Lloyd and Mary Morain: Pioneer World Humanist Ambassadors<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

IHEU’s General Assembly was pleased to have Lloyd Morain as an honoured guest this year: Lloyd and his wife Mary Morain were founder directors of IHEU in 1952. Fellows of the World Academy of Art and Science, the Morains served the cause of Humanism throughout their lives: in 1954 Lloyd and Mary wrote the popular book Humanism as the Next Step. They were involved in many public causes: Lloyd served on the Board of the Planned Parenthood Association, and in the 1940s and ‘50s Mary was on the birth-control boards in both Massachusetts and California as well as becoming President of the International Society for General Semantics. Sadly, Mary died in 1999 – but at 87, Lloyd is well and maintains a keen interest in IHEU’s development and welfare.

 

Both Levi Fragell and I were amazed to receive from Lloyd documents relating to work he and Mary had done for IHEU to help establish links with Humanists around the world, and especially to promote Humanism in Africa in the 1950s. Browsing through the Morain papers, one learns of their trip to Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, of an active Rationalist group in Ghana in 1958, and of Humanist-oriented development work in Botswana. In 1954, the American Humanist Association’s then Executive Director Edwin H. Wilson entered into correspondence with Samuel P. Etu of Nigeria. With support and encouragement from the AHA’s Committee on World Humanism – which seems to have operated IHEU’s World Humanist Extension Project – Samuel Etu established the Nigerian Humanist Association.

 

Apart from supporting the Nigerian Humanists through their personal generosity, the Morains also encouraged Hector Hawton of the Rationalist Press Association and officials of the British Ethical Union (now the British Humanist Association) to help the remarkable Tai Solarin, who established the Mayflower School in Nigeria (see IHN, February 2003). Several hundred books were sent to the school through this appeal. These early and dedicated efforts by IHEU’s founders to take Humanism to countries where it is desperately needed make inspiring reading.

 

Babu Gogineni