Dear all,

I have received the very sad news from Sheila of the passing of our great and compassionate leader, Rev. John Collins.  He passed away peacefully in his sleep last night at the age of 95.  The family will be planning a memorial service for him later this Spring.

Ainsley and I had visited him not too long ago and you can watch our interview here

John Collins was a retired United Methodist minister who had been a long-time champion of peace and racial justice.  In 1960, while a student at Union Theological Seminary, he co-founded the Student Interracial Ministry that sent white seminarians to work in black churches in the South and African Americans to work in white churches.  That summer John served as assistant pastor of an AME Zion church in Talladega, Alabama.

While serving a congregation in East Harlem during the 1960s he helped to found M.E.N.D. a local expression of the War on Poverty and supported the East Harlem community during the community control of the schools fight.  In 1963 he spent a week in a jail in Mississippi for trying to integrate a church and that same year was arrested for trying to integrate a restaurant in Wilmington, NC. He was also arrested for protesting injustice in Washington, DC, Cleveland, OH and five times in New York City.

While serving a church in the South Bronx from 1986 to 1984 he helped organize South Bronx Churches, which constructed over 500 single family homes for low/moderate income families. 

He also held positions as the Youth Coordinator for the New York Conference of the Methodist Church; built affordable housing with Connecticut Interfaith Housing; served as a consultant with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility where he worked on trying to save the steel mills that were being shut down in the Mahoning Valley, Ohio and as Co-Director of Clergy and Laity Concerned where he led campaigns for human rights and disarmament.  He was a co-founder of Witness for Peace and led two delegations to Nicaragua during the contra war.  In 1984 he helped organize Religious Leaders for the Jackson presidential campaign and wrote speeches for the candidate.

Since his formal retirement in 1994, John was a field organizer for the Methodist Federation for Social Action and its president, led two religious delegations to Venezuela and was emcee of an address by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a Manhattan church.  He also started and led for several years a two-year training program for all new ministers in the New York Conference, UMC.  In his later years he taught in prison, mentored several formerly incarcerated men and worked with the White Plains Coalition for police reform.

Nada Khader

WESPAC Foundation Director

www.wespac.org

914 449-6514       
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