"RAMBLIN' IN THE WEST"

 “RAMBLING IN THE WEST”

Caroline and I are out in Salt Lake City (SLC), visiting our son David and spouse Erin – Susan has joined us, too, so it is a mini family reunion.  SLC is obviously in Utah, the Mormon state, and sometime in this visit, we will go the spot that the Mormons call “This Is It.” It is the place that the Latter Day Saints remember as the place where Brigham Young and others decided in 1847 that they had found the location out West that Joseph Smith had asked them to find in order to build the Kingdom of the Latter Day Saints.   It is stunning geography – mountains all around, the Great Salt Lake, and so far during our visit here, clear blue skies – along with high altitude.  We’ve also learned that the LDS leadership now prefers to drop the word “Mormon” to describe themselves.  Now they are “the Church of Jesus Christ.”  That is problematic because there are many denominations who have those words in their names.  But, that’s their problem, not mine.

Speaking of geography, we arrived here on Thursday evening, just as hurricane Helene was striking Florida and Georgia with its vastly destructive powers.  We were anxious on Thursday night and Friday morning until we heard from a friend that our home in Decatur had suffered no damage.  Since we live on a hill, we were not worried about waters flooding into the house – as David put it, if we suffered flood damage at our house, it meant that the apocalypse had arrived.  Our worries were the tall old pine and oak trees around the house, but they seem to have survived.  Our other worry was flooding in the basement, but thanks to the great work of our friend, Dave Hess, we have a pumping system that seems to have worked.  We are so grateful to have been spared the brunt of the storm, but we are saddened and astonished at Helene’s destructive power in much of Georgia (including the north side of Atlanta), in western North Carolina (including Montreat), and in east Tennessee.  In our area, we have not a destructive storm like this since Opal in 1995.  It is a reminder of the raw power of nature, as well as signs of building destructive powers, related to our way of living.  One colleague noted a connection between all the death penalty executions in the country this week and the destructive power of Helene, saying that God didn’t like this kind of ugly.  A second connection is the rapidly rising earth temperatures, caused by climate change.  Helene intensified quickly in the hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and its destructive power is a harbinger of things to come.

On that level, it was pleasant to arrive in Utah with sunny skies and warm weather.  I haven’t been out west much.  In the summer of 1967, my college suitemate, Sidney Cassell, and I traveled around the West for a couple of months, including a stay in SLC.  I remember floating in the Great Salt Lake and the gigantic Mormon Temple.  Caroline and I also traveled a lot to New Mexico, when Susan was working in Americorps in Albuquerque.  The desert air of both new Mexico and Utah seem similar. 

    Utah’s earliest known residents were indigenous people known as the Anasazi group, native Americans who came here around the time of the birth of Jesus in the Middle East.  Indeed, the state is named for the clan of tribes who were here when the Mormons came – the Ute people.  Like every other territory in the USA, the native people were driven from the area to make room for the “whites” who were coming.  One other “unfun” fact about Utah – the Mormons brought African-American enslaved people with them, thus making Utah the only western state to have slavery established in it for a time.  The conservative nature of Mormonism and the heritage of slavery make Utah a politically conservative state.  

We are staying in an Airbnb right at the bottom of part of the Wasatch Mountain Range.  On my morning walks, I have been surprised to find a lot of Harris/Walz yard signs.  I’ve included one of them in the accompanying photo. Though the state of Utah won’t go for Harris, I am encouraged that even here, there are folks looking to break us out of the “old white man” phase of American politics.  There seems to be a struggle here in Utah over the next steps for the future.  One of the senators, Mitt Romney, represents the “decent” Republican party, while the other, Mike Lee, represents the mean, right wing impulse of the “restore white men” movement.  Our election in November will tell us a lot about what direction the country will be taking.  And, speaking of elections, make it your goal this week to find at least 5 people who aren’t registered to vote, and get them registered to vote.  The deadline in Georgia (and in most states is October 6), so the time for waiting is over.  

"HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT"

 “HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT”

Caroline and I were blessed to have lunch recently with Catherine Meeks in downtown Decatur.  We talked about many things, including my new book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”  She also asked us if we knew any videographers, because one of her continuing projects was to get a documentary made about the lives of William and Ellen Craft, who were natives of Macon, Georgia (where Catherine had taught for many years).  They were enslaved people, who escaped slavery by hiding in plain sight.

I noted that I had preached on them in the 1990’s in our Black History Series at Oakhurst.  I first encountered them in Dorothy Sterling’s so-fine book called “Black Foremothers,” in which she gave short biographies of Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and Ellen Craft.  It was in that book that I first discovered Ida B in 1985, but the story of Ellen and William Craft stuck with me.  They escaped slavery in 1848 by posing as a white master and “his” Black slave.  Ellen Craft was very light skinned, and she could easily pass as a white person.  

In late December of 1848, they came up with the plan to escape slavery by self-emancipation, by using their wits and steely courage to use the Southern system of slavery against itself to escape that very slavery.  They dressed Ellen as a wealthy white male planter, sickly and injured, traveling north with her slave to seek a medical cure for her illness that no Southern doctor had yet provided.  Ellen’s husband William would be her “slave” on this trip, and she had to switch from the protective turtle shell of being an enslaved woman to being an assertive white man who commanded the world.  They walked out of slavery in the pre-dawn hours, going to the train station in Macon, taking it to Savannah.  Ellen bought a ticket in the white man’s section, while William was confined to the designated “Negro slave” car.  They left Macon on the 7 AM train to Savannah.  From somewhere, they had obtained a pistol – they did not intend to return to slavery if they were caught.  They would fight for their freedom or die trying.  They left on December 20, 1848.  Ellen, traveling as “Mr. Johnson,” could not read or write.  In order to keep from having to sign any documents, she had her arm in a bandage and a sling, hoping to avoid the confrontation over her lack of literacy.

They had many trials and close calls and delays, but they sailed to Charleston on a ship from Savannah.  They did not know when the bounty hunters would be sent to capture them, so they were always on edge.  In Charleston, they got bad news – the steamer to Philadelphia had stopped running for the season.  They had to take a ship to Wilmington, NC, and from there they hoped to take a train to Philadelphia in the land of freedom.  They took ships and trains to Washington, DC, then finally to Philadelphia, all the time posing as wealthy white master and dark skinned personal slave.  Along the way, several white enslavers urged “Mr. Johnson” to be more forceful with his slave, and they warned him of going to Philadelphia, because they indicated that many Black people held as slaves had escaped their slavery in the city of brotherly love.  At their last stop in the South – in Baltimore – a white station master argued with “Mr. Johnson” that he had to have proof that the enslaved man belonged to her, and the station master indicated that he would refuse to let them board the train to Philly unless Mr. Johnson demonstrated such proof.  Ellen – as Mr. Johnson – put on her haughtiest and most entitled face, and she demanded that the tickets for the “slave” and for herself be honored.  The station master relented, and off they went on the train to Philadelphia.

In the pre-dawn hours of Christmas Eve, the train pulled into Philadelphia.  As one older Black person put it to William:  “Wake up, old horse, we are in Philadelphia.”  As they crossed into the streets of Philly, William remembered that he felt “as if the straps that bound the heavy burden of slavery began to pop, and the load to run off.”  Harriet Tubman had a similar feeling when she discovered that she had made it to Pennsylvania.   In Philadelphia, Ellen and William Craft made their way to the office of William Still, the great Black conductor on the Underground Railroad.  Still was astonished at their story and congratulated them on their ingenuity, skill, and courage in carrying this escape out.  Still connected them with other conductors and urged them to go farther North because the bounty hunters would be after them soon.

In their segregated rooming house, the Crafts later described the change that happened when they arrived on free soil:  “Scarcely had we arrived on free soil when the rheumatism departed – the right arm was unslung; the toothache was gone; the beardless face was unmuffled; the deaf heard and spoke; the blind saw; and the lame leaped as a hart, and in the presence of a few astonished friends of the slave, the facts of this unparalleled Underground RailRoad feat were established by most unquestionable evidence.”  They were funded to go on up into England, especially Boston, and they encountered and toured with Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Robert Purvis, Henry “Box” Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, and many others.  Many people classified as “white” were astonished to learn their story, but they were even more astonished to see a “white” woman named Ellen Craft standing before them, learning that someone who looked like them could also be held in slavery.  

