"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.

"CHICAGO"

 “CHICAGO”

Towards the end of May, Caroline, Susan, and I met in Chicago for an ancestry trip and a viewing of some of the many sites of Chicago. Susan flew into Chicago from Baltimore, and we all met at O’Hare airport, which was announcing that it was the world’s busiest airport, an assertion that made my ears perk up, because we in the ATL claim to have the busiest airport.  As I later learned, O’Hare has the most flights, while ATL has the most people passing through.  We rented a car and drove on the back roads to our Airbnb in Evanston, Illinois.  We chose that place because it is close to Northwestern, where Caroline was planning to do some research on some of her ancestors who attended Northwestern.  Our place was about a block from Lake Michigan, which is huge – but, it was relatively cool, so we only walked around the beach a bit.

As I wrote in “She Made a Way,” I had traveled to Chicago as a child several times with my mother on the train and on the bus to see her brother and my uncle, Maurice “Bud” Armour.  Caroline and I had been to hotels in Chicago to lead workshops for denominational conferences, but this was the first time that we would encounter the city of Chicago as adults.  As always, we were so grateful to have Susan with us – she is a fearless and skilled navigator.  After we rested up, our first stop was at Wrigley Field on May 24 (my mother’s birthday) to see the Cubs play the Astros.  Our Airbnb was close to a public parking deck where we could park our rental car and catch the “EL” to Wrigley on the Red Line.  As we headed towards Wrigley, at various stops, Cubs fans were piling on the train, and when we asked some of them how we would know we had arrived, they laughed and said “Don’t worry about it – you’ll know.”  And sure enough, the stadium was right off the Addison train stop.  It was such an exciting experience – major league baseball in person at one of baseball’s best stadiums.  Wrigley was filled, and of course, the Cubs lost.

The next day brought a milestone for me.  Prior to our trip I had contacted Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, asking her to give us a tour of Ida B. sites in Chicago.  The only day that we all could work it out was on Memorial Day, but Michelle was so kind to give us most of the day, showing us around the South side of Chicago, where there are many Ida B. Wells sites.  Wells had moved to Chicago after she had been exiled from the South when Memphians blew up her newspaper offices in response to her definitive study on lynching called “Southern Horrors.”  Michelle took us to the house where Ida B. and her husband Ferdinand Barnett lived, to the street named after Wells in Chicago, to the cemetery where they are buried, and to a great monument to Ida B. on Langley Avenue.  It is called The “Light of Truth Ida B. Wells Monument,” and it was done by renowned sculptor Richard Hunt.  It is made of bronze and marble and is in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.  It is powerful to see it and to read the selected quotes from Ida B. Wells.  Michelle also introduced us to her brothers, Dan and Dave.  It was their grandmother, Alfreda Duster (daughter of Ida B), who had preserved Ida B’s records and eventually got the autobiography before John Hope Franklin to be published by the University of Chicago Press in 1970.

The next day Caroline and Susan joined cousin Judy Asselmeier at the Northwestern library to do research on Caroline’s maternal grandmother, Mildred Boddy, who had graduated from there in 1915, and Mildred’s father, Samuel Boddy, who graduated in 1885.  Thanks to a great archivist named Kevin Leonard, they found a wonderful treasure trove of info about these ancestors.  Caroline had always known about her great grandparents and grandmother graduating from Northwestern.  As she got older, her interest grew but not much was ever said.  Then when we were cleaning out boxes from the attic at her parents’ house, there was a treasure trove of annuals, pictures, diplomas, graduation invitations and more!  Our trip to Northwestern was really a time to put the “dots together” with her foreparents from the North.

On another day, we crossed over to my side of the family to eat lunch with Uncle Bud’s oldest daughter Bonnie Armour Adams, whom I had known as a child before Bud moved to Chicago in the 1950’s.  Bonnie brought along her daughter Heather and her husband John, and we had a great visit.  The last time that we had seen one another was in 1988, when we all gathered in Byhalia, Mississippi, for Bud’s funeral there.  We had such a good time catching up, and they are thinking about coming down for my 80th birthday celebration on November 21.  Bud was such an important person in my mother’s life, and I was glad to make this reconnection.  As you’ll see in the photo, Heather noted that “double first cousins” Bonnie and Nibs wore the same kind of blue stripe tops!  And, we were glad to learn that they are on the left side of the political spectrum.

