THE POWER OF THE PRINCE OF THE AIR

THE POWER OF THE PRINCE OF THE AIR

            As we shift from Black History Month to Women’s History Month (and the Season of Lent) this week, I am reminded of the depth of racism and patriarchy in all of us.  I didn’t notice many men posing on Sunday night at the Oscars and showing us their bodies, but I did notice the attempt to sneak in the white oriented “LaLa Land” as best picture over the black oriented “Moonlight.”  These forces of racism and patriarchy were the main conduits of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election of 2016.  There were, of course, other factors, but these were the driving wheels.  Why?  Why do these powerful forces persist in our individual and communal lives?

            There are many explanations, but the one that makes the most sense to me is a Biblical one.  In the beginning of the 2^nd chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, the author uses an intriguing phrase as she talks about how tied up and tangled up we are in sin.  The author says that we are “following the power of the prince of the air” (vs. 2). Growing up, I heard this in individualistic terms (drinking, lying, lust, stealing, etc.)  As a young adult, I was mystified by the meaning of this phrase, which seemed to me to be a primitive remnant from the early church.  Thanks to authors like Walter Wink and Dorothee Soelle, I have shifted to understand this concept also in communal and sociological terms, and now it seems profound.

             I received the sins of racism and patriarchy (and many others) long before I realized that I was receiving them, and I received them from people whom I loved, people who were good and decent people.  I came to believe in these powers, and because they came to me from trusted sources, they worked themselves deeply down into my soul and into my imagination.  So, this idea of the “power of the prince of the air” turns out not to be such a primitive term after all.  It speaks to me of the air that we breathe – we have to breathe air in order to live, but also in that same life-giving air,  we breathe all kinds of pollutants into our bodies that cause us pain and sickness.  This is why these powerful forces remain so difficult to get rid of in our lives – we have “breathed” them in, and they have become part of the fabric of our lives and our imaginations. 

            If you are wondering what in the world I am talking about,  I want to share a story from one of my African-American ministerial colleagues as we close out Black History Month. I was once part of a team in our Presbytery that asked people to share stories about how race had impacted their lives.  We videotaped them (that shows how long ago it was!), and my colleague shared this story during his testimony.  The Reverend Lonnie Oliver was one of three African-American students to integrate Hampton High School in 1963 in Virginia (yes, the same Hampton of “Hidden Figures”).   Lonnie was an athlete and a scholar, and he played sports there.  His family had always emphasized to him that he was a child of God and that no definition from the racist culture in which he lived could change that definition.  He remembered getting his first test scores from a class early that fall.  He asked two of his white football teammates what their test scores were, and when they told him their scores, he said he felt a jolt in his own heart, a jolt like an electric current running through him.   He had made higher scores than them.  He did not brag about it, but he noted internally that he had not expected to have higher test scores than white students.  He testified that he was stunned because he did not know the source of this internalized inferiority, the idea that because he was African-American, he could not possibly score higher than white students.  My sense is that the source is the “power of the prince of the air.”  Lonnie had “breathed” it in, and it acted independently of his and his family’s will.  I am not suggesting here that there is a personal being called the “prince of the air” (or the Devil), but I do believe in this concept of our absorbing the communal perceptual apparatus, an apparatus that comes to dominate our thinking and our perceptions of ourselves and of the world.  These are very difficult to change, but change them we must, and fortunately for us, we have the grace of God and other prophetic voices who come into our lives to remind us that we are all children of God first and foremost, not matter what the world tells us, or what we tell ourselves.  Let us listen for those voices in these difficult days.  The Reverend Lonnie Olver is now one of those voices, and we give thanks for his ministry and his journey!

If you’d like to read more on this idea of the sociological and theological dimension of the “prince of the power of the air,”  here’s a place to start:  “The Powers” by Walter Wink, and “Jesus of Nazareth” by Dorothee Soelle.

WHO IN THE HELL IS DIANE NASH?

WHO IN THE HELL IS DIANE NASH?