    The Crafts also helped to change the narrative not only about slavery but about the agency of those held as slaves.  Theirs was not a story of courageous white people who saved dark people held in slavery.  Theirs was the story of the agency of those classified as “slaves” to plan and escape and to use their wits and courage against the very people who sought to tell them that they were too stupid and primitive to be anything but slaves.

    The Crafts would have to escape the bounty hunters several more times, going to Canada and then to England, where they lived for many years.  After the Civil War, they would return to Georgia to found the Woodville School to teach Black people reading and writing – the school was so successful that it attracted many students, as well as the attention of the KKK.  They were under constant threat, but remained powerful and vital witnesses.  Ellen died sometime in 1891, but her burial place (like Clarence Jordan’s) remains unknown.  William died at the beginning of the 20th century and is buried in Charleston, SC.  For more info, you can see the Crafts’ book “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom,” first published to great success in 1860, or the more recent NYT best-selling biography by Ilyon Woo called “Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom.”  If you don’t know about this extraordinary couple, learn about them! And, if you know some documentary folk, contact Catherine Meeks!

"SHE MADE A WAY' AND THE POWER OF CAPTIVITY

 “SHE MADE A WAY” AND THE POWER OF CAPTIVITY

I’ve begun to talk about my book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World,” most recently at a salon at Ann Starks’ home.  I am grateful to Ann for inviting me and friends to share together, and I’ll be glad to come and share with you and your group at your home or other places.  As we talked yesterday, I was reminded again of how much I have been captured by the systems of the world, what the Bible calls “sin,” or what I like to call “captivity.” I grew up in a church that was deeply important to me. They emphasized that the primary elements of sin were individual issues – fornication, alcohol, cursing, lying, cheating, stealing, etc.  While all those are definitely relevant, as I came into young adulthood, I began to discern that the Biblical view of sin, of captivity, was much deeper and more radical.  Systemic powers like racism and sexism and homophobia and militarism and materialism – all these and more are at the root of the Biblical view of sin.  I tried to address some of that issue in this book, in “She Made A Way,” as my mother and I negotiated our way through that morass of captivity.  

I began my talk yesterday with a reading from the beginning of the book, and I want to share it now:

“It is one of my earliest memories.  I am trapped in our room in our home on Porter Street  in Helena, Arkansas.  I say that I was “trapped” because it felt like that to me at a young age of four.  It was in a hot, sticky room on a Sunday afternoon, with both doors  shut.  Summer in the Mississippi River delta in 1951 – hot and muggy, no air conditioning, only a small rotating fan whirring on the dresser, trying to draw me some cool air.  I had been ordered by my mother to take a nap, and failing that, ordered to lie there quietly until she opened the door to tell me that I could get up and play.  At least I had open windows on three sides of the room – to the east Fannie and Mack Thompson’s house, facing the Mississippi River a mile away.  To the south was our backyard, where I longed to go and play in the fifty yards or so of ground before the steep climb began to Crowley’s Ridge;  to the north was a window to the screen porch, where we would often go sit in the evenings to seek to cool off and get relief from the stifling heat.

    On this particular afternoon, though, these windows were not welcome entries into relief but rather reminders that I was trapped by my tyrannical mother, who refused to allow me to get up and play until she gave me permission.  I fumed and tossed and turned, waiting for the excruciating time to be ended.  In my fuming on that hot Sunday afternoon in 1951,  I had no idea of the depth of the story that underlay my confinement.  It would take me decades to learn the depths and nuances of that story, but for now I will say that my mother worked six days a week as a beautician in someone else’s shop.  The only time that she had to take a nap and rest during those grinding days was on Sunday afternoons, after attending church and Sunday school and eating Sunday dinner.  

