M m Letter H introduces Lewis McGee

Welcome. After each person says his or her name, the group responds, “Welcome, (name).” For a child who is attending for the first time this year, add name to the letters that have been posted and to the attendance sheet, and make a nametag during or after the session. Leave an empty chair for someone who is not present or for someone who has not joined the group yet.

It was 1920. Lewis McGee was 27 years old and lived in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a mailman, and his heavy bag got lighter and lighter as he delivered letters and magazines and packages to people. He walked many miles each day.

Lewis' father was a minister. Lewis was a minister, too, of a small African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a mailman because the people in his church could not pay him enough to live, so he had to have another job.

One day Lewis saw a magazine in the mail called the Christian Register, the magazine of the Unitarians. (The magazine that we have now is The World.) Well, Lewis got excited reading the magazine. He found that the writers believed as he did! He kept the magazine for a few days. When he took it to the right mailbox, he told the woman that he had read it several times. She invited him to her church. He was excited to hear that there was a church that believed like the writers did!

Lewis went to the church. He liked it. He decided to become a Unitarian minister. But he was a Negro, or African American. The Unitarians were afraid that a black minister would not be accepted by a white congregation! The color of a person's skin made a difference on what a person could do.

So, for 28 years, Lewis McGee dreamed of being a Unitarian minister. He went to a school for ministers, and was a chaplain in the Army in World War I and World War II. And he waited.

In 1948, he and his wife, Marcella, worked to start the Free Religious Fellowship, an interracial congregation in Chicago. Lewis McGee was the first minister. But it was not until 1961 that a black minister became the senior minister of an essentially white congregation, when he became minister of the Chico Unitarian Fellowship in California. That was a long time to wait for his dream to come true.

Marcella involved women in local and national activities to make the world better, wherever she lived. She was part of the women's groups from the Unitarians and Universalists that joined in 1962. In 1994, she was given the Clara Barton Award (See about her, if you have had the lesson about her) because of her leadership with women.

Multi-cultural: Read a story on multicultural diversity. There are a number of stories available from bookstores, including the Unitarian Universalist Bookstore (www.uua.org/bookstore)

Music. What kinds of music do the children like? Where is music used in the church? How are children involved with music (hymns, possibly choir, musical games). Have items for instruments or instruments themselves, like triangles, rattles, drums or cans to make drums, metal and wooden spoons, lids. Make own band.

CLOSING: Gather around the Special Place where the things related to the letter have been placed. "We give thanks for the Letter M. We have shared and learned about special people and animals and ourselves and our church. May we leave in love and peace. Next week we will meet again. Our letter will be ____ and our leader(s) will be ____________________." Make sure that people take home things that need to go.

Multi-cultural: Read a story on multicultural diversity. Does a person’s background make a difference in positions today?

Magazine: Have copies of The World, including one with an insert of UU & Me, the magazine for children from the Church of the Larger Fellowship, for children ages 6-12. Also have copies of your own church’s newsletter, which can be considered as the church’s magazine.

Lewis McGee learned about Unitarian Universalism from a magazine. Talk about the newsletter that the church sends out. Is there information about the children in the church in the newsletter? Would they like to write something about their group and its activities? Children could develop the Children's Page for the church newsletter or as a separate item.

(Note: As churches move more and more to electronic communication and web sites, the children may not see the hard copies of newsletters or The UU World.)

M m Letter M introduces Lewis McGee, who waited years to become a Unitarian minister in a white congregation, and finding out about Unitarians through our magazines. His wife, Marcella, was active in working with women.