            No, it is not Donald Trump attacking another woman.  It was the question that Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked John Siegenthaler, his federal liaison in the South, in 1961.  Kennedy had heard that his carefully negotiated ending of the Freedom Rides was coming apart because this woman was sending volunteers from Nashville to “get on the bus,” as we noted that Reverend Joseph DeLaine did in last week’s blog.  John Lewis and James Farmer and others had originated the Freedom Rides in DC, but their bus had been firebombed in Anniston, Alabama, and the other bus riders beaten severely in Birmingham.  Their offense?  They rode together as black and white folk on busses across the South.  Kennedy had negotiated with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi to prevent violence in exchange for delaying the Freedom Rides.  Diane Nash and others had different ideas – they did not look to the government for their moral centers.  They looked to themselves and to the community.  Students poured in to continue the rides, and many others did too, and it worked!  

            Who is Diane Nash?  It is a good question, because not many people have heard of her, but for almost a decade, she was one of the powerful and creative leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.  She was born in Chicago in 1938, a light skinned African-American, who came South to Fisk University in Nashville for college.  Here she met Rev. James Lawson, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Jim Bevel and others.  Although she was not necessarily non-violent, she attended Rev. Lawson’s sessions in Nashville and was surprisingly elected to head the group.  From here, she was one of the leaders of the student sit-ins in Nashville, the Freedom Rides, the Birmingham campaign in 1963, Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, the Selma campaign in 1965.  There are many stories about her – she’s still living, so “google” her if you want more info on her (and I hope that you do!)  An excellent sourcebook for her and other women civil rights leaders is “Freedom’s Daughters” by Lynne Olson, and as always “Eyes on the Prize” by Juan Williams and Henry Hampton.

            Of the many stories about her, one stands out for me.  In 1962 she had been arrested in Mississippi for recruiting high school and college students to work in the model of non-violent mass protest against legal segregation.  She was convicted of encouraging the youth to violate the state’s segregation laws, and she was sentenced to two years in prison.  She appealed the sentence, but in the spring when she was 5 months pregnant, she announced to the judge that she would abandon her appeals and go to prison to affirm her previous “jail, no bail” policy.  She told the judge: “I can no longer cooperate with the evil and corrupt system of this state.  Since my child will be a black child, born in Mississippi, whether I am in jail or not, he will be born in prison.”  Prescient words for the kindergarten-to-prison pipeline that continues to exist today.  The judge begged her to continue her appeal, but the reply came:  “Judge, you don’t understand Christianity – all the early Christians went to jail.”  The judge replied:  “Maybe so.  But they weren’t all pregnant and twenty-one.”  In the end, Diane Nash served only ten days.  The judge refused to implement the earlier sentence – he didn’t want any more martyrs.

            Who is Diane Nash?  Why was such a giant almost forgotten?  Well, it is complicated, but the bottom line is that most of the women leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were almost forgotten, even as Ida Wells was almost forgotten, because of the patriarchy that is in all of us.  But, thank goodness, her leadership and that of others are being revived.   Of the many lessons of her witness, here are three that are helpful in this time of growing injustice.  First, she did her homework.  She had not intended to become a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, but when she was confronted with injustice, she waded in to the fight.  She went to workshops;  she learned non-violence;  she found her voice.  Second, she believed in the power of community – no lone rangers allowed – the people must organize and work together.  Third, she did not wait on the patriarchy or the government or the powers that be – she listened to the cries of injustice and found allies and acted.  May we find our voices and get into action too.

If you want more info on the Nashville movement, a good place to start is “The Children” by David Halberstam.  More info on the Freedom Rides?  Start with “Freedom Riders” by Richard Arsenault.

GET ON THE BUS!

GET ON THE BUS!

            It began as a request for equal treatment under the “separate but equal” clause of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson  Supreme Court decision.  In 1946 (a great year!), in rural Summerton, South Carolina, near the Santee River, a group of African-American parents wanted the white school board to purchase school busses for their children to ride to the segregated schools, just as had been bought for the white kids.  The chairman of the school board, a Presbyterian minister named L. B. McCord, indicated that would not fit in the budget. As we all know, Plessy meant separate and unequal.   Reverend McCord underestimated the power of the Spirit and of the church.

