Marvin McMickle and James Forbes Jr. speak at first-ever cross-racial gathering to tackle racism
Marvin McMickle, president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, was one of the speakers at a conference that brought together more than 300 clergy and community leaders to address race relations.
“We’re not going to be able to resolve the issues of racism alone, whether it is the black church alone or the white church alone,” McMickle said. “I think both hands have to be on the plow.”
The Conference of National Black Churches, founded in 1978 to bring African American denominations together, hosted the mid-December event, “The Healing of Our Nation: Race and Reconciliation,” which also included leaders from mainline Protestant denominations. The three-day meeting took place in Charleston, South Carolina, with a worship service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study in June. A white extremist, who wrote that he had hoped to “start a race war,” was charged with federal hate crimes for the massacre.