We had a great trip to Chicago, connecting with deep and old roots, we had other friends that we wanted to see but ran out of time and energy. and I also remembered all the Black people who had come up Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in the Great Migrations.  And, as Michelle Duster noted, this important American city was founded by a Black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.

"FATHER'S DAY"

 

“FATHER’S DAY”

In coming to write about Father’s Day, I have a lot of ambivalence.  Both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have turned into commercial ventures, but since my mother was such a great single parent for me, I’m happy to celebrate Mother’s Day.  For more on that, see my latest book “She Made a Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.” Indeed, statistics show that 20% of American families are headed by single mothers.  

        My relationship to Father’s Day is much more difficult, because I never knew my father – he abandoned me and my mother when I was an infant, and I never heard from him again until I was a young adult.  Indeed, statistics show that 20% of American families are headed by single mothers.  I carried the pain of that abandonment at the center of my heart for a long time, and I want to share a story of that pain.

            I remember the incident so vividly.  It was in the summer of 1963 on the cusp of my senior year in high school.  I would have another vivid occasion in that summer in late August when I surreptitiously listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, DC, but that is the story for another blog.  This incident was earlier that summer, sometime in July.  I had just returned from a six week science camp at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, a venue made possible because a bridge spanning the Mississippi River at Helena had been opened in 1960.  It would be my first long time away from home, and I was dreading the experience.  Because we did not have a car, our next door neighbors Mr. Mack and Ms. Fannie, drove with my mother to take me to the camp.  I was good at math and science, and the teachers at segregated Central High School had recommended me for the camp and had obtained a scholarship for me.

            During the orientation for the camp, the senior white leadership of the camp proudly pointed out the bullet holes in the Lyceum building where Southern white manhood had resisted the invading federal government, which had “forced” Ole Miss to register one of its state citizens as a student – an African-American named James Meredith – in the previous September, 1962.  I am ashamed to admit that I felt pride at that point in the orientation.  I did well in the science camp, and I thrived in it, so much so that I got my picture taken with an Indian (they were allowed under the race caste system in Mississippi) graduate student who was doing work on vortex flow and its potential for harnessing energy.  That photo and an article on the science camp appeared in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper, and that brings me back to the incident to which I referred earlier.

            After I returned home from the science camp, a letter came in the mail, addressed to me.  The return address was marked “GP Stroupe, Jackson, Mississippi.”  When I read that return address, my heart leaped – it was a letter from my father, for whom I was named!  I had never received any communication from him at all, in my 16 years of living.  I had so longed for it, and here, finally, was a letter from him.  My heart was pounding, as I opened the envelope and tried to anticipate what my father would now say to me in his first engagement with me.  I opened the letter, and the newspaper article on the science camp fell out – my father was proud of me!  Then, my blood boiled as I read the note, not from my father, but from his second wife, the woman who had taken him from my family.  It said that that they were so proud of me, and oh yes, give the child support check to my mother.  No word from my father – no word from him.  I remember cursing out loud and flinging that letter across the room in anger.  “That ******* couldn’t even bring himself to write me and express his praise for my work.  He had to get his wife to do it.”  

            I would hear nothing else from my father for 9 more years, and even then I met him accidentally – another story for another blog.  So, as I approach Father’s Day, I have even greater ambivalence about it than I had about Memorial Day – at least for Memorial Day, there was some honor involved.  In this case and in this relationship, I felt dishonored and disowned.  For a long time, I felt that my being disowned was my responsibility. I allowed the anger of that summer of 1963 to dissipate back into anxiety, wondering what I had done to force my father not only to leave me but also to ignore me.  Years of therapy and great friends would begin to heal me, and I am grateful to all those who stepped into that breech in my heart.  Thanks to all the men out there who took me in and nurtured me – and there are many!  I honor them this Father’s Day.

            My honoring of Father’s Day also comes from experiencing Wordsworth’s line “The Child Is Father to the Man,” from his poem “My Heart Leaps Up.”  I use it differently than he did, though.  I mean it in the sense that I received a lot of my fathering from being father to our kids David and Susan.  They are a great joy to me, and I have learned a lot about fatherhood from them.  I’ve made many mistakes with them, but through loving them and having them love me, I have felt the redemptive power of fatherhood.  And I’ve sought to repay all those people, who stepped into the breech with me when I needed fathering, by seeking to offer that to others. 

