Religion: Reparations up to Date

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At the first meeting of the National Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit just two years ago this week, a solemn, angry black man rose to read a "Black Manifesto." He demanded, among other things, $500 million in "reparations" from white U.S. churches and synagogues. What he wanted, said James Forman bluntly, was to be paid for past injustices. He calculated the bill at "$15 per nigger," and he urged black people "to commence the disruption of white racist churches and synagogues." Eight days later, Forman and some of his followers invaded Riverside Church, Manhattan's temple of liberal Protestantism, and demanded "extra reparations," partly because of its connection with Rockefeller money.

Since then, measured strictly by its own improbable expectations (Forman later upped the ante to $3 billion), the reparations movement has been something of a failure. So far, the Black Economic Development Conference (B.E.D.C.) has collected little more than $300,000. Critics contend that it does not adequately account for the money, and as a result, it has even lost the support of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, which sponsored the Detroit meeting.

The Rev. Calvin B. Marshall, outspoken Brooklyn pastor (TIME, April 6, 1970) who is chairman of B.E.D.C.'s steering committee, argues that one of B.E.D.C.'s virtues is the ability to "shoot down bureaucracy and get some dollars moving." Many of the dollars have been moving in the direction of one of B.E.D.C.'s main projects, the Black Star Press of Detroit. Its first book, by Forman, endorses "armed struggle and the seizure of state power."

The true impact of Forman's pronouncement, however, is greater than B.E.D.C.'s bank account. Though the manifesto in fact antagonized a good many churchmen, it may have helped release literally millions of dollars for expanded or new programs to aid minority groups, especially blacks. White churchmen generally deny that they are acting in direct response to the manifesto, whose revolutionary appeal they abhor. But in a number of denominations, there is evidence of a heightened effort to overcome the racial and social problems the manifesto dramatized. The churchmen are exercising control over their money and for the most part are not financing radicals. But they are giving. Items:

> The United Presbyterian Church voted in its 1969 General Assembly to reject any support of B.E.D.C., but it also voted to establish a Fund for the Self-Development of People with an initial goal of $10 million this year.

> The Episcopal Church, already involved heavily in more than $4,000,000 worth of special programs for minority assistance, made an additional $200,000 grant in 1969 to the National Committee of Black Churchmen, with the unwritten but clear understanding that it would be passed on to B.E.D.C. And though contributions have dropped, partly because of backlash over that and other controversial grants, the church has maintained the programs despite its financial crisis.