            At the South Carolina NAACP meeting that year, the Reverend James Hinton, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor asked for witnesses to have courage and to speak up for justice – to emphasize the need for equal treatment in the school bus allotment.  He knew that such a public witness could lead to loss of jobs, violence, and even death, but still he called out:  “Can I get a witness?”  And, he did. The Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine stepped up.  He was an AME minister and was a tentmaker as a principal and teacher at a public school.  Thurgood Marshall met with Rev. DeLaine and others and asked them to get twenty families to sign a petition, asking not only for busses but for desegregated schools as well.  Twenty families!   How could he get that many to sign?

            Rev. DeLaine led the charge for doing this, going door to door to get the signatures.  Many were reluctant to sign up because the oppression and repercussions were so great.  But, finally it worked.  He delivered the petition to Thurgood Marshall in November, 1949.  The first names on the petition were Harry and Liza Briggs, and he was a Navy veteran of WW II.  Though he had fought for his country, he couldn’t get a school bus for his kids. The case became Briggs v. Elliott, and it was merged with four other cases to go before the Supreme Court as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.  Both Harry and Liza Briggs lost their jobs as a result. 

            Reverend DeLaine also paid a great price for his activism.  He was fired from his school position, as were his wife and sisters and a niece.  His house was burned to the ground, and night riders fired on him.  He fired back, and then he and his family fled to New York for their lives.  His church was then burned to the ground.  He did not return South until 1971, when he retired, but he got on the bus!  His groundbreaking work and witness led to the Supreme Court decision that made legal segregation illegal. 

            We are not in those times, but it is looking very grim these days.  In these days, let us remember witnesses like Reverend DeLaine, his wife Mattie, Harry and Liza Briggs, and Ida Wells and many others.  They spoke up, they organized, and they fought.  While it took a courageous individual like Joseph DeLaine to step up, he could not do it without a community – that’s why the NAACP wanted twenty families to sign up. Individuals could be oppressed and fired or burn out too easily, but like the Montgomery Bus boycott, this story reminds us that a “whole lot of people is strong.”  Reverend DeLaine started early in 1949, and the case was finally decided in 1954 – a long haul.  Reverend DeLaine and many others were in it for the long haul – they had found their voice, and they stood up and stood out.  May we do the same.

            If you want more information on this, see the Pulitzer Prize winning book “Simple Justice”  by Richard Kluger.   

A WOMAN FOR OUR TIME

A WOMAN FOR OUR TIME

            Those of you who know me will not be surprised that in Black History Month, I am starting my roll call of witnesses with Ida B. Wells.  She was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, and I first met her in Dorothy Sterling’s book “Black Foremothers.”  I was reading it to begin a series on witnesses in Black History Month at Oakhurst Church in 1986, a series that continues to this day.  Her work was so broad and so powerful, and I was stunned that I had never heard of her.   It was another lesson in my continuing captivity to racism.  She was born about the same time as my great-great grandmother, who was also born in Marshall County, where Holly Springs is the county seat.   I have no evidence that they ever met one another, but I do have evidence that my great-great grandmother’s family held people as slaves.  I remember hearing stories from my great aunt Gran about the people treated as slaves, who hid the family horses from the Yankees when they came through Holly Springs in the Civil War.

            Wells grew up in Reconstruction, that brief period in American history when there was at least an idea of black people sharing power with white people.  It did not last long, however, as the white Southerners and other allies used violence, terrorism and legislation to seek to put people classified as “black” back in their inferior status.  Ida Wells spent most of her life fighting against this retrogression, and she did not win many of the battles – the tide of racism once again overwhelmed the country.  Why is she a witness for our time?   She lived in very difficult times, in which racism and white supremacy reasserted themselves in a powerful way.  Although we are not back there yet, we seem to be taking several steps backward, and Wells’ witness reminds us that we must always be in the fight for justice and equity – to paraphrase Langston Hughes – there ain’t no crystal stairs. 

