wfn.org | United Church of Christ and Amistad

[powellb@ucc.org]

March 29, 2000
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
Hans Holznagel, press contact
(216) 736-3863
<holznagh@ucc.org>
On the Web: <http://www.ucc.org>

For immediate release
March 29, 2000

United Church of Christ and Amistad:
'It's been theirs for 160 years'

     MYSTIC, Conn. -- An especially loud cheer went up under
the big tent when the words "United Church of Christ" were read
from the short list of major sponsors of the freedom schooner
Amistad.
     The speaker paused to explain the cheer to the thousands of
dignitaries and well-wishers assembled on the grounds of Mystic
Seaport.
     "The Amistad has been my story for about 25 years.  It's
been theirs for 160 years," said George Bellinger, chairperson of
the Board of Trustees of Amistad America.
     It was one of several appreciative acknowledgments of the
United Church of Christ's historical and financial ties to the ship
during three hours of ceremonies surrounding its launch into the
Mystic River March 25.
     The new Amistad -- named for a 19th-century cargo ship on
which African captives revolted in 1839, ultimately winning a
Supreme Court declaration of their freedom -- will debut July 4 in
a "tall ships" parade in New York Harbor.  It will then begin its
long-term mission of visiting U.S. and other ports as a floating
museum and classroom, bearing the story of the original Amistad
incident and promoting cooperation, freedom, leadership and
racial justice.
     Even if visitors to Mystic Seaport read the launch-day
program carefully, or happened to notice the UCC banner or an
indoor exhibit at the shipyard's construction building, it would
have been easy to leave the ceremonies without grasping how
profoundly the original Amistad Event is tied to the 1.4-million-
member Protestant denomination -- and how much, in turn, the
UCC has done to support the new Amistad and its mission of peace
and justice.
     Who knows how the Mendi captives, arrested after their
mutiny, would have fared in U.S. Courts without the people of
faith who rallied to their legal aid.  Among these were individual
Christian abolitionists and entire local churches, both European
American and African American, whose Congregationalist legacy
is now part of the United Church of Christ.  Church people not
only took up the captives' cause of justice, but also befriended
them while they were federal prisoners during their two years of
trials and appeals, bringing them food and clothing and teaching
them English.
     Who knows how Sengbe Pieh and many of the other freed
captives would have gotten home without the help of New
England churches -- many of them still in existence and now part
of the United Church of Christ -- that raised money for their
passage back to Africa.
     And who knows how much poorer the church's own life
and witness would have been if the Mendi people had not
reclaimed their freedom.  The momentum of the Amistad Event
led to the formation of the American Missionary Association,
whose movement of education, social justice and discipleship lives
on today in the ministries of the United Church of Christ.  In
particular, the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, the
legal and programmatic heir of the AMA, considers the Amistad
story its own, as do six historically African-American colleges that
were founded by the AMA and that are still related to the United
Church of Christ: Dillard University, New Orleans; Fisk
University, Nashville, Tenn.; Huston-Tillotson College, Austin,
Tex.; LeMoyne-Owen College, Memphis, Tenn.; Talladega
College, Talladega, Ala.; and Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Miss.
     A large part of the church's ministries of education and
Christian social justice flow directly from the original Amistad --
so much so that the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries
has contributed $225,000 to make the new ship possible, and the
Connecticut Conference -- the church's state organization -- has
added an additional $20,000.  Not to mention gifts that individuals
and congregations may have sent to Amistad America, Inc., the
builder and operator of the new ship.
     For the March 25 ceremonies, the entire Board of Directors
of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries bused from
their meeting in Hartford, Conn., to Mystic Seaport.  UCC officials
present included the likes of President John Thomas, UCBHM
Executive Vice President Thomas Dipko, Commission for Racial
Justice Executive Director Bernice Powell Jackson, longtime
justice advocate Yvonne Delk, Connecticut Conference Minister
Davida Foy Crabtree and Massachusetts Conference Minister
Bennie Whiten.
     Microphone and camera time, however, went primarily to
persons more widely known or international in stature: stage and
screen stars Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Sen. Christopher Dodd of
Connecticut, other state politicians, members of the Congressional
Black Caucus, and government officials from Sierra Leone, the
part of South Africa where the Amistad captives were kidnaped.
     Several speakers worked the United Church of Christ into
their remarks -- especially those visiting from Sierra Leone. The
UCC was thanked by Minister of Social Welfare, Shirley Yema
Gbujama, and also by that country's president, Alhaji Ahmad
Tejan Kabbah, in a letter read aloud by that country's ambassador
to the United States, John E. Leigh.
     Others spoke more broadly of the religious dimensions of
the Amistad Event.  Storyteller Valerie Tutson, playing the part of
one of the girls among the Amistad captives, told of the Christians
who came to their aid.  And Senator Dodd asked of the United
States, then and now: "How could people who confess faith in God
enslave so many people? ... How do we open our hearts so that we,
too, can become instruments of grace?"
     In a prayer of invocation that opened the ceremony,
Thomas, the UCC president, summed up the importance of the
event: "Remind us, O God, that we are here today because
determined people of faith and conscience confronted evil and
challenged indifference that our land might reach toward its nobler
instincts and be led by a purer vision.  Remind us!"
     Information on the new Amistad, as it makes its way to sea
trials and its maiden voyage, is available on the Internet at
www.amistadamerica.org and www.mysticseaport.org.  For
information on the historical connections among the Amistad
Event, the American Missionary Association and the United
Church of Christ, see www.ucc.org/who/histories/chap6.htm.

# # #

[EDITORS:  Here is the full text of a prayer of invocation given by
the Rev. John H. Thomas, president of the United Church of
Christ, at ceremonies surrounding the March 25 launch of the
freedom schooner Amistad.]

     "Remind us, O God, that we are here today because
mothers, fathers, children, and elders were taken from their land,
their culture, their loved ones, to be sold into slavery for the
convenience and enrichment of others.  Remind us!
     "Remind us, O God, that we are here today because a
courageous band threw off their chains to declare that freedom is a
cause worth dying for, that home is a place worth struggling for.
Remind us!
     "Remind us, O God, that we are here today because
determined people of faith and conscience confronted evil and
challenged indifference that our land might reach toward its nobler
instincts and be led by a purer vision.  Remind us!
     "O God, today as we launch this ship, may it be a
memorial, and may these memories caution us against self-
congratulation that hides our own complicity in the enduring
legacy of slavery even as it redeems us from an easy cynicism that
recognizes no victories and honors no achievement.  But let this
Amistad join memory to hope, bearing us on the winds of sacred
stories and holy dreams toward shores of promise where dignity is
recognized and justice is assured.
     "Bless now our assembly, especially those whose skill built
this ship, whose vision inspired this project, whose gifts made it
possible.  And gather about us today the great cloud of witnesses --
the enslaved, the courageous, the determined -- to remind us, to
remind us, to remind us.  Amen."

#     #      #