"SUSAN STROUPE!!!"

 “SUSAN STROUPE!”

Caroline and I were playing balloon ball with 2-year-old David in our duplex in Nashville in the late evening of September 11, 1982 – years before that date became one of infamy in American history.  Caroline said: “I think that my water broke – I believe that the baby is coming.”  It was a few days early, and I was skeptical, but I’ve learned that Caroline (and other women) may know more than I do on this subject.  We went to the birthing room at Vanderbilt Hospital, and Mary Susan came out a couple of hours later early in the morning of September 12.  We have been celebrating her ever since.  

We moved from Nashville to Decatur five months later, so baby Susan was a hit at Oakhurst Presbyterian for many reasons, including the fact that she was the only infant there.  She grew up there, and it was a great blessing to her and to us – many grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles.  She also learned how to be a good listener there – hearing many different cultural approaches and voices.  With so many African Americans at Oakhurst and so much African-American music there, she learned to clap on the back beat!  

She has been (and continues to be) our teacher on so many levels.  She took us up into the cold north when she went to Macalaster College in Minnesota.  She majored in English and drama, and we were introduced to the world of theater in a way that I never thought possible.  We took a trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca one year when she was there.  I was amazed that I could walk across the beginnings of the River that swirls and eddies and flows fast in its mile wide crossing at my hometown of Helena, Arkansas.

        She worked for Americorps for two years in Albuquerque, and we learned a whole new world of the Southwest.  Given her compassionate heart, she worked in Albuquerque with adults with developmental disabilities.  She made lifelong friends there among the artists in that Americorps Center, and they helped their students do a play by Shakespeare.

She moved to Baltimore in 2009 to work on her MFA in theater at Towson University, and she has been thriving and growing in Baltimore ever since.  We have enjoyed getting to see her develop her personality and leadership.  She joined the church choir at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.  She later joined the church as a member, later chaired the Worship Committee there and has been an elder and co-clerk of  the Session.

As an artist in American culture, Susan has to cobble “day jobs” together for income, but she has been blessed to find theater-related jobs to do this, for which we are grateful.  She is one of the founders of Submersive Theater, a group of colleagues who approach works of art in an “immersive” way.  Yes, another learning for us – “immersive theater” invites the audience to be participants in the performance of the play itself.  For those such as I who like linear plots, I’ve had a learning curve on this.  But, it is great and pleasing to watch Susan develop and perform so well in these contexts.  As Susan put it to me, “There’s a lot of similarities between worship and theater, and I learned a lot of this in worship at Oakhurst: the willingness to not rely so much on script; the belief that the congregation/audience are integral parts of the performances; the necessity of recognizing and learning to cross cultural boundaries without colonizing the other.”

Susan is passionate for justice and has a deeply compassionate heart, a combination that makes her so impressive and such a good theater (and church) leader and performer.  She has been a gift to us ever since she popped out of Caroline’s womb in 1982. We had not done amniocentesis during the pregnancy to determine the gender identity or anything else about the baby whom Caroline was carrying in 1982, and we were expecting a boy.  We even had a mild disagreement on the way to the hospital about what name we would give a boy, but we were agreed that if we were blessed to have a girl, we would name her “Mary Susan.”  When Dr. Betty Neff helped to slide Susan out of Caroline, she said: “Welcome to the world, Mary Susan!”  And Caroline almost leaped up from the birthing table in joy – the girl that we so wanted.  Susan has been blessing us and teaching us ever since, and we give so many thanks for her on her birthday!  Give a shout-out and raise a glass for Susan Stroupe on her birthday on September 12! 

"NASHVILLE"

 “NASHVILLE”

Caroline and I visited Nashville last week, staying with long-time (met in Norfolk) friends Jane and John Skelly, who provided great hospitality to us.  We were traveling up to Nashville when we heard that Dolly Parton had died, so that made it a special time to be in Nashville, as her humanity and her music were celebrated.  Our daughter Susan was also born in Vanderbilt Hospital, though we left Nashville for Decatur and Oakhurst when she we six months old.

I’ve had three iterations in Nashville.  After I graduated from Rhodes College in 1968, I moved to Nashville to attend Vanderbilt Divinity School, seeking either a PhD in philosophy or theology there.  Thanks to Dr. Michael McClain at Rhodes, I got a full scholarship, plus I wanted to be near to my girlfriend/fiancé, who was still a student at Rhodes.  Nashville was a great place to be in those days, and I learned  how deeply the Civil Rights Movement revolved around Nashville.  I started volunteering for the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, and I worked with Baxton Bryant, Andy Lipscomb, Will Campbell, Riggins Earl, Ed Hamlett, and others.   Eventually, my romantic relationship was broken off, which threw me for a loop (I don’t recommend such long-distance romances).  I was still in school, but I was increasingly involved in the anti-Vietnam war movement.  While attending an anti-war seminary conference in New Hampshire in the summer of 1969, I began to think about giving up my draft-exempt status, seeking to force the church to take a stronger stand against the Vietnam War.

The USA invaded Cambodia and Laos in May, 1970, and I was part of thousands of demonstrators who went to DC to protest that invasion and the continuing war.  While there, I made up my mind to drop out of seminary and seek to work to end the war.  Giving up my draft exemption meant that I would be drafted, but I was not going to serve in the War, so I had three choices:  go to Canada, go to jail, or seek conscientious objector (CO) status.  During the summer of 1970, I was on the faculty of the Roses Creek Folk School in the mountains of east Tennessee, which brought together middle-class students and mountain people.  In that summer, I became good friends with Ed Loring and his first wife Pat Hiott Loring, and they both helped to steer me towards seeking conscientious objector status.  Professor Don Beisswenger at Vanderbilt Divinity School was also instrumental in helping me discern my direction on this.

