Black History Month—19 Feb 2023
Our task this month is to unlearn a long practice of forgetting. This practice started with the families who listed these names and numbers in their wills alongside livestock and furniture, forgetting their humanity in order to enslave them. It continued as our congregation left out the memories and stories of these people from our church’s history over the decades and centuries that followed. This month, we turn away from this practice of forgetting. We remember that each name and number on these tiles represents a full, complex human life—someone with a sense of humor, an appreciation for beauty, a spiritual life, griefs and fears and joys. We remember that they were more than names or numbers; they were people beloved by God, fearfully and wonderfully made, as much a part of the history and legacy of this church as we are.
The first window we look at today is named Christ Healing the Sick, dedicated to Theodore L. Mason, MD, born 1803, died 1882, with the inscription “who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed for God was with him”. Yet the history of the family’s enslaving people reminds us of another quote from Jesus: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
The second window is dedicated to the memory of George Kissam, late of 1889. His [wife, Phoebe Ryerson’s] family had a history of five generations of enslaving people and had the distinction of holding the last slave sale in the town of Brooklyn in 1773. Mrs. Kissam was said to have had her face painted in the place of the Samaritan woman. Samaritans were seen as ‘lesser’ than Jews and looked down upon, and the woman was surprised that Jesus asked her for a drink from the well. Although she was a woman, another ‘lesser’ group, Jesus makes clear that his gift of salvation is free to all that ask for it, demonstrating that “Love your neighbor as yourself” pertains to all people, including outcasts and those enslaved, all beloved by God. In this window, Jesus speaks to the woman, saying that “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life,” thus promising his grace and salvation to all.
—— Susan Snyder
The Remembrance and Racial Justice Working Group has been researching our church’s historical connections to slavery and racial injustice. This month, we are hanging tiles with the names—or numbers in the cases where names were not recorded—of people who were enslaved by the families who donated our stained glass windows. On each tile is a QR code where you can read stories of these people—and the stories are also reproduced on posters in Fellowship Hall.