Earnest John G. Gill looked like just the man to take care of the Unitarian Church in the quiet, well-kept town of Alton, 111. (pop. 32,000), on the bluffs of the Mississippi River. At Harvard, John Gill had written his Ph.D. thesis on Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the fiery Abolitionist minister and editor who was beaten to death by an Alton mob in 1837.
For six years John Gill and Alton got along, but beneath the tranquil surface, trouble threatened. Like many another small town in southern Illinois, Alton ignores a state law, on the books since the 1880s, and segregates its Negro children in public schools below high-school level.
All went well until last year, when Unitarian Gill began to see local conditions in terms of black & white. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was fighting segregation in Alton's schools, and Gill was openly in the anti-segregation fight. One day 175 Negro boys & girls tried to register at five grade schools and two junior high schools. Gill organized his fellow ministers to supervise the demonstration and prevent trouble. When crosses in the Ku Klux Klan tradition were burned on the riverfront to intimidate the Negroes, Gill's pulpit denunciation, and a newspaper statement which 17 other ministers signed, were the only voices in Alton raised publicly in opposition.
Last September the board of his church (one of the few Unitarian congregations which re-elects its ministers each year) voted 46 to 25 not to rehire "troublemaking" Minister Gill. The decision had nothing to do with Gill's outspoken stand on the racial issue, the board explained. But last week, after a stiff letter from the Rev. Robert Raible, president of the Unitarian Ministers' Association, the Alton church board found it advisable to pledge that 1) its ministers would never be required to consult with the church board before taking a stand on anything; 2) the practice of annual re-election (or rejection) of ministers would be discontinued; 3 ) racial equality was something the board "believed in."
Last week Minister Gill was looking for another parish, and Negro children were still segregated in Alton's elementary schools.