At the end of that summer, I moved back in with my mother in Arkansas to apply for my CO status and to seek a job which would qualify for alternative service to fulfill my duty to serve my country.  The local draft board in Helena would determine if I would be granted CO status and would have to approve any job placement that I would find.  While I was working on all this, Don called me at home to tell me that Father Jim Zralek was looking for someone to help him start a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  He felt that it would qualify as a CO position, especially since the pay was so low!  I talked with Father Zralek, and he sounded enthusiastic about my coming.  I packed up and moved back to Nashville for my second iteration there as director of Opportunity House.  I served there for two years, and it was there that I had my eyes and heart opened about prisons and how they serve in American culture.  Almost half of those in prison were Black, and there were a miniscule number of people with money in prison.  (For more on this part of the story, see my book “She Made a Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”).

While living in Nashville in this second iteration, I met Caroline in Nashville at the wedding of Robin and Linda Williams. Caroline had been ordained in 1973 by Atlanta Presbytery and was a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  She had come to Nashville with her housemate Murphy Davis, and I was smitten by her.  By this time, Ed Loring had talked me into returning to seminary and in coming to Columbia in Decatur, where he was on the faculty.  I was also motivated by the fact that Caroline lived in Atlanta!  I moved to Decatur, re-entered Columbia Seminary on a scholarship (thanks to Ed and Erskine Clarke), and Caroline and I started dating.  We eventually got married in 1974 and moved to Norfolk, where we became the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the Presbyterian Church in the United States at St. Columba Presbyterian Church.

After doing ministry at St. Columba for five years and writing a grant to receive the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering, our son David was born in 1980.  We were a long way from our families, so we worked with our friends Randy and Theon Dempsey to try communal living in Nashville for my third iteration.  I worked there at the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prison (under Joe Ingle and state director Harmon Wray), and Caroline stayed home with baby David.  My job was to work for prison reform in the Tennessee state legislature and to visit with people on death row.  I was terrible at being a lobbyist, but my pastoral presence on death row was strong – my designated death row prisoner eventually had his death sentence rescinded.  While in Nashville in this third round, I also became part-time pastor at Second Presbyterian, which was a great church for us.  We discovered that we were not made for communal living, and my work at Second reminded me how much I missed pastoring in the church.  Again, through Ed Loring, we were contacted by Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in the fall of 1982 to see if we would be interested in becoming pastors there.  We were, and we did.  We moved to the Decatur area in March, 1983, and stayed as pastors at Oakhurst until I retired in 2017.

There will be more of these stories in our upcoming book “Better Together:  Pioneers in Ministry and Marriage,” which we will complete soon.  But, for now, a lot of these memories rolled through my consciousness in our recent visit to Nashville.  Like the Civil Rights Movement, Nashville was central to our formation too. 

"CHRISTINE CALLIER"

 “CHRISTINE CALLIER”

Our friend and longtime Oakhurst Presbyterian member Christine Callier died on August 8, and we had her funeral at Oakhurst on Friday.  We were grateful that current Oakhurst pastor OJ Flowers welcomed Caroline and me back graciously to assist in leading the service and for my doing the eulogy.  The sanctuary was full, and many dignitaries were there, including her son Congressman Hank Johnson, daughter-in-law Dekalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson, and Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, who spoke during the service.

Christine was a remarkable human being, born in 1926 in rural south Georgia in Sandersville (also birthplace of Elijah Muhammad) in the middle of neo-slavery.  Refusing to be defined by the powers of racism and sexism, she went to Clark University and became a teacher.  She lived in DC for a while, then came back to Georgia, where she was the first Black teacher at all-white Livesey Elementary School on the north side of Dekalb County.  None of the white teachers or students wanted her there, but she was determined to demonstrate to them her humanity and their own humanity.  It worked – by the time of her retirement, the white parents hired a limo to pick her for school and to take her back home after school.  She had that kind of effect on people.  

She joined Oakhurst Presbyterian in the mid-1970’s, when Dr. Lawrence Bottoms was the first Black pastor.  She helped to build the multicultural church that it became.  As white folks were fleeing from Black folk coming to worship, and as Black folks were saying: “Nah, I don’t want to mess with white people,” Christine said: “Yes, let’s build a congregation where the dividing walls really are broken down.”  And she led Oakhurst in doing just that -  as an elder, as the first Black member in the Chancel Choir, as the Chair of several church committees, and as founder of the Supper Club, in which we read books and saw plays and movies, then met in people’s homes to discuss them.

In the early 90’s, she discovered a book for the Supper Club called “Brothers, Black and Poor’” written by Sylvester Monroe.  She also discovered that Mr. Monroe was the bureau chief for Time Magazine in Atlanta at the time, and she told me that she was going to get him to meet with us at the Supper Club.  I was skeptical that she could do it, but I told her to try to get him.  I had severely underestimated the power and persuasiveness of Christine Callier.  She got Mr. Monroe to meet with us at her home, and he ended up writing an article on Oakhurst for Time.  A full-page article entitled “The Gospel of Diversity,” appeared in the April 24, 1995, issue of Time, and it opened the doors to many visitors and to a media blitz, including AJC, CNN, NPR, CBS Radio, NBC News, NYT, the Christian Science Monitor, and many others - all coming to see for themselves.  Christine had laid the foundation for the modern, multicultural Oakhurst.  

We became good friends with her, and she was so supportive of our families, including marshaling funding and energy at Oakhurst during my mother’s terrible 4-month ordeal after being severely injured by a drunk driver in 1993.  She made a significant impact on our children, and our daughter Susan wrote these words on Christine’s passing:

     “I describe her, one of the extraordinary host of Black women Elders at Oakhurst, as the kind of person who made one sit up a little straighter, speak a little clearer, and be doing the kinds of good works in the world that would make her nod with approval when she received a report (and she would be receiving that report).  I would not be who I am without Christine Callier; I am extraordinarily grateful to her, and I encourage everyone to read her obituary to understand what it means to live a life of good works.”  Check out her obit at Gregory Levett and Sons Mortuary or go to Legacy.com. 

So, we mourn her death at the age of 99, but she was an extraordinary person, so we give thanks to God and to her for passing by our way and sharing so many gifts with us and with so many people.  If you want to watch the funeral service, check it out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsKZJCPS3xg.  Well done, good and faithful servant!

