuhrian distinctions between moral individuals and immoral institutions in society. There were many instances that brought that theological understanding “home”. One early lesson came as I was introduced to Herb Lyken, a gifted black man, who, when I first knew him was working at a downtown Boston office, I believe John Hancock. It was a period when institutions openly “bragged” about men like Herb, splashing across the news his picture, pointing with public presence to the advances of the company, proud that they employed such an able black man! At some point I had a brief consulting relationship to an administrator at the Harvard Business School, and I introduced Herb to that friend. The leaders at the school loved Herb! So much so that they offered him a job! I was unaware of his vocational move to Harvard, phoned his old job number, and was told how to contact him at “THE ‘B’ SCHOOL”. I phoned Herb, and he invited me out to see his new office and him in his new position, which included recruiting blacks for the school. I asked for directions to his office on the campus. Herb said: “You won’t have any trouble finding me. They’ve got me on display prominently inside the main office entrance”. Even with that ‘warning” I was still astounded when I walked into the building, and there he was in complete visibility, in an office which was practically glass-enclosed, where it was almost impossible for anyone entering the building to miss him! It was Harvard’s way of announcing to the world that it was clearly not racist, nor complicit with racism …The school might just as well have hung a big sign saying, “see who we have”!!!!! That was an early lesson in “tokenism” and institutional “display”, devoid of real meaning. (By the way, the “B” School never invited ME back.)

Work in colleges began in earnest in 1979, when we were invited to conduct workshops at Brown University. Two years later, several people at Brown, led by Theatre Arts Professor, Barbara Tannenbaum, and Darryl Smaw, University Chaplain. Together with a few others, in college leadership positions, we joined to create SOAR, the Society Organized Against Racism in Higher Education. The opening was exciting, with support from its President, Brown University hosted the event; combined choral groups at Brown presented the first performance of a specially written work built on Langston Hughes’ image: a “broken-winged bird cannot fly”.

SOAR was a good idea, but never lived up to my expectations. I learned from that experience that since SOAR was administered by campus personnel, the vigorous pursuit of racism depended on the willingness of the administrators to take risks. Administrators paid by the college were not often able/willing to do the necessary challenging. When students organize and begin to significantly challenge, the university has learned ways to divert attention, delay action, and wait for the students to graduate.

An example of how students can be ignored/dismissed came for me when I was invited to speak on a panel of “founders” at an anniversary of SOAR held at Dartmouth College. There was a noticeable lack of students present, and when I called attention to that in my talk, I was informed by the administrator-organizer of the program, that the lack of students was due to the fact that it was a vacation week on most campuses. I wondered aloud why the people who organized the conference planned a date when they knew most students would not be available?. My comment gave rise to an expected defensive reaction. It was the last time I was invited to a SOAR event!

One of the interesting innovations which came during this period was a result of an intention to elevate the significant role which every person plays in the struggle for racial justice. We wanted to say clearly that the work of the struggle was not only for people in positions of influence, but it was for everyone. We began to have gatherings which we called “People Meetings”, with no designated leader/s or speaker/s. The process sought statements from people that they would be coming to the meeting. Then we published the list, inviting others to come to the “People Meeting” to meet, greet, and join purpose with the others. These meetings were successful in bringing a hundred or more people together, for the several times that we held them. In the “”People Meetings” was the seed-bed of our later Drylongso Awards.

The work with people in places of employment led to a need to find some way of identifying how the employing institutions themselves might be places where racism was actually implemented through policies, procedures, and practices. Building on an “Inventory of Racism” which had been published earlier by Knowles & Prewitt, we developed a process of engaging people in what we called an “Audit” of institutional racism. One of the difficulties in getting organizations to engage in the “Audit”, was an inherent perceived assumption that there was or might be a verdict that there were institutional practices which needed to change. Only in organizations where leadership was willing to accept that possibility, was it likely that we would be invited to work. With that limitation built-in, we were successful in engaging a number of private and public agencies in the “Audit” process, including several church denominations. The learnings about how institutions function, which had been growing in previous years, were expanded during the “Audits”.

The agenda of society also needed to be addressed, and the presence of racism in the criminal justice system became blatant with the case surrounding the arrest of Willie Sanders. After a series of rapes in the Brighton section of Boston, under extreme public pressure, and while a large public meeting was in process, the Boston police arrested Willie, a black man who was a painter in a building of the area, and he became the accused.

