The Church is working with a University of Illinois School of Information Sciences graduate student to archive and digitize our records, some of which go back to the beginning of the Twentieth Century. From time to time, we’ll report on interesting findings from her search.

On September 29, Rev. Sally’s sermon centered on a mid-Twentieth Century Unitarian minister in Champaign named Philip Schug. She focused on his efforts to advance the case of McCollum vs. Champaign Board of Education. Begun in 1944, the case ultimately was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 8, 1948 in favor of Vashti McCollum and her son, Terry. The primary finding was that public schools cannot allow religious groups to use their facilities to provide religious instruction to children.

While McCollum was working its way through the courts, Rev. Schug had another fight on his hands. Here are his words, taken from a long letter written to Jane Anderson (a longtime UUCUC member) in July 1977. He’s reflecting on the immediate post-World War II years.

“… the Black veterans were complaining that they could not get a haircut in Champaign-Urbana, nor get service in campus restaurants. I was putting together a much tougher project to rid the campus area, and possibly Champaign-Urbana, of open racial discrimination. This had to be a community-wide project. Most ministers would no longer talk to me [because of McCollum] and they were needed. Finally a wonderful Baptist minister in downtown Urbana would talk to me – and the District Attorney would talk to him. We got to be right chummy and things began to look up.

The Student-Community Interracial Committee was born. The basement of the Unitarian Church [now the Channing-Murray Foundation building] became its work room and warehouse. Professors, one or two ministers, many students, and Mary [his wife] and I go to test restaurants for discrimination, go to movies with Blacks to see whether we can get in, take depositions and get them notarized, etc., etc. on all fronts. We bring hundreds of depositions to the District Attorney’s office.

The Student-Community Interracial Committee is phenomenally successful. The restaurants were easy. Barbers – difficult. Pools – delayed but easy. Theaters – almost easy. A big downtown theater was a hold-out – the manager would not budge. We gathered a bulging file of notarized evidence for the D.A. and first took it to the theater’s owners. They proved to be willing to talk it over. I suggested that they simply transfer their manager and secure one who did not have a knee-jerk reactions to Blacks. The manager went off to Minnesota. Case closed.

Ultimately, and tactfully, we took on student housing at the U. of I. Stoddard had been installed [as President of the University] by then. Everything went smoothly.”