"1963"

 “1963”

Sixty years ago in the early fall of 1963, I started my senior year at Central High School in Helena, Arkansas.  Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the March on Washington in late August had already opened the window into my soul a bit.  My growing awareness of a whole new world was beginning to open my imagination, and because of this, I felt pain at the white response to King’s speech.  That response happened on September 15, 1963, when four little Black girls (Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley) were killed in their Sunday school room, when white men bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  For a powerful rendition of this horror, listen to Rhiannon Giddens cover of “Birmingham Sunday,” written by Richard Farińa, brother-in-law at the time of Joan Baez.

Caroline and I preached at Oakhurst Baptist Church this month on MLK Sunday, using King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” as the theme, intertwined with our Seven Steps for guiding those classified as “white” in engaging our addiction to race.  That Birmingham campaign had taken place in the spring of 1963, and in working on the sermon, we went back and reviewed some of the events of 1963. It was quite a year in American history and especially in civil rights history.  This year marks the 60th anniversary of those events.  I want to note some of them here, so that we all can remember them and re-commit ourselves to working for justice and equity in our time.

That year began with the inauguration of George Wallace as governor of Alabama.  Wallace had been a “moderate” on race in the South, but he pivoted to take up the mantle of overt racism with these words in his inaugural speechin Montgomery:  “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and throw a gauntlet before the feet of tyranny… and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”

Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) would seek to answer Wallace’s tyranny with the Birmingham campaign in April and May of 1963, in which basic rights for Black people were sought.  There were marches and sit-ins and nonviolent protests.  Eight white liberal pastors addressed a letter to King and SCLC in the Birmingham News, asking them to stop the campaign, in order to give the white moderates a chance to produce those rights.  King’s reply to them in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” has become a classic in American history and indeed in world history of human rights movements.  I’ll look at it more closely later this year, but if you have not read it lately, especially if you are classified “white,” go read it as a letter of 2023 addressed to your congregation.  

In the spring of that year, the all-white Mississippi State men’s basketball team, which had won the Southeastern Conference basketball title, snuck out of Starkville, Mississippi, to fly to East Lansing, Michigan, to play Loyola of Chicago, a team with many Black players.  The legislature of Mississippi had passed resolutions forbidding the team to play any team with Black players. More on this later too.

On June 11 of that year, Governor Wallace again made the news, when he stood in the schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama, seeking to prevent James Hood and Vivian Malone from entering their state university as students who were classified as Black.  Wallace made a big splash nationally, but as often happened, he stepped aside and allowed federal marshals to accompany Mr. Hood and Ms. Malone to register and to attend classes at the University of Alabama.  Wallace’s point was made, however, and his national profile rose.  One day later in Jackson, Mississippi, a cowardly white man named Byron De La Beckwith, shot Medgar Evers in the back as Mr. Evers walked up his driveway at his home.  Beckwith was tried twice in the 1960’s for the murder of Medgar Evers, but he was not convicted.  He was finally convicted in 1994 and sentenced to prison.

MLK made his powerful “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28 before 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, a speech that called to me in ways that I had not expected.  Again, the cowardly white folk responded by bombing a church in Birmingham, killing those four little girls, whose main offense was seeking to follow Jesus.

And, for me was the crowning event of 1963:  on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  Although I was a Richard Nixon supporter in the presidential election of 1960, I was still shocked that an American president could be assassinated like that.  It was a life-changing moment for many of us who were teen-agers at that time.

So, wow, 1963 – what a year!  I’ll be revisiting some of these events as their 60th anniversary comes up this year.  There were clearly many other important events that year, and I invite you to think about the impact of this year on your life, if you were alive at that time. Let me know your thoughts and reflections.