"EQUALITY"

"EQUALITY"

            We have been visiting our daughter Susan in Baltimore to see her Submersive Production’s immersive play “See Also,” staged in the library of the Peabody School of Music.  It was a fine production, provocative for its reminder of the freeing nature of libraries as well as the repressive nature of libraries, especially when they seek to limit access to those seeking information.  The title for the play comes from the old card catalogs in libraries, when the reference cards would say at the bottom (or top) “see also” for more information.

            Whenever I am in Baltimore, I think of its power in the human rights movement.  Frederick Douglass was leased out to work here when he was held as a slave, and when he escaped slavery, Baltimore was his point of departure.  Harriet Tubman passed through here, and Nancy Pelosi grew up here.  But, the giant of civil rights from Baltimore is Thurgood Marshall.  He was born here in 1908, born into a long line of activist parents and heritage.  His father was the first black person to serve on a grand jury in Baltimore. 

            Marshall grew up in segregated and regressive Maryland, which had remained in the Union but also had the oppressive approach of the racist South, when it came to people with brown skin.  Baltimore was one of the first cities in the US to adopt a law that prohibited black people from renting or owning property on blocks where white people lived.  Marshall was a rough and ready kid – he was tall and big, but his mother reminded him that if he got out of line: “Boy, you may be tall, but if you get mean, I can always reach you with a chair.”  Despite his wildness, his grades in school were excellent, and he went to Lincoln University for college. Some of his classmates were Langston Hughes, Cab Calloway, and Kwame Nkrumah.

            When he graduated from college, he applied to his state law school, the University of Maryland.  Even though his grades and recommendations were excellent, he was not accepted because the U of M did not accept black applicants.  He decided to enroll at Howard Law School, and if U of M hoped to destroy his spirit by rejecting him, they instead helped to create a powerful force for civil rights.  Marshall’s mother pawned her wedding ring to pay his tuition, and there at Howard, he came under the leadership of Charles Hamilton Houston, who had been empowered by Howard President Mordecai Johnson to build a cadre of lawyers to tear down neo-slavery in the US.  He and Hamilton became lifelong friends and partners in tearing down legal segregation.

            Hamilton hired Marshall tin 1935 o join him on the NAACP’s national team to fight legal segregation.  They took a tour of the South together to see first-hand what they would be going up against – it was Marshall’s first time in the South.  It was appalling, and it was dangerous.  They were chased out of several towns under the threat of lynching and death. It fired them up, especially Marshall.  Health problems forced Hamilton to resign as director of the NAACP program, and Marshall was asked to replace him.  Marshall agreed and created the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, whose purpose it was to abolish legal segregation.  They won many legal victories and then decided to go all out to attack legal segregation in public education.  Five cases were gathered to make the case before the Supreme Court, one being the famous lead case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.  (For the powerful story and history of this case, see the fine book by Richard Kluger “Simple Justice.”)

            On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the decision, which was a unanimous verdict: “We conclude – unanimously – that on the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.  Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”  That decision joined with the lynching of Emmett Till and the Montgomery bus boycott to launch the modern civil rights movement, which indeed led to the abolition of neo-slavery with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Marshall would later become the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court, and he would help fulfill the mandate of equality, for which he fought so hard.

            As we have seen over these 50+ years, white supremacy still seeks to be supreme.  We are still not sure if we want to follow Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896 or Brown v. Board of 1954.  The Trump presidency rests squarely on this white supremacy, and it will be up to us to guide us in the next steps.  No matter whom the Democrats nominate, turn-out is the key.  So register yourself and get 10 others to get registered for this year’s elections.  

"WITNESS FOR THE LONG HAUL"

“WITNESS FOR THE LONG HAUL”

            In 1948 at age 85, in a snowstorm in December in DC, a stooped white-haired old lady, wearing finery such as a fur coat and pearls, leaned on a cane and led a march urging the downtown Kresge store to desegregate its facilities.  She had been protesting racial and gender injustice since the mid-1870’s.  Her name at that time was Mary Church Terrell, but at her birth she was Mary (Mollie) Church. 

            In her autobiography “A Colored Woman in a White World,” published in 1940, she wrote “If it hadn’t been for the victory of the Union Army, I should be on some plantation in the South, manacled body and soul in the fetters of a slave.“  She was born in September, 1863, in Memphis, just nine months after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was took effect.  She would join Ida Wells as one of the primary African-American women who worked for the passage of the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.  Though her status as slave or free was in doubt until the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, she was born into a wealthy black family, headed by Robert Church.  She had the many advantages of being wealthy in America, with one huge exception:  her racial classification was “black.”  She would wrestle with the meaning and the struggle of such classification all her life.

            In 1866, those classified as white in Memphis began the terrorizing work of re-establishing slavery by fomenting a white race riot, and her father was shot in the head.  He recovered, and then he decided to send Mary Church north for her education.   She enrolled in Antioch College Model School in Ohio at age 6 – she was the only African-American in her class.  At age 12 she enrolled for high school and college at Oberlin, and in her first year in high school she wrote an essay entitled “Resolved, There Should Be a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution Granting Suffrage to Women.”  She indicated that she could not remember a time when she did not believe in votes for women. 

