John Frazier (born 1941), an African American Unitarian Universalist minister, was born in Mississippi. During the early 1960s, he was active in the civil rights movement and served as assistant to the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Field Directors, Medger and Charles Evers. Frazier left Mississippi to attend the seminary at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and Manchester College in Oxford, England. He was ordained in July 1969. His ordination coincided with the founding of the Humanist Fellowship of Liberation by dissident members of the First Unitarian Society in Cleveland, Ohio, and Frazier came to Cleveland to serve as minister of the newly formed congregation.
The John Frazier Papers, 1962-1974 and undated, consist of correspondence, financial records, sermons, speeches, school records, newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous papers, relating to Frazier's civil rights activities, his seminary years, racial issues in the Unitarian-Universalist church, and the Humanist Fellowship of Liberation.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Unitarian Universalist church there in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the Humanist Fellowship of Liberation. The collection reflects Frazier's involvement in civil rights activities during his seminary years, the racial issues which divided the Unitarian Universalist church, and his role in the establishment and development of the Humanist Fellowship of Liberation in Cleveland, Ohio. Those studying the history of the African American community in Cleveland, Ohio, will find this collection particularly useful.
The collection is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
The researcher should also consult MS 3592 Humanist Fellowship of Liberation Records.
Processed by Sandra Berman in 1975.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 3593 John Frazier Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of Reverend John Frazier in 1973.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.