"MORE THAN I IMAGINED"

 “MORE THAN I IMAGINED”

Today’s title phrase is the title of my friend John Blake’s newest book, whose full title is “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.” It was released in May by Random House, and it is a memoir about his growing up as an interracial child in the rough streets of Baltimore.  His previous book “Children of the Movement” was also a fine book.

I first met John when he came to Oakhurst in 1996 to do a story on us for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, for whom he was a reporter.  The AJC gave us a full page story by John, and he became interested in us and in the church’s story.  He started worshipping with us and became a member.  Later her became an elder on the Session.  I officiated at he and Rev. Terrylyn Pons’ wedding at her church on the other side of Atlanta.  In his new book, John credits Oakhurst with helping him to recover his faith.

John describes his journey in “More Than I Imagined,” and he begins it in his upbringing on the tough streets of Baltimore, streets that were depicted in “The Wire.”  John and his brother Patrick lived with his father in Baltimore – he did not know who his mother was.  Learning her identity and her story is part of the “more than I imagined” of this book, as well as John’s reconciliation with his mother (and his father) and parts of his mother’s white family who had previously rejected him.  John’s father was a merchant marine, and so he traveled a lot.  When he traveled, John and Patrick would be farmed out to various relatives and the underground foster care system.  One of those foster care givers, Aunt Fannie, was a person who terrorized John and Patrick and caused them to be filled with resentment and anger. But another Aunt (this aunt, a biological aunt), Aunt Sylvia, treated them with love and respect – she was tough but fair, demanding but compassionate.  She knew that she was raising Black boys in a white world, and she wanted them to be tough but to also have love at the center of their hearts.

John grew up amidst violence, despair, and struggle, but people like his brother Patrick,  Aunt Sylvia and even his father helped him to find his center as a child of God – a child who was illegal when he was born, a child whom the institution of white supremacy told was worthless, a child abandoned by his mother.  Yet he heard that he was a child of God.  Reading and books were also a prime way that he escaped the pain and his seeming destiny of street life.  Many people threw seeds of love and vision along his path, and he was fortunate enough to find some of those seeds and nourish them in his heart.

He eventually found his mother, but I will leave it to you to read the book to see how her love prevailed in his heart, even under the worst of circumstances.  He also had encounters with his racist maternal grandfather in ghostly, eerie encounters, which forms one of the big mysteries of his book.  He also met his mother’s racist sister, and their developing relationship is one of the powerful stories in the book, giving us hope in a hopeless world.  John discovered in his journey a truth that becomes one of the mantras of his book:  “Facts don’t change people; relationships do.”

John’s story speaks to our system of race which targets those classified as Black - especially black males – to be put on the road to the prison/industrial complex.  His story is an inspiring one, but those of us classified as “white” must take care not to judge the system by John’s (and Patrick’s) remarkable escape from it.  We are so invested in denying that the system of race exists, and John’s story can be used as an antidote to that.  John puts it like this towards the end of his book:  “A choice is unavoidable.  I once wrote that America is in the middle of another “irrepressible conflict” where white Americans will eventually be forced to choose between becoming a vibrant, multireligious, multiracial democracy, or a “hollowed out” democracy where one racial group rules the rest.  The status quo will no longer be sustainable.”

I highly recommend John’s book, and I hope that you’ll get it and get taken into its narrative – as Caroline put it, it is a page turner!  It will anger you, make you wonder, and inspire you.  Most of all, it will call you to give thanks for the vision and possibility of America that John calls us to see in this fine memoir. 

"155 YEARS FOR THE 14TH AMENDMENT!"

 “155 YEARS FOR THE 14TH AMENDMENT!”

This month marks the 155th anniversary of the 14th Amendment.  It was ratified on July 9, 1868, when the state of South Carolina approved it.  On July 29, Secretary of State William Seward declared that it was officially ratified and now part of the Constitution.  We visited his and his spouse Frances Miller’s home when we were in Auburn, NY, earlier, and I thought about their work on this groundbreaking amendment.  Frances Miller Seward helped to push her husband William to become the strong abolitionist that he was.