            After graduating from college, she became active in education for black children and began working in earnest for women’s rights and the right to vote for women.  In the fight for women’s rights, she stepped headlong into the intersection between race and gender, which divided the women’s rights movement.  Most southern white suffragists opposed rights for black women, and Northern white women feared the loss of white southern women’s support over this issue.  Lest this seem like ancient history, let us note that the tensions over this intersection of race and gender continue right up to the present moment.  She began attending the meetings of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, where she met Susan B. Anthony and became friends with her.  Terrell gave an address in 1898 to the Association entitled “The Progress and Problems of Colored Women.”  Most of the white women attendees were astonished at her prowess, and while she loved the adoration, she also knew that it meant that their racism deeply affected their expectations:  black women simply were unable to do these kinds of things.  She signed on to do a lecture tour, which she continued to do for many years.  She also was a founding member of the NAACP, and she kept working for rights for those classified as “black” and for all women.        

            After the 19^th Amendment was finally passed, Terrell worked hard to try to get black women included in this idea, but as we all know, she (and many others) failed.  The denial of the vote to black women (and men) would continue until the Voting Rights act of 1965 was passed, but the tensions between white women and women of color, especially black women, continue to hinder us all in the fight for justice and equity.

            The ratification of the ERA by the legislature of Virginia earlier this year may lead to its addition to the Constitution, building on the work of many women of all colors.  Warriors like Terrell and Ida Wells would be glad, but they would still ask:  “What’s in it for black women and other women of color?”  It will be our generation and those to come who will answer that question.  What will our witness look like over the long haul?  If we make it to age 85, will we be out in the snow, standing and protesting and working for justice and equity?

"ARTHUR ASHE AND THE RICHMOND ROAD"

“ARTHUR ASHE AND THE RICHMOND ROAD”

            When I was a boy, I dreamed of being a major league baseball player.  I was a smart player and fielded well, but my hitting was so-so.  When I got old enough to face pitchers who threw curve balls, I threw in the towel – I was too afraid of being hit by the ball.  So, I thought about tennis, since it was a non-contact sport.  We were  poor, so I could not go to the country club to practice, and there was only one public court.  It was segregated, but like our baseball fields, it was located in a black neighborhood.  I’ve often wondered what those black kids thought about us white kids coming into their neighborhood to play on venues on which they could not set foot.  Though I liked tennis, I never developed it much.  Our son, David, however, did – he became the #1 singles player on his high school team. 

            My interest in tennis in those days made me notice Arthur Ashe, the first person of African descent to play on the USA Davis Cup team and the first African-American to win a Davis Cup match.   In those days tennis was a white person’s sport, and in many ways, it still is, although Venus and Serena Williams have blown the doors open for women’s tennis.  Ashe was born in Richmond, VA, in 1943, and he became interested in tennis at age 7.  He was tutored in tennis by Ron Charity, who was the best black tennis player in Richmond, and likely he was the best player of any color, but he was not allowed to compete with whites in that segregated era. 

Ashe’s dad and Ron Charity helped him get noticed by local white tennis pros, who took him under their wings and opened doors for him.  He earned a tennis scholarship to UCLA, and while there he joined the USA Davis Cup team at age 20.  He later turned pro and made money – he had majored in business at UCLA, so he knew what to do with his money.

            Ashe died in February, 1993 of pneumonia, brought on by AIDS, which he had gotten from a blood transfusion after heart surgery in 1993.  As Black History Month rolled around in 1994, I decided to research Ashe and preach on him.  He was one of the few athletes of his time who would take political positions.  He was arrested several times in protest of South Africa’s apartheid policies.  I was also attracted to him because he was a Presbyterian – he attended First Presbyterian in Brooklyn, where my colleague (and former pastor at Hillside) Paul Smith was pastor.  As I began to read about him, though, I was shocked – he was so conservative!  He voted for Bush in 1988, and he was a frequent guest at the Reagan/Bush White House.  He opposed the idea of black power, and he stood against affirmative action as a way to do some reparations.

            So, I decided not to preach on him – he was the wrong kind of black man, not my kind of black man.  I wrestled with that.  I was turning him down because he didn’t seem black enough to me, a white man.  How could I know his struggles?  How could I judge his “blackness?”  So, I decided to preach on his life and witness, and I did it a year to the day after his death.  I discovered a remarkable passage in his autobiography “Days of Grace,” and I want to share part of it here.  He was being interviewed by a white reporter from People Magazine about how he was coping with AIDS:

            “Mr. Ashe, I guess this must be the heaviest burden you ever had to bear, isn’t             it?”  I thought for a moment, but only a moment. “No, it isn’t.  It’s a burden,

            all right.  But AIDS isn’t the heaviest burden that I’ve had to bear.” 

            “Is there something worse?  Your heart attack?”

            “You’re not going to believe this, but being classified as black is the greatest

            burden I’ve had to bear.”  She said, “You can’t mean that.”  My reply: “No

            question about it.  Race has always been my biggest burden.  Having to live

            as a minority in America.  Even now it continues to feel like an extra weight

            tied around me.”

            I can still recall the surprise and perhaps even the hurt on her face.  I may

            even have surprised myself, because I simply had never thought of

            comparing the two conditions before.”

I give thanks for the witness of Arthur Ashe, who overcame so many obstacles to become one of the best players in tennis history.  I also give thanks to him for being willing to reveal the cost of being classified as “black” in a white, racist society.  And, I thank him for revealing the continuing power of race in my life. So, with apologies to James Weldon Johnson,

Stony the road he trod,

Bitter the shoes he shod,

Difficult to be seen as odd,

But thank God

For Arthur Ashe

For his journey to sing his own song and that of his ancestors.    

And, Arthur Ashe’s statue now has a place on Richmond’s infamous Monument Avenue, where all the Confederate forebears can celebrate his great achievements!