            So, on Father’s Day, let us give thanks for those who gave us fathering love, whether they were our biological fathers or not.  In the best sense, fathers teach sons and daughters what real men are like. Not the immature men who seem to be stuck in adolescence (like the President), but rather men who show us what manhood really is – nurturing, protecting, forgiving, challenging, and most of all, loving.  I’m hoping that all who are reading this have experienced this fathering love from somebody in their lives.  If not, contact me, and we’ll see what we can do!

"JUNETEENTH"

 “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  This week many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons.  

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years, after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of white supremacy (and the slavery that goes with it).  These have been warring ideas in American history.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking at ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

Yet, as we all are well aware, this powerful gift of equality is always banging up against the idea of white supremacy, which seeks to tell us that those of us classified as “white” that we are superior and are meant to be in control.  We see the power of the idea of white, male supremacy growing now under the Trump administration and in the racist turn of SCOTUS, which recently eviscerated the last remaining vestige of protection from the Voting Rights Act.  As if on cue, Southern states have hurried to redistrict so that they can dilute, and in some cases, end the power of Black voting.

            It is now time to step up, speak up, and act out.  So, on June 19,  find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  Let us join in that parade of witnesses. Let us find ourselves in that Juneteenth parade.

"THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE"

 “THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE”

The presidency of Donald Trump is a continuing nightmare, but as I wrote last week, it is not a aberration.  It is rather a continuance of the Reagan Revolution in response to the movements for justice and equity of the 1960”s+.  Trump is an extreme form of this counter-revolution, and I am hoping that he will implode before he can do too much more damage.

In the meantime, there are several approaches that we can take in order to stay in resistance to this movement.  The first step is TO VOTE.  Thanks to the right-wing SCOTUS, the white supremacists are seeking to rig elections everywhere, but if we turn out in adequate numbers, their machinations can be defeated.  There are primaries going on everywhere, so make sure that you vote in them.  For the November elections, make sure that you are registered to vote and make sure that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote.  We will need a huge turnout in the fall so that Congress can be retaken.  The Trumpster will seek to delay the elections under the guise of national security (that’s what Bill Pulte is now working on), but the states are generally in control of elections, so let’s work on that end too.

The other, more immediate step is to speak up and act out.  This step is critical – do not remain silent or stay on the sidelines, complaining about how bad things are.  Join protests, write elected officials, speak out to the press, engage your friends and neighbors.  Every two weeks, Caroline and I participate in the “Old People’s Protest” in Stone Mountain, and we usually have 40-50 people who turn out in their walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, gathering at a busy intersection to protest the Trumpster actions and presidency.  We were there this past Saturday, and we got lots of honks and waves (and a few middle fingers too).  Find some place to make this kind of public witness – this one was started by several older folk in a senior living residence, and it has grown and grown.  So, find a group to join in expressing public dissent, or start your own.

A third step is to assist in smaller groups who are working for social justice and equity.  There are lots of groups around – if you are not already part of one or more, join in so that they may be bolstered in their work.  Our friend John Vodicka coordinates the Court Watch program in Athens, Georgia, and they have developed a Bail Fund to help people with minor offenses make bail so that they can get out of jail.  You would be surprised at the number of people held in jail because they do not have funds for a $100 bail (or less).  Our friend Mary Catherine Johnson directs New Hope House in Jackson, Georgia, a residence for families to stay while they visit their loved ones on death row in Jackson.  Our friend and co-author Dr. Catherine Meeks directs Turquoise and Lavender Institute for Transformation & Healing, and she is constantly writing and speaking on behalf of justice and equity.  Find ways to support these groups or ones like them.  Or, find them in your locale and begin donating time and money.  

These are dangerous and scary times as the river of white, male supremacy bursts out of its borders and threatens to flood us all with the pollution of racism, sexism, materialism, and militarism.  Let us work on these three steps in order to combat these forces.  As Sweet Honey in the Rock put it their song “Battle for My Life:”  “the white man’s disease is the same across the seas.”  We are in a battle for our lives.  Let us rise up to meet the occasion.