Edith Douglas Black, who practiced a love of nature, a life of the spirit, and a commitment to social justice, died on March 20, 2019 of pancreatic cancer.  

In 1964, Edie’s faith led her to volunteering in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project teaching children in a Freedom School in Mileston, Mississippi.  The following summer she helped register voters in Natchez. She later was involved in the Anti-War movement, the South Africa Divestment movement, and the Women’s movement.  Her studies in Ancient Near Eastern Languages were motivated by a desire to explore the origins of patriarchy.  

Edie grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. After graduation from Smith College, and a junior year abroad at the University of Edinburgh, she went on to Union Theological Seminary in New York. She later studied Ancient Near Eastern Languages at Columbia University and the University of California in Berkeley, where she received her MA. 

As a staff member in the early years of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) she researched and wrote about how private interests were translated into public policy.  She also co-authored the first draft of the organization’s  widely used Research Methodology Guide. 

Subsequently, she worked for 12 years as an environmental instructor for the Lindsay Wildlife Museum, participated in numerous field studies of Bay Area and Sierra Nevada wildlife, and conducted her own explorations in the wilderness areas of the Western US.  

In her lifelong spiritual quest she taught Old Testament at New College and the Diocesan Institute for Lay Pastoral Ministry, and was involved in numerous grassroots faith-based social justice campaigns.

Edie loved horses and enjoyed riding in the East Bay hills from the Orinda Horsemen’s Association cooperative horse ranch.  Her home was known as a place one could take an injured animal or a homeless cat or dog, and critters from the surrounding woods could find a welcome. 

The daughter of Robert Kerr Black and Sionag Douglas Vernon, she was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, January 16, 1942. She is survived by her husband of 50 years, Fred Goff, her sister Sionag of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and brother Charlie, of Northfield, Minnesota.    

A memorial service for Edie is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on March 26, 2022, at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Memorial events which had been planned for 2020 were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The family will be attempting to notify friends of Edie and Fred's by e-mail of the newly scheduled memorial. Please feel free to pass on this information to anyone you think may be interested.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek, CA, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, the Northern America Congress on Latin America (NACLA), or a charity of your choice.