"THE GREAT MIGRATION"

“THE GREAT MIGRATION”

             Caroline and I heard Isabel Wilkerson speak a couple of week ago at Agnes Scott College on the issue of migration.  It was right in the middle of the Congressional negotiations over the Trump Wall, and she used her fine book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” as the basis for her presentation.  In her talk, she noted that there were three main routes of the great migration of African-Americans from the South from 1915-1970.  Some went northeast to New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.  Some went north to the Midwest – Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago.  And some went west to Los Angeles.  In all of these migrations, she emphasized that America gained greatly because, while these new regions were not free of neo-slavery and segregation, they were dramatically more open to the humanity of African-Americans than the South had been.

            She shared many stories of these contributions of African-Americans once their dreams could begin to bear fruit, but this one stuck with me.  One such family lived in Oakville, Alabama, in the early 1920’s, and they were hoping to migrate to Cleveland, Ohio.  The parents were sharecroppers, meaning that they were held in neo-slavery, and they had ten children, because they needed them to work on the small amount of land that they leased.  They had been dreaming of going north to Cleveland, as many other African-Americans had done from their area.  The mother was anxious to migrate, but the father was hesitant – he was scared, because the white supremacist society in which they lived heavily discouraged migration.  Some immigrants were arrested before they left, some were thrown off their farms or lost their jobs, and some were beaten or killed.  The message was clear – stay here and provide the cheap labor, or great harm will come to you. 

            Things changed for the family when their youngest was born.  In hope of going to Cleveland, they named him that:  James Cleveland.  As the baby grew, he was thin and sickly, and he could not work in the fields without getting deathly ill.  This situation pushed the dad to take action on migration – they would head to Cleveland and the new world there.  As Wilkerson tells it, as they were preparing to leave, the little boy happened to bump into the dad, as they were packing to leave.  The dad put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to steady himself, and it was only then that the boy noticed how afraid his dad was – his hands were shaking with fright. 

            They did safely arrive in Cleveland, and on the first day of school, James Cleveland went to school at age nine.  The teacher asked him what his name was, and he replied that he was called “J.C.”  She could not understand his strong Southern accent, so she took his name to be “Jesse,” and she called him that.  When JC went home to tell his parents about the mistake, they advised him to stick with the name “Jesse,” and he did.  So did everyone else, and instead of being James Cleveland Owens, he became Jesse Owens.   He became a track and field star, and as we all likely know, he went into another white supremacist venue in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, presided over by Adolf Hitler.   He would win 4 gold medals in these Olympics, the first American ever to do so in track and field.  In so doing, he burst wide open the white supremacist theory that was the foundation of Nazi Germany and white America.  Had he stayed in the fields of neo-slavery Alabama, he likely would have shriveled up there, if not dying of his respiratory disease. 

            Of course, Jesse Owens did not end white supremacy.  Hitler went on to the horrific suffering of World War II, and when Owens returned to the USA, he was greeted with segregation.  In a reception given in his honor at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, he was forced to ride up the freight elevator rather than be allowed to ride on the “white” elevator.  Yet, he put a dent in the armor of neo-slavery and segregation, and his witness resonates now to us, so much so that those twins of white supremacy have been put back in the basement of American history.

            As Trump rattles on about the wall, let us remember the migrants, let us remember all the doctors and lawyers and artists and preachers and athletes and justice workers who have come here as immigrants, and let us dedicate ourselves to justice and equity for them and for ourselves, not only because it is right but also because it is our salvation.

"A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM - BARBARA JOHNS PART II"

“A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM – BARBARA JOHNS PART II”

            The Superintendent of Prince Edward County’s (PEC) segregated schools was the son of Presbyterian missionaries named TJ McElwane. Since his appointment in 1918, he had expended a lot of energy on keeping neo-slavery in power in the schools.  However, Barbara Johns was coming for him.  As we noted last week, she was a 15 year old student in Farmville’s rundown, “separate and unequal” black school.  Black parents were working for a new black school, and black leaders like Rev. Francis Griffin, Negro county agricultural agent John Lancaster (yes, there was a separate agency for African-Americans), and Boyd Jones (principal of black Moton High School) were lobbying heavily.  During the summer of 1950, Barbara Johns began to think that she must act. 

           

            As she began her junior year in high school, she talked with teachers about it, and one of them challenged her:  “Why don’t you do something about it?”  It stung her, but it also inspired her.  She met with Connie Stokes, president of the Student Council, and Connie’s brother John, who was a star athlete.  As John remembered it, she spoke with great effectiveness:  “She opened our eyes to a lot of things.  She emphasized that we must follow our parents, but in some instances, a little child shall lead them.”  They signed on and recruited a few more students – but no adults allowed –no parents, no teachers, no principals, no ministers.  The plan?  To go on strike, to boycott classes until the white school board agreed to build a new black high school.  It was a plan hatched and carried out in secret.