Friend Max Stern defended Willie, and CCI became an active component of a coalition convinced of his innocence. Four cases brought against Willie ended in two acquittals, one in which the D.A. dropped the charges, and one in which the case was dismissed by the court. The one case dropped by the D.A. was clearly no case at all; the one dismissed by the court was the one in which the tape of the lineup in which a rape victim identified Willie, included the words of a police officer pointing to Willie, and saying to the viewer, “that’s the painter”! Watching those trials closely was an education in how corrupt a system can become even though it is created to administer justice. Never again could I sit “at ease” when confronting “justice”.

One result of the Sanders case was to propel us into the work of the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty, the oldest single-issue, anti-death penalty organization in the nation, with roots in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Active on the Board of MCADP for over twenty years, now I want to give more and more time to local anti-death penalty organizing. Death is the ultimate penalty, and the administration of the death penalty is the place to see how the disparate discriminatory treatment of people of color is the ultimate instance of systemic racism.

What I sometimes call the “criminal system of justice” has been a major focus of the work of Community Change. One lesson from that work is worth citing. During a period in Massachusetts when John Boone, a black man, was Commissioner of Corrections, there was strong resistance to his administration among prison guards, overwhelmingly white. Tensions within the prison at Walpole were close to a breaking point. Ash Eames and I, from CCI, joined a group of Citizen Observers, allowed to be in the prison to watch and write reports on what was happening, those reports going to the Commissioner’s office. Because my work days were filled, I went to the prison for several all-night shifts. It was there that I heard an important lesson from a uniformed guardsman.

The guard was known to me only as “Big Jim”; his physical presence was a testimony to the name. Most of the guards did not appreciate our presence, and made that very clear. “Big Jim” seemed ready to talk. One night I was in conversation with him , as we walked the cold, bleak halls of the prison. “Big Jim” spoke about the prisoners. He said that there were about ten percent of the men in that prison who probably should be isolated from society. The others, he said, need help which he could not give them. They need doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and “Big Jim” knew he had no skills in any of those fields. The plea from “Big Jim” was really for an approach to incarceration which would emphasize “corrections” rather than punishment. That was truth, out of the heart of an experienced prison guard!

One of the efforts to improve the “justice” system came as we joined with the Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, and other community groups. That group was concerned with how released prisoners were received once they returned to the community. As they try to build new lives the needs are immense, and the receiving communities are poorly equipped to serve those needs. We organized a couple of community meetings in the Roxbury area, but found ourselves facing a major obstacle.
Outside of the few who were eager to work with us, the concern of the greater part of the population was simply for “safe streets”, too often translated into “get ‘em off the streets!” Since those early efforts, much wiser, and more community-based efforts have shown at least modest success, still in the face of a system which is too much committed to punishment.

In January, 1979, the CCI office moved from Reading to Boston, where we were provided a small office in the rooms of the Black Ecumenical Commission, 14 Beacon Street. That space was offered by Erna Ballantine (now Bryant), then the Director of the Black Ecumenical Commision, and a CCI Board member. While the suburbs were not abandoned, there was a clear change in focus, centered on organizing with people where they worked rather than where they lived. Many of those suburban people worked in Boston, and that is where we needed to be.

Before we left Reading, one of the most moving events of my life took place when two Maryknoll nuns came out from Boston to visit. There had been no contact with them until they phoned and said they wanted to meet with me. The day was a pleasant day, and the three of us sat on the front church lawn, ate our bag lunches, and shared our dreams about peace and justice. The sharing of bread and drink was quite like communion for me, with two of the most lovable and beautiful people. Before they left to return to their Boston base, we agreed that when they came back from a mission to El Salvador, we wanted to work more together. Those two women were Ita Ford and Maura Clarke. Not long after that, I, and much of the world read of their brutal rape and murder in El Salvador. Their pictures remain prominent in my living room, and the spirit they brought to me will always inspire my longing for the peace the world did not give them.

History was like a dog yapping at my heals, insisting on attention. Some of the great white leaders of the Abolition Movement, Garrison, the Grimke sisters, L. Maria Child gained attention as quotes came from them. They were then just pertinent quotes from another time, but constituted a dawning of the importance of history, still to become prominent in my life. The spirit of Baldwin was at work on my heart of “dis-ease”. Now I also realize that the powerful, moving spirit of Garrison was already meeting my spirit.

From that first room in the offices of the Black Ecumenical Commission, one of the amazing memories was sharing space with the black writer William Worthy. Bill had for years followed and written about revolutionary movements in the world. Once I remember he let me stand over his shoulder as he typed his fury at a situation I do not recall; I said to Bill then, “I surely hope you are never mad at me!”. His writing of a truth usually ignored by the majority press was remarkable; I treasured the opportunity to know him. From the early days of sharing space with Bill and Erna, CCI has moved five times within the building, where it still greets people, and does wonderful education and work for racial justice.