Tears flowed and applause resounded as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference marked its first-ever leadership transition at the annual gathering in Chicago Feb. 23.
Iva E. Carruthers, who was the founding general secretary of the nonprofit, has taken on emeritus status and Damien Durr has assumed leadership as general secretary.
Durr previously served as a community engagement facilitator with the Children’s Defense Fund in Nashville, as executive director of Faith Formula Human Services, as youth and young adult pastor at The Temple Church in Nashville, and as executive pastor of community development at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. He began the new role Dec. 1 but was formally installed at the opening session of this year’s conference.
Iva E. Carruthers
Carruthers was one of three founders of the Proctor Conference in 2003. She joined Frederick D. Haynes III and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in launching the national network serving pastors, lay leaders and the next generation of those working for social justice out of the Black Church tradition.
Both Carruthers and Durr stood in front of the group’s trustees as all those gathered in the assembly reached hands forward in a prayer of thanksgiving and dedication led by Pastor Traci Blackmon.
“We gather with gratitude for what has been, reverence for what is and hope for what shall be,” she prayed.
Before the prayer, Haynes reviewed the history of the organization and praised Carruthers.
With her leadership, “We are not just a once-a-year meeting, we are a movement that has made a difference,” he said.
Carruthers led the group to take difficult stands along the way, he said, including a decision to change venues of a previous annual meeting in Chicago when hotel workers went on strike.
“We were scheduled to have the conference, and with less than a month before the conference was to take place, Iva Carruthers said, ‘No, this is a movement that makes a difference. We stand with workers and as a consequence we are going to change the meeting location even in less than a month to make sure all those who consider themselves in power recognize who the real power is, because the power of the people is greater than that of the people who are in power.”
Damien Durr
After Hurricane Katrina, when Black residents were treated as “refugees,” Haynes said, Carruthers determined to take the Proctor Conference to New Orleans as an act of solidarity. She said, “We’re going down there to speak truth to power.”
Also as a result of her vision, the Proctor Conference achieved NGO status with United Nations and now has global influence.
The Proctor Conference meets in February, during Black History Month, he said, because “you can’t get to July Fourth until you go through February. If you don’t get February right, you can’t get July Fourth right.” That is significant in this year of the United States’ 250th birthday.
Even with the change of leadership, the conference will march on, Haynes said. “Minute by minute, hour by hour, if we lose our history, we lose our power. And we refuse to lose our power because we’re not looking back, because we’re going to keep on marching forward. So let us march on ’til victory is won.”
Forrest E. Harris Sr., president emeritus of American Baptist College, introduced Durr, whom he said had been formed “in the crucibles of possibility between liberation and love and justice.”
When Durr arrived at American Baptist College as a student, Harris immediately “perceived in him more than he perceived in himself,” he said. Durr was “articulate already with a vocabulary of rhyme and reason and passion and commitment to discover something beyond himself.”
Through the study of Black Liberation Theology, literature and theology, “he developed a mindset for Jesus. And in that development, he sacrificed much. I watched him stand before the National Baptist Convention USA Inc. to encourage them to give more to the college. And as he stood, I saw his shoes had been worn thin. The heels were turned right and left because he had worn those shoes for so long. But God has given him a new set of shoes, a new set of shoes to walk with justice and love in his heart. And in that movement and in that power, God has elevated him to be the next leader of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.”