This amendment is one of the most litigated of the parts of the Constitution because it did four important things.  First, it established the right of citizens to due process in relationship to the government.  Second, it provided equal protection to all citizens.  Third, it established the idea of “birthright” of citizenship – if you are born “here” in USA or our territories, you are automatically an American citizen.  Fourth, it indicated for the first time that state and local governments were subject to these first three steps. 

  This 14th Amendment has had a difficult time in American history.    Even while it was being ratified, white Southerners were working to undercut it, and indeed we did undercut it through a reign of terror and legislative manipulation.  It would take almost 100 years before it would gain even a minimal force of law through the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.   In a terrible but not surprising decision in 2013, the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by taking out its “special” enforcement status for those states whose history indicated an unwillingness to adhere to the 14th Amendment.  I was pleasantly surprised recently when SCOTUS paid homage to the 14th Amendment in overturning the gerrymandered voting maps of North Carolina and Alabama.  Maybe there is hope after all.

This struggle over the 14th Amendment is so great because, in many ways, it is the crux on which the American experiment  and indeed the idea of constitutional government hinges – it always seems to be hanging in the balance.  Do we believe in the idea of equality or not?  For the most part, our history says “no,” but the 14th Amendment is among our better angels, urging us to say “yes.”  Many of our leaders have understood the importance and the meaning of this Amendment.  Thurgood Marshall was one who understood it, and he put it this way in his Bicentennial speech in 1987:  “While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not.  In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14th Amendment….guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.”

Marshall correctly understood that the intent of the Constitution in its beginning was to keep power in the hands of white men of property, and so there was no mention of the full humanity of women or of people of African descent or Native Americans.  Yet, the idea of equality was so powerful and so electric, that the white men of property could not confine it to themselves.  Women heard their names called.  African-Americans heard their names called.  Native Americans heard their names called.  Latinx Americans heard their names called.  Asian-Americans heard their names called.  Poor people heard their names called.  LGBTQ people heard their names called.  The power of the 14th Amendment is to speak to all of us:  the power of the idea of equality is calling to us all.  That is one of the great things that we should remember as we celebrate this powerful amendment to the Constitution.

  It is not just progressives who have understood the meaning of this 14th Amendment.  Regressives have understood it too.  That’s why the fight over the 14th Amendment continues.  Those who speak of being “originalists” on the authority of the Constitution are seeking to take us back to the days of the origins of the Constitution, when white men of property were seen as those entitled to power.   There is a lot of talk these days about the changing demographics in America, with young people and people of color becoming the majority in the USA sooner than many of us realize.   Some progressives have hopes in this demographic change, and I have hopes too.  Yet, we should realize that old white men (and women, it seems, since the majority of them voted for Trump) will not yield this power easily, if we yield it at all.  Limits on voting rights, purging voter rolls, overt gerrymandering – all designed to take us back to the original Constitution.  

So, let us give thanks for those who worked so hard for this amendment and others to follow.  Take time this week to read the 14th Amendment – our very lives as a nation may depend on our ability to believe and to live it.  Then, while you still can, make sure that you are registered to vote and that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote.

"COOPERSTOWN"

 “COOPERSTOWN”

I’ve been writing about the great trip that Caroline, Susan, and I took to central and upstate New York to tour human rights sites – Harriet Tubman, Frances Miller Seward, Susan B. Anthony, Gerritt Smith, Mother Ann Lee and the Shaker Heritage Center, and John Brown.  In between those powerful visits, we went in for a bit lighter fare – the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  We were staying in an Airbnb near Auburn, New York, where Harriet Tubman’s home was, and we drove 120 miles east to Cooperstown, a small town of 1900.  When we got there, it definitely looked like the small, rural town that it is – except for 3 or 4 blocks that surrounded the Baseball Hall of Fame.  For those 4 blocks, it was as busy as a commercial center anywhere.

The Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) started in Cooperstown in 1939, because it was the hometown of Abner Doubleday, who was credited then with inventing the game of baseball.  That turned out not to be true, but it stuck, and the HOF prevailed there.  I grew up loving the game of baseball, and though I never dreamed that I would make it to the HOF, there we were driving up to it on a Tuesday afternoon.  Our son David had long had the HOF on his bucket list, so when he found out about our impending trip there, he arranged his schedule so that he could join us.  He and spouse Erin were on their way to NYU to pick up granddaughter Zoe who had been at arts camp/workshop there, and we were delighted that he could join us.  

The HOF did not disappoint – all things baseball, mostly white males but strong and numerous exhibits on the Negro Leagues and women’s baseball.  There are exhibits scattered around featuring all the Major League teams, and I was glad to find my place beside the St. Louis Cardinals (my childhood team – I still cheer for them, unless they are playing the Atlantans), the Chicago White Sox (another childhood team), and the Atlanta team (they still need to change their name).  It did not take long for that 12 year old Nibs to emerge – I could feel the vibrations and the thrill of baseball that had such a hold on my heart and spirit for so many years in my childhood and youth.  Until I got to be a young adult, I could name every World Series opponent and winner for every year from 1953 through 1975.  I loved Stan Musial of the Cardinals, and I remember having endless arguments with my pastor and mentor Reverend Harold Jackson about who was the better hitter – Musial or Ted Williams of the Red Sox.  

My favorite player, however, was Nellie Fox of the Chicago White Sox.  He was a small player and a second baseman for the Sox, and that was my position in my baseball playing days.  He was a very good player, named the Most Valuable Player of the GoGo Sox pennant winners in 1959. But, it took him a long time to get into the HOF, because he was not a power hitter or a spectacular player.  After many failures, he was finally voted into HOF in 1997.  I was delighted to have my photo taken in the HOF in front of his plaque.  

The HOF had strong exhibits on baseball cards also, and that one I definitely felt the pull on my conscioiusness.  My friends in Helena and I were fierce collectors, always going to the 5 & 10 cent store, looking for the new cards, which at first were just a throw-in for bubble gum.  Once the passion got us, we just threw away the gum and leapt into the cards.  In our area, Stan Musial’s was the hardest card to get for a long time – it was like the pearl of great value.  There were many baseball card stores in Cooperstown, and my 12 year old self said:  “Buy them all – you are in baseball heaven.”  When I was a young adult, I sold some of my baseball cards to finance a trip out West with a college buddy, Sidney Cassell, and though I hated to lose them, I have never regretted it.

Our son David has inherited the remainder of my baseball card collection, and in that honor, in Cooperstown, he bought four packages of cards, one for each of us.  He asked us to pick which one we wanted, and the baseball gods saw fit to steer Susan, who is the least baseball fan in the family, to the pack with the most valuable card, an autographed card that David said was already worth $30. He urged her to get a special plastic pack to keep the card in.

I am still a baseball fan, though I no longer give it quite the spiritual value that I once did.  One reason that I continue to like baseball is that it is a game not governed by a clock – though they have instituted a pitcher’s clock this year.  It also is a game that is filled with players who must deal with failure.  The best hitters in baseball fail 60% of the time – indeed, no one has averaged 40% in getting hits since the aforementioned Ted Williams did it in 1941.  In baseball (and in life), if you don’t learn from your failures, you will not come close to succeeding.  Though baseball is not as physically demanding as some sports, there is nothing that demands more skill than hitting a baseball being thrown at you at 100 miles per hour from a pitcher who is 60 feet away.  So whether you like baseball or not, give a cheer for this used-to-be national pastime and its continuing hold on our thoughts and our hearts.

"THE LONG WITNESS"

 “THE LONG WITNESS”

This Sunday, July 16, marks the 161st anniversary of the birth of Ida B. Wells in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  For over 40 years, she was a primary witness about the continuing power of racism after the Civil War, against the enduring power of white supremacy, and a promoter of the equality and human rights of those classified as “Black” in American culture.  She was also a strong supporter of women’s rights, and often shad to fight to keep these two paths together, as both white women and Black men chafed at her emphasis on the need for walking both these paths.

