Truth and Justice: The BlackQuaker Project Challenges Quakerism in the 21st Century

“If Quakers were so active in the Abolitionist movement, then why are there so few African American Friends today?”

This haunting query, initially posed by a concerned Black Cuban Quaker visiting Wellesley Friends Meeting some years ago, will serve as a springboard for a presentation challenging Friends to greater commitment to Truth and Justice through new, innovative narratives and models.

In this 2024 Black History Month Monday Night Lecture, Dr. Harold D. Weaver Jr. (Hal), Founding Director of the BlackQuaker Project (BQP), seeks to answer this puzzling question and others pertaining to the Religious Society of Friends in relation to Friends of Color worldwide in the 21st century. He will utilize some of his ministry’s major activities to suggest a path forward for the Religious Society of Friends: putting the Quaker testimony of Justice at the forefront of modern Quakerism, healing historical injustices through a new model for Quakers, and responding to a new understanding of systemic violence through anti-violence, not merely non-violence. Hal will draw on and expand the pronouncements of Friends and non-Friends of various ethnic backgrounds throughout history: African, Asian, European, Latinx, Middle Eastern; the pioneering work of Christian Palestinian scholar-activists Edward Said and Quaker Jean Zaru; video interviews from the Quakers of Color International Archive; and his personal experiences and observations worldwide.