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Samuel J. May: The Peaceful Warrior |
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A
Sermon by The Reverend Richard R. Davis Used
with permission. In 1852 the Unitarian
minister Samuel J. May received a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe, the
author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, asking him to recount how
intimately he had been acquainted with blacks during his life. Apparently
Stowe wanted to better understand why May was working with such passion and
commitment to bring about the abolition of slavery. Among the many
impressions that came to May's mind were two from his early childhood. Remembering a racially
integrated school he attended in early childhood in Boston in the beginning
years of the 19th century he noted: "I well remember that I sat upon the
same bench, and recited in the same class, with a boy whose skin was as dark
as a starless night, but whose spirit was as bright and joyous as a cloudless
noon-day. He was certainly more witty, if not more
wise, than any of my school-fellows, and therefore was the favorite among us
all." May also remembered an
incident from this same period of his life. While going on an errand for his
mother a dog started chasing him. The young boy fell, struck his head and was
knocked unconscious. Upon regaining consciousness he found himself in the
arms of a large black woman who said "Don't be afraid, little boy. I
know who you are. I'll carry you to your mamma." When May's mother saw
the bloodied lad she panicked and attended exclusively to him. After washing
off all the blood, she saw that May simply had a nasty gash and would be OK.
When she turned to thank the black woman, she was gone. The May family was
never able to find out who this woman was. Family heritage also
shaped May's character as well. May often recounted that one of his direct
ancestors, Samuel Sewell, had been a judge at the Salem witch trials in the
17th century who had played a role in condemning innocent people to death.
After realizing his tremendous error May's ancestor observed a day of
repentance every year for the rest of his long life. Every year in his church
he handed up a written confession of his error for the minister to read aloud
to congregation while he stood and faced them, and then he asked for them all
to join him in a prayer for forgiveness. Affirming the humanity
of blacks and atoning for great social injustice was a profound passion for
May. As one scholar notes: "Family history, religious training,
temperament and implacable psychological forces wove together a texture of
personality that produced one of the most important reformers in the
nineteenth century." Samuel Joseph May was
raised in Boston, Massachusetts and had no direct experience of that peculiar
institution, slavery, until he was a young man. He and his sister Louisa were
traveling in a carriage from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, D.C. Out of
the window he and his sister saw some shackled, barefoot black men being led
down the dusty road. At first May wondered what crime all these black men had
committed, but then he was thunderstruck by the realization that it was his
American society that was committing a crime. These men were slaves. May then
blurted out for all in the carriage to hear: "I am ashamed of my country
and of my race." But in the earliest
days of his ministry in the early 1820s, after May graduated from Harvard, he
was not an abolitionist. Hardly anyone was, for that matter. This reform
movement was just in its infancy on American soil. As a new, young minister
May headed off to the wilderness to become the first official Unitarian
minister in the state of Connecticut. The orthodox clergy there despised the
dangerous, liberal Unitarian faith and considered it a sure pathway to hell.
Thus, the welcome for the new minister was quite hostile. But May was
optimistic. Rational Unitarian beliefs represented cutting edge theology. At
this time even retired President Thomas Jefferson was predicting that it was
destined to be the dominant faith on American soil by the end of the century.
In a word, this liberal faith taught the virtue of improving your mind
through study, your heart through love, and the world through actively
working to make it better. In these early years
encounters with significant figures were to shape May's life and ministry in
ways he could not have foreseen. While studying for the ministry he was
deeply impressed by an encounter with the Unitarian peace advocate Noah
Worcester. In 1825 an English Quaker published a seminal book on religious
pacifism that confirmed May as a pacifist. The central tenet of this book was
firm opposition to the idea that "it is lawful to do evil that good may
come"—in other words, violence should never be used as a means to a good
end. By nature a loving and compassionate person, May passionately embraced
this sublime thought. Just as he believed that Jesus had done. Yet it was his
encounter with the young abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison that May later
called the "grand epoch of my life." May was in Boston and went to
hear the young firebrand abolitionist speak. All the churches in Boston
closed their doors to the radical, disreputable, riff raff abolitionists, so
they turned to a renegade atheist by the name of Abner Kneeland
to provide them a place to meet. May was immediately
taken by Garrison's flaming attacks upon slavery. Garrison characterized it
as the greatest of all sins, a vile offense against God and humanity, and he
sounded a call that resonated in the core of May's personality. To May,
Garrison appeared as a Christ like figure—he was young, courageous,
outspoken; he had forsaken the prospect of a lucrative career, and he was
despised and rejected by the rich and the powerful people of society. Of this
first encounter May wrote: "that night my soul was baptized in his
spirit. The impression which he made upon my soul has never been effaced;
indeed, it molded it anew. He gave a new direction to my thoughts, a new
