[crowd noise]
[singing bowl]
Hello, and welcome to Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist virtual Church.
My name is Spencer Conco and i'm glad that we can get together even though we cannot yet be together.
Today our minister the Rev, Jeff Briere brings us a few lessons from history that we probably missed when we went to school.
To accompany the lighting of the chalice i have a reflection from Stephen Shick on being a part of history.
Being a force of history and a lover of life at the same time can feel like an uneasy combination.
When we are forces of history we engage with the problems of the world and act to improve on them,
but as lovers of life we delight in mere existence, the beauty of watching a bird in flight, or the light fading into dusk.
As Rumi points out, the lover is always getting lost and choosing to drown in the eternal.
Must we choose between immersing in the issues of the day and drowning in love?
Two arts are required: to get lost in love
and accept one's time and location.
Like dervishes we are compelled to whirl in love, holding one hand toward the heavens and one hand toward the earth.
Grounded in this way, we are moved to engage history with hope and push it to a more just future.
Perhaps practicing the two arts is like taking a breath.
Breathe in the deeds of history,
and breathe out the joy of living.
Breathe in the joy of living,
and breathe out the deeds of history
For music today our mighty fine virtual choir brings us a song written around the 1920s as a children's song: "This Little Light of Mine."
[music]
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
Everywhere I go,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Everywhere I go,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Everywhere I go,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
Building up a world,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Building up a world,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Building up a world,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
We'll sing "Loving Kindness" next.
Please light a candle to dispel the darkness, to honor someone or some event, or to bring light to a memory.
[music]
Hello. My name is Jeff Briere and I am the
minister of this virtual church.
I hope you are safe and well.
Please mask up in public and remember to keep your social distance.
The president got a lesson in American history last June when he thought to have a rally on June 19th in Tulsa
and someone schooled him on the meaning of Juneteenth and what happened in Tulsa.
Actually a lot of other Americans got the same lesson at the same time.
If you were one of those people or if you had never heard of Juneteenth or the Tulsa Massacre until then, I wonder what else you've never heard of.
What episodes in American history were left out of your textbooks?
What about the Tuskegee Experiment? Or the Red Summer of 1919?
Have you ever heard of drapetomania? Or the Three-fifths Compromise?
How about the One-drop Rule?  Slave
codes?
Have you ever heard of Bleeding Kansas?
And anti-literacy laws?
How much about race and racism, slavery and the building of America were you not taught?
Today I bring you those history lessons, and although I am the whitest white boy you ever saw, I will dare to teach you something about Black history.
I can't teach you what Black people felt during those episodes of forgotten history, but more that they happened.
And the reason I'm compelled to teach these lessons is just that: They happened.
I did not learn about them when I studied American history in elementary school, in high school, or in college.
These lessons were not taught.
And let's start with a familiar one.
You may have heard of the three-fifths compromise.
Do you know what it's all about? 
It's all about power and money.
The three-fifths compromise was reached among state delegates during the 1787 constitutional convention.
Whether and, if so, how slaves would be counted to determine a state's total population for legislative representation and taxing purposes was important
as this population number would then be used to determine the number of seats that the state would have in the house of representatives for the next 10 years.
The compromise solution was to count three out of every five slaves as people for this purpose.
The effect was to give the southern states a third more seats in congress and a third more electrical votes than if slaves were ignored
but fewer than if slaves and free people were counted equally.
So out of every five Black slaves three were counted as people and two were ignored as if they were not people,
and of course all five had no power and no money nor any representation until the 1965 voting acts.
And what about the Tuskegee experiment? Do you know what that's all about?
The syphilis study at Tuskegee was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service.
The purpose of this study was to observe
the natural history of untreated syphilis.
The study began in collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically Black college in Alabama.
Investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County Alabama.
Of those men, 399 had syphilis, and a control group of 201 men were not infected.
As an incentive for participation in the study the men were promised free medical care,
but they were deceived by disguised placebos, ineffective methods, and diagnostic procedures disguised as treatment.
The men who had syphilis were never informed of their diagnosis despite the risk of infecting others and the fact that the disease could be fatal.
The men were told they were being treated for "bad blood," a colloquialism that described several common conditions.
None of the infected men were treated with penicillin, despite the fact that by 1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis.
Study clinicians could have chosen to treat all syphilitic subjects and close the study.
Instead they continue the study without treating anyone.
The study terminated in 1972 when a leak to the press was reprinted widely.
The victims of the study, all African-American, included numerous men who died of syphilis, 40 women who contracted the disease, and 19 children born with congenital syphilis.
Do you know anything about the Red Summer of 1919?
The Red Summer of 1919 is the period during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place
in more than three dozen cities across the United States as well as in one rural county in Arkansas.
In most instances attacks consisted of white-on-Black violence.
However, numerous African-Americans fought back, notably in the Chicago and Washington DC race riots,
and that resulted in 53 people dying along with even more injuries and extensive property damage in Chicago.
Still, the highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where an estimated 240 Black people and five white people were killed, an event now known as the Elaine Massacre.
The anti-Black riots developed from a variety of post-World War I social tensions generally related to the demobilization of both Black and white members of the United States armed forces,
an economic slump, increased competition in the job and housing markets between white Americans
and African-Americans.
The riots and killings were extensively documented by the press, which, along with the federal government,
feared socialist and communist influence on the Black civil rights movement following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
They also feared foreign anarchists who had bombed the homes and businesses of prominent figures and government leaders.
How about drapetomania? You ever heard of drapetomania?
