"JOHN LEWIS!"

 “JOHN LEWIS!”

On Saturday, Caroline and I had the privilege of joining hundreds of others to participate in the unveiling of a statue of John Lewis on the courthouse square in Decatur and Dekalb County.  There is quite a story behind this unveiling.  It stood in the space previously occupied by an obelisk in honor of Confederate soldiers, an obelisk that had been erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  At the same time, they erected a cannon celebrating the “Indian Wars of 1836,” in which Native American Muscogees had been forced out of Georgia as part of the Trail of Tears.  Both of these monuments occupied land in the Decatur square for over 100 years.  It was part of a successful movement by the burgeoning Confederacy in the first decade of the 20th century to venerate the “Lost Cause” and to re-affirm the neo-slavery that had been re-established in the South after the dismantling of Reconstruction.

Over the years, many people protested these monuments to racism and neo-slavery, but the main energy came from the jolt of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017.  The state of Georgia passed laws that prohibited the removal of Confederate statues on public land, and many people felt stymied because it was felt that nothing could be done about these statues.  As Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond put it at the unveiling on Saturday, young people and activists pushed and pushed on this, seeking to find a way to remove these offensive statues.  The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights was especially forceful and creative in seeking to find ways to get these statues removed.  Dekalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson was a leader in the county to get it removed.  After the obelisk was vandalized, and many protest gatherings were held at the statue, the city of Decatur went to magistrate court in 2020 to get the obelisk declared a public nuisance and safety issue, with the atmosphere juiced up because of the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.

    In early June, 2020, Superior Court Clarence Seeliger (who was near retirement) ruled that the obelisk was indeed a public nuisance and safety hazard, and he ordered Dekalb County to remove it.  CEO Thurmond recalled on Saturday that when the court order came down, his assistant asked him if he wanted him to file an appeal of the order.  Mr. Thurmond said “Not only no, but HELL NO – excuse my language.”  There were protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who asked that the order be reconsidered, but Judge Seeliger refused.  

    I remember the night that the obelisk was removed.  It was removed by the County late at night because of the fear of protests and even worse from the right-wing.  Downtown Decatur streets were blocked off, and a demolition crew went to work removing the obelisk.  We went down to see part of it, and our friend Lorri Mills stayed for the entire removal, and with no small amount of irony, Dekalb County removed it in the early morning hours of Juneteenth – June 19, 2020.  The Task Force to Design the Statue met a lot and commissioned Basil Watson to sculp it.  Mereda and Decatur Mayor Patti Garrett raised over $700,000 to pay for the sculpting.

    There was quite a lineup of luminaries at Saturday’s gathering Decatur Square.  Jennifer Holliday sang so powerfully – the two national anthems (Star Spangled Banner and Lift Ev’ry Voice), “Everything Must Change” and “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”  Senator Raphael Warnock spoke, as did Congresswoman Nikema Williams (who now holds John Lewis’ old Congressional seat in the 5th district – our Congresswoman).  Mereda gave a powerful speech (full disclosure here – she is the daughter-in-law of our longtime Oakhurst friend Christine Callier and spouse of Congressman Hank Johnson), and I was so glad to see her get such fine recognition.  As I noted, CEO Michael Thurmond gave a fine speech, and he noted that he is near the end of his term-limited CEO office in Dekalb County – I hope that he will run for governor in 2026.  He introduced Mereda by noting that she was one of the first Dekalb County Commissioners to welcome him as CEO.  She told him that he would do well as CEO – if he would always do what she advised him to do.  And, he has been a fine CEO, so he must have listened well!

    There was thunderous applause when the statue was unveiled, and I look forward to taking some time soon to go and look at it more carefully and meditate on the witness of John Lewis, a rural Black boy from Troy, Alabama, dubbed “the boy from Troy” by his mentor and preacher Martin Luther King, Jr.  Lewis grew to be a giant in the hearts of so many of us, from his boarding the Freedom Rider busses in Alabama to his wrestling with A. Philip Randolph at the great March on Washington – Randolph had been commissioned to try to get Lewis to tone down his speech – to his fateful crossing of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma in 1965.  What a man – what a witness!

