"150 YEARS OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT"

“150 YEARS OF THE 14^TH AMENDMENT”

            I’m sending out my weekly blog a couple of days early because today is the 150^th anniversary of the adoption of the 14^th amendment to the Constitution.  It was ratified on July 9, 1868, and on July 29, Secretary of State William Seward declared that it was officially ratified and now part of the Constitution. 

            This amendment is one of the most litigated of the parts of the Constitution because it did four important things.  First, it established the right of citizens to due process in relationship to the government.  Second, it provided equal protection to all citizens.  Third, it established the idea of “birthright” of citizenship – if you are born “here” in USA or our territories, you are automatically an American citizen.  Fourth, it indicated for the first time that state and local governments were subject to these three steps. 

            This 14^th Amendment has had a difficult time in American history.    Even while it was being ratified, white Southerners were working to undercut it, and indeed we did undercut it through a reign of terror and legislative manipulation.  It would take almost 100 years before it would gain even a minimal force of law through the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.   In a terrible but not surprising decision in 2013, the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by taking out its “special” enforcement status for those states whose history indicated an unwillingness to adhere to the 14^th Amendment.  It should be no surprise that decision (Shelby v. U.S.) came out of the state of Alabama, a state as Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his 1963 speech: “with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.”

            This struggle over the 14^th Amendment is so great because, in many ways, it is the crux on which American history and indeed the idea of constitutional government hinges – it always seems to be hanging in the balance.  Do we believe in the idea of equality or not?  Our history says “no,” for the most part, but the 14^th Amendment is among our better angels, urging us to say “yes.”  Many of our leaders have understood the importance and the meaning of this Amendment.  Thurgood Marshall was one who understood it, and he put it this way in his Bicentenial speech in 1987:  “While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not.  In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14^th Amendment….guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.”

            Marshall correctly understood that the intent of the Constitution in its beginning was to keep power in the hands of white men of property, and so there was no mention of the full humanity of women or of people of African descent or Native Americans.  Yet, the idea of equality was so powerful and so electric, that the white men of property could not confine it to themselves.  Women heard their names called.  African-Americans heard their names called.  Native Americans heard their names called.  Latinx Americans heard their names called.  Asian-Americans heard their names called.  Poor people heard their names called.  LGBTQ people heard their names called.  The power of the 14^th Amendment is to speak to all of us:  the power of the idea of equality is calling to us all.  That is one of the great things that we should remember as we celebrate this powerful amendment to the Constitution.

            It is not just progressives who have understood the meaning of this 14^th Amendment.  Regressives have understood it too.  That’s why the fight over the 14^th Amendment continues.  Those who speak of being “originalists” over the authority of the Constitution are seeking to take us back to the days of the origins of the Constitution, when white men of property were seen as those entitled to power.   There is a lot of talk these days about the changing demographics in America, with young people and people of color becoming the majority in the USA sooner than many of us realize.   Some progressives have hopes in this demographic change, and I have hopes too.  Yet, we should realize that old white men (and women, it seems, since the majority of them voted for Trump) will not yield this power easily, if we yield it at all.  Limits on voting rights, purging voter rolls, overt gerrymandering – all designed to take us back to the original Constitution.  And, now the Supreme Court seems to taking a hard turn towards this regressive status, so perhaps a Dred Scott decision or a Plessy decision awaits us in the near future.

            So, let us give thanks for those who worked so hard for this amendment and others to follow.  Take time this week to read the 14^th Amendment – our very lives as a nation may depend on our ability to believe and to live it.  Then, while you still can, make sure that you are registered to vote and that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote – these November elections will tell us if we are moving with the 14^th Amendment or against it.

"NEIGHBORS OR FASCISTS?"

“NEIGHBORS OR FASCISTS?”

            While we were traveling in Boston after our trip to Princeton, we went to see the Mr. Rogers movie entitled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”  It was powerful and moving.  The approach of seeing the “other” as potential neighbor rather than potential enemy obviously has deep resonance in these Trumpian days when the ”other” is not even remotely close to being seen as neighbor (unless they are Vladmir Putin).  In these days, the “other” is definitely seen as enemy.   Mr. Rogers urged a different approach, and I have seen many comments on this movie, all wishing that we had his voice now in the midst of the strife and the stoking of the primal fears that are within us all.

            This year is the 50^th anniversary of his first show, and the movie did a fine job of showing the evolution of the show and the thought of the man behind it.  What struck me the most about the movie, however, was its narration of its first week, a week in which we are introduced to the ruler of the neighborhood, King Friday the 13^th.  It is the summer of 1968, and violence and changes and struggles are rampant in American culture.  In light of this, King Friday the 13^th orders that a wall be built around his castle to keep the “bad” people out and to keep any changes from occurring.  He also orders signs to be posted:  “No Changes!!  No Changes!!!” 

