Been hearing & reading a lot lately about “cultural appropriation” & how awful & widespread it is.
I’ve been musing about this all week, while sitting in on rehearsals for “Pathway to Freedom,” out in the woods of Alamance County NC.
Here, at the Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre, an interracial cast is preparing to perform the only ongoing play about the Underground Railroad. On July 13, “Pathway” will open its 23rd season. The cast has been working hard every day,
The Quaker History Roundtableopens Thursday evening, June 8. Its focus is 20th Century American Quakerism, and it will continue through Sunday morning, June 11.
If you can’t join us in person, you can watch it online. It will be webcast online here.
Bayard Rustin, a gay Black Quaker, strategist for Dr. King, key movement activist.
8:00-9:30 PM – Gwen Erickson: History & Historiography & Friends
Mary Craudereuff: Quaker Archives & Civil Rights & marginalized groups
Friday – June 9
Daisy Douglas Barr of Indiana: she was a Quaker pastor, renowned for her preaching, and served at several Friends churches in the Hoosier state. She was also the head of the Ku Klux Klan’s huge women’s division during the early 1920s, in the years that the KKK largely controlled Indiana politics.
8:00-9:00 am – Breakfast – ESR – 9:25 am Welcome by Jay Marshall, Dean of ESR
9:30-11:15 am – Betsy Cazden: Friends World Committee for Consultation & Modernism: a Critique
Guy Aiken: AFSC, Neutrality & Justice
Noon-1:00 pm – Lunch – ESR
1:15-2:45 pm – Tom Hamm: U.S. Young Friends groups and their 20th century impact
Steve Angell: The Dog That didn’t Bark: The Reunification of Canadian Yearly Meetings
3:00-4:30 pm – Janet Gardner & Dick Nurse, documentarians, on their film The Quiet Revolutionaries, showing of work-in–progress, discussion
5:00-6:00 pm – Dinner – ESR
7:30-9:00 pm – Stephen McNeil: Quakers & Japanese Americans
Lonnie Valentine: Quaker Tax Resistance, 20th Century
Saturday June 10
8:00-9:00 am – Breakfast – ESR
9:30-11:15 am – Emma Lapsansky: Quakers and 20th Century Intentional Communities
Kathy Adams: Willie Frye: Controversial North Carolina Quaker Pastor & Activist[Read by Chuck Fager]
I’ve been retired for four-plus years, and interested in Quaker history for about fifty. I’ve done research, attended conferences of historians, and written my share of articles and books on related topics. I’ve also organized some conferences. (For more about this work, click here. )
Retirement is supposed to be when, with time growing short, one gets to work on the bucket list. And on my list, making some sense of the last century — half of which I spent among Friends — is pretty high. Much higher than going on a cruise.
Call me weird, but I think watching glaciers melt is like watching paint dry. Besides, I’ve checked, and not one of these boats has a decent Quaker library.
Working on Quaker history has been continually stimulating for me, and often fun. And not much has been done on the 20th century among Quakers — despite the fact that a LOT went on.
Seventeen years past the end of that century, I figured it was time to start filling that gap. So about a year ago I started sounding out scholars and others I’ve met and heard about who are also Quaker history geeks, and suggested we do some work, then get together and share and discuss it; many were interested. And I had enough savings to underwrite it, so I did. Continue reading Friends’ History Coming Alive: The Quaker History Roundtable→
When Friends pulled the rope on the bell atop Spring Friends Meeting, the ringing convened the Carolina Friends Emergency Consultation on March 25. And its session began with cheers & applause.
Pull the rope, ring the bell for victory over the AHCA, and to call for continued resistance.
Who was Jane Johnson, and why was she racing down Philadelphia streets in a coach with Lucretia Mott in September of 1855? And why were federal marshals trying to catch them??
And why did Johnson run through Mott’s house and out the back door?
There’s two ways to find out the answers to these (and many other) exciting questions.
3:00-4:30 pm