    On our way out from the ceremony, I was telling Caroline that Michael Thurmond was on fire today, and an older Black couple walking nearby said “Amen – he sure was.”  We chatted about how glad we were that this had taken place, and I noticed that the man had a Barack Obama 2008 T-shirt on.  I remarked that we had been fortunate enough to attend the Obama inauguration in 2009.  He indicated that he was hoping for another Black person to be inaugurated in 2025, and as we parted ways, he said:  “See y’all in DC in January!”  May it be so.

"VISION AND HOPE"

 “VISION AND HOPE”

The Democratic Convention begins today in Chicago, and as I wrote last week, it calls me back to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968.  That convention was a total mess, as Mayor Richard Daley took over the convention inside and sent his police power outside to beat up and push back the 10,000 demonstrators against the Vietnam War.  I was at my home in Helena, Arkansas, after my college graduation, waiting to go to Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville.  I watched that convention with my mother and her brother Bud, who was visiting from Chicago on vacation.  Bud was a conservative, “boot-strap” guy, but he was always loving to Mother and me.  During that 1968 convention,  we had tremendous clashes because he felt that Mayor Daley was great, and I felt that Daley was a repressive tyrant.  We held it down because Mother felt caught in the middle. 

I looked back at my journals and found many phrases about that 1968 convention – here is one that catches my thoughts on it: from Tuesday, August 27: “I just saw a sickening and disgusting display at the convention.  A motion to adjourn was made by Donald Peterson from Wisconsin, but he was ruled down. Then the god of the old politics, the mayor of Chicago, said that the gallery should be quiet or that it would be cleared.  However, the delegates were tired of being pushed around by Daley and the other machines.  If that is Humphrey’s way, then **** it.  The police have clobbered about 20 reporters and no telling how many protesters.”   

The convention careened along until Hubert Humphrey received the nomination to run against Richard Nixon.  One highlight of a lowlight convention – Julian Bond, a delegate from Georgia was nominated from the floor to be Vice-President by a Wisconsin delegate.  Since he was only 28, he was ineligible, but he was the first Black person to be nominated on the presidential ticket of either major party.  And, speaking of that,  here’s a little trivia quiz – who were the vice-presidential nominees for the two major political parties in 1968?  (Answer at the end).

All of that intro is to say that I hope that this year’s Democratic convention does not follow the pattern of the 1968 one.  It should not, though there are plenty of anti-war demonstrators coming to protest the Israeli war in Gaza.  A ceasefire seems close, so maybe that will help.  And, the positive energy released by President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election should give the delegates a wave to ride.  Though she was not my first choice (Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan was my first choice),  Vice-President Kamala Harris has so far demonstrated maturity, vision, and energy in her road to the nomination.  If she can stay near this level, she has an opportunity to defeat the Trumpster.  She seems to have genuinely flummoxed Trump, and has him so off balance that he has returned to his hyperbolic ways and personal attacks.  May that continue throughout the campaign.

So, here’s hoping for a substantial and unifying Democratic convention.  The world has changed a lot since 1968, but as I have noted before, the historical parallels are striking.  Here’s hoping also that the parallel ends on November 5 – Harris needs to be president rather than Trump.  It would be so great to send Trump back to TrumpWorld as a loser once again, and it would be so great to change the conversation from grievance and grumpiness to vision and tolerance and hope.  The main issue, of course, is on us – getting the vote out.  Register to vote and ask everyone you meet if they are registered to vote – it they are not, get them motivated to do it.  Because of the Chicago fiasco in 1968, I chose not to vote in the presidential election that November - I joined thousands of other anti-war protestors who sat out the 1968 election.  And, as a result, we got Richard Nixon.  I won't make that mistake again - and please don't you do it either this year.

{The vice-presidential candidates were Edmund Muskie of Maine for the Democrats and Spiro Agnew for the Republicans.  Both Nixon and Agnew would resign from their offices after being elected – Agnew in 1973, and Nixon in 1974.}

"A TUMULTUOUS TIME"

 “A TUMULTOUS TIME”

August is always a hot month in the South, and so it is this summer.  We are also in a hot and tumultuous time politically, with a close Presidential race and Congressional races.  The Democratic convention will start next week in Chicago, and that is a call back to the chaotic Democratic convention of 1968 in Chicago.  I’ll write more on that next week, but this week, I want to remember the tumultuous summer of 1964, especially the month of August, 1964. Sixty years ago, the country was in more turmoil than it is now, if that is even possible.  Lyndon Johnson had become President in November, 1963, after the assassination of President John Kennedy, an event that shocked the nation, whether you supported Kennedy or not.  It was as if the 1960’s was saying to the mundane 1950’s – “your time is up, there are sweeping changes coming.”  