            Over the weekend of April 21-22, 1951,  word was passed among the students – take action on Monday.  On Monday morning, Principal Boyd Jones got an urgent phone call, saying that two of his students were at the Farmville bus station being hassled by the white police, and they were likely to be arrested and beaten up.  As soon as he left for the bus station, student monitors passed out notes from Principal Jones to the teachers, calling for an assembly at 11 AM.  Barbara Jones had forged the notes, and when all the students and teachers were gathered, the curtains were pulled back to reveal 16 year old Barbara Johns at the podium, with the strike committee seated behind her and the football team acting as marshals in front of her.  She called for order and invited the teachers to leave.  Seeing a dangerous situation developing, several teachers stepped forward to take over the room, but on Barbara’s cue, the marshals stepped up to block them.  Barbara then took off her shoe and rapped it on the podium – “All teachers must get out of this meeting!”  Most left, but some stayed to try to gain control. 

            Barbara Johns then spoke eloquently from her heart – it was time that they were treated equally with whites, time to have a decent black high school, time for students to take leadership.  The strike committee’s proposal:  they were going to march out of the school right then, and they were going to stay out until the white school board agreed to build a new and decent black high school.  The vote was taken, and the students marched out, up to Rev. Griffin’s First Baptist Church.  The boycott held, despite great stress and duress.  When Barbara Johns got home that night, she told her grandmother Mary Croner, “Grandma, I walked out of school today and took 450 students with me.”  Mary Croner later recalled:  “It took my breath away – you reckon you done the right thing?”  Johns answered:  “I believe so – stick with us.”

            Reverend Griffin helped them contact the NAACP to get legal assistance, and Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson arrived at a meeting on April 25 in a room overflowing with black students and adults.  The lawyers indicated that the NAACP was changing strategy – they no longer were seeking “separate but equal” schools – they now were seeking to end segregation and neo-slavery.  The assembly decided to accept that challenge, and a 14 year old girl, Dorothy Davis, was the first name listed on the lawsuit challenging segregation itself.  It became known as Davis v Prince Edward County, and though it lost in federal district court in Richmond in 1952, the NAACP filed an appeal to SCOTUS.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear it, but it grouped it with several other NAACP lawsuits, consolidating 5 cases into what became Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

            In that case, SCOTUS overturned “separate but equal,” but as we all know, racism and white supremacy run deep.  For her own protection, Barbara Johns was sent to New York for her senior year.  The state of Virginia closed all of its public schools for awhile in response to Brown.  PEC closed its schools from 1959-1963, being the last county in Virginia to re-open the public schools.  If you go to PEC today, you will find the public schools there as segregated as they were when Barbara Johns rapped her shoe on the podium in 1951.  A little child did lead them then, but her teacher’s question to Barbara resonates to us in our time: “What are you going to do about it?” 

(For more information on this story and on all the cases that led to the Brown decision, see Richard Kluger’s excellent book on it:  “Simple Justice.”)

"THE STATE OF VIRGINIA MEETS BARBARA JOHNS"

“THE STATE OF VIRGINIA MEETS BARBARA JOHNS”

            The state of Virginia has been in the news a lot lately, as well it should be.  With the three top elected officers of the state facing their racist and abusive captivity and with the leader of the Republican Senate facing the same captivity, it is hard to know what to think or where to put one’s allegiance.  Except, one thing remains clear – the racism and sexism of Virginia and the United States continue to endure.

            This is a big anniversary year for Virginia – it is the 400^th anniversary of Virginia’s General Assembly, making it the oldest continuous legislative body in America.  It is no coincidence that it is also the 400^th anniversary of the coerced arrival of African people to Jamestown, having been captured and forced to become slaves in the first recorded passage of Africans to America.  It is also the 60^th anniversary of Prince Edward County closing all of its public schools in order to avoid integrating them.

            Prince Edward County (PEC) is in the center of the state of Virginia, and it was in the center of the civil rights struggle in the 1950’s.  Farmville is the small town in the center of PEC, and PEC is at the northern end of the great Black Belt that forms an enormous curve back towards the southwest for over 1000 miles to the Mississippi River and beyond.  Along this belt of African-American population came some of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights movement in the 20^th century.  So it would be in PEC,in which a series of actions there would alter the life of everyone in the USA.

            For all its contrariness, indeed because of its contrariness, PEC has produced some powerful witnesses for racial justice.  One was Robert Moton, right-hand man to Booker T. Washington and Washington’s successor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  Another was the Rev. Vernon Johns, one of the Big Three of black preaching in the middle of the 20^th century, and predecessor of Martin Luther King, Jr., as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.  A third was Barbara Johns, niece of Vernon Johns.  She was born in New York City in 1935, but several years after her birth, her family moved back to PEC to her mother’s family farm, where maternal grandmother Mary Croner ruled the roost.  At Grandmother Croner’s feet, Barbara would learn about an unshakeable love, a love that was strong and enduring, a love that would not let her go, no matter what white folk said about her or did to her.  But, she also learned at the feet of her paternal grandmother, Sally Johns, mother of her father Robert and uncle Vernon Johns.  At her feet, Barbara learned about justice and courage and dignity.  She would later say of Grandmother Johns: “She had no fear and was not the slightest bit subservient to whites.”  From Mary Croner, she learned about the enduring power of love.  From Sally Johns, she learned about the enduring call to justice.

