James Reeb

James Joseph Reeb (January 1, 1927 – March 11, 1965) was an American Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor, and activist during the civil rights movement in Washington, D.C., and Boston, Massachusetts.

Reeb was born on January 1, 1927, in Wichita, Kansas, to Mae (Fox) and Harry Reeb.

He was raised in Kansas and Casper, Wyoming.

He attended Natrona County High School and graduated in 1945, after which he joined the Army despite the fact that his commitment to the ministry made him exempt from service.

After basic training, he was sent to Anchorage, Alaska, as a clerk typist for the headquarters of Special Troops.

He was honorably discharged eighteen months later in December 1946 as Technical Sergeant, Third Class.

After his time in the Army, Reeb continued his schooling.

Initially, he attended classes in his hometown at Casper Junior College, before moving on to St. Olaf College, in 1947, where he received his A.B. cum laude in 1950.

Reeb married Marie Deason on August 20, 1950; they had four children.

As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb went to Selma to join the Selma to Montgomery marches, a series of protests for African-American voting rights that followed the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Ala., by a law enforcement officer.

He then entered Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, where he earned his B.D. in 1953.

Three days later, Reeb was ordained a Presbyterian minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Casper.

After this he accepted a position at the Philadelphia General Hospital as Chaplain to Hospitals for the Philadelphia Presbyter.

To become a more effective counselor, he returned to school, enrolling at Conwell School of Theology, and earning an S.T.M. in Pastoral Counseling in 1955.

As a scholar of theology, Reeb grew away from traditionalist Presbyterian teachings and was drawn to the Unitarian Universalist church.

In March 1957, he resigned his Presbyterian Chaplaincy and contacted the American Unitarian Association about transferring his fellowship from Presbyterian to Unitarian.

He took a job that would allow him to work closely with Philadelphia's poor community as a youth director for the West Branch Y.M.C.A. between 1957 and 1959.

While at the Y.M.C.A. he abolished the racial quota system and started an integrated busing program to transport youth to and from the location.

Reeb appreciated the church's emphasis on social action, and he became active in the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

Beginning in his new ministry, Reeb encouraged parishioners to participate in the movement as well.

With his wife and four children, he lived in poor black neighborhoods where he felt he could do the best.

When he was granted a preliminary fellowship by the Unitarians, he accepted an offer to be an assistant minister of All Souls Church in Washington D.C. After three years of active service at All Souls Church, Reeb was fully ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1962.

In 1964, he began as community relations director for the American Friends Service Committee's Boston Metropolitan Housing Program, focusing on desegregation.

At the AFSC, Reeb and his staff advocated for the poor and pressed the city to enforce its housing code, protecting the rights of tenants of all races and backgrounds, particularly poor African and Hispanic Americans.

The Reebs were one of the few white families living in Roxbury.

James Reeb's daughter Anne recollected that her father "was adamant that you could not make a difference for African-Americans while living comfortably in a white community."

While participating in the Selma to Montgomery marches actions in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was murdered by white segregationists and white supremacists, dying of head injuries in the hospital two days after being severely beaten.

Three men were tried for Reeb's murder but were acquitted by an all-white jury.

His murder remains officially unsolved.

Reeb was prompted by the Bloody Sunday attack by state troopers and sheriff's deputies on nonviolent demonstrators on March 7, 1965.

After eating dinner at an integrated restaurant on March 9, Reeb and two other Unitarian ministers, Rev. Clark Olsen and Rev. Orloff Miller were attacked by white men with clubs for their support of African-American rights.

The black hospital in Selma did not have the facilities to treat him.

Two hours elapsed, and his condition deteriorated, before Reeb arrived at a Birmingham hospital—treatment was not available for him in much closer Montgomery—where doctors performed brain surgery.

While Reeb was on his way to the hospital in Birmingham, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a press conference lamenting the "cowardly" attack and asking all to pray for his protection.

Reeb went into a coma and died two days later from his injuries.

Reeb's death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South.

Tens of thousands held vigils in his honor.

President Lyndon B. Johnson called Reeb's widow and father to express his condolences, and on March 15 invoked Reeb's memory when he delivered a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress.

The same day, King eulogized Reeb at a ceremony at Brown's Chapel in Selma: "James Reeb symbolizes the forces of goodwill in our nation. He demonstrated the conscience of the nation. He was an attorney for the defense of the innocent in the court of world opinion. He was a witness to the truth that men of different races and classes might live, eat, and work together as brothers."

And, King said, "James Reeb says something to each of us, black and white alike—says that we must substitute courage for caution, says to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him but about the system, the way of life."