"FINDING LIFE IN THE CHURCH"

 “FINDING LIFE IN THE CHURCH”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the death of the church, and I got several powerful responses to my ramblings.  Some people were in grief; some people felt that the church’s becoming inclusive had not made much difference; some people felt that I was off the mark.  Whatever your response, I hope that you will continue to work to help us all re-form the church so that it resembles more what I think that God intends.  Here are some characteristics that seem important to me in reviving the church.

First, let us seek to put God at the center.  Caroline and I both grew up in churches that put white, male supremacy at the center.  This is not a value statement so much as it is a factual statement – women could not be ordained, and Black people were not allowed to attend or become members.  No one ever said that white supremacy was the center of the church, but that was the fact.  Both of our home churches changed their policies in the latter days, but by then it was too late – the word had gone forth.  Now, both of those churches are closed.  So, in our reformation, we must be clear-eyed and disciplined:  God must be at the center of the church, not any of the categories of the world.

Second, we must work to reunite spirituality and justice in the life of the church.  Too many churches – Black and white – seek to split them off from one another, emphasizing that all God cares about is spirituality, in getting us into heaven when we die.  White churches made this split because we wanted to be able to maintain slavery while calling ourselves Christians.  The genetics of this split have followed us down to modern times, where many churches do not think that it is right to mix politics and religion.  While that mixture is volatile, the authentic mixture is religion and justice.  And, speaking about justice often involves politics, or as Dr. Cornel West put it so well: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”  Or, to quote the real prophet, Jesus gave us the two main principles: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, and all your soul.”  And “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  He reminded us in the powerful parable of The Good Samaritan that our neighbor is not the one we choose, but the one whom God is sending us.  Let us open our hearts and our doors to them.

     I cannot overemphasize the necessity of welcoming everyone into our worship and community life.  When we were pastors at Oakhurst, we were astonished to hear how many people came through our doors because they felt unwelcomed at other churches.  In some ways, we built our membership from people whom other churches had rejected.  As one of my respondents noted from the previous blog on the death of the church, it may be too late for some churches – they may already be tarnished with the brush of exclusivity.  Yet, when we came to Oakhurst, there were 80 members on the rolls, with 40 or so in worship, and it was on life support.  We made it our mission and our business to make clear to the surrounding neighborhoods and indeed the entire metro Atlanta area that we welcomed everyone in the name of Jesus at Oakhurst.  When we retired, we had 400 members on the rolls and 200 in worship.

Once we get them through the doors, we must keep them coming back. Once the word went forth about what we were doing, we got many visitors in worship.  A lot did not come back, but some came back, and some stayed and enriched our life together as members.  We kept them coming back by taking several steps – dynamic worship, strong children’s programs, community ministry, and strong pastoral ministry.  Since we were seeking to be a multicultural church, we wove several kinds of music into our worship life, and we also adopted the Black church model of sharing concerns and joys in worship.  These two foci gave our worship a sense of the immediacy of God’s presence.

Caroline led our children’s programs and our community ministry, and they both became strong – when she retired, we had over 100 children in our church.  Our community ministry went into many places, and it helped to make the life of Oakhurst Presbyterian visible to everyone.  We became, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution put it, “one of the most intriguing congregations in the metro area.”

And, lastly and briefly, we must attract more men back to the church.  We must do this not by asking women to step back but rather by helping men to step up in a way that is affirming to themselves and to everyone else.  The most recent PCUSA statistics show that women comprise 59% of the church, and our experience in our 50+ years in the church demonstrated to us the importance of women in the church.  Yet, I’d also love to see more men get involved in the life of the church.  I’m not sure how to accomplish this, but I’m cogitating on it. I’d be glad to get any thoughts that you have on this.

The current form of the church is dying, but God’s church is not dying.  She will re-form the church as needed, and we are asked to keep our eyes and our hearts opened for Her leadership and movement, so that we can join the great parade of witnesses.

"FINDING OUR WAY"

 “FINDING OUR WAY”

We are at the end of our annual beach trip, usually to Tybee Island near Savannah.  We like Tybee because it is relatively undeveloped and still a bit funky, and it is also not a bad drive from Atlanta.  It is also the place where the Savannah River meets the Atlantic Ocean, and it is always moving to watch those two powerful bodies of water meet, flowing in opposite directions, then meeting with a clash, then becoming one, as the ocean takes over the river.

On one of our days here, we met our long-time friend Pat Hiott-Mason, her daughter Susan and granddaughter Mary, for lunch on John’s Island, South Carolina.  Pat was the original semi-matchmaker for Caroline and me, so we are always glad to see her – and we got to meet teen-ager Mary for the first time!  On the way back from that lunch, we crossed over the Combahee River on the Harriet Tubman Memorial Bridge, where there is a small historical marker that notes that this is the place where Harriet Tubman led Union troops to free over 700 enslaved people.  Tubman had been doing spy work in the surrounding plantations, letting enslaved people know that an opportunity for freedom was coming. In early June, 1863, she led several boats of mostly Black Union troops up the Combahee River, and when the larger Union ship blew its whistle, those who were enslaved came running out of the woods.  Out they came, and off they went.  The historical marker on Highway 17 downplays her role in the venture, though it does note that she was a part of it.  

Given the magnitude and complexity of this operation – it took a lot of planning and espionage work on Tubman’s behalf, and it struck a deep blow in the white enslavers’ hearts – we were surprised that this site is not better marked or celebrated.  Yet, we have to remember that it is located in South Carolina, the place where the first shots of the enslaver’s rebellion were fired in the Civil War and the place where the longing for the return to neo-slavery is still deep and powerful.  So, perhaps I should be grateful that it is even marked at all.  And, that date in June, 1863, marked an important month in the Civil War – Tubman’s raid, Vicksburg falling to the Union, Gettysburg in early July, and of course my hometown of Helena, Arkansas surrendering to Union troops on the same day as Vicksburg.

