Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative and professor of history at the University of St. Thomas, authored an op-ed published in the Minnesota Star Tribune examining how the Minnesota Council of Churches has grappled with racial equity and accountability over time. In the piece, Williams reflects on historical patterns of institutional retreat when efforts to confront racism become politically or socially challenging, urging sustained commitment rather than symbolic action.
From the op-ed:
In 1993, the Minnesota Council of Churches announced a bold intention: to support congregations in becoming “deliberate and intentional about their identity as an anti-racist institution.” Those words – spoken by Lou Schoen, then-director of the council’s Commission on Life and Work – signaled what could have been a transformational era of truth-telling within Minnesota’s faith communities. Yet within two years, the council quietly stepped back from that work, overwhelmed by the weight of the commitment it had made.
It would take another quarter-century – and the murder of George Floyd in 2020 – before the council reclaimed that promise in a more public and determined way, launching an ambitious statewide “Truth and Reparations” initiative intended to address historical harms with honesty, humility and moral clarity around Black and Indigenous communities in Minnesota. The Minnesota Council of Churches pledged that truth telling would be the centerpiece of its work. And the public face, moral compass and community anchor of that commitment was the Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs, a citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of the Mohican Indians and the council’s program co-director of racial justice.
Last month, just days before Thanksgiving, Jacobs was told his position was being eliminated. ...
