Becoming Beloved Community
Join us on a journey to build Beloved Community in St. Petersburg.
Beloved Community Will Offer 2024 Pilgrimage to Civil Rights Sites in Alabama
As a faith community, we at St. Peter’s have been making great strides in our journey toward Becoming Beloved Community: a community in which everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate. We have armed ourselves with knowledge, learning of the history of race via podcasts, book studies, and the Episcopal Church’s groundbreaking film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith, Sacred Ground. Through these activities we have walked through chapters of America’s history with race and racism, while weaving threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity.
During 2021 our Chapter adopted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement to reflect the increasing awareness of our call to justice and racial healing. Elements of the Diversity Statement became a part of the foundation on which the Cathedral’s strategic plan is based. Read the statement here.
Many of us have answered God’s call to open our hearts and “do something” by becoming involved in social justice and racial healing activities. In 2022 our Cathedral community joined with 50 other diverse Pinellas County congregations in FAST, a justice ministry to better the lives of residents. Now your BBC Team invites you to take a moment out of time to make a pilgrimage highlighting racial and social-justice sites.
We will spend three days — April 11-14, 2024 — exploring significant sites in Montgomery, Tuskegee and Selma, AL. Among them: the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, with its stunning commemoration of the victims of lynching; the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where marchers were beaten and fire-hosed on Bloody Sunday in 1965: and Tuskegee University on the Civil Rights Trail in Tuskegee, the home of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Airmen National Monument. We will travel together, break bread together, and pray together, asking God to strengthen our commitment to justice and healing as well to lead us in the direction we should go. All are invited, both those well versed in justice issues and those just beginning the journey. For more information please contact Betsy Adams (betsygadams@icloud. com).
Recommended Reading
These are a few books members of the BBC team have read and highly recommend. Have other favorites or recommendations? Let us know! Email Hillary Peete (hpeete@spcathedral.com). Additional titles are listed below.
Local Resources and Events
The African American Heritage Trails in St. Petersburg
The African American Heritage Trails in St. Petersburg, Florida, are walking tours of downtown neighborhoods. They provide individuals, groups, and classes with an overview of African American influence on the history of the city. Nineteen markers covering more than a dozen city blocks provide details about the history of the African American community in St. Petersburg.
Dr. G. Carter Woodson African American Museum
The museum presents the historic voice of one segment of the St. Petersburg Florida community in the perspective of local, regional, and national history, culture and community. It is another demonstration of the commitment to revitalize the Midtown St. Petersburg area.
The Union of Black Episcopalians
The Union of Black Episcopalians stands in the continuing tradition of more than 200 years of Black leadership in the Episcopal Church. The Union of Black Episcopalians is a confederation of more than 55 chapters and interest groups throughout the continental United States and the Caribbean. The Union also has members in Canada, Africa and Latin America.
The NAACP
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.
Past Events and Recordings
The Making of a Racist with Charles B. Dew
A native of St. Petersburg, Charles B. Dew will speak about his memoir, “The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade.” He describes growing up in St. Petersburg during the Jim Crow era, and how he realized that he had been thoroughly indoctrinated into thinking that that was "just the way things were."
African-American Communities with Ray Arsenault
Noted Civil Rights historian Ray Arsenault will join us for a webinar discussion about the history of the African-American communities in St. Petersburg.
Resources from the Episcopal church
We acknowledge this is hard work.
We are asking ourselves and each other to reexamine stories and truths that are deeply held. We also acknowledge that we are called by God and our baptismal vows to do this work. We approach this work with a sense of curiosity and understanding that we don’t have all the answers and are sometimes limited by own own life experiences. Below are links to books, articles, films, and online resources to help us learn and reflect as preparation for wider discussion.