During
Black History month we pause to remember the great impact of African American
leaders in this country. In December I
received a Christmas card from Kenyon and Betty Camper who are members of the
Ezion-Mt. Carmel UMC in Wilmington. The
Christmas greeting was a picture of a statue of Louis L. Redding and the
inscription read: “Pioneer in the struggle for equality and tireless advocate
in civil rights cases of national significance.” This was indeed a unique Christmas greeting
and an appropriate one as Christ came to earth to bring equality to all people
and as his followers we strive to walk in that path always, not only at
Christmas time.
I did a
little research (“Diamonds of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore: Seven
Black Men of Distinction” by James E. Newton and Harmon Carey) and found that
Louis Redding spent most of his life in Wilmington, DE. He graduated from Howard High School, Brown
University and Harvard Law School. He
was not only the first African American lawyer in the State of Delaware, he was
a respected civil rights leader for the entire nation. He was part of the NAACP legal team that
challenged the school segregation policies in the Brown vs. the Board of
Education case that was heard in the U. S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, “Lawyer Redding” (as he was
called), brought a case before the Chancery Court against the University of
Delaware, which did not allow black students (Parker vs. the University of
Delaware). He won the case and the
University of Delaware became the first state-funded undergraduate institution
in the country to desegregate by court order.
He also successfully challenged other discrimination cases that involved
housing, employment and public accommodations.
The
United Methodist Church celebrates two kinds of holiness: personal and
social. Social holiness is concerned with the rights and dignity of all people. May we take a page out of the book of the
life of Louis L Redding and work for the rights of people where we live, work
and worship. In that way we truly
celebrate Black History Month with integrity.
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