Title
Commemorating the life of Temple professor and civil liberties champion John Raines, who participated in the Freedom Rides in the 1960s, bravely seized and leaked FBI files revealing government surveillance of civilians in 1971, and served as a tireless activist for peace and racial justice throughout his entire life.
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WHEREAS, John Curtis Raines was born in 1933 in Minneapolis and earned his bachelor's degree from Carleton College in 1955 and his doctorate in Christian Social Ethics from the Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1967; and
WHEREAS, After serving as a minister in Setauket, New York, Raines felt a call to action and began participating in Freedom Rides across the South. In 1961, as he stood with an interracial group of activists in a bus station waiting room after the Supreme Court had ruled that interstate waiting rooms had to be desegregated, Raines was arrested in Little Rock, Arkansas and was found guilty of "threatening the breach of the peace." Raines noted that,"I found myself in a space I had never been before - outside power and regarded by power as an enemy, and power had the power to punish me for that"; and
WHEREAS, In addition to his work as a Freedom Rider, Raines courageously participated in racial justice efforts time and time again throughout the 1960s: he demonstrated with seminarians until a filibuster on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was broken, led Black voter registration efforts across the South, boycotted First National City Bank in its attempt to support the apartheid economy in South Africa, and worked as a Freedom School educator in Mississippi; and
WHEREAS, In Fall 1966, Raines came to Philadelphia with his wife Bonnie to teach religious studies and social ethics at Temple University, where he would remain for the next 50 years; and
WHEREAS, Once moving to Philadelphia, Raines became involved with the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, an anti-war protest group led by Catholic priests ...
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