The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013, but it wasn’t until the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis May 25 that people around the world rose up and joined the movement.  George Floyd’s death ignited a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-national protest spanning the globe and demanding long overdue justice and racial equality.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have always stood on the side of love and justice for all. In the early 1960’s UU’s were among the Freedom Riders who rode buses across the segregated South to peacefully assert the rights of African-Americans. UU’s marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Civil Rights activists In 1965 on a day that came to be called Bloody Sunday because of the beatings the activists suffered in response to their peaceful protest. Both the Unitarian Universalist Association and our own Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Columbus have always supported and promoted the Black Lives Matter campaign.

At the Celebration of Life ceremony for George Floyd June 9 in his hometown of Houston, Texas, the impassioned words of pastors, state and national officials, family and friends focused on what is most needed to heal the deep wounds in our nation: love and justice.  A message of hope was expressed in the chorus of Sam Cooke’s 1964 hit song, “A Change is Gonna Come”:

It’s been a long

A long time comin’, but I know

A change gon’ come

Oh, yes it will

As UU’s we share this hope with all the people in the world who are joining the Black Lives Matter movement.

In Fellowship (I am sharing this letter written by my wife, Michelle)

Hal Midgette

UUFC President