            The result of this wall-building on Mr. Rogers’ show in 1968 was not the safety and tranquility that King Friday the 13^th sought, but rather an increase in fear and a dissolution of trust between the neighbors INSIDE the wall.  It was eerily prescient of the time in which we now live, and one could only marvel at the genius of Mr. Rogers, whose emphasis on being neighbors caused him to understand how much we would resist this idea of neighborliness, no matter the era in which we live.  The idea of seeing others as “neighbor” requires that we bump up against the categories which the world uses to separate us – race, gender, culture, nation, sexuality, income level, and I have to sadly add, religion.  Israel’s passage of the Jewish state law, Trump’s and the pandering Republicans’ emphasis on the danger of the “other,” Europe’s rise of anti-immigrant political groups, the radicalizing of some Islamic groups, white Christian support of separating children and their families at the border – these and many other developments point to the power of fear to push us towards seeing the “other” as enemy rather than neighbor.   Walls go up in response to fear, and I wish that I felt that Donald Trump had the wisdom to see the deep irony of the former Republican hero Ronald Reagan telling the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin wall, while Trump seeks many more dollars to rebuild that same wall on the Mexico border.    

            I don’t think that the Trumpsters are capable of this, but King Friday the 13^th had the wisdom to tear down the wall and to start a newer and better way of relating to others.  I’m hoping that a stinging political defeat this November will make President Trump recalibrate as King Friday the 13^th did.  Yet, there are two problems with my hope.  First, there is no guarantee of a stinging political defeat in November.  It will require a huge voter turnout, and I hope that I am wrong, but right now I’m wondering if we can do it.  Please prove me wrong by registering to vote yourself, getting your friends, colleagues and neighbors to register – and get them to do the same for their circle of friends.  Then work to make sure that you and all of them vote in the November 6 election.  Vote for moving us back towards seeing one another as neighbors rather than as enemies.

            The second problem with my hope is that I am not certain that Donald Trump will be as wise as King Friday the 13^th.  I’m not sure that he will change his course, no matter what happens in November.  Yet, even so, if the Republicans lose control of one or both legislative houses, there will be significant roadblocks to what Trump can legally do.  Many of my friends believe that unless those legislative changes are made, we are well on the way to fascism.  I don’t want to believe that, but I must say that the lack of courage of Republicans to stand up to Trump gives me pause. 

            It makes me wish all the harder that we could turn to being neighbors, that we would learn that the approach of King Friday and Donald Trump (who seems to wish that he could be king)  to build walls and separate us makes for disaster rather than peace and security.  As Octavia Butler poses in her powerful book “The Parable of the Sower,” do we want to be neighbors or fascists?  We’ll know soon enough, and the waiting is terrifying.  To paraphrase the quote attributed to John Wesley, let us work as hard as we can, for as long as we can, with as many people as we can to move us towards being neighbors rather than being fascists.

"ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY"

“ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY”

            July is the birthday month of many strong women!   Caroline (July 3), Margaret Walker (July 7), June Jordan (July 9), Mary McLeod Bethune (July 10), and today, July 16, is the birthday of Ida B. Wells.  She was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on the land owned by the man who “owned” her father and mother, Jim and Elizabeth Wells.  She was born just before General Grant’s troops captured Holly Springs in the Civil War.  It would be a few more months before Union control of Holly Springs was solidified, but Ida Wells lived the early years of her life in slavery, yet under the oversight of the Union army.   On the land where she was born, there now stands not the house of her former owner but rather a museum in her memory.

            And, remembered she should be!  Though born into slavery, she came to consciousness in the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War.  Thus, her primary definition was not “slave,” not “property of white people.”  Her primary definition was daughter of God, woman held in slavery by those who professed the idea that all people are created equal.  She never allowed that internalized oppression to enter her heart and consciousness.  She never accepted the idea that she and her family were slaves because they were supposed to be slaves.  She understood from the earliest stages that she was held as a slave because of the oppressive nature of the masters, and this consciousness made a huge difference in her life and in her imagination.

            I have written about Ida Wells often, and Catherine Meeks and I are now working on a book about her witness for our time.  For today’s blog, I want to share one snapshot from her life.  In 1875 in its last significant law for civil rights until 1957, the U. S. Congress passed an act that forbade segregation on public accommodations.  In 1883, the US Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, and the floodgates of segregation and re-enslavement were open fully.  In the spring of 1884, Ida Wells followed her usual pattern of purchasing a seat in the ladies car on the train on a trip out of Memphis.  After the train had pulled out, the conductor came to collect the tickets and then informed her that she would have to move to the car reserved for black people.  Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her seat, and when he grabbed her and tried to pull her up from her seat, she bit his hand and braced herself not to move – no nonviolent resistance for her.  He went to get male reinforcements, and it took three men to throw her off the train.

