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"The Negroes and the Puerto Ricans have had it."

So wrote Graydon McClellan, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of New York, in a 1965 pastoral letter supporting the activism of one of its minister members, Milton Arthur Galamison, who had just led a march of students through Harlem in protest of the continued segregation of New York's public schools, and the subordinate treatment of Black and Puerto Rican children. 

"Mr. Galamison dramatically represents that fact. The people he leads are not out to win our favor or approbationbut to win educational rights for their...

In 1970 the UPCUSA Council on Church and Race issued a $10,000 grant to the legal defense fund of Angela Davis, occasioning a furore inside the denomination that many Presbyterians remain reluctant to mention out loud to this day. In light of the tumult, a group of Black ministers contributed $10,000 of their own back to COCAR, to make the denomination whole.

In September 1972, following the...