Follow-up to WATERtalk Melanie Morrison
“Becoming Trustworthy White Allies” (Duke U. Press, 2025)
Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 1 PM ET
WATER thanks Melanie Morrison for sharing her book, “Becoming Trustworthy White Allies.”
The program began with a land acknowledgement and recognition of two of the recent travesties wrought by the Trump Administration—the incursion into Venezuela and the murder by an ICE agent of Rene Nicole Good. These horrific crimes affect all of us in their brutality and their “might makes right” approach to human community. “Let them be considered anathema.” I Cor. 16:22.
The video and these notes can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72O6p9fhmgg
Please feel free to share this material with others.
Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction to Melanie Morrison
Welcome, Melanie Morrison. Melanie describes herself as an author, speaker, and anti-racism educator. We will experience all of that shortly. She lives in Durham, NC, and is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She studied for the MDiv at Yale Divinity School, and earned a doctorate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Melanie Morrison is one of the innovators of my theological generation. It is interesting how many of us – you, Melanie; Jeanette Stokes at the Center for Women and Ministry in the South; Marie Fortune founder of the FaithTrust Institute; Carol Adams, another of your Yale Divinity School cohort who is a prolific writer; myself here at WATER with Diann Neu; and others we could name who use our theological training to create new spaces in which to do what the Rev. Dr. Katie Canon of blessed memory called, to “Do the work your soul must have.”
It is no accident that I mention white women’s names as we were, in our early years and largely still, among the few whose privilege—racial, economic, educational—permitted us to figure out how to make a living doing what we felt was and continues to be so important. The task, as I see it, is to create a world in which everyone can fulfill their vocation in that way.
Some WATER people will recall Melanie’s last time with us when she discussed her book “Letters from Old Screamer Mountain” in April 2022. Some of us who have been here for a while will also recall a brilliant article that we discussed in this space in May 2012, “What No Longer Serves Us: Resisting Ableism and Anti-Judaism in New Testament Healing Narratives” written by Melanie and Julia Watts Belser, published in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. I daresay some of that material was a foretaste of Julia’s prize-winning book Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole (2023). Melanie’s current work follows on some of the contours of that article as well. See WATER’s website for videos and notes of these programs https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/watertalks/.
Today, we look at Melanie’s newest book, Becoming Trustworthy White Allies (Duke University Press, 2250). In this book, set in our contemporary racist, imperialist culture, she draws on her work with the project “Doing Our Own Work” which she founded in 1994. She describes it as “an intensive anti-racism program for white people who seek to deepen their commitment to confronting racism and white privilege.” She and her late mother, Eleanor Morrison, founded the Leaven Center in Michigan, to provide a space of this kind of education and respite for those working on social justice issues.
This is a challenging volume. It is by parts one woman’s life story, a critical analysis of contemporary patriarchy, and most relevant, a practical, how-to book on moving from being clueless, afraid, even resistant to dealing with white racism both personally and politically to being a trustworthy ally. It is not easy work and most of us will make limited progress at best. But it is crucial work for the future that we want and need.
I will leave the rest to Melanie to sketch out. I welcome you, Melanie, with the certain knowledge that we will learn from and with you, and that your work makes a world of difference and a different world. Welcome, Melanie.
Melanie Morrison’s Remarks
Melanie Morrison’ remarks can be found on WATER’s website at https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/watertalks/. Feel free to share the video with others. The following summary is meant as a sketch not a portrait for which only watching the video will suffice.
Here are some highlights:
1. Melanie began by outlining her book which is a collection of essays, stories, personal reflections that white people can use to become trustworthy partners in the work of social justice. Intended readers are white people troubled by systemic racism and white supremacy who want to develop capacity and resilience to show up and be agents of change. She is also writing for white people who seek to move through the places where white people often get stuck. White people need cultural humility, courage and consistency; and white people need to participate in movements led by people of color.
2. About the Title: Becoming Trustworthy White Allies
-White people can try to be allies, accomplices, though it is a lifelong struggle
-Ally is more a verb than a noun; it is committing to take action by showing up and being in right relationship
-Learning to be an ally is a lifelong journey, including mistakes and repair
3. Sections of the Book
1. Inner Work
2. Ancestoral Investigations
3. Legacies of Lynching
4. Staying Power
Section 1: Inner Work
In the opening essay, “Becoming Trustworthy White Allies,” Melanie described how she had relied on an African American friend to tell her when she engaged in racist behavior. The friend made clear that it was Melanie’s work as a white woman to do, not hers. Trust must be earned not assumed.
In 1994, Melanie and her mother Eleanor Morrison founded an anti-racism seminar for white people, “Doing Our Own Work,” 6 days of intensive learning for 12 people in each group. It went on for 26 years with 750 participants.
A white-only program has its downsides. Developing strategies outside of relationships with people of color can be harmful. White people need to be involved in diverse communities as well, accepting the leadership of people of color.
