“Theodore Parker and the UU Fight Against Slavery”
Our faith has a complicated history with slavery. Some famous Unitarians, notably Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. While others, including Rev. Theodore Parker, led the fight against the enslavement of African people in the decades leading up to the Civil War.
Four of the “Secret Six” who funded John Brown’s unsuccessful raid that hoped to spark a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in 1859, were Unitarians, including Parker. Theodore Parker said this, in an anti-slavery speech in the Massachusetts State House testifying before an Anti-Slavery Commission: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways…. And from what I see, I am sure it bends towards justice.”