purpose to my ministry. May sought to share
his new convictions at the first opportunity. This happened to be at a
Unitarian Church in Boston a week later where he was a guest speaker. In his
sermon May passionately attacked the institution of slavery and racism as
well. "It is our own prejudice against the color of these poor people
that makes us consent to the tremendous wrongs they are suffering," he
said. He concluded by saying that all Unitarians were under the moral
obligation to end their indifference and join in the battle against this
great evil. The congregation was not at all accustomed to being morally
implicated in this social problem south of the Mason Dixon line—they were
aghast and the host minister was furious. He told May that he would never be
welcome in his pulpit again. To be sure the
northern Unitarians were on record as being opposed to slavery, but they had
proposed no program to end it. They were resigned to letting the issue
resolve itself without their interference, but when slavery was ended they
wanted all blacks to return to Africa. Also, somewhere in the corners of
their minds, these well-to-do Unitarians knew that their own Yankee wealth
was in many cases indirectly dependent upon the exploitations of slave labor
in the South. After this service
several prominent members of the congregation, accompanied by some important
businessmen, tracked down Samuel May's father to tell them what kind of
rubbish his son was preaching. May's father was shocked to discover how
radical his son had become, and he pleaded with him to tone it down, lest he
destroy his career in the ministry. May's reputation in
Boston was already destroyed—one older, distinguished Unitarian gentleman
told May that he had "lost caste among the Unitarians." May was
told that respectable Bostonians would never accept black people as their
equals, and all the Unitarian pulpits in Boston, except those in Ralph Waldo
Emerson's and William Ellery Channing's churches were closed to May. His own congregation
back in Connecticut was less than thrilled with their minister's new zeal on
the issue of slavery and racism. In those days many white congregations had
some special pews for black members in the rear of the sanctuary. One black
family in May's church outgrew its pew in the rear of the church, and he
invited them to come and sit in the front. A parishioner confronted May saying "How came that n------- [the “n” word] family
to come down into that front pew? They are n-------s [the “n” word], and n-------s
[the “n” word] should be kept to their place." The usually kind and
gentle Reverend May told the man that if he caused this black family any
embarrassment or discomfort that he would receive uncharacteristic Unitarian
wrath directly from the pulpit, as severe "as I may be able to frame in
words," said May. While May was
ministering in Connecticut he became embroiled in a controversy that was to
have profound implications for the abolition movement. In nearby Canterbury,
Connecticut, a woman from a Quaker background from Rhode Island by the name
of Prudence Crandall was hired to head the female academy. To the
townspeople's shock and dismay Ms. Crandall violated a rigid racial taboo by
admitting a young black woman into the school. When this was met with
a howl of protest, Crandall, who had recently become enthralled by
abolitionist sentiment, informed the town that she was going to turn the
institution into a school for black girls. Townspeople were now apoplectic
with rage, and the threat of violence hung heavy in the air. A common racial
fear in the north at the time was that freed blacks from the south were going
to flood into and defile their communities by their presence. Now it appeared
that Canterbury's worst racial nightmare was about to come true—twenty black
girls were on their way. Crandall contacted
May, who lived in nearby Brooklyn, Connecticut, and asked for support. He
became intimately involved in the controversy, and he and Crandall were
threatened by the townspeople. When twenty black girls arrived the town
responded by closing all stores and services to the teacher and her students.
The girls were abused on the streets, the school was defaced, and dung was
poured down their well. Prudence Crandall's father had to carry drinking
water to the beleaguered students. Finally this incident
compelled the Connecticut General Assembly to pass a "Black Act"
that prohibited blacks from immigrating into the state. During their
deliberations an expert phrenologist displayed several skulls before the
legislators to show that blacks were not actually a part of the human
species. Prudence Crandall was immediately arrested for breaking the black
law. May advised her not to post bail, but to spend time in jail to draw
national attention to the injustice. This strategy worked, and many in the
north were outraged that a woman had been imprisoned for the crime of
educating black girls. Crandall was able to
continue the school for a short period of time, but finally the townspeople's
campaign of harassment and threats of violence won out. May was called upon
to tell the black girls that the school must close. "The words almost
blistered my lips," he wrote, "and my bosom glowed with
indignation." Nevertheless, this
incident galvanized the abolitionist's cause and thrust May in the national
spotlight, putting him to the forefront of the movement. In the meantime
May's own congregation grew increasingly intolerant of his
abolitionism—holding back his pay they issued an ultimatum: end antislavery
agitation or leave. There was no way that May was going to abandon his all
consuming passion to eradicate the greatest evil on North American soil. He
ended his fourteen year ministry in Connecticut. May continued
agitating for the abolitionist cause. One day while he was on a lecture tour
in Rhode Island a woman came up to him after his speech and said that "I
suspect that you do not apprehend how much your description of the helpless
dependence of the slaves applies equally well to the condition of the whole