    I grew up fatherless in a patriarchal world.  My father, for whom I was named, had abandoned me (and my mother) for another woman before I was a year old.  I was born in Memphis, and after my father left, we lived in Memphis for a time, living with an Irish woman, who she kept me while my mother worked as a beauty operator.  This Irish woman nicknamed me “Nibs,” using  an Irish word for the British aristocracy, who consider themselves to be the center of the world – “his Nibs” and “her Nibs.”  That appellation is even heard on occasion now to refer to the Queen of England in an affectionate way.  I have come to use “Nibs” as my primary name – one of the great ironies of that development is that I don’t know the name of the Irish woman who named me. My mother told me during my childhood, but I have simply forgotten it.

    I may be projecting onto to my mother a sense of shock and loss in my father’s departure – for reasons that will become clearer, we never talked much about him or his departure.  Undoubtedly, she felt loss, and undoubtedly, we were poor,  and she was looking for shelter.  She would find shelter with her grandmother’s sister, Bernice Brown Higgins, who had recently been widowed.  Because of this, Mrs. Higgins needed fiscal and physical companionship in her small home on Porter Street in Helena.  

    It is not surprising that these two women, my mother and Mrs. Higgins (whom I called “Gran”) pooled their resources in Helena to create a new household.  We moved from Memphis sometime in my second year to live with Gran on Porter Street in a green clapboard house facing the north.  That small home - two bedrooms, one small bath, a combined living and dining room, an average sized kitchen and a wonderful back porch and spacious side porch – would become my constant and stable home until I left for college in 1964.  It was in the east bedroom of that house where I would find myself confined on that hot, sticky afternoon in 1951, fidgeting while my mother sought some rest from the grind of her life, on the couch in the living/dining area.  I would come back often to this home until my mother’s death in 2004……..

    I will be telling the story of my mother and I negotiating our individual selves, our selves together, and our relationship in a world that changed.  The external world changed dramatically from our 1947 move to Helena to the early decades of the 1970’s, when I permanently left home.  Yet our internal world also changed as my mother and I discovered a deeper and larger world out there.  This larger world envisioned Black people as siblings rather than enemies, envisioned women as equal partners with men, celebrated people who loved others of the same gender, and began to see that money was not the key to life.  I grew up being immersed in racism and sexism and homophobia and militarism and materialism by my mother and by other people who loved me, people whom I loved and trusted.  Most of them taught these things to me not because they were mean, but rather because they too were caught up in their cultural environment by these repressive and oppressive powers.  This book will be about seeking liberation from those powers, while knowing that captivity to them came to me from people who loved me and whom I loved.

    My mother and I had a powerful connection because she dedicated herself to raising me as a “real” man, becoming both father and mother to me.  “Manless” herself, she nevertheless taught me what a real man is:  protective, loving, nurturing, challenging.  Trapped by and influenced by these very forces, she taught me to begin to think about liberation from them, a liberation that would take me out into a whole new world, while bringing her along also towards her own liberation.  These will be stories of that journey towards liberation, fashioned by a woman who was a captive herself but who gave me the foundation to work against those oppressive values.”

    Again, I’d be glad to come and talk with your group or do a session on Zoom.  I’ve had many readers already tell me that this book was an occasion for them to return to their own roots and to think about their journeys. So, get a copy and let’s talk!

"YAY FOR SUSAN STROUPE!"

 “YAY FOR SUSAN STROUPE!”

Our daughter Susan’s birthday is September 12, and I am writing this week to give thanks for her being in our lives!  She arrived in the birthing room at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville about 1 AM in 1982.  Caroline and I had gone to the hospital about 11 PM, and Susan wasted no time in coming out into the world in a couple of hours.  Indeed, Caroline had given birth to David over a period of about 12 hours with few drugs.  She had hoped to do the same with Susan, but about 12:30 AM, she told me that the contractions were coming so hard that she did not think she could make it, that she would have to have some drugs to see her through the delivery.  I went to get the nurse, and she came to see about Caroline.  When she looked at her womb, she exclaimed:  “Oh, wow, I see the head – your baby is coming on out.  But, stop pushing, because I want to get Dr. Neff so that she can be here for the delivery.  This baby will be her first in her new practice.”  Caroline said: “What?  You’d better get her here fast because this baby is coming out soon.”  Dr. Betty Neff arrived soon after, and we all celebrated when she helped to guide Susan out, saying “Welcome to the world, Mary Susan!”