            Undeterred, she took the railroad to court under Tennessee law, and the judge who heard the case was a former Union soldier.  He ruled in her favor and awarded her $500 in damages.  She was thrilled with the victory, but it was short-lived.  The railroad appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and in 1887, they overturned the verdict.  Ida Wells was crestfallen and wrote in her diary on April 11:

“I had hoped for such great things from my suit for my people generally.  I have firmly believed all along that the law was on our side and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.  I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged, and just now if it were possible would gather my race in my arms and fly far away with them.”

            Wells was beginning to develop the sense that the power of racism was deep and wide in those classified as “white,” and she would later lift up a phrase that ironically Ronald Reagan would use as one of his hallmark phrases:  “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  Wells meant it in the sense that we know it today:  racism is deeply embedded and intertwined in our American consciousness, and we must always be working to mitigate its loathsome power.  Some of us had hoped that its power was ebbing with the election of Barack Obama, but we have seen so many examples of its continuing power, not the least of which was the election of the ultimate white man, Donald Trump, whose signature phrase was “Make America Great Again.”  We call it “staying woke” today – Wells called it eternal vigilance.

              Wells would be shaking her head but also shaking her fist and calling on all of us to stand and seek to deliver on the promises of the powerful idea of equality, adopted in her birth month into the Declaration of Independence.  Through many dangers, toils, and snares, she stood and delivered, and on her birthday, let us seek to walk in some of her steps.  If you’d like a short intro to her life, let me know, and I’ll send you one.  Or find her autobiography “Crusade for Justice,” lovingly pieced together by her daughter Alfreda Duster. 

"BLACK JESUS AND FREEDOM TO THE PRISONERS"

“BLACK JESUS AND FREEDOM TO THE PRISONERS”

            When we moved from Norfolk to Nashville late in 1980, I began working for the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons(SCJP), whose purpose it was to work on prison reform.   I also wanted to transfer my ministerial membership from Norfolk Presbytery to Middle Tennessee Presbytery (both have since changed names).  Middle Tennessee Presbytery was deeply divided at that time, much like the country is now, with only a few votes making a difference in each important issue.  This was also prior to reunion with the former UPCUSA (1983), so I expected and got an extensive grilling on the floor of the Presbytery meeting.  One of the opponents to my being received into the Presbytery read a quote at the meeting from the brochures of the SCJP to the effect that our ultimate goal was the abolition of prisons in the USA.

            He asked me (lots of “he’s” at that point) if SCJP really believed that prisons should be abolished, and if I believed it.  I wanted to keep my answer simple and persuasive at the same time, so I said that it was biblical, that Jesus had said in his first sermon in Luke 4, that he come to free the prisoners.  So, yes, I believed in the Bible, and I believed that Jesus was being literal when he said that.   He had come to free the prisoners.  There was a fair amount of murmuring in response, but I did squeak into the Presbytery by a few votes.

            I was reminded of that episode this week when a multiracial (African/Hispanic) friend of mine wrote me to ask about the mass incarceration rate in the USA.  In specific, he was wondering about Jesus and prisons.  He had noticed that Jesus talked about prisoners a lot, and he remembered Jesus’ sermon from Luke 4 about bringing liberty to the captives.  He was noting that most people believe that the purpose of prisons is a response to crime, and did Jesus want to abolish prisons?  He was wondering why Jesus and the Bible itself looked at prisons and the judicial system in such a different way, ending with this note:  “They seemed to have no trust in the judicial system.”

            My response was that we must remember that Jesus was an oppressed and marginalized person, born into imperial Rome.  He had no rights as a citizen and from Rome’s point of view, he was merely a commodity to be used by Rome.   In this sense, I usually refer to the Black Jesus, not because of the color of his skin or even his racial classification, but because of his socio-economic status at the margins of Roman society.  It is no accident that the historian of the four Gospel writers, Luke, places the birth of Jesus squarely in the shadow of the Roman Empire.  Black Jesus would understand that the Roman prisons did not exist as a response to crime but as a tool of social control.  Jesus’ view of prisons was similar to the views of those people held as slaves – they would have no trust in the judicial systems of the masters.

