MAY 18 -- CELEBRATION AND LAMENT

MAY 18 – CELEBRATION AND LAMENT

            On May 18 in 1974, Caroline Leach and I got married 43 years ago in Ed Loring’s back yard on Kirk Road near Columbia Seminary in Decatur.  He and Sandy Winter, a long time friend of Caroline’s from Chattanooga, officiated at the ceremony.   It was a hot day, and the ceremony was supposed to begin about 2 PM.  Our reception took place before the ceremony – we ate lunch first! We were dressed in “hippie” fashion – Caroline in a dress that her mother had made (that Caroline embroidered), and I was wearing a blue shirt that my mother had made, along with pink bell bottom pants.  Both of us had hair down to our shoulders.  We had no money, so we improvised.  The place was free, and Ed and Sandy did not charge anything for the wedding.  Rather than seeking wedding presents, our invitations asked people to make donations in our names to one of four non-profits.  Or, if they could not support those, we asked them to make a donation to a charity of their choice.  A friend of ours from New Orleans made our wedding rings.  Music was provided by friends who brought their instruments and played them – Carole Etzler even wrote a song for us. 

            For our reception, we asked people to bring covered dishes, which they did, and like the Biblical feeding of the 5,000, we had more than enough.  We noticed that the guests had not obeyed our wishes at this point – most of them did not take their covered dishes home, and we are still using some of those dishes to this day.  Caroline’s parents did not like the consumption of alcohol, so we asked Dan Hamby to buy the beer for us, and we would reimburse him.  If anyone objected to having alcohol at the wedding, we would cite Jesus, of course, and say that the alcohol was a gift from a friend, so we couldn’t refuse it!  It was a great day, and the total cost to us was $400.   These forty-three years have seen a lot of ups and downs (mostly ups), and it continues to be a great trip.

            We got married in May in the middle of my final exams at Columbia Seminary because Caroline did not want to be a June bride.  We had a short, two day honeymoon at the Montreat home of Erskine and Nan Clarke – thank you!  Then, it was back to exams and papers.  We chose May 18 because it was a Saturday, and it was only later that we discovered that May 18 is not only our wedding anniversary.  It is also the anniversary of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, which instituted legal segregation in the United States.  No split decision there – 8-1, with Justice John Harlan being the only dissenter.  This decision came 31 years after Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army at Appomattox, Virginia.  Over 600,000 people died in the Civil War, and 31 years later, the Supreme Court legalized what had already happened in the South and in other parts of the country:  a return to legalized slavery, no longer called that, since slavery had been abolished (except in prison).  It was now called “segregation,” and is sometimes called “Jim Crow,” but I prefer Doug Blackmon’s more accurate term for it: “neo-slavery.”  In his fine book “Slavery by Another Name,” Doug makes a strong case that slavery, especially in the South, continued until 1945.   Having grown up in the South, as Doug did, I prefer to stretch that projection out until 1965 – we had legalized slavery until the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. 

            Why?  Why did slavery return after at least 600,000 people had been killed in the Civil War?  The simple but complex answer is the power of racism that is woven into our national character.  Not even the deaths of so many people in that great war could eradicate racism (or even slavery), and indeed the power of race began to reassert itself almost immediately after the Civil War.  The Plessy decision in 1896 only affirmed what was already codified in the South and in many other states.   The power of race is deeply embedded in our individual and collective and institutional consciousness, and it is always a battle for our lives and for justice and equity.  The election of Donald Trump as president is a reminder of that deadly power of race – he is the quintessential white man.

            So, May 18 always brings celebration and lament to my heart.  Celebration because of all the great gifts that I have received through my marriage to Caroline – so much to name, but most especially our two children David and Susan, who have grown into such fine adults.  Lament because it is a reminder of the power of racism in my life and in our life together.   Though racism is always in face of brown and dark people, it is now out front and center in all of our faces in the Trump administration.   May we join the great cloud of witnesses who have fought and who continue to fight for racial justice and equity.

For further reading, there are many good books.  I’d suggest these:  “Deep Denial” by my long-time friend David Billings;   “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander; “White Rage” by Carol Anderson;  “Simple Justice,” by Richard Kluger;  and “Slavery By Another Name” by Douglas Blackmon.