Caroline, Susan, and I just returned from a tour of some of the human rights sites in central and upstate New York, and I thought of Ida Wells often on this trip.  We started with one of my bucket list items in Auburn, New York, touring Harriet Tubman’s home and hearing an excellent presentation on her by AME Zion pastor Paul Carter.  The next day we drove up to Rochester to see the home of Susan B. Anthony, the legendary leader of the drive for rights for women – this was one of the bucket list items for Caroline.  Rochester was also the adopted home of Frederick Douglass, and he and Anthony were friends.  There is a powerful sculpture of Douglass and Anthony at tea in a park near Anthony’s home.

On Monday, at Ed Loring’s suggestion, we went to Peterboro, a small hamlet known as the birthplace of abolition.  A former Presbyterian church there houses the National Abolition Hall of Fame, and the home of Gerritt Smith, who was a major financial supporter of the abolition movement and the movement for women’s rights.  We had excellent tours there, especially at the Gerritt Smith grounds, where Norm Dann, a major biographer of Smith, gave us a fine tour.  Next we took a break from the heavy history and toured the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and our son David joined us for that – it was a bucket list item for him.  There’ll be more on that next week.

Next we went to Watervliet where we had a fine tour of the Shaker Heritage Society, which was founded in the 1700’s by Mother Ann Lee.  Lee believed that Jesus was the male face of God, and she was the female face of God.  She was one of the early feminists, and she believed that money and marriage were oppressive instruments which sought to crush women.  So, she decreed that the Shakers would be celibate to prevent women from being turned into sex objects, and she insisted that all money would be held in common so that women would not be dependent on men for economic survival.  We concluded our trip on the next day with a visit to John Brown’s farm in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, on land donated to him by Gerritt Smith – Smith was one of the “Secret Six” who financed Brown’s attempted takeover of Harper’s Ferry.  It was at this farm that Brown planned and carried out the Harper’s Ferry revolt in 1859.

Ida Wells knew most of these people, and she had relationships with Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman.  Wells helped to organize the National Association of Colored Women and was a central player in their first meeting in DC in 1896.  Also attending was Harriet Tubman at age 76, and Wells formally introduced Tubman at the meeting.  Wells had given birth to her first son, Charles Aked, earlier that year, and in a pioneering move, she brought him to the meeting with her.  Later in that meeting, Tubman lifted baby Charles up over her head for all to meet him and to name him the official “baby” of the meeting.  It was a profound moment, as the torch of witnessing for equality and justice was passed from Tubman to Wells and to all the other women who would fight for both equality for Black people and for civil rights for women.

Wells also had a friendship with Susan B. Anthony and stayed in her home several times in Rochester.  Their mutual friend, Frederick Douglass, had died in 1895, and a memorial service was held in Rochester for Douglass, and Anthony would speak at the service.  Anthony graciously invited Wells to stay in her home, and they continued their discussion about the intersection of rights for Black people and rights for women.  At one point, Anthony criticized Wells for getting married and having children, saying that women like Wells “had a special call for special work, that there was no one in the country better suited to do that work.”  Wells indicated in her autobiography “Crusade for Justice” that Anthony’s comments stung her, and that she felt that she had a “divided duty.”  Wells, however, decided to fully re-enter public life and do her “divided duty” as best she could.

Harriet Tubman died in 1912; Frederick Douglass in 1895; Susan B. Anthony in 1906; Ida Wells in 1931.  They were powerful witnesses who passed on their legacy to one another and to the next generations:  Mary McLeod Bethune, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Johns, Rosa Parks, Joann Robinson, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, on down to Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, who founded  “Black Lives Matter.”  Let us raise a glass in honor of Ida B. Wells this week -and let us find our own places in this long and great parade of witnesses!

"EQUALITY TOUR"

 “EQUALITY TOUR”

Caroline’s birthday is today, July 3, and in her honor, our daughter Susan has joined us in a week of touring some of the human rights sites in central and upstate New York.  This is also July 4th celebration week, and instead of emphasizing “independence,” I want to lift up the idea of equality, which is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence.