Susan has been delighting us and surprising us ever since.  We left Nashville when she was 5 months old, moving to the Atlanta area where we would be pastors at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur.  Susan was baptized at Oakhurst by the Reverend Murphy Davis, and she grew up at Oakhurst, learning theatrical and many other skills there.  At her young age, she was very shy, and some people at Oakhurst thought that she might have some learning issues because she did not talk at church.  Even her brother David defended her when people asked him about it – “She talks – she talks all the time at home!”

Susan made her oral debut at Oakhurst about a year later, when Dr. Lawrence Bottoms (former senior pastor at Oakhurst) and I were officiating at the wedding of Christine Johnson and Charlie Callier.  Caroline attended and brought David and Susan with her.  Somewhere in the middle of the ceremony, while I was talking, all of a sudden, we all heard a loud voice shouting out: “Dada!  Dada!  Dada!”  Susan had made her voice known, and as everyone turned to look at who was making the noise, Caroline shrugged and said:  “Well, at least you know that she talks!”

Susan has taken us to many new places in her young adult life.  We ventured up to cold Minnesota where she attended college at Macalester College.  We dropped her off on the last day for parents and flew back to Atlanta.  A few days later, the twin towers in New York were attacked in the horrific 9/11 attack.  We were worried about her, since she was so far away, but one of our former ministerial interns, the Rev. Alika Galloway contacted us that night.  She was now a pastor in Minneapolis, and she called us to tell us that she didn’t know what else would happen, but if something more happened, she would get Susan and take her to her home.  We were so grateful to Alika, and we were relieved that nothing else happened like that terrible occurrence.

Susan worked at Americorps in Albuquerque after her graduation from college, and we got to see the whole new world of the desert Southwest, seeing mesas that were hundreds of miles away, learning that some of the pueblos only averaged 7 inches of rain per year. We also saw a multiracial culture of Anglo, Native American, and Hispanic come together in a world that seemed to mock the racism in which Caroline and I had been raised in the Deep South.  Though I would not want to live there (I need more trees and greenery around me), we certainly enjoyed our time visiting there.  

Then it was on to Westfield, NY, where she did a year-long internship at a puppet theater.  We helped to drive her up there, and as we came into town, I saw all these cottonfields with buds on them.  I remarked that I didn’t realize that cotton could grow so far up north with the cold weather.  Susan set me straight: “Dad, those aren’t cotton fields – they are grape vineyards.  Westfield is the home of Welch’s grape juice.”  Anther learning for me!  I’ll always remember the year that Susan started there, because we had rented an Airbnb while we moved her into her apartment.  We all watched the Republican convention that week, and we were shocked when John McCain announced his pick for vice-president:  Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.

There are many other Susan sightings and musings to share, but I’ll save those for another time.  For now, we give so many thanks for Susan and for all her gifts to us and to so many others.  So, on September 12, raise a glass for Susan and sing “Happy Birthday” (in the Stevie Wonder style).

"MUSINGS ON THE BEACH"

 “MUSINGS ON THE BEACH”

Caroline and I were at the beach last week at Tybee Island near Savannah.  It’s still known as “Savannah Beach” by many.  It’s been one of our go-to beaches for over three decades.  We first learned about it from our late Oakhurst friend Fred Dresch, who loved going fishing there and also loved the funkiness of Tybee.  It was not very developed then, and it has still retained that “laid back” feeling.  Ever since we moved to Atlanta and the kids got old enough to enjoy the beach, we have tried to go somewhere each summer.  Through our friends Bob and Phoebe Smith in Daytona, we met Mary Ann Richardson who gave us a free place to stay at the El Caribe for over a decade – it was such a great gift to us.  She was so generous – we met Jim Wallis and Vincent Harding there, who were also gifted by her.

