Racial Justice Team

The Purpose of the UUCUC Racial Justice Team is: To educate ourselves about racial injustice, white privilege, and implicit racial bias, and to work to dismantle white supremacy in our schools, our church, our workplaces, and our communities.

Racial Justice Team's activities support these UU principles:

1. The worth and dignity of all people

2. Justice, equity and compassion for all

6. World community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

8. Spiritual wholeness by working toward diverse multicultural Beloved Community.


For more information contact Priscilla Kron.

Mission and History

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana Champaign (UUCUC) has a history of action for racial justice. In 1968, UUCUC ordained and called one of the first African-American Unitarian Universalist ministers, Rev. Renford Gaines, who later changed his name to Mwalimu Imara. Other former ministers of the church were directly involved in the civil rights movement, and more recent ministers, Rev. Elaine Gehrmann and Rev. Axel Gehrmann, led workshops on white privilege and worked on reform of the local justice system. Our previous minister, Rev. Florence Caplow, was involved in interfaith efforts to promote racial justice, including organizing an interfaith vigil in fall, 2019, in response to local and national gun violence, in collaboration with the Ministerial Alliance and the CU Trauma and Resilience Initiative.

In May 2016, the congregation chose the Racial Justice Initiative (RJI) as its two-year initiative. In 2018, the congregation voted to place a “Black Lives Matter” banner on the building and to create an ongoing group, the Racial Justice Project (later renamed Racial Justice Team, RJT), to continue the work. We, like many UU churches, have a high percentage of white members, so much of the work has been focused on education and increasing awareness about systemic racism, white privilege, and the effects of white supremacy culture for the church and the wider progressive white community.

UUCUC has hosted film screenings, workshops, educational training, and church services on themes such as the history of slavery and its continuing reconstruction, mass incarceration, policing, cultural competency, reparations, and systemic racism. RJT continues to provide workshops, movie screenings, and other educational opportunities to our church members and friends from the community. In partnership with our Religious Exploration and Engagement program we are considering how these activities can be reframed as part of our congregation’s religious education. One ongoing educational opportunity is our Racial Justice book discussion group, offered to adults who are teen-aged or older.

• Through funding efforts and volunteer activities, UUCUC has supported many local community groups doing racial justice work. These include the Community Coalition Race Relations group, Racial Taboo Working Group, CU SURJ, First Followers, Books to Prisoners, the Education Justice Project, CU Trauma and Resilience Initiative, CU Reparations Coalition, the Randolph St. Garden, and the NAACP. In October, 2019, and again in October, 2023, we received the President’s Award from the Champaign County chapter of NAACP for our ongoing support of racial justice activities.

• Through participation in community events, RJT is increasing UUCUC’s visibility around issues of race and racial justice.

• RJT will continue to partner with Rev. Beth Monhollen and Rev. Sally Fritsche on church services that explore race and racial justice.



• RJT is leading the congregation in reflecting critically on the procedures, documents, and practices within our congregation that might deter people of color from becoming more fully a part of our community.

• We support the Unitarian Universalist Association’s work to dismantle racism within Unitarian Universalism and we promote Black Lives of UU, a national advocacy and support group for people of color within our churches. We recently promoted UUCUC’s adoption of the “8 th Principle” that explicitly promotes anti-racist actions in Unitarian Universalist congregations. The members of the Racial Justice Team look forward to helping the congregation maintain racial justice education and advocacy as a sustained, central part of our church.