Drapetomania was a conjectural mental illness that American physician Samuel Cartwright hypothesized in 1851 as the cause of enslaved Africans wanting to flee captivity.
Contemporarily reprinted in the south, Cartwright's article was widely mocked and satirized in the northern United States.
The concept has since been debunked as pseudoscience and shown to be a part of the edifice of scientific racism.
Cartwright also had a "cure" for drapetomania.
He suggested cutting off the big toes of both feet of slaves.
You ever heard of the one-drop rule?
The one-drop rule is a social and legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the United States in the 20th century.
It asserted that any person with even one Black ancestor, that is one drop of Black blood, any person with one Black ancestor is considered Black.
This concept became codified into the
laws of some states in the early 20th century.
It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children from a union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with a lower status regardless of the proportion of ancestry.
The one-drop rule is now defunct in law in the United States and was never codified into federal law.
How about "Bleeding Kansas"? You ever heard about that?
"Bleeding Kansas" refers to a series of violent confrontations in Kansas Territory, United States, between 1854 and 1861
which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and retributive murders carried out in Kansas and neighboring Missouri
by pro-slavery folks called "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery folks called "Free Staters."
It was a prelude to the American Civil War which followed it.
About 200 people were killed.
Missouri, a slave state since 1821, was populated by many settlers with southern sympathies and pro-slavery views,
some of whom tried to influence the decision by entering Kansas and claiming to be residents.
The conflict eventually degenerated into brutal gang violence and paramilitary guerrilla warfare.
The term "Bleeding Kansas" was popularized by the New York Tribune.
Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861.
"Bleeding Kansas" demonstrated the gravity of the era's most pressing social issue.
Its severity made national headlines which suggested that sectional disputes were unlikely to be resolved without bloodshed, and it therefore anticipated the American Civil War.
Now why do you suppose these five stories from our history are not widely known?
Why were we taught more about Washington crossing the Delaware than we were about the Tuskegee study?
And the more important question: What can we do to remedy our ignorance?
I have a favor to ask of you.
Before coming to this church I was an interim minister at People's Church Unitarian Universalist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for two years.
Eastern Iowa was really hit hard by a derecho a few weeks ago.
A derecho is a widespread long-lived straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms.
Basically it's a hurricane on land.
The derecho caused a lot of damage, most notably to corn and soybean crops and the city of Cedar Rapids.
I sent a message to the minister at People's Church now, Rebecca Hinds, and this is what she had to say:
Dear Jeff, thank you for reaching out.
Today is the first day in a week that I have had power and the internet at my house. We are lucky. Most people are still without.
The storm was devastating, a 40-mile-wide band of wind that was clocked in various places at 115 miles an hour, the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane.
Cedar Rapids was square in its path.
Our church survived. Some siding was ripped off. One tree is all we lost. Several neighbors lost trees which ended up in our parking lot.
Most of the congregation is without power. Some have homes damaged, and two people lost homes completely.
Some have generators that have allowed them to preserve their food; most have lost all their perishables.
As you know, the larger community includes many refugee families who speak French.
Some of the apartment complexes they live in were totally destroyed.
Some are literally living in cars and tents.
Most, perhaps 99 percent, did not have renters insurance.
Every single member of the church was impacted by this storm.
All of us had trees down and lost power.
Some of us were hurt more than others.
Susan's house is now uninhabitable because a tree crashed through it, and it will be many months before they can return home.
George's house burned down in the storm.
The text he sent me said, "I'm now a homeless man."
He camped outside the church for a week and is now staying with his family.
The church has received help but we could use additional support as we assist members with housing, food, and supplies.
Perhaps you can guess the favor I ask of you:
Please help the folks in Cedar Rapids by sending a check to this church.
Make it out to Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, but make sure it is marked for Cedar Rapids relief.
We will write one check to the People's Church in Cedar Rapids.
Watch the announcements following this service for the mailing address of this church, and thank you.
Please follow the CDC guidelines and local mandates during this time.
Wearing your face masks in public is an
act of charity because it protects other people.
And remember what Zig Ziglar said:
You'll get all you want in this life if you just help other people get what they want.
[music]
I have a simple benediction for us today. Actually, it's a recipe from Stephen Shick:
Boil your passions for justice.
Boil your longings for peace.
Let them rise in dream-vapors, 
and condense into what you seek.
Our time together is nearly finished, but our work is not done.
May our spirits be renewed and our resolve strengthened as we meet the challenges of the week to come.
Now please help me close this service:
We extinguish this flame 
but not the light of truth,
the warmth of community,
or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts
and share with all the world.
[singing bowl]
My name is Tish Kashdan, and I'm happy that we could get together today.
Please come back whenever you like. We will post another virtual church service next Sunday.
Please contact the minister or the caring team if you or someone you know needs help during this time.
Our services are recorded in advance, so current events may move faster than our ability to address them in a timely fashion.
However, you can find up-to-date information on local events, social justice issues, inspiration, and content for all ages on our Facebook page.
I hope to join you at our virtual coffee hour beginning at 11 30.
You can find the link on our website HVUUC.org under the "news & events" tab.
To close our service today, Charis Carter brings us a Sheryl Crow song: "Everyday Is a Winding Road."
The chorus tells us about life: Jump in, let's go, lay back, enjoy the show. Everybody gets high, everybody gets low. These are the days when anything goes.
As you make your way through the week remember that
you are good, you are loved, we all need a little work, and we're all in this together.
And there's nothing left to say but ...
[music]