On the other end, we made a visit to Savannah the next day and found the Green-Meldrim House on Macon Street, where General William Sherman made his headquarters as he made his march to the sea, delivering Savannah as a Christmas present to President Lincoln in 1864.  In January, 1865, Sherman met with Black ministers and leaders in the Green-Meldrin House to hear their suggestions on how to implement freedom for the formerly enslaved people.  Out of this discussion came his Special Field Order 15, which confiscated land from the rebels and gave it to the newly freed people whose forced labor had built up the wealth of the Southern rebels.  President Lincoln had sent down Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to help facilitate the deal, and both had approved Special Field Order 15, which became known as “Forty Acres and a Mule.” 

    It confiscated lands mostly in South Carolina and Georgia, and it began to be implemented as the Union troops marched up through the Carolinas.  In one of the great tragedies of American history, after President Lincoln was assassinated, his successor President Andrew Johnson rescinded Special Field Order 15, returning most of the lands to the enslavers and their families.  Out of this failure came the neo-slavery that replaced slavery in the South until 1965.

    Though there are many wonderings in our history, this is one of the main ones.  Will we ever acknowledge the deadly cost of slavery and neo-slavery?  Will we ever acknowledge how much American wealth was built on the backs of the forced, unpaid labor of slavery?  Will we ever acknowledge our theft of the land from the indigenous people who lived here?  As we made our travels through this history-rich land on our beach trip this week, we thought of these questions and of the attempt of the current administration to “whitewash” this history, to take us back to the 1850’s when everyone knew that white men should rule the land and everything.  Until we have this kind of reckoning, we will never find our way. 

"WHY IS THE CHURCH DYING?"

 “WHY IS THE CHURCH DYING?”

Since I retired almost 10 years ago (wow!), Caroline and I have been attending and preaching in many different churches – mostly Presbyterian but with some Missionary Baptist and some AME churches sprinkled in there.  We have been in some dynamic ones, including our current church North Decatur Presbyterian.  But, for the most part, we have been in ones who are on life support, usually with large buildings and low membership.  The members who are attending those churches are dedicated and committed, but the mainstream churches in the USA are dying.

I am not an expert on the state of the church, but from my 79 years of experience in the mainline church (including 51 of those as an ordained minister), I believe that I have some informed opinions.  Let me start by saying that both the churches that were so important to me and Caroline in our childhood and youth are now closed – First Presbyterian in Helena, Arkansas where I grew up, and Central Presbyterian in Chattanooga, where Caroline grew up.  In both of those churches, the reason for their closure is clear – a lack of inclusivity in who they welcomed and even permitted as members.  Both churches refused to allow Black people in their worship for the longest time, and by the time they did, it was too late.  First Presbyterian was in a small, dying Delta town, so that makes it obvious – most of the young white people (whom they preferred) have left town.  Central is a different case – it was in a vital urban area.  Still, the word went forth – only certain kinds of people were welcome there.  There was a struggle to get women officers; there was a struggle to even allow Black people on the grounds, much less in worship; and don’t even get started on the LGBTQ+ issue.

For Southern churches especially, we cannot discount race as an issue in the decline of churches. The church where Caroline and I served for over 30 years, Oakhurst Presbyterian, lost 90% of its white membership after its Session voted in 1963 to allow Black people to attend worship.  That story was repeated around the South in mainline white denominations, and most churches never recovered.  Fortunately, Oakhurst did recover and is now led by a dynamic Black pastor OJ Flowers, while its membership remains stable and multicultural.

Mainline white churches have had many fights over the last few decades about who is welcome and who can lead.  We’ve fought over Black people attending.  We’ve fought over whether women can be leaders and even pastors in the church.  We’ve fought over whether people of differing sexual orientations can be members.  We’ve fought over whether Christianity is America’s national religion. We have often resisted those whom God is sending to our doors, and that resistance has been costly.  We have gotten a reputation for being closed-minded, for being mean, for being exclusive.  

Because of our resistance and our reputation, fewer people are showing up at our doors; fewer people are saying “I was glad when they said to me: let us go to the house of the Lord.”  And we are steadily losing members – the PCUSA is shrinking fast.  Our recent national General Assembly celebrated this summer because we did not lose as many members as we had been losing.  Still losing members, but at least we are still over a million members (down from over 3 million in the 1960’s).  When Caroline and came to Oakhurst in 1983, Atlanta Presbytery had over 55,000 members.  Now, we are down to just over 29,000 members.  That story is repeated around the country in all denominations.

Will the church survive?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know the answer to the larger question.  God is calling forth those who will worship and serve Her, and while those communities may not be structured like our current ones, there will be communities who have God at the center.  Next week I’ll suggest some possible steps to take to seek revitalization, but for now here are the two main principles that Jesus gave us: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, and all your soul.”  And “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  And, he reminded us in that powerful parable of The Good Samaritan that our neighbor is not the one we choose, but the one whom God is sending us.  Let us open our hearts and our doors to them.

"LAPC SUMMER"

 “THE LAPC SUMMER”

In her fine, National-Book-Award-winning “South to America,” author Imani Perry travels to many places in the South to seek to understand the soul of America.  Born in Birmingham, but like many other Black Southerners, she left the overt racism of the South for less rugged terrain.  In her chapter entitled “Upper Alabama,” she notes that the proximity of Black people and white people in the South did not mitigate slavery or neo-slavery, and she concludes: “We lived together. Black and White.  We traveled from Upper South to Deep South together.  We died together.  This intimate garment is a lesson.  If you think, mistakenly, that American racism can be surmounted by integration, by people knowing each other, even by loving each other, the history of the American South must teach otherwise.  There is no resolution to unjust relations without a structural and ethical change.”

While I agree with her last sentence in this quote, I am more skeptical about the earlier sentences.  In my youth, when many Black people lived all around me, I did not know any of their names or their stories.  The purpose of segregation/neo-slavery was to keep us separate, especially to keep white people from engaging the humanity of Black people.  That was the point of segregation – to keep the power of neo-slavery intact.  I believed in the power of white supremacy, but it was engaging the humanity of Black people that began to shake the foundations of my faith in white supremacy.

