Lifetime activist Reverend Maurice McCrackin (the gentleman being arrested, at right) has been sticking his neck out for over 60 years.

The minister of an inner-city church in 1945, McCrackin made it the first interracial congregation in the entire Presbyterian Church. He became a leader in the civil rights movement, working with Rosa Parks, Myles Horton and Martin Luther King. Concerned about people who lost homes or jobs because of their civil rights activities, he ran an unofficial relief agency to assist them.

In the course of following his conscience, Reverend McCrackin was accused of being a Communist in the ’50’s, when McCarthyism was raging in this country. In the ’60’s, his highly visible protest actions on behalf of integration and peace led to his expulsion from the Presbyterian Church. (In 1987 he was invited back, with apologies, to a Church whose views had caught up with his.) In the ’70’s he was an active protestor against the war in Viet Nam, and was jailed for six months for being a war tax resistor.

Being jailed led him into yet another humanitarian effort: he founded Talbot House to assist former prisoners with their return to society.

Even in his 90’s, Reverend McCrackin was protesting the injustices he'd see; one of his last causes was the “dumping” onto the streets of mental patients in need of psychiatric care and safe shelter.

Mac has passed on, but his dedication and commitment to social justice lives on in the hearts and lives of all who knew and loved him.