female sex." May perceived the truth of her comment, and he also worked
tirelessly advocating for the rights of women and condemning the exploitation
of working women by industrialists in the northeast. May became an out and
out feminist—the very first American clergyperson to take such a stand. This
was a cause of tension among the abolitionists, most of whom
believed that a woman's place was the home. May's activism
required both moral and physical courage because abolitionists were often
assaulted by unruly mobs. Once when May was speaking in a church a large
stone flew through a window and struck a woman, who fell down shrieking. The
crowd panicked and began to rush away, but May called them back and had them
leave in an orderly, fashion, row by row. Witnesses said that he saved many
lives by his calm action. This mindless violence
only served to fortify May's resolve, and it also enhanced his sympathy for
the suffering of all slaves. Confronting the violence put May's pacifist
ideals to a severe test. May said that his nonresistance required for a
person to "have entire possession of himself, his appetites, and his
passions must be in complete subjection to his moral sense." But May's total
commitment to pacifism soon created a moral dilemma for him when he entered
into his next and final ministry in Syracuse, New York, where he stayed for
over twenty years until his retirement. It began when the infamous Fugitive
Slave Law was passed in 1850. This law allowed slave catchers to come into
the north, apprehend escaped slaves and take them back down into the southern
hell of slavery. The law forced thousands of blacks to flee America in the
largest expatriate movement in American history. May was sickened and
outraged by the suffering caused by this evil law. He grieved to hear about
one black family who took passage on the Erie canal. The boat's crew took
perverse delight in falsely warning them that slave catchers were waiting for
them. The father panicked, ran down the tow path, and slit his throat and the
rest of the family jumped into the canal and drowned. May did what he could
to see that many blacks escaped—he personally provided refuge in his home to
literally hundreds of black fugitives on the underground railroad to freedom.
He also toured extensively in Canada and distributed funds for the black
expatriates there. Yet his opposition to
the Fugitive Slave Law challenged his commitment to absolute pacifism. This
came to a head for May when the slave catchers and Federal Marshals entered
Syracuse and apprehended a black man named Jerry McHenry, who worked in a
cabinet shop owned by a member of May's congregation. As a pacifist May was
opposed to the use of all force, yet he could not allow the authorities to
take McHenry back into slavery. Mere moral persuasion was not going to do the
trick. At a court hearing May made some kind of signal whereupon other
abolitionists grabbed McHenry and took him away. He was soon recaptured, but
the abolitionists stormed the prison and freed McHenry again. May realized
that although he had not physically harmed anyone himself, he was implicated
in the use of physical force to achieve a moral goal. This deeply troubled
him, and he could never resolve this issue in his heart. As the country edged
closer to the fatal precipice of civil war, May recognized that more powerful
historical forces than pacifist abolitionists were directing the course of
human events. When the war began he saw it as a tragic necessity. Although
May was opposed to war, he saw this one as a divine chastisement for
America's acceptance of slavery. In 1862 May toured
Union hospitals in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. There he saw the
horrors of the war firsthand. Maggot filled corpses were stacked like
firewood beside groaning soldiers, desperate cries
filled the air as the doctors performed their ghastly mutilations to save
lives. Recounting this scene at city hall in Syracuse, May was overcome with
grief and had to be led away. Perhaps the most
remarkable thing about May was that through all the tumult and the strife,
all the bitterness and passion of conflict and the unspeakable horrors of
war, he retained a certain sweet innocence. Colleagues praised this quality
and said that somehow, May had never become "world spoiled." Lydia
Marie Child, the famous writer and abolitionist, believed that everything
delighted him: "just like a child he is. God Bless him." Someone
else wrote "His spirit is as gentle as a dove, yet hath an angel's
energy and scope." His congregation in
Syracuse loved him dearly, too. They told him he could preach for them as
long as he should ever desire, and some even said that it would be enough if
Samuel May simply sat silently in front of them as a visible reminder of
their highest ideals. May died
in 1871. In loving remembrance of this great soul the blacks of Syracuse, New
York, put on mourning badges, and they flew their flags at half mast, just as
they had earlier done for Abraham Lincoln. His church in Syracuse
is now called the May Memorial Society. A recent book on his life calls May
one of the most important figures in American reform. Yet strangely,
inexplicably, among Unitarian Universalists he is almost completely
forgotten. Most students for our ministry are taught nothing about him, and
most Unitarian Universalists have never heard of him. One of my personal
missions in life is to see that he is not forgotten. I've spoken about May to
over a dozen UU congregations from Los Angeles to Seattle. It's not only that
Samuel J. May needs to be remembered. Our greater need is to remember him so
this great, compassionate soul, who dedicated himself to the alleviation of
human suffering and injustice can inspire us to do
likewise. Albert Schweitzer has
written: "At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark
from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of
those who have lighted the flame within us." So, as I have said before
and will say again, "Thanks to you Samuel J. May. You do light the flame
within me every time I think of you." |