Today Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me posed questions about Up With People to Gary Oldman. I confess I knew that “What Color is God’s Skin” was the answer to the song title query. Why? Because in the spring of 1968 I was a member of a Northern Virginia Up With People cast, and we sang that song. We sang quite a few others, both internally composed and from outside sources. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Try doing highly-choreographed dance moves on the back of a flatbed truck, which we did once.

There were rehearsals, bus rides, and a group of about 35 high school boys and girls who really did think that singing songs like “God’s Skin” and “Is There a Reason Why” were our own small efforts in the civil rights movement. I enjoyed it and I’m not embarrassed about my participation at all.

At that point none of us knew UWP was as tied to the Moral Rearmament group as it was then (it broke away from MRA in the 1970s). I don’t remember any proselytizing for the MRA goals at all.

The organization still exists and has casts performing worldwide.