Alfred McClung Lee (August 23, 1906-May 19, 1992) and Elizabeth Briant Lee (September 9, 1908-December 9, 1999) were leading 20th-century sociologists who published breakthrough studies of propaganda, race, and media. They also authored textbooks; founded two professional organizations and were outspoken advocates for freedom, democracy and equality.
Clarence J. Harris (March 16, 1873-November 27, 1941) was a minister who served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations. During the early years of the motion picture industry, he wrote hundreds of screenplays. He also organized military-style youth groups, animal welfare organizations, a screenwriter’s school, and summer camps for boys.
Bruce Wallace Brotherston (August 12, 1877-April 17, 1947) was a Universalist minister, author, and educator. After 16 years in the ministry he went on to teach philosophy, religious education, and philosophy of religion at St. Lawrence University and Tufts College for twenty-one more years.
Frank Oliver Hall (March 19, 1860-October 18, 1941) was an inspiring preacher and social gospeler who founded the Universalist Commission on Social Service. He served thirty-five years as minister of the Church of the Divine Paternity in New York City, and taught homiletics for thirteen years at Crane Theological School, Tufts College.
Homer Alexander Jack (May 19, 1916-August 5, 1993) was a Unitarian Universalist minister and early activist for peace, disarmament, racial equality and social justice. An accomplished writer and speaker, he organized and led a number of civil rights, disarmament, and peace organizations.
Ephraim Nute, Jr. (September 18, 1819-January 21, 1897), an outspoken and aggressive abolitionist, was the American Unitarian Association (AUA) missionary to the Kansas territory during the “Bleeding Kansas” years prior to the Civil War. A conductor on the Underground Railroad, he was a key figure in the free state cause.
Francis Ellingwood Abbot (November 6, 1836-October 23, 1903), a founder of the Free Religious Association and first editor of the radical journal, the Index, developed an evolutionary philosophy of science. He yearned to free humankind from pre-scientific religions, believing that people could escape the trap of agnosticism by adopting his vision of free religion.
John Aikin (January 15, 1747-December 7, 1822), M.D., epitomized the dissenting spirit that advocated freedom of religious expression in mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. He is best known today as the brother of the poet and educator Anna Lætitia Aikin Barbauld, yet deserves attention in his own right.
Alice Mildred Harrison (July 27, 1906-June 13, 1989), a religious educator, was a pioneering leader and organizer of youth programming and activities for the Universalist Church of America, the Council of Liberal Churches, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Celio Secondo Curione (May 1, 1503-December 24, 1569), a classical scholar and professor of eloquence, was a leading religious and humanistic voice in the community of Italian Protestants living in exile in Switzerland during the Reformation. Although too cautious to openly oppose John Calvin, he secretly helped to prepare protests against the execution of Michael Servetus.
Robert Edward Green (September 30, 1934-January 15, 2003) was a religious humanist and Unitarian Universalist minister who served churches in Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, Michigan, and, for 23 years, the First Unitarian Universalist Church, Stockton, California. Also a social activist lawyer, he founded, co-founded, and promoted numerous organizations and endeavors in Stockton to help feed and house low-income people, to protect their civil rights and rights as consumers, and to give them legal assistance.
Leonard Mason (February 7, 1912-December 26, 1995), a British Unitarian humanist minister, who served churches in England and in Montreal, Quebec, was one of the outstanding preachers and public speakers of his generation.
Born in Meadow Cottage, Ainsworth, Lancashire in 1912, Leonard was the youngest of three brothers.