            Wells also fought to keep our imaginations from being captured by the power of racism.  In the 1890’s there was a huge wave of lynchings of black people, not only in the South.  Though many thought that it was barbaric, the rationale given was that black men were lusting after white women.  Wells did not believe this, and she made it her business to study all known accounts of the lynchings.  Her final report, which she named “Southern Horrors,” gave a blistering account of the motivation for the lynchngs:  not black lust but rather the white need to maintain white supremacy.  The white South did not respond well – she had gone on a trip to New York to see her friend T. Thomas Fortune, and when she arrived there, he told her that he was glad that she would be staying with them for a long time.  When she replied that she did not intend to stay that long, he showed her a headline from the Memphis Commercial Appeal indicating that her offices had been burned and that a price had been put on her head.  She never returned South again until 1920, when she returned South incognito to visit black prisoners who were facing the death penalty because they chose to defend themselves in a white race riot near my hometown of Helena, Arkansas. 

            Wells was a consistently powerful voice against racism and sexism and materialism, and we will need her spirit to shore us up in these days.  Maybe since President Trump has resurrected Fredrick Douglass, perhaps he can bring Ida Wells back too!

            To read more about her, see her autobiography “Crusade for Justice,” or Dorothy Sterling’s “Black Foremothers.”  The definitive biography is Paula Giddings “Ida: A Sword Among Lions.”  For more on this whole subject of race and US history, see my good friend David Billings’ book “Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in US History and Life.”  You can also look at my series of monthly articles in Hospitality Magazine in 2016.

The Arc of History

Hello!  At my daughter Susan’s suggestion, I’m starting a blog!  I’m not much of a techno-person, so bear with me while I learn it.  I will seek to use this forum on at least a weekly basis to share thoughts and open room for discussion on issues focusing on race, theology, the church, and justice.  I’ll be glad to hear from you on these musings and on any ideas that you have. 

             I’ll start with the obvious point of all of these:  the beginning of the disastrous Trump administration.  During this administration, I don’t know how far back we will go in the history of human rights, but we almost certainly will lose some ground, and perhaps a lot of ground.  Will we return to the 1950’s, with the deep struggle for human rights beginning to take hold, but still a deep struggle?  Will we go back to the 1910’s when Woodrow Wilson, the first Southerner to be president since the Civil War, re-segregated the federal government, and before women had the right to vote?  Will we go back to the 1890’s when a combination of legislation, violence, and Supreme Court decisions re-instituted “slavery by another name,” as Doug Blackmon put it so well in his book by the same name?  Will we go back to the 1870’s when white Southerners and allies elsewhere fought hard to strip black people of their rights, finally culminating in the “Mississippi Doctrine” of law and death?   I hope that we don’t go back further than that – if we do, Lord, help us all!

            Wherever we go, we should note that this is part of a long struggle in American history between the forces who designed the Constitution with slavery as a strong element of it, deeming those of African descent to be 60% human, in one stream, with the other stream driven by those inspired by the idea of equality, those women and poor people and people of color who heard that the idea of equality applied to them also.   We should also note that many of us have both forces in us as individuals and as institutions, much like Thomas Jefferson, who penned the famous line in the Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all {people} are created equal.”  Jefferson was not quite sure that people of African descent were more than 60% human beings, and that is how he could emphasize equality while holding the 60% human beings as slaves.  And, of course, as the DNA tests have told us, he had several children with one of his 60% human being slaves, Sally Hemmings. 

            We find ourselves now swimming in those same waters, as the eddys and currents seek to take us one way or another, with the current arc of history bending not towards justice but rather injustice.  There is much work to do in the short term, but there is one long term idea that I’d like to float out there and get response to it. How about seeking a constitutional amendment to establish that people of African descent are full human beings, rather that the 60% currently enshrined in the document?  We could combine this with the idea what women are also full human beings, since the “men” in Jefferson’s famous phrase seems to have meant “males.”  We tried to do this with women 40 years ago with the Equal Rights Amendment but fell 3 states short.  I’ll have more on this discussion next time, but I’ll be glad to hear from folk on this idea and any others that you have! 

            This era looks to be full of chills and spills but very few thrills.  I’ll be glad to hear from folks on how you see this time in our history, and since it is Black History Month, soon I will suggest some witnesses from different eras who can give us some clues about actions and attitudes needed in our present time.  Let me hear your thoughts!