I remember how it started.  My long-time friend, David Billings, and I were sitting outside of segregated Nick’s Café in Helena on an early January night in 1966, at the end of Christmas break.  We were in the middle of our sophomore years in college – David at Ole Miss and me at Rhodes.  We had both done hard physical labor the summer before, and we wanted something different for the coming summer.  We also wanted to get out of small-town life in Helena.  As we talked about what to do for the coming summer, I remembered that I had heard about a church in Brooklyn, New York, that hired white Southerners to work in their summer children’s program.  I mentioned it to David, and we both were intrigued by the possibility, mainly at getting out of Helena and going to New York City!  

We both applied, and we both got into the program as staff members for the summer of 1966.  The pastor of the church was a white man named George Knight, and we had assumed that the leadership of the summer program would be white.  I remember gathering for orientation in Jarvie Hall in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (LAPC) with 40 or so other summer staff members, mostly white people.  The leadership of the program were two Black adults, and neither David nor I had ever worked under the supervision of Black people.  Gene Hatley and Nancy Martin told us that they would save our lives that summer.  First, we would be working in a Black neighborhood with mostly Black kids, and they told us they would help us survive in a community accustomed to seeing white folks as the enemy.  Second, they told those of us who were Southerners that they would help save our souls for the long haul – in this summer program, we would have the opportunity to see how life could be lived when some of the dividing wall of race was torn down.

It worked for David and me – our eyes were opened, and our hearts were deepened as we encountered the humanity of Black people for the first time in our lives.  It was a lesson that we never forgot, a lesson that changed our hearts and our imaginations forever.  The LAPC Summer did not end racism in our hearts, but it did open a window wide for us to escape the pounding white supremacy of the South.  I experienced the lingering power of that racism as soon as I returned home to Helena at the end of the summer.  When I encountered Black people in Helena, I did not want to see them as human beings like me – I wanted to stay in the comfortable place I had known at home.  But, I could not deny the humanity of the Black people that I had experienced in Brooklyn.  My first response to this dilemma was to decide that the Black people in Helena were not like the Black people in Brooklyn.  That response lasted only briefly, but I did notice how deeply racism was planted in my heart.

So, I’m grateful to LAPC for taking a chance on me and David and for changing our lives in ways that we could not have imagined when we got on that plane to fly to New York.  Imani Perry’s book is powerful and profound, but on this point, I have to disagree.  It was the conscious decision to step over the dividing wall of race in the form of actual human beings – human beings whose humanity I had previously dismissed – that opened the door wide for David and me to step through into a whole new world.  That was sixty years ago this summer, and I still give thanks for it.  LAPC changed and saved my life – Gene and Nancy were spot on.

"250 AND 15"

 “250 AND 15”

I did not write anything for our 250th anniversary as a country.  I am glad to be an American, but the current grifter who occupies the White House and who promulgates such vile untruths, makes it hard to celebrate America.  I’m hoping that this imperial presidency is just an aberration, but I also have to remember that the Trumpster was elected twice, so I am not certain what the future will hold.  At this point, I want to celebrate the vision and the gift of America – that at our heart is the promise that all people are created with equal dignity.  The current, roaring river of white supremacy still has not been able to extinguish that gift yet.  I’m hoping that we can celebrate that gift 250 years from now.

But, I also want to lift up the other number in the title: “15.”  It stands for General William Sherman’s Field Order #15, which he issued in Savannah, Georgia early in 1865.  It is an example of America seeking to rectify its wrongs in a definite and material way – what some would now call “reparations.”  It confiscated lands from white planters and made the lands eligible for people freed from slavery – the famous “40 acres and a mule.”  On January 16, 1865, during the Civil War, Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed Black families in forty-acre segments.

    Sherman’s order came on the heels of his successful March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. He had “given” Savannah as a Christmas present to President Lincoln. Senators and congressmen, like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, for some time had pushed for land redistribution to break the back of Southern slaveholders’ power. President Lincoln sent his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, to Savannah to facilitate a conversation with Sherman over what to do with Southern planters’ lands.

    On January 12, 1865, Sherman and Stanton met with twenty Black leaders of the Savannah community, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, to discuss the question of emancipation. They met at what is now the Meldrin-Green House in Savannah – you can take a tour and see the room in which the order was signed.  Lincoln approved Field Order No. 15 before Sherman issued it, just four days after meeting with the Black leaders. The order explicitly called for the settlement of Black families on the confiscated land, encouraged freedmen to join the Union army, and designated a general officer to act as inspector of settlements. Inspector General Rufus Saxton would police the land and work to ensure legal title of the property for the Black settlers.

    Sherman’s plan for land redistribution in the South was actually a practical response to several issues. Although Sherman had never been an egalitarian, his land-redistribution order served the military purpose of punishing Confederate planters along the rice coast of the South for their role in starting the Civil War, while simultaneously solving what he and Republicans viewed as a major new American problem: what to do with a new class of freed Southern laborers. Congressional leaders convinced President Lincoln to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands on March 3, 1865, shortly after Sherman issued his order. The Freedmen’s Bureau, as it came to be called, was authorized to give legal title for forty-acre plots of land to freedmen and white Southern Unionists.

    But the order was a short-lived promise for Black people. Despite the objections of General Oliver O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau chief, new U.S. president Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, and returned most of the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it.

    Thus the good – making meaningful reparations – and the bad – taking them back after Lincoln was assassinated.  What would all of our lives look like if Special Order #15 had been allowed to stand and to be developed?  We obviously will never know, but one thing that we can say:  Special Field Order #15 points the way for us in our time.

"IDA B. WELLS"

 “IDA B. WELLS!!!”