We keep going to Tybee because it is close, and because it is still relatively undeveloped.  We usually stay at a condo situated near the mouth of the Savannah River, and it is powerful to watch the Savannah River meet the Atlantic Ocean, with the River flowing to the southeast, and the Ocean rolling in to the west.  We often see dolphins swimming and sometimes frolicking – this time we saw a turtle taking its life in its legs by crossing busy Hiway 80 between Tybee and Savannah.  We heard rumors of an alligator nearby this time, but fortunately we never saw it.  It is both powerful and soothing to sit out in the hot sun, listening to the waves ebb and flow with the tides.  

     Since it is a Southern beach, Tybee has its share of historical racism.  It was a “whites only” beach for over a century.  Here is a description of its recent history from a plaque installed on Tybee in 2021.  “On August 17, 1960, eleven African-American students were arrested at Georgia’s first wade-in protesting the Whites-only public beaches. During the era of segregation, Savannah’s African Americans were forced to travel outside of the city for public beach access. NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins announced the wade-in as a desegregation tactic for public beaches following the April 1960 wade-in at Biloxi, Mississippi, where an angry White mob attacked protestors. An extension of the Savannah Movement, the Savannah Beach wade-ins were planned and implemented by the local NAACP Youth Council under the leadership of W. W. Law. The last wade-in at Savannah Beach was in July 1963. Savannah Beach and the city’s other public places were integrated by October 1963, eight months before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

  In our visits there lately, there have been a growing number of African-American tourists there, but nothing compares to the Orange Crush that happens at spring break in Tybee each year.   Black students on break come to Tybee, and the racism that is inherent in Southern white culture rears its head once again.  Orange Crush has officially moved to Jacksonville to friendlier confines, but some Black students still come to Tybee for spring break.  It is as if all those ancestors who were denied access to the beach at Tybee are now returning.

    We usually go into Savannah for a day while we are at Tybee, and this year was no exception.  We had planned to go on Thursday, but with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz coming into town as part of their bus tour that day, we opted for a Wednesday trip to Savannah.  Had we known the city and its streets better, we would have loved to go in on Thursday, but we figured that many streets would be blocked off.  Our usual gathering area is around Madison Square, which is next to the Green-Meldrim House. At that house in 1864, General William Sherman established his headquarters as he and the Union Army made its March to the Sea.  In this house, he met with Black ministers and other Black leaders, and they inspired Sherman to issue Field Order #15, which confiscated land previously owned by slavers, and then gave it to Black people as part of his “40 Acres and a Mule” reparations program.  President Andrew Johnson, a committed white Southerner, later rescinded that order as one of his first acts as President after Lincoln’s assassination.  What a difference Sherman’s order would have made, if it had stayed in place! 

     Also nearby are SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and the wonderful bookstore “The Book Lady” – as Susan has put it, that is a dangerous place for our family members to go!  Because of the timing this visit, we were not able to make a visit to the former childhood home of Flannery O’Connor, which is only open on weekends. O’Connor was born there and lived there into her early teens.

    This time, we went a couple of blocks south to the newly renamed Taylor Square.  It had previously been known as Calhoun Square, named after the infamous slaver and Confederate supporter and US Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun.  It is now named after Susie King Taylor, a Black woman who was born into slavery in 1848 in nearby Liberty County, but escaped slavery and became the first Black nurse in the Civil War.  Despite Georgia's harsh laws against the  education of African Americans, she attended two secret schools taught by Black women. Her literacy proved invaluable not only to her but to other African Americans she educated during the Civil War. She became free at the age of 14 in 1862 when her uncle led her out to a federal gunboat near Confederate-held Fort Pulaski.  After a lot of work and lobbying, the Savannah city council voted unanimously in 2023 to rename the Calhoun Square to be the Taylor Square.  We can imagine that Calhoun is turning over in his grave at this development – or maybe by now, God and Ms. Taylor have brought Calhoun out of purgatory by converting him to the idea that all people are children of God.