Section 2: Ancestoral Investigations
Melanie made ancestor research a priority after her father’s death. Her aunt explained that Melanie is a direct descendent of enslaving ancestors who lived in Montevallo, Alabama. Now Melanie asks, “What does this reckoning with my family’s past require of me?”
For the last 6 years, Melanie has worked in concert with local residents to understand how slavery played out in that place, King House, in Alabama. Understanding the local situation, and encouraging the truth telling of what slavery means is part of the work of students at the University of Montevallo. Such work can be an act of reparative remembrance. Descendents of slaves have shared their stories as well. Melanie is deeply involved in and responsible to the local people in Montevallo.
Section 3: Legacies of Lynching
“Soul Splitting” is the lead essay in this section of the book. Intergenerational legacies of white supremacy have infected, distorted, and weakened the lives of white Americans. The auction block and lynching tree were sites of massive white spectatorship. Lynchings were usually public events. Afterwards, photos, postcards, newspaper reports, and other materials made certain that white people would see what happened. Few white people tried to stop the violence.
Children were brought to see these events just as they were brought to see the selling of slavery years earlier. This created dissociation and disavowal in white children, a way they were taught to look but not see, look but not fully apprehend what they saw. This led to domesticating terror, normalizing it, and produced a numbing effect in a racist society.
The purposeful staging of violence by the Trump Administration is reminiscent of this dynamic. Thankfully, today, some people are documenting and otherwise resisting.
Section 4: Staying Power
White people often become engaged briefly in this struggle but then retreat from the long-haul work of justice-making. “What Will It take for White People to Stay the Course?” is the chapter in which Melanie looks at the intergenerational marathon that is interracial justice work. One can become a trustworthy ally if one is willing to make serious changes in ways of seeing the world, and if one will stay the course.
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Discussion – Watch the video for the full richness of this conversation. Here is a sample of the comments.
1. One participant spoke of a similar experience of finding out later in life things about her family’s suppressed history in the South. Melanie drew parallels to contemporary events. So much of U.S. history is being erased and distorted especially in the celebrations during this 250th year of the nation.
2. Another person observed that we are now turning the spectator tables on ICE, showing just how it does its pernicious work. As a white Jewish person, she inquired about what Melanie named and explained as intersectional justice work.
3. Another good observation: “staging” is key. In some cases, prisoners are stripped to their underwear which adds a sexual component to these atrocities.
4. A leader of the Roman Catholic WomenPriests said that this conversation has spurred her to work with her majority-white group on racial justice. She will recommend Melanie’s book to her priests for study.
5. The importance of liturgy, ritual, and ceremony in this work was underscored. Prayer and worship can help to repair divisions. Rituals are places in which to deal with grief, rage, and celebration. People need to create their own forms of ritual. Melanie spoke of people in movements for justice who have been sustained by prayer, for example, calling on ancestors. Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock is an important example of the power of music in this work.
6. The word “ally” raises question. For example, Jesus left an advocate rather than an ally (John 14:26). Is it time to switch to ‘advocate’ language as white people move toward action? Melanie said that ‘accomplice’ and ‘co-conspirator’ are good words but ‘ally’ is recognizable to many. Melanie underscored the depth of commitment needed in this work so that white people understand that racism is everyone’s history. Racism harms white people too. Another participant observed that ‘ally’ is a helpful “entry word” to get people into the conversation.
7. A cultural anthropologist spoke of her own family history having enslaving ancestors. She affirmed the importance of “soul splitting” as a shaping force in American history, which begins with acknowledging the hard issues. Melanie suggested Katrina Brown’s 2008 film “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North” about slavery in Rhode Island.
8. Cemeteries belonging to white people who owned the land on which they were set often did not have marked graves for Black people. See: Macky Alston’s 2024 documentary, “Acts of Reparation” https://mackyalston.com/acts-of-reparation/ about burial grounds and systemic racism.
9. Asked about the religious dimensions of her work, Melanie said it has a faith connection, but many people do this work for other reasons as well.
Asked about her work being accessible, Melanie described her experience as a 14-year-old going to the March on Washington which is chronicled in the book. It is a story-based experience to which many people can connect.
10. “Getting to We” is a group in Cleveland, OH started by Deborah L. Plummer to promote conversation between Black and white women. One question is “On whose back do you come?” to do anti-racism work, including those who were slave-owning ancestors. Melanie used to name only her parents for their modeling of anti-racism work. Now, she includes names of ancestors who created intergenerational wounds as part of her own history. She continues to ask, “What does this work require of me?”
11. The last issue was the question of pushback from one’s own family which can be so problematic. Dealing with a history of racism in one’s family has implications for all of the members who were related in the same way to persons who enslaved. Melanie affirmed that there is work needed to sort out these complicated dynamics.
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WATER thanks Melanie Morrison for her work, for this book, and for future projects that she is working on including one with a focus on the dispossession of Native people.