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, civil, rights and/or involvement:
“A mechanism of some kind stands between us and almost every act of our lives.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 2 (1962)
“The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.”
—Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1740–1792)
“In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both public and private, need to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)