Delaware Backstory: An icon of peace, civil rights
He was described as an idealistic man of peace and justice – but also as overly outspoken, controversial and too-political for the cloth.
But politics and opinions aside, few if any were as iconic of the 1960s' civil rights and 1970s' peace movements in Newark as the Rev. Robert W. Andrews.
He led the United Campus Ministry/Phoenix Community at University of Delaware with decades of high-profile activism – including work for racial equality that prompted the Ku Klux Klan to attack the center.
His life was celebrated last week at the New Ark Church of Christ in Newark, following his May 8 death at age 85 of kidney failure at his home in Costa Rica, where his ashes later were interred.
Andrews, born in Chicago in 1929, was Delaware's radical college minister of his day – a bona fide spiritual and intellectual leader of a stream of blue-jeaned young liberals who believed in and demonstrated for peace, love and equality.
He began his work in Delaware in 1954 after completing studies at Wheaton College in Illinois and Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.
Andrews was the inaugural pastor of the Presbyterian ministry at UD and assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, shifting to campus ministry full-time in 1957, according to News Journal archives.
His work for equality, however, reached far beyond the building of his ministry.
At a celebration of his first 25 years of service, Andrews was honored for having been campaign management for the late George M. Wilson, the first African-American elected to Newark City Council, as well as his service with the Newark Housing Authority, Committee on Religious Liberty of the National Council of Churches, the National Conference on Religion and Race, the National Board of the University Conference on Religion and Race, chairmanship of the White Clay Hundred Democratic Policy Committee and president of the Delaware Committee for Fair Practices – among other local, regional and statewide efforts.
He became an international advocate with the World Council of Churches, first aiding Hungarian refuges in the late 1950s, served in the 1960s as special adviser to the Student Christian Movement of Indonesia and lecturer at the Jakarta Theological Seminary and Christian University of Indonesia.
As a civil rights activist and leader in the 1960s, he chaired Delaware's delegation to the famed March on Washington in 1963, culminating with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, also walking with King in Alabama.
Also in the 1960s, when housing in Delaware still could be restricted legally to "whites only," Andrews publicly blasted a proposal to end racially segregated housing only in New Castle County.
"Fair housing practices are needed in Kent and Sussex County no less than in the third county," The News Journal quoted him saying at the time. "Negroes in the southern part of Delaware are just as human as in the north. Good citizenship and fair play toward everyone are the goals before all Delawareans, not just those of us who live in metropolitan Wilmington."
Andrews also is credited with helping integrate The Deer Park Tavern in Newark, Newark Country Club and University of Delaware graduate programs.
"Bob was an incredible force," Phillip Bannowsky, who organized the celebration of his life, told The News Journal on Sunday.
Buy PhotoThe Rev. Robert Andrews, well-known as a civil rights advocate, also campaigned tirelessly against the war in Vietnam. (Photo: RON DUBICK/THE NEWS JOURNAL)
Andrews changed the tone of Newark when he founded the Phoenix House, where talk of pacifism was as plentiful as acoustic folk-rock, and let the anti-war "Heterodoxical Voice" – a newspaper produced by UD's chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society – publish under his ministry's sanction.
"The Phoenix House was many things — a place to explore one's religious and political beliefs, a shelter for the troubled and downtrodden, but most of all an escape from rigid town-and-gown formality of Newark and the university campus," author Shaun Mullen wrote in a blog post eulogizing Andrews.
The coffee house "was welcoming to folkies and other musicians who had nowhere else to play, as well as an opportunity to be served hot cider by a professor who had taught you in class earlier in the day," he said. " It also was a safe haven for aspiring young journalists, including the staff of The Heterodoxical Voice, which chronicled ghetto life in Wilmington while championing radicalism, counter-cultural music and literature, and free speech. And I was one of many young people who was first introduced to vegetarian cooking at the Phoenix House's one-dollar Friday night dinners."
In one of his many anti-war activities, Andrews in 1969 led the Delaware delegation to the March Against Death in Washington, D.C., calling for American troops to be brought home from Vietnam. To humanize the war's impact, he wore a placard bearing the name of Lt. Thomas B. Adams of Selbyville, killed in action at the age of 21.
Andrews also organized and was president of the Society of American-Indonesian Friendship in the early 1970s and, in the end of that decade, the American Christians for Justice in Palestine.
After leading the United Campus Ministry for 35 years, Andrews lost financial support of the New Castle Presbytery and the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic. Presbytery leaders said they had voted to transfer financial responsibility to the synod, but that body declined to finance the ministry under Andrews.
He kept the ministry alive as The Phoenix Community – continuing his outspoken leadership without pay and living on retirement income.