            She would need both of these dimensions, as she encountered the powers and principalities of racism and sexism in Prince Edward County in the state of Virginia in the late 1940’s and 1950’s in the age of neo-slavery.  PEC did not even build a “separate” high school for African-Americans until 1939, named after one of its most accomplished sons, Robert Moton.  It was awful from the start – though built under the “separate but equal” clause of the SCOTUS decision of 1896, there was nothing “equal” about it.  It was little more than a large shack – no heating, no place to eat, no adequate facilities.  Despite its woeful nature, black students came.  By 1947, the enrollment was twice the number that it was supposed to hold.  Black parents began to petition the all-white school board of PEC to obey the “separate but equal” clause and build an adequate, separate school for African-American students. They received little or nothing for their taxes – wasn’t Virginia a leader in some earlier movement about “taxation without representation?”   

            It will surprise no one that the school board denied their request many times, indicating a lack of funds in the budget.  Leading this resistance was the white superintendent of schools, T. J. McIlwane, son of Presbyterian missionaries in Japan.  Indeed, he had been born in Japan.  He became superintendent of PEC schools in 1918 and held the post until 1958.  He worked hard to keep neo-slavery in place, never calling it that, of course, but always working for it.  Waiting for him, though was a 15 year old student named Barbara Johns, and we will engage her part of the story next week.  You can, of course, look her up, if you want to know more of the story before then.  Suffice it to say that it is astonishing! 

"BLACK HISTORY - TALKIN' BEALE STREET"

“BLACK HISTORY – TALKIN’ BEALE STREET”

            I want to begin Black History Month with a bit of white history – mine.  What else is new?  A white man seeking to take over something else!  This comes in my reflections on seeing the powerful movie “If Beale Street Could Talk,” directed by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), based on the James Baldwin novel of 1974, based on black life in Harlem in the 1970’s.  Both the movie and the book focus on the loving relationship between a 22 year old man named Fonny and a nineteen year old woman named Tish, as they fall in love, move in together, get pregnant and have a baby.  In the middle of this comes the powerful force of race, most especially seen in Fonny being falsely accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman. 

            I have seen the movie twice, once with our daughter over Christmas and once with 92 year old friend Christine Callier. Her white grandfather “had relations” with Christine’s black grandmother in south Georgia, and Christine was one of the results of that union.  I read the book back in the 1980’s, but I had largely forgotten its plot.  When I saw the movie the first time, I kept waiting for the violence, and by “violence” I mean “black violence.”  Over these 44 years since the novel was written, my white psyche had been conditioned to expect black violence, even though the vast majority of violence in race relations is white on black, including that which was done to Christine’s grandmother.   So, I noticed that in myself in my first viewing of the movie.  I missed a lot of the dynamics of the movie because I was bracing myself for the violence that I knew was coming.  It never came in the way that I had feared.

            In my second viewing of the movie, I was struck by many scenes, but I noticed one where my racism came roaring through.  Early on in the movie, Tish gathered to tell her family that she was pregnant.  They were in the Rivers’ family home, and the director had a direct-on camera shot of her dad, Mr. Rivers, at the dinner table.  My first thought was that I hated to see it when he would be violent towards her for getting pregnant.  As the camera focused on his face, I noticed how my racism led me to think that because he was a black man, he would be violent. 

He never was violent towards her or anyone else.  Indeed, he was quite loving and supportive of her.   This emphasis on the humanity of black men was one of the powerful parts of the movie in both of my viewings of it.   The black men in the movie had many dimensions to them – they were human beings.   One form of  violence in the movie came from “religious” mother-in-law of Fonny, whose language and bitterness boiled over into domestic violence – the church comes through again!

            The other violence that we saw in the movie came from where it usually originates in America – from the white police officer who harassed both Tish and Fonny and who finally arrests Fonny for the rape.  We do not see the rape, so neither the movie nor I seem to know which racial category the rapist fits.  Fonny is ground through the white criminal injustice system, and in his prescience, Baldwin shows how the white system will respond to the gains of the civil rights movement.  As Michelle Alexander and others have documented, the criminal injustice system became the hub of a desire to form a “new Jim Crow,” or as I prefer it, a new “neo-slavery system.” 

            I urge everyone to see this movie, and I won’t spoil it by telling you how it ends.  I will tell you that the movie is a stunning testimony to the enduring power of love in the midst of death.  This is one of Baldwin’s continuing themes in his artistic works.   I will also tell you that if you are classified as “white,” you will be invited to consider the continuing power of race in all of our lives in America.   Beale Street is the birthplace of every person classified as “black” in America, and it is where Black Jesus was also born.