Another birthday of an important woman this month – first Caroline, now Ida B. Wells.  Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs, the county seat of Marshall County in northwest Mississippi.  That county is the home county of my mother and her forebears, and that is one of the reasons that Ida B’s life has struck such a deep chord in me.  I first encountered Ida B. in 1985 in a book by Dorothy Sterling entitled “Black Foremothers,” and I was astonished that I had never heard of Wells before.  Part of that was my own ignorance, and part of it was a deliberate effort to “disremember” witnesses like her.

In many ways, Wells’ life is the mythical American story of possibility and hard work:  she was born into slavery in Mississippi, but by the time of her death, she was one of the most famous people in America.  In many ways also, her story is the American story of racism and sexism:  because she was a Black woman, her witness was deeply resisted and almost forgotten in history.  Yet, thanks to the efforts of her daughter Alfreda Duster and now her great-grandchildren Michelle and Dan Duster, Ida B. Wells is having her moment in history, as her powerful witness is remembered and celebrated.

Wells fought her way into the American consciousness, and she kept fighting until she passed in 1931.  Although she was a “race” woman, she was just as strongly a crusader for women’s rights, for an end to war, and for justice for all, no matter one’s class status.  Though she was anti-war, she did not espouse non-violence as a way of life.  She told all Black families to keep a Winchester rifle in their homes so that they could protect themselves in case white folks came for them.  Indeed, in one of the many times that her life was threatened, she proclaimed that they might get her, but she would take as many of the attackers as she could with her into death.

On our recent trip to Chicago, we spent a great day with Michelle Duster, who gave us a fabulous tour of Ida B. sites in Chicago, including the powerful monument to her on Langley Avenue, designed and sculpted by the renowned architect Richard Hunt.  Michelle was so generous with her time and with her knowledge, and we were delighted to see Ida B. murals all over the South side of Chicago!

          In 2019, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I co-authored a book about Ida Wells and her influence on our time.  It was entitled “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  It won several awards, and I am thinking about it this week as Ida Wells’ 164th birthday approaches on July 16.  It would be fascinating to hear Wells’ perspective on our time, and Catherine and I tried to speculate on some of that in our book.  If you haven’t read it, find it in your library or buy it somewhere (churchpublishing.org or bookshop.org are my suggestions).  Wells lived through a time similar to ours – when rights for Black people were being scaled back, and white supremacy was on the rise.

 Michelle Duster also has a fine book about her and about her witness for both racial and gender justice: “Ida B the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells.”  There is also a much longer biography of her by Paula Giddings entitled “Ida: A Sword Among Lions.”  Or, in the modern age, just “google” her, and you will find all kinds of information.  There are also numerous children’s books about her.

If you have not encountered Ida B. Wells and her story yet, please take time to do it.  It will both inspire you (how could she do so much in such a short time?) and infuriate you (her struggles over justice and equity continue today).  But, most of all, let us all take heart from the life and witness of such a great prophet.  When people like Alice Paul sought to deny her entry in the women’s rights protest in Washington, DC, in 1913, Wells defiantly stepped into the parade anyway, and on her birthday this Thursday, raise a glass (or a piece of cake) to this great witness.  And, no matter who is telling you not to step into the great parade of witnesses like Ida B., take a page from her example and get into the march for justice and equity.  Find your place and find your voice.

"CAROLINE LEACH"

 "CAROLINE LEACH"

We celebrated Caroline’s 79th birthday over the weekend – actually, we started on Thursday, July 2, when granddaughter Emma took us out for lunch at Manuel’s Tavern (Emma had never been there).  We were touched by Emma’s continuing thoughtfulness and now her young adult agency.  We continued the birthday celebration with Inez’s annual party, with great tributes from many people.  We’ll continue it next week with several meals with friends.

Caroline had always been a strong girL and is now a strong woman, having learned those traits from her family and from her long association with the Girl Scouts.  When I met her in Nashville in the early summer of 1973 at Linda and Robin Williams’ wedding, she had already overcome many barriers from individuals and institutions which were always telling her “NO!”  I was intrigued by her story, by her fierce determination, and by her “curvy” looks, as a Knoxville newspaper once described her.  I was so smitten that I moved to Atlanta to complete seminary there at Columbia, and we started dating late that summer.  

One of my early concerns was that at the beginning of our courtship, Caroline indicated that she was not sure that she wanted to get serious about our relationship because she was tired of men disappointing her and trying to control her.  I replied that I would make many mistakes if we continued in our relationship, but that I would definitely not try to control her, and I would try not to disappoint her.  She agreed to continue dating, and we got engaged later that year and got married in May of 1974.  So, we’ve been working on it for 53 years!

We are nearing completion of our book on our pioneering career as a clergy couple (the first in the Presbyterian Church in the United States), and in writing that, we have revisited our journeys, and especially Caroline’s, as she had to fight to make her voice heard and her call as a minister accepted.  Our first church together was St. Columba Presbyterian in Norfolk, Virginia.  It was in a 1500 unit apartment complex of Navy families and other families with little or no income.  Norfolk Presbytery was funding the tiny church (26 members) and the budding community ministry there.  We arrived in May 1975, and we worked hard to grow the church and to develop the community ministry there.

One of our strategies to grow the church and to develop the community ministry was to use the media (print, radio and TV in those days,) and in the fall of 1975, an interview appeared in the Norfolk newspaper (The Virginian-Pilot).  It was entitled “The Rev. Ms. Leach Ministers to Change.”  The reporter, Laura White, had never met a woman minister before, and she was astonished by Caroline’s journey and the depth of her insights.  Here are excerpts from that newspaper article:

“The first week Caroline Leach was at seminary, a student came up to her with a Bible and told her St. Paul said she shouldn’t be there.  In that first week she changed her mind from wanting to be a church’s director of Christian education to wanting to be a minister.  She had never seen a woman minister – and it was not easy becoming one.  The Rev. Ms. Leach was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1973.  In May she and her husband Gibson (Nibs) Stroupe, also a Presbyterian minister, came to the small St. Columba Church with its 26 members.  Both are 28, and they are trying to minister to the residents of the 1,500 unit, low-income Robin Hood Apartments a few hundred feet from the church.Ms. Leach noted: “One of the first things I noticed in seminary was during lectures the professor would say ‘the minister he’ or ‘all mankind,’ or ‘the theology of man.’  I would tell them about it, and they’d either laugh it off or just have bitter anger.”  When she graduated from seminary in 1972, her diploma noted that the seminary was pleased ‘to confer upon him the degree of master of divinity.”

