James Reeb (January 1, 1927 — March 11, 1965). The second march, called “Turnaround Tuesday,” had concluded on March 9 of that year when Dr. King led the marchers onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge and said a short prayer before turning around. Until a few months before his death, he had been Assistant Minister at All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C.A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb took part in the Selma to Montgomery protest march in 1965. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister in Boston, grew outraged as he watched television footage of the brutal “Bloody Sunday” attack. Rob Hardies, the pastor at All Souls Church Unitarian in Northwest Washington, D.C. at a special service held in Reeb’s memory earlier this month. With his wife and four children, he lived in poor black neighborhoods where he felt he could do the most good. Clark Olsen, now 81 and living in Asheville, N.C. told Religion News Service. He died in a Birmingham hospital two days later. He died 50 years ago today, after a vicious beating by white segregationists in Alabama.In 1965, Reeb answered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for clergy to join civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala. March 11, 1965: White men beat James Reeb to death as he walked down a street in Selma, Ala.
Reeb was an American white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, Massachusetts who, while marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, was beaten to death by segregationists [1]. “One of them was carrying a club and swung it at Jim’s head.”Reeb, a 38-year-old father of four, fell into a coma and died two days later as a result of his injuries. He was 38 years old. The three men charged in the assault were acquitted by an all-white jury after just 95 minutes of deliberation.“He felt it was appropriate to live among the people he was working with,” Olsen said. This is to be compared with the case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by police in Selma two weeks earlier while protecting his mother from a beating; his case attracted much less national attention.President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the events in Selma "an American tragedy," which, he said, should strengthen people's determination "to bring full and equal and exact justice to all of our people." While in Selma on March 9, Reeb was attacked by a white mob armed with clubs, which inflicted massive head injuries. At Philadelphia General Hospital, where Rev. James Reeb worked in 1956 as a chaplain, the strict Presbyterian minister suffered a crisis of faith while tending to drug addicts and the city’s poor.“His theology had told him that if people were suffering, that it was God’s punishment for their sins,” said Rev.
Those with true religious courage and spirit leave their churches, temples, … “He was just a very committed person this way and wanted to do good in the world and right some of the wrongs in our society.”King preached Reeb’s eulogy, and hours later, President Lyndon B. Johnson mentioned Reeb’s death and the violence of Selma when he addressed Congress to introduce the Voting Rights Act: “Many were brutally assaulted; one good man, a man of God, was killed.”Fifty years later, Hardies remembered a man whose legacy is still tied closely to the church, whose progressive roots date back to its founding in 1821, when it was known for its opposition to slavery.“When did he first give his life over to the cause of freedom?” Hardies asked his congregation. The Unitarian minister from Boston had been among many white clergymen who … He was an American white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, Massachusetts who, while marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, was beaten to death by segregationists. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister in Boston, grew outraged as he watched television footage of the brutal “Bloody Sunday” attack.
James Reeb was born in Wichita, Kansas. Johnson's voting rights proposal reached Congress the Monday after Reeb's death.The James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Madison, Wisconsin is named in honor of Rev.