wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Activist James Forman remembered as being change-agent

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Note #8608 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05026
January 14, 2005

Activist James Forman remembered as being change-agent for the church

Self-Development of People program is lasting legacy

by Toya Richards Hill

LOUISVILLE - The legacy of civil right activist James Forman, who died Monday
of colon cancer, will undoubtedly include being a catalyst for change in the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), church leaders said this week.

     Boldly challenging denominations in the 1960s to help African-American
people economically develop, Forman called on Presbyterians and other
main-line churches to use their dollars to help black people.

     "He shook us up, and I'm sure that had a lot of influence" on the
programs that the Presbyterian Church developed, said the Rev. Eugene Turner,
retired associate stated clerk of the General Assembly.

     Forman was 76 when he died at a hospice where he lived in Washington,
D.C., according to the Associated Press. Known as a leader in the Civil
Rights Movement, Forman held office in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC).

     He also gained much attention when he publicly called for American
churches - including the PC(USA) - to pay slavery reparations. Forman
outlined his demands in his "Black Manifesto."

     "He believed firmly that the economic system in the United States was
still enslaving African-Americans," Turner said. And he pressed the PC(USA)
"to spend some of its excess millions" to bring about change, he said.

Presbyterians, Forman maintained 'close' relationship

     The Rev. Gayraud S. Wilmore, who served from 1963 to 1972 as executive
director of the denomination's Council on Church and Race, vividly recalls
Forman and his interaction with the PC(USA).

     "We were in close relationship with him through the Council on Church
and Race, helping him to understand that we were both supportive of what he
was doing and critical of it," Wilmore said.

     In fact, it was Wilmore and the council who invited Forman to present
his manifesto to the General Assembly of The United Presbyterian Church in
the United States of America in 1969 in San Antonio, TX.

     From that, the General Assembly formed a committee on the
self-development of people, the precursor to the Self-Development of People
program that currently exists within the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD).

     "The program for Self-Development of People was, in a way, the
distinctive Presbyterian response to the reparations demand," said Wilmore,
professor emeritus of African-American church history at the
Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.

     "It was our way of meeting some of the challenges of the manifesto," he
said.

Program designed around self-help

     The Reverend Fredric Walls, retired director of the Self-Development of
People program, concurred with Wilmore.

     "It was because of his (Forman's) work and his presentation that I
believe that self-development really got off the ground," he said.

     Through self-development, Presbyterian money was to be used not only for
black people, but also "for any poor people anyplace in the world so that
they could begin to do things that would help them develop economically,"
Walls said.

     Walls served as director of the self-development program from 1980 until
2002. He said in that time he tried to "stick pretty close" to the program's
original mandate.

     The purpose was to make certain that the indigenous people in the world
were the ones deciding what happened with their lives, even when outside
resources were being provided, Walls said.

     The idea was "that people would be given the right to think and act for
themselves," he said.

     "That's what Forman was saying," Walls said. "People ought to be
involved in the decisions that affect their lives."

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