"250 AND 15"

 “250 AND 15”

I did not write anything for our 250th anniversary as a country.  I am glad to be an American, but the current grifter who occupies the White House and who promulgates such vile untruths, makes it hard to celebrate America.  I’m hoping that this imperial presidency is just an aberration, but I also have to remember that the Trumpster was elected twice, so I am not certain what the future will hold.  At this point, I want to celebrate the vision and the gift of America – that at our heart is the promise that all people are created with equal dignity.  The current, roaring river of white supremacy still has not been able to extinguish that gift yet.  I’m hoping that we can celebrate that gift 250 years from now.

But, I also want to lift up the other number in the title: “15.”  It stands for General William Sherman’s Field Order #15, which he issued in Savannah, Georgia early in 1865.  It is an example of America seeking to rectify its wrongs in a definite and material way – what some would now call “reparations.”  It confiscated lands from white planters and made the lands eligible for people freed from slavery – the famous “40 acres and a mule.”  On January 16, 1865, during the Civil War, Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed Black families in forty-acre segments.

    Sherman’s order came on the heels of his successful March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. He had “given” Savannah as a Christmas present to President Lincoln. Senators and congressmen, like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, for some time had pushed for land redistribution to break the back of Southern slaveholders’ power. President Lincoln sent his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, to Savannah to facilitate a conversation with Sherman over what to do with Southern planters’ lands.

    On January 12, 1865, Sherman and Stanton met with twenty Black leaders of the Savannah community, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, to discuss the question of emancipation. They met at what is now the Meldrin-Green House in Savannah – you can take a tour and see the room in which the order was signed.  Lincoln approved Field Order No. 15 before Sherman issued it, just four days after meeting with the Black leaders. The order explicitly called for the settlement of Black families on the confiscated land, encouraged freedmen to join the Union army, and designated a general officer to act as inspector of settlements. Inspector General Rufus Saxton would police the land and work to ensure legal title of the property for the Black settlers.

    Sherman’s plan for land redistribution in the South was actually a practical response to several issues. Although Sherman had never been an egalitarian, his land-redistribution order served the military purpose of punishing Confederate planters along the rice coast of the South for their role in starting the Civil War, while simultaneously solving what he and Republicans viewed as a major new American problem: what to do with a new class of freed Southern laborers. Congressional leaders convinced President Lincoln to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands on March 3, 1865, shortly after Sherman issued his order. The Freedmen’s Bureau, as it came to be called, was authorized to give legal title for forty-acre plots of land to freedmen and white Southern Unionists.

    But the order was a short-lived promise for Black people. Despite the objections of General Oliver O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau chief, new U.S. president Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, and returned most of the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it.

    Thus the good – making meaningful reparations – and the bad – taking them back after Lincoln was assassinated.  What would all of our lives look like if Special Order #15 had been allowed to stand and to be developed?  We obviously will never know, but one thing that we can say:  Special Field Order #15 points the way for us in our time.

"IDA B. WELLS"

 “IDA B. WELLS!!!”

Another birthday of an important woman this month – first Caroline, now Ida B. Wells.  Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs, the county seat of Marshall County in northwest Mississippi.  That county is the home county of my mother and her forebears, and that is one of the reasons that Ida B’s life has struck such a deep chord in me.  I first encountered Ida B. in 1985 in a book by Dorothy Sterling entitled “Black Foremothers,” and I was astonished that I had never heard of Wells before.  Part of that was my own ignorance, and part of it was a deliberate effort to “disremember” witnesses like her.

In many ways, Wells’ life is the mythical American story of possibility and hard work:  she was born into slavery in Mississippi, but by the time of her death, she was one of the most famous people in America.  In many ways also, her story is the American story of racism and sexism:  because she was a Black woman, her witness was deeply resisted and almost forgotten in history.  Yet, thanks to the efforts of her daughter Alfreda Duster and now her great-grandchildren Michelle and Dan Duster, Ida B. Wells is having her moment in history, as her powerful witness is remembered and celebrated.

Wells fought her way into the American consciousness, and she kept fighting until she passed in 1931.  Although she was a “race” woman, she was just as strongly a crusader for women’s rights, for an end to war, and for justice for all, no matter one’s class status.  Though she was anti-war, she did not espouse non-violence as a way of life.  She told all Black families to keep a Winchester rifle in their homes so that they could protect themselves in case white folks came for them.  Indeed, in one of the many times that her life was threatened, she proclaimed that they might get her, but she would take as many of the attackers as she could with her into death.

On our recent trip to Chicago, we spent a great day with Michelle Duster, who gave us a fabulous tour of Ida B. sites in Chicago, including the powerful monument to her on Langley Avenue, designed and sculpted by the renowned architect Richard Hunt.  Michelle was so generous with her time and with her knowledge, and we were delighted to see Ida B. murals all over the South side of Chicago!

