May the Work That We Do Speak For Us

Left to Right: Leon Spencer, Paula Cole Jones, Qiyamah A. Rahman and Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris at a District Anti Racism Transformation Team Retreat.

Unitarian Universalists are Committed to an Anti-racist/Anti-oppressive and Multicultural World

This is a picture of the Unitarian Universalist Association's Thomas Jefferson District Anti-Racism Transformation Team. The Team's role is to conduct trainings and education on becoming anti-racist/anti-oppressive and multicultural with the congregations comprising the distict that include: North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia (except the Northern most parts), and some parts of Georgia.


Below is a picture of me that a friend took at our recent Seminarian and Ministers of Color Retreat on April 12-16, 2007 held at Galludet University Conference Center in Washington, DC. Approximately 40 were in attendance from around the country.

Actual Pictures of Slave Children on Slave Ship?

Someone sent me these pictures last year. They are alleged to be actual photos taken of slave ships and children. I didn't recall slave traders taking children because there was not a market. But these pictures certainly look real enough. It can easily be researched to determine when photography was first invented. I am actually speaking very rationally and detached about these scenes now. But initially, as a mother I just wept to see these babies. while imagining what it must have been like to be snatched from ones home as an adult and how much more traumatic that would be to a child. So while I don't know if these are legitimate photos, I do know that 6-10 million human beings were kidnapped from Africa, my family among those taken from Nigeria among the Yorubas, and that some were taken with the complicity of other Africans. And they were brought to this country to work mostly in the fields and some as house servants. And I know that they endured lives of pain and suffering. We know that this Black holocaust did occur. And like the Jews, we know not to forget less we dishonor their legacies and their sacrifices. May we live our lives in service to that which is sacred in the universe and serving humanity's highest good so that we create the kind of world where such atrocities are not even possible. May we be able to hold the energy of that knowingness even when a contrary reality appears to prevail seemingly all around us. May we hold in our hearts and minds the world as we want it to be and then seek to live our lives so as to manifest those dreams and visions.
Blessed Be!
Qiyamah A. Rahman