On this Thanksgiving weekend, I want to give thanks for the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) in our nation’s history who chose faith based nonviolent direct action as the way to advance freedom and justice for all. For the last 20 years, a major part of the ministry of the Cornelius Corps has been to lift up the stories of witnesses from the modern Civil Rights Movement as a call to continuing their legacy in our time. Over those years, it has been a great blessing and inspiration for me to be in the presence of some of them at various programs, marches, and conferences. The following list includes some of those witnesses – some are nationally and internationally known while others are less well known but whose lives were equally committed to faith based nonviolence that changed our nation for the better. I invite you to take the time to do an internet search to learn more about their contributions to the ongoing struggle for racial justice. You will be thankful you did.
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John Lewis
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Andrew Young
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Dick Gregory
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Marian Wright Edelman
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Minnijean Brown, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Ernest Green
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Vincent Harding
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John Perkins
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Bernard Lafayette
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Ed King
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Janice Wesley Kelsey
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Julian Bond
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Harry Belafonte
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
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Dion Diamond
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Larry Rubin
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Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
As I give thanks for their lives and witnesses, the following verses from Hebrews 11 come to mind:
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Beyond being thankful, we are called to follow God’s way of nonviolent self-sacrificial love that unites us with that great cloud of witnesses. The following video summarizes the impact of the power that is greater than the power of violence.