          In 2019, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I co-authored a book about Ida Wells and her influence on our time.  It was entitled “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  It won several awards, and I am thinking about it this week as Ida Wells’ 164th birthday approaches on July 16.  It would be fascinating to hear Wells’ perspective on our time, and Catherine and I tried to speculate on some of that in our book.  If you haven’t read it, find it in your library or buy it somewhere (churchpublishing.org or bookshop.org are my suggestions).  Wells lived through a time similar to ours – when rights for Black people were being scaled back, and white supremacy was on the rise.

 Michelle Duster also has a fine book about her and about her witness for both racial and gender justice: “Ida B the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells.”  There is also a much longer biography of her by Paula Giddings entitled “Ida: A Sword Among Lions.”  Or, in the modern age, just “google” her, and you will find all kinds of information.  There are also numerous children’s books about her.

If you have not encountered Ida B. Wells and her story yet, please take time to do it.  It will both inspire you (how could she do so much in such a short time?) and infuriate you (her struggles over justice and equity continue today).  But, most of all, let us all take heart from the life and witness of such a great prophet.  When people like Alice Paul sought to deny her entry in the women’s rights protest in Washington, DC, in 1913, Wells defiantly stepped into the parade anyway, and on her birthday this Thursday, raise a glass (or a piece of cake) to this great witness.  And, no matter who is telling you not to step into the great parade of witnesses like Ida B., take a page from her example and get into the march for justice and equity.  Find your place and find your voice.

"CAROLINE LEACH"

 "CAROLINE LEACH"

We celebrated Caroline’s 79th birthday over the weekend – actually, we started on Thursday, July 2, when granddaughter Emma took us out for lunch at Manuel’s Tavern (Emma had never been there).  We were touched by Emma’s continuing thoughtfulness and now her young adult agency.  We continued the birthday celebration with Inez’s annual party, with great tributes from many people.  We’ll continue it next week with several meals with friends.

Caroline had always been a strong girL and is now a strong woman, having learned those traits from her family and from her long association with the Girl Scouts.  When I met her in Nashville in the early summer of 1973 at Linda and Robin Williams’ wedding, she had already overcome many barriers from individuals and institutions which were always telling her “NO!”  I was intrigued by her story, by her fierce determination, and by her “curvy” looks, as a Knoxville newspaper once described her.  I was so smitten that I moved to Atlanta to complete seminary there at Columbia, and we started dating late that summer.  

One of my early concerns was that at the beginning of our courtship, Caroline indicated that she was not sure that she wanted to get serious about our relationship because she was tired of men disappointing her and trying to control her.  I replied that I would make many mistakes if we continued in our relationship, but that I would definitely not try to control her, and I would try not to disappoint her.  She agreed to continue dating, and we got engaged later that year and got married in May of 1974.  So, we’ve been working on it for 53 years!

We are nearing completion of our book on our pioneering career as a clergy couple (the first in the Presbyterian Church in the United States), and in writing that, we have revisited our journeys, and especially Caroline’s, as she had to fight to make her voice heard and her call as a minister accepted.  Our first church together was St. Columba Presbyterian in Norfolk, Virginia.  It was in a 1500 unit apartment complex of Navy families and other families with little or no income.  Norfolk Presbytery was funding the tiny church (26 members) and the budding community ministry there.  We arrived in May 1975, and we worked hard to grow the church and to develop the community ministry there.

One of our strategies to grow the church and to develop the community ministry was to use the media (print, radio and TV in those days,) and in the fall of 1975, an interview appeared in the Norfolk newspaper (The Virginian-Pilot).  It was entitled “The Rev. Ms. Leach Ministers to Change.”  The reporter, Laura White, had never met a woman minister before, and she was astonished by Caroline’s journey and the depth of her insights.  Here are excerpts from that newspaper article:

“The first week Caroline Leach was at seminary, a student came up to her with a Bible and told her St. Paul said she shouldn’t be there.  In that first week she changed her mind from wanting to be a church’s director of Christian education to wanting to be a minister.  She had never seen a woman minister – and it was not easy becoming one.  The Rev. Ms. Leach was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1973.  In May she and her husband Gibson (Nibs) Stroupe, also a Presbyterian minister, came to the small St. Columba Church with its 26 members.  Both are 28, and they are trying to minister to the residents of the 1,500 unit, low-income Robin Hood Apartments a few hundred feet from the church.Ms. Leach noted: “One of the first things I noticed in seminary was during lectures the professor would say ‘the minister he’ or ‘all mankind,’ or ‘the theology of man.’  I would tell them about it, and they’d either laugh it off or just have bitter anger.”  When she graduated from seminary in 1972, her diploma noted that the seminary was pleased ‘to confer upon him the degree of master of divinity.”

So, I give thanks for Caroline, who has changed and deepened me in so many countless ways. She is now also mother and grandmother in our family and to so many others who are not our blood relatives.  She is a great gift to us all, to the church, and to the larger world.  So, in this week, lift a glass (or a piece of cake) in her honor.