        Indeed, today’s tuumultous times are in many ways an echo of those struggles – do we want to return to a time when everyone agreed that white men should be in control, or do we want to be in conversation about a multiracial democracy with shared power and influence?  The idea behind “Make America Great Again” is to seek to return to that time of the 1940’s and 1950’s when everyone acknowledged that those classified as “white” males should be in control.  The 1960’s are a central part of that conversation, and especially 60 years ago in 1964.

The summer of 1964 began with the Mississippi Summer Project (later to be renamed Mississippi Freedom Summer) being instituted by SNCC and CORE.  Its creative director was the great visionary and organizer Bob Moses of SNCC, with assistance from Dave Dennis of CORE.  The idea was to bring white volunteers from the North to work in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, hoping to get as many Black people registered to vote as possible.  This was before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so registering to vote in Mississippi was an act that could cost a Black person their lives in 1964.  The idea was that bringing white students down to Mississippi would lessen the violence, and what violence that did occur would be magnified to the nation because there would also likely be white victims, rather than just the Black victims, who were often ignored by the national media.  Reverend James Lawson was a leader of non-violent training for the many white volunteers, who soon came to Mississippi.

The summer began in high hopes.  Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 on July 2, the most significant civil rights bill passed by Congress since 1875, almost 90 years.  The bill outlawed discrimination and segregation in the USA on the basis of race, religion, sex, or creed.  It also emphasized the need for integration in public schools and made it illegal to discriminate in employment practices.  It was the beginning of the end of the neo-slavery that had plagued the South and the country since the end of Reconstruction.  It was a difficult political achievement, but President Lyndon Johnson used his considerable political skills to get it done.  Indeed, when he signed the Civil Rights Bill, he noted that Democrats would lose the South for at least a generation, which has proved to be prescient, with the shift from Democrats to Republicans lasting longer than a generation.

The white, Southern resistance had already begun, however.  On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman – were kidnapped by the KKK.  A massive search for them began and continued through most of the summer.  I had just graduated from high school in May of that year, and although I was still firmly in the grip of the power of racism, I had begun to wonder about its accuracy and power.  

        Sitting in front of me as I write this today is the Memphis Press-Scimitar of August 5, 1964, a paper that I have saved for these 60 years.  It was the afternoon paper at that time, and we received it at my home in Helena, Arkansas, with its being the “Mid-South Edition.”  I saved it because it has two glaring headlines: one is a smaller headline “Bodies of Civil Rights Trio Identified.” The article supporting it indicates that the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman had been found in shallow graves at a farm pond site near Philadelphia, Mississippi.  They had all been beaten severely and shot to death.  And, yes, that Philadelphia is also the place where Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign of 1980, as if to make certain that everyone understood what his platform would be.   It took a long time to find some of the murderers, and some were convicted in 1970. But it would be over 40 years before the main leader Edgar Ray Killen would be convicted.  He died in prison in 2018.

The main headline in that Memphis Press-Scimitar, however, was not the discovery of the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.  The main headline was in dark black one inch type:  “NAVY PLANES DESTROY 25 PT’S, HIT FIVE NORTH VIET NAM BASES.”  The article under it indicated that the US Navy had responded to attacks by the North Vietnamese on U.S. destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy.  President Johnson had addressed the nation on Tuesday, August 4, and had indicated that these military attacks had taken place.  He also indicated that he would seek Congressional support for protecting American troops in the area.  Two days later on August 7, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving LBJ the power to prosecute this campaign as necessary.  The House of Representatives passed the Resolution unanimously, and the Senate voted 88-2 to support (dissenting were Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska).  It was the beginning of the disastrous Vietnam War, in which over 50,000 American troops were killed and millions of Vietnamese killed. The huge protest over this war drove Johnson not to seek re-election in 1968 and led to the election of Richard Nixon as president.