So, I give thanks for Caroline, who has changed and deepened me in so many countless ways. She is now also mother and grandmother in our family and to so many others who are not our blood relatives.  She is a great gift to us all, to the church, and to the larger world.  So, in this week, lift a glass (or a piece of cake) in her honor.

"CHICAGO"

 “CHICAGO”

Towards the end of May, Caroline, Susan, and I met in Chicago for an ancestry trip and a viewing of some of the many sites of Chicago. Susan flew into Chicago from Baltimore, and we all met at O’Hare airport, which was announcing that it was the world’s busiest airport, an assertion that made my ears perk up, because we in the ATL claim to have the busiest airport.  As I later learned, O’Hare has the most flights, while ATL has the most people passing through.  We rented a car and drove on the back roads to our Airbnb in Evanston, Illinois.  We chose that place because it is close to Northwestern, where Caroline was planning to do some research on some of her ancestors who attended Northwestern.  Our place was about a block from Lake Michigan, which is huge – but, it was relatively cool, so we only walked around the beach a bit.

As I wrote in “She Made a Way,” I had traveled to Chicago as a child several times with my mother on the train and on the bus to see her brother and my uncle, Maurice “Bud” Armour.  Caroline and I had been to hotels in Chicago to lead workshops for denominational conferences, but this was the first time that we would encounter the city of Chicago as adults.  As always, we were so grateful to have Susan with us – she is a fearless and skilled navigator.  After we rested up, our first stop was at Wrigley Field on May 24 (my mother’s birthday) to see the Cubs play the Astros.  Our Airbnb was close to a public parking deck where we could park our rental car and catch the “EL” to Wrigley on the Red Line.  As we headed towards Wrigley, at various stops, Cubs fans were piling on the train, and when we asked some of them how we would know we had arrived, they laughed and said “Don’t worry about it – you’ll know.”  And sure enough, the stadium was right off the Addison train stop.  It was such an exciting experience – major league baseball in person at one of baseball’s best stadiums.  Wrigley was filled, and of course, the Cubs lost.

The next day brought a milestone for me.  Prior to our trip I had contacted Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, asking her to give us a tour of Ida B. sites in Chicago.  The only day that we all could work it out was on Memorial Day, but Michelle was so kind to give us most of the day, showing us around the South side of Chicago, where there are many Ida B. Wells sites.  Wells had moved to Chicago after she had been exiled from the South when Memphians blew up her newspaper offices in response to her definitive study on lynching called “Southern Horrors.”  Michelle took us to the house where Ida B. and her husband Ferdinand Barnett lived, to the street named after Wells in Chicago, to the cemetery where they are buried, and to a great monument to Ida B. on Langley Avenue.  It is called The “Light of Truth Ida B. Wells Monument,” and it was done by renowned sculptor Richard Hunt.  It is made of bronze and marble and is in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.  It is powerful to see it and to read the selected quotes from Ida B. Wells.  Michelle also introduced us to her brothers, Dan and Dave.  It was their grandmother, Alfreda Duster (daughter of Ida B), who had preserved Ida B’s records and eventually got the autobiography before John Hope Franklin to be published by the University of Chicago Press in 1970.

The next day Caroline and Susan joined cousin Judy Asselmeier at the Northwestern library to do research on Caroline’s maternal grandmother, Mildred Boddy, who had graduated from there in 1915, and Mildred’s father, Samuel Boddy, who graduated in 1885.  Thanks to a great archivist named Kevin Leonard, they found a wonderful treasure trove of info about these ancestors.  Caroline had always known about her great grandparents and grandmother graduating from Northwestern.  As she got older, her interest grew but not much was ever said.  Then when we were cleaning out boxes from the attic at her parents’ house, there was a treasure trove of annuals, pictures, diplomas, graduation invitations and more!  Our trip to Northwestern was really a time to put the “dots together” with her foreparents from the North.

On another day, we crossed over to my side of the family to eat lunch with Uncle Bud’s oldest daughter Bonnie Armour Adams, whom I had known as a child before Bud moved to Chicago in the 1950’s.  Bonnie brought along her daughter Heather and her husband John, and we had a great visit.  The last time that we had seen one another was in 1988, when we all gathered in Byhalia, Mississippi, for Bud’s funeral there.  We had such a good time catching up, and they are thinking about coming down for my 80th birthday celebration on November 21.  Bud was such an important person in my mother’s life, and I was glad to make this reconnection.  As you’ll see in the photo, Heather noted that “double first cousins” Bonnie and Nibs wore the same kind of blue stripe tops!  And, we were glad to learn that they are on the left side of the political spectrum.

We had a great trip to Chicago, connecting with deep and old roots, we had other friends that we wanted to see but ran out of time and energy. and I also remembered all the Black people who had come up Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in the Great Migrations.  And, as Michelle Duster noted, this important American city was founded by a Black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.

"FATHER'S DAY"

 

“FATHER’S DAY”

In coming to write about Father’s Day, I have a lot of ambivalence.  Both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have turned into commercial ventures, but since my mother was such a great single parent for me, I’m happy to celebrate Mother’s Day.  For more on that, see my latest book “She Made a Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.” Indeed, statistics show that 20% of American families are headed by single mothers.  

        My relationship to Father’s Day is much more difficult, because I never knew my father – he abandoned me and my mother when I was an infant, and I never heard from him again until I was a young adult.  Indeed, statistics show that 20% of American families are headed by single mothers.  I carried the pain of that abandonment at the center of my heart for a long time, and I want to share a story of that pain.

