Rev. Teresa Schwartz

In honor of Black History month, we’ll explore the story of the first Black Unitarian Minister, Egbert Ethelred Brown, who started a Unitarian congregation in Jamaica in 1908 before moving to Harlem in 1920, where he founded the Harlem Community Church; the AUA provided sporadic financial support, then took away his ministerial fellowship in 1929. His story highlights our faith’s failures—and Brown’s resilience in the face of racism within the American Unitarian Association.