wfn.org | Racial justice advocate, Charles Cobb, dies

[BARBARA_POWELL.parti@ecunet.org (BARBARA POWELL)]

Dec. 30, 1998
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
William C. Winslow, press contact
(212) 870-2137
winsloww@ucc.org
On the Web: http://www.ucc.org

Racial justice advocate, Charles Cobb, dies

by William C. Winslow 

     WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Rev. Charles Earl Cobb,
civil rights advocate and first executive director of the United
Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice, died Sunday,
Dec. 27, 1998, at Georgetown University Hospital here.  He was
82.
     During the turbulent early days of the civil rights
movement, the United Church of Christ took, in 1963, the then
unusual step of forming a Committee for Racial Justice Now--later
renamed the Commission for Racial Justice--to coordinate its
work.  By 1966, the church realized it needed a full-time executive
director and tapped for the job Cobb, who was then pastor of St.
John's United Church of Christ in Springfield, Mass.  He became
head of the first and still the only racial justice unit of a Protestant
denomination.
     Cobb set out two objectives for his Commission:  to
challenge a predominantly white denomination on the
corrosiveness of racism and to work to strengthen the black
community.  But it was the burning of Mike's Grocery on a cold
February night in 1971 in Wilmington, N.C., that forever defined
his ministry and made him a nationally recognized civil rights
leader.
     After the fire in the white-owned store, nine young black
men and a white woman were arrested on charges of arson and
conspiracy. Among the defendants was Benjamin F. Chavis, a
field worker for the Commission whom Cobb had sent to work
with black students newly integrated into Wilmington's formally
all-white high school.
     The Executive Council of the United Church of Christ was
asked to provide $500,000 bail for all the defendants, but it
balked, agreeing only to pay for Chavis.  "They didn't reckon with
the wrath of Charlie Cobb," recalls the Rev. Everett C. Parker,
then the church's communications director, who was present at the
meeting.  In forceful, even angry terms, Cobb reminded the
Council members that the church had formed a racial justice unit to
fight racism wherever it was, not just selectively.  Bail for all the
Wilmington Ten "is what is right," he said.  Not to provide it was a
"betrayal" of the church's commitment to justice.
     The Executive Council relented. But it was a long 10-year
battle in the courts before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Va., overturned the Ten's convictions in 1980, ruling
that their Constitutional rights had been violated in the trial. Cobb
kept pressure on the church to pay legal and other costs,
amounting to over $250,000.
     "He was responsible for making our church own up to
what it said it believed," remembers the Rev. Joseph Evans,
retired president of the United Church of Christ.  "The Wilmington
Ten would have never been in the record if it had not been for
Charlie Cobb."
     "His leadership in the United Church of Christ was and is
unprecedented as he raised his deep, strong voice for the poor as
an advocate," says Chavis, who succeeded Cobb in 1985 as
executive director of the Commission for Racial Justice, and who
now, as Ben Muhammad, is a minister in the Nation of Islam.
     In a letter sent to leaders of the UCC, the Rev. Paul H.
Sherry, president of the United Church of Christ, extolled Cobb as
an "untiring advocate" for justice for all people.  "Through his
efforts, countless lives were renewed, the church was transformed
and the vision of a world of peace with justice renewed."  Sherry
calls Cobb, "a saint of the church and a faithful witness for a world
more akin to God's desire."
     Charles Cobb was "a giant of a man," says the Rev.
Bernice Powell Jackson, executive director of the Commission for
Racial Justice.  "Often, we in the United Church of Christ want to
do right," she says, but only when "we are confronted by the
realities of the world, do we step out there and take the positions
that we do.  Charles Cobb was the church's pusher. He loved the
UCC deeply and cared deeply for the people in the UCC.  The
sad part is that many of the same battles that he was fighting I'm
still fighting." 
     Charles Cobb realized early on that he couldn't work
miracles alone, and he sought out allies in and outside the church.
He was a founder of the National Conference of Black Christians,
the country's first ecumenical organization of religious civil rights
leaders.  He was a founding board member of TransAfrica and the
Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). He
also served on the board of directors of the Black United Fund.
     Cobb sought to improve the lot of African Americans in
general. The Commission provided financial assistance to more
than 4,000 college bound students, and he initiated a program to
reach out to women in prison. No armchair executive, he walked
in the picket lines and was arrested for demonstrating against the
apartheid South African government.
     Cobb was the first to focus the national spotlight on the
practice of the siting of toxic wastes in poor, mostly black
communities, when he led a fight against a toxic dump in rural,
black Warren County in North Carolina. Today, such tactics are
called environmental racism.
     Charles Cobb came to the attention of the national United
Church of Christ because of his reputation as a scrapper while
serving St. John's UCC in Massachusetts. He took on the political
establishment of Springfield by running for mayor in 1965 at a time
when few African Americans anywhere had the courage to test the
political waters, particularly in a community where blacks were a
minority. But according to his daughter, Ardienne Brooks, Cobb
was outraged at the way the school system treated blacks.
"Teachers used 'Little Black Sambo' to teach kids how to read,"
she says. He lost the race, but not by much, and the experience
taught the black community to rally around issues.
     In Springfield, Cobb also reached out to the Nation of
Islam. Another daughter, Ann Cobb, says some ministers and
church leaders in the community wanted nothing to do with what
some considered an anti-white radical organization. Cobb
defended the Nation's right to sell its newspapers.
     "Malcolm X heard about my father supporting their
efforts," Cobb continues, " and he came to our home in Springfield
and personally thanked my father." 
      Cobb had a universal perspective that influenced and
directed his ministry. Even then, he was thinking of higher
education.  He got his church to buy a bus and used it to take
students to historically-black colleges in the South.  "He started
organizing teenagers and began a basketball program.  He wanted
the kids to see that there were more opportunities for them,"
Brooks says.
     Charles Cobb was born in Durham, N.C., on Sept. 28,
1916.  A graduate of North Carolina College, he received his
B.D. degree from Howard University, his M.S.T. degree from
Boston University and a D.D. degree from Huston-Tillotson
College in Austin, Texas. 
     Among his honors:  Frederick Douglass Citation for
outstanding achievement in the "Struggle for Black Liberation";
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
award for outstanding community service; listing in "Who's Who in
Black America"; and a member of the Congressional Black
Caucus' "International Relations" and "Legislative Support" Brain
Trust.  Prior to serving in local churches, Cobb was the managing
editor of the Carolina Times/Charlotte edition.
     After his retirement from the Commission for Racial
Justice, Cobb continued to work for civil and human rights.  His
commitment to racial justice did not wane even after his health
began to fail.  In 1997, he was hospitalized as he began an
extensive period of acute illness.
     Survivors include his wife, Dr. Martha Cobb; two
daughters, Ann of Baltimore, Md., and Adrienne Brooks of
Washington, D.C.; a son, Charles; 14 grandchildren and four great
grandchildren.
     Funeral services will be held Saturday, Jan. 2, 1999, at 11
a.m., at the Plymouth Congregational Church, United Church of
Christ, in Washington, D.C.  For more information regarding
memorial arrangements, please contact the Rev. Graylan S. Hagler
at (202) 723-5330.
                 #   #   #