Shoulder to Shoulder: M. Shawn Copeland

Abstract

In the early 1960s, during the civil rights movement, a Fijian woman studying in the United States was prevented from dining at a local restaurant in the southern town where she was attending a Methodist college. Sue Thrasher, a white student at the same college, introduced a resolution to the student council, using what she later calls “the orthodox language of Methodist doctrine” to condemn the incident of race-based discrimination. She was stunned when “everyone agreed that it was too bad that [the woman] had been discriminated against, but everyone did not agree that something had to be done about it.”¹ The motion failed.