Speak­ing of Bayard Rustin, the print­ed ver­sion of the 1948 speech that is the sub­ject of Car­los Figueroa’s recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is now avail­able as a free e‑book or PDF.

But not just that speech: Pen­dle Hill and Quak­er Heron Press recent­ly fin­ished dig­i­tiz­ing dozens of the William Penn/Seeking Faith­ful­ness lec­tures dat­ing back to 1916. It’s an amaz­ing col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing a who’s-who of twentieth-century Friends and friends-of-Friends.

A warn­ing that the selec­tions reflect the prej­u­dices of the day. As far as I can tell it took until the 1950s until lec­ture orga­niz­ers thought to invite a woman. And of course nam­ing your lec­ture after William Penn is seen as prob­lem­at­ic today giv­en his per­son­al involve­ment in human traf­fick­ing. Back then they could over­look that to claim he endeav­ored “to live out the laws of Christ in every thought, and word, and deed.” In 2016 the revived lec­ture series was renamed.