We began our tour at Auburn, New York, which is where Harriet Tubman settled in after fighting for equality in her Underground railroad trips, in her spying and scouting and leading troops for the Union in the Civil War, and in her support for women’s suffrage and for rights for older people.  She was simply one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and we were glad to visit her home in Auburn.  On an earlier trip, we had visited her birthing grounds on the Eastern Shore of Maryland – in a remarkable coming together of geography, she and Frederick Douglass hailed from the same areas on the Eastern Shore.  

    We also visited Frances Miller Seward’s home in Auburn, commonly known as the William Henry Seward home, but it was actually Frances’ home.  She helped to push Henry into the anti-slavery camp, and she also helped Harriet Tubman purchase her home in Auburn.  Frances Seward, Harriet Tubman, and Martha Coffin Wright (younger sister of Lucretia Mott), all were contemporaries and friends in Auburn, and a fine book called “The Agitators” by Dorothy Wickenden was written last year about their relationships and witness.

    The next day we went to Rochester to see Susan B. Anthony’s home there.  It was on Caroline’s bucket list for a long time, and our tour of her house brought up many feelings and a deep sense of gratitude.  Anthony was a powerful witness for abolition and women’s suffrage, and although she missed the original Seneca Falls Conference in 1848, she soon joined up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to form an incredibly powerful team in promoting both the abolition of slavery and the development of the rights of women.  Though Anthony did not live to see the 19th Amendment passed in 1920 (she died in 1906), it was her work that was at the heart of that Amendment.  In Rochester, she and Frederick Douglass became friends, and we were pleased to see a sculpture of Douglass and Anthony at tea in a garden near her home, and we found both of their graves in the Rochester cemetery.  What giants and witnesses they were!

    Next we went to the Shaker Heritage Society near Albany – there we saw the Shaker worship house and the home of founder Mother Ann Lee.  Lee believed that while Jesus was the male face of God, she was the female face of God. The communal group that she founded in England became known as “The Shakers,” because of their ecstatic dancing worship.  The Shakers held all possessions in common, and their motto was “Hands for Work, Hearts for God.”  Ann Lee was a strong women’s rights advocate, and they also harbored people escaping from the evils of slavery.  Lee emphasized celibacy and separate quarters for women and men, because she believed that the emphasis on sex turned women into sex objects, and she thought that marriage diminished the status of women.  She went on missionary trips in New York and other places to seek to recruit followers, but she ran into tremendous opposition because of her radical commitment to the idea of equality.  She was often beaten up on her missionary trips, and she died at age 48 because of all the beatings.  Obviously she was one of the earliest feminists in American history.  

    We closed out our tour at John Brown’s farm in North Elba, where he moved in 1849.  Funding for him was provided by Gerritt Smith, whose home we had visited earlier in the week in Peterboro, also home to the National Abolition Hall of Fame.  Here in North Elba in the Adirondack Mountains, Brown had planned his participation and leadership in the civil war in Kansas, and later his transforming raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry in 1859.  We took a tour of his modest home, and saw the living room area where his funeral was held in December, 1859, after he was hanged in Charlestown, West Virginia.  We also paid homage to his grave near his home.  I grew up in the white supremacist South, and in that time, I heard and believed that Brown was a lunatic terrorist.  Over the years, I have learned of a different John Brown, that he was one of the few white men who was willing to put his life on the line to seek to end slavery before the Civil War. 

      As we celebrate the 247th anniversary of the inscribing of the idea of equality into the American mindset, let us remember these and so many other witnesses who have worked and fought and suffered for the idea of equality.  We are in a time now when the commitment to the idea of equality is being tested once again, with a white supremacist SCOTUS and a growing and violent body of folk seeking to turn back the power of this American idea that all people are created with equal dignity before God and before the law.  We are being asked to find our place and our work in that great parade of witnesses, so let us take our steps too.