            It is in this context that we must reflect on the imprisonment of the children of immigrants, separating them from their families, no matter what their age.  Even the proponents of this horrid doctrine defend it not as a response to crime but as a deterrent to certain behaviors.  Multiply this by a thousand times, and you will get a sense of the mass incarceration of millions of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.  Prisons are not a response to crime in the United States – if they were, there would be so many more people classified as “white” held in our jails and prisons.  If they were, there would be so many fewer people of color held in our jails and prisons. 

            I grew up with Jesus as a white, middle class man, and because of that context, it was easy for my forbears to take a passage like Isaiah 61:1-4 and spiritualize it and individualize it.  They made it into a passage about becoming free from sin and getting into heaven when I died, and I believed that teaching.  Seeing the Black Jesus, however, has helped me understand that the Bible and Jesus did not mean for this idea to be spiritualized.  They meant for Roman (and Babylonian and Egyptian) prisons to be emptied of their brothers and sisters so that justice could be done. 

            Would I abolish prisons if I could?  Absolutely.  What would I put in their place?  A system where those who have been oppressed and marginalized could be brought into the center of life and society, a system involving recognition and repentance and reparations and recovery.   Would there be any prisons left?  Yes, likely, for those rich and others whose core beliefs seem to involve robbing and hurting others, but even the goal for them would be rehabilitation.  To quote the Apostle Paul from the beginning of the 5^th chapter of his famous letter to the Galatians:  “Freedom is what we have.  Christ Jesus has set us free – stand then as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.”  As long as we have prisons, we will have slaves, and we all will be slaves.

"SALEM WITCH TRIALS"

“SALEM WITCH TRIALS”

            This past week was one of traveling and reflecting, after my lecture at Princeton Seminary.  We took the African-American heritage tour in Boston and then went to Salem to look at the extraordinary 10 months or so in 1692, which became know as the Salem witch trials.  Our daughter Susan had devised and directed a play last year on the Salem girls who had become possessed by demonic powers and had accused many, many people of being witches.  Nineteen of those who were accused were executed, eighteen by hanging, and one by the medieval torture of “pressing,” where more and more weight was gradually added to the person’s body until it was crushed.  More died in prison awaiting trial or were unable to pay their way out of prison before they died.  It was a time when mass fear seemed to overwhelm everyone.

            Susan led us on this tour, and it was sobering and powerful, because in many ways, we seem to be hovering around there in 2018.  The Salem Witch Museum had a formulary for various periods in American history, where similar occurrences happened.  Their formula was “fear+trigger= scapegoat.”  They emphasized that fear was ever present in Puritan New England, and that when the girls got possessed, that served as a trigger that led to many people becoming scapegoats, with disastrous consequences.  The Museum asked visitors to give suggestions for more episodes in American history.  I suggested the time of lynchings in American history.  There was a great white fear of African-Americans, triggered by the new amendments to the Constitution which affirmed the citizenship and even the humanity of African-Americans.  This fear and trigger led to the lynchings of so many African-Americans, and yes, there is still no federal law against lynching.

            And, I also added 2018 to the suggestion. It was no stretch to put our time into that category.   I have been thinking that we are close to the time of the 1850’s, when the country split apart into the Civil War.  Or, at times, I think that we are close to the 1890’s, when the white Southerners, who lost the Civil War, reconstructed their power with both laws and violence, with the conservative Supreme Court ratifiying their work.

             Our time at Salem makes me wonder if we are not closer to 1692.  With the Trump administration’s evil policy on family separation, we see the outcome of the fear plus the trigger leading to scapegoats.  Trump built his campaign and now his presidency on cultivating fear of the other, especially immigrants from Mexico and south and from Africa.  Trump seems to be doing this in order to get votes, but the Salem history should give us pause.  If this fear persists and begins to grow, there will be a tipping point at which the process takes on a life of its own and is no longer under any person’s or group’s control.   The Salem terror was relatively short lived, lasting only 10 months or so.  I asked Susan when and why it ended, and while she named several reasons, there were two main reasons.  First, a judge finally stood up and no longer allowed “spectral” evidence, meaning that those possessed could no longer cite ghosts as the verification of someone’s being a witch.  Most of the evidence evaporated at that point.  Second, the girls accused the governor’s wife of being a witch, and the usual political power stepped in.  However, nineteen innocent people had been given the death penalty by then (most of them were women). 

            Are we in that kind of time now?  I hope not, but I am uneasy about the kind of demonic power that has been loosed in our current times.  The best current cure is for all of us to step up and be witnesses for justice and equity and mercy, and of course, all of us must register to vote in the November elections.   The Democrats are no saviors, but in these difficult times, they may be our best political hope.  So, register to vote, and get your friends and neighbors and colleagues to register and vote.