So, this one day headline in the Memphis Press-Scimitar points to the turbulence of the 1960’s and points us to the turbulence of our own time.  In many ways, this election of 2024 is eerily similar to that of 1968, with a defeated presidential candidate running again for the Republicans, and the sitting Vice-President (Hubert Humphrey)stepping in for the President who had declined to seek re-election.  I hope that the similarity ends there, because the once-defeated candidate, Richard Nixon,  won in 1968.  If Trump wins in 2024, we will look back at the election of 1876, where the gains of Reconstruction were wiped out, just as Trump has promised to take us back to the 1950’s if he wins. The power to prevent that retrenchment lies in our hands and hearts, so let us take care of business in this tumultuous time. 

"KAMALA HARRIS!"

 “KAMALA HARRIS!”

I supported Kamala Harris for President in 2019 and 2020, before she suspended her campaign.  Now, she becomes the Democratic nominee for President, a dramatic turn of events that no one expected on the morning of July 21.  I had called for Joe Biden to step down several times this year, but as July came to a close, it seemed as if he would stay on.  Then came his announcement on July 21 that he would not seek re-election, and that stunned so many people.  He endorsed Kamala Harris, and so much Democratic energy and money flowed her way – people had hope again that Donald Trump could be defeated.  

I supported Harris in 2019 for many reasons, the chief of which was how she handled herself in the US Senate, especially when she questioned white men.  I remember that Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Senator Harris made him nervous because she came at him from her prosecutor’s background.  She seemed ready to take the next step, and although it was delayed 5 years, she now has taken that step.  I hope that there are some white men who will not be intimidated by her, because she will need some of our votes.

Harris has hit the ground running, and so far she has shown remarkable dexterity, insight, and presence in front of a crowd.  Though I am loathe to say it, Trump does have presence in front of a crowd, but I am glad to say that Kamala Harris demonstrates some of that same presence, if not more so.  She will definitely need it, because in order for her to win the Presidential election, she will need to sway some white men in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina.  She does bring a maturity that she has seemed to lack in the past, but even on her worst days, she has already shown more maturity than Trump has ever shown.

Despite Trump’s glaring flaws, many people classified as “white” (especially white men) still support him and will vote for him.  I don’t understand this, but I am gaining some clues from the knowledge that by 2040 at the latest, there will no longer be a majority racial classification in the USA.  Those of us who identify as “white” feel the presence and the power of “the other” in the American system of racial classification in a way that we rarely have known in American history.   And, for many of us, it is not a good feeling.  We hope to stave it off as long as possible, and for us, Trump seems to be the ticket to purchase our whiteness to remain in power, long past the day when we cease to be the majority in the country.  

Yesterday I preached at Smyrna Presbyterian Church in Conyers, GA, and the epistle lesson was Ephesians 4:1-16.  It is called “Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians,” though many scholars don’t think that Paul wrote the letter.  Whoever wrote it, in this passage, Paul urges the “newbies” in the faith (the Gentiles) to live a life worthy of the calling into which they have been called.  He lists the traits that comprise this higher life:  humility, gentleness, patience, bearing one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  In case anyone thinks that Paul means people who are passive and hesitant, he has already noted that he himself is in prison because he disturbed the peace.  He urges the newbies in the faith to stand fast and to mature in the faith, so that they are not like immature people who are “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”

I noted in my sermon that Trump seems to be one of those deceitful people who are highly creative in their desire to win people over by their trickery.  Trump, of course, is stirring and riding the wave of  the powerful stream of white supremacy and now white grievance, and many white people seem to have drunk the kool-aid.  I am hoping some of them will see Kamala Harris as a breath of fresh air, as someone who has some integrity and who is not trying to win people over by deceitful scheming.  Harris has already re-set the Democratic ticket – maybe she can also reset the American scene, polluted as it has become with the Trump and white grievance vitriol.  Trump has been nominated for President three times in a row by the Republicans, so we are in a dangerous time.  Let’s pray that Harris is able to defeat Trump (and let’s practice what we pray), because if she is not able to defeat Trump, we face an apocalypse similar to the Civil War in our life as a nation.