Civil Rights Involvement
In April 1963 Bishop Harmon made civil rights history when he, along with seven other white clergymen (including fellow-Methodist Bishop Paul Hardin Jr.), released a statement calling on African Americans to stop taking part in demonstrations initiated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. The statement called King's actions "unwise and untimely", and stated that only "slow, slow, slow" change should bring about equal rights. This statement caused Dr. King to write his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail". In his 1983 autobiography, Bishop Harmon referred to the letter as a "propaganda move".
Bishop Harmon died June 1993, the first U.M. Bishop to live to be 100 (or more) since Bishop Herbert George Welch. He was also the oldest out of the eight white clergymen.
Read more about this topic: Nolan Bailey Harmon
Famous quotes containing the words civil, rights and/or involvement:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
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—Elizabeth Wurtzel, U.S. author. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, p. 298, Houghton Mifflin (1994)
“Even if you find yourself in a heated exchange with your toddler, it is better for your child to feel the heat rather than for him to feel you withdraw emotionally.... Active and emotional involvement between parent and child helps the child make the limits a part of himself.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)