            I remember the incident so vividly.  It was in the summer of 1963 on the cusp of my senior year in high school.  I would have another vivid occasion in that summer in late August when I surreptitiously listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, DC, but that is the story for another blog.  This incident was earlier that summer, sometime in July.  I had just returned from a six week science camp at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, a venue made possible because a bridge spanning the Mississippi River at Helena had been opened in 1960.  It would be my first long time away from home, and I was dreading the experience.  Because we did not have a car, our next door neighbors Mr. Mack and Ms. Fannie, drove with my mother to take me to the camp.  I was good at math and science, and the teachers at segregated Central High School had recommended me for the camp and had obtained a scholarship for me.

            During the orientation for the camp, the senior white leadership of the camp proudly pointed out the bullet holes in the Lyceum building where Southern white manhood had resisted the invading federal government, which had “forced” Ole Miss to register one of its state citizens as a student – an African-American named James Meredith – in the previous September, 1962.  I am ashamed to admit that I felt pride at that point in the orientation.  I did well in the science camp, and I thrived in it, so much so that I got my picture taken with an Indian (they were allowed under the race caste system in Mississippi) graduate student who was doing work on vortex flow and its potential for harnessing energy.  That photo and an article on the science camp appeared in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper, and that brings me back to the incident to which I referred earlier.

            After I returned home from the science camp, a letter came in the mail, addressed to me.  The return address was marked “GP Stroupe, Jackson, Mississippi.”  When I read that return address, my heart leaped – it was a letter from my father, for whom I was named!  I had never received any communication from him at all, in my 16 years of living.  I had so longed for it, and here, finally, was a letter from him.  My heart was pounding, as I opened the envelope and tried to anticipate what my father would now say to me in his first engagement with me.  I opened the letter, and the newspaper article on the science camp fell out – my father was proud of me!  Then, my blood boiled as I read the note, not from my father, but from his second wife, the woman who had taken him from my family.  It said that that they were so proud of me, and oh yes, give the child support check to my mother.  No word from my father – no word from him.  I remember cursing out loud and flinging that letter across the room in anger.  “That ******* couldn’t even bring himself to write me and express his praise for my work.  He had to get his wife to do it.”  

            I would hear nothing else from my father for 9 more years, and even then I met him accidentally – another story for another blog.  So, as I approach Father’s Day, I have even greater ambivalence about it than I had about Memorial Day – at least for Memorial Day, there was some honor involved.  In this case and in this relationship, I felt dishonored and disowned.  For a long time, I felt that my being disowned was my responsibility. I allowed the anger of that summer of 1963 to dissipate back into anxiety, wondering what I had done to force my father not only to leave me but also to ignore me.  Years of therapy and great friends would begin to heal me, and I am grateful to all those who stepped into that breech in my heart.  Thanks to all the men out there who took me in and nurtured me – and there are many!  I honor them this Father’s Day.

            My honoring of Father’s Day also comes from experiencing Wordsworth’s line “The Child Is Father to the Man,” from his poem “My Heart Leaps Up.”  I use it differently than he did, though.  I mean it in the sense that I received a lot of my fathering from being father to our kids David and Susan.  They are a great joy to me, and I have learned a lot about fatherhood from them.  I’ve made many mistakes with them, but through loving them and having them love me, I have felt the redemptive power of fatherhood.  And I’ve sought to repay all those people, who stepped into the breech with me when I needed fathering, by seeking to offer that to others. 

            So, on Father’s Day, let us give thanks for those who gave us fathering love, whether they were our biological fathers or not.  In the best sense, fathers teach sons and daughters what real men are like. Not the immature men who seem to be stuck in adolescence (like the President), but rather men who show us what manhood really is – nurturing, protecting, forgiving, challenging, and most of all, loving.  I’m hoping that all who are reading this have experienced this fathering love from somebody in their lives.  If not, contact me, and we’ll see what we can do!

"JUNETEENTH"

 “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  This week many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons.  

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years, after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of white supremacy (and the slavery that goes with it).  These have been warring ideas in American history.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking at ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

Yet, as we all are well aware, this powerful gift of equality is always banging up against the idea of white supremacy, which seeks to tell us that those of us classified as “white” that we are superior and are meant to be in control.  We see the power of the idea of white, male supremacy growing now under the Trump administration and in the racist turn of SCOTUS, which recently eviscerated the last remaining vestige of protection from the Voting Rights Act.  As if on cue, Southern states have hurried to redistrict so that they can dilute, and in some cases, end the power of Black voting.

            It is now time to step up, speak up, and act out.  So, on June 19,  find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  Let us join in that parade of witnesses. Let us find ourselves in that Juneteenth parade.

"THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE"

 “THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE”

The presidency of Donald Trump is a continuing nightmare, but as I wrote last week, it is not a aberration.  It is rather a continuance of the Reagan Revolution in response to the movements for justice and equity of the 1960”s+.  Trump is an extreme form of this counter-revolution, and I am hoping that he will implode before he can do too much more damage.

In the meantime, there are several approaches that we can take in order to stay in resistance to this movement.  The first step is TO VOTE.  Thanks to the right-wing SCOTUS, the white supremacists are seeking to rig elections everywhere, but if we turn out in adequate numbers, their machinations can be defeated.  There are primaries going on everywhere, so make sure that you vote in them.  For the November elections, make sure that you are registered to vote and make sure that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote.  We will need a huge turnout in the fall so that Congress can be retaken.  The Trumpster will seek to delay the elections under the guise of national security (that’s what Bill Pulte is now working on), but the states are generally in control of elections, so let’s work on that end too.

The other, more immediate step is to speak up and act out.  This step is critical – do not remain silent or stay on the sidelines, complaining about how bad things are.  Join protests, write elected officials, speak out to the press, engage your friends and neighbors.  Every two weeks, Caroline and I participate in the “Old People’s Protest” in Stone Mountain, and we usually have 40-50 people who turn out in their walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, gathering at a busy intersection to protest the Trumpster actions and presidency.  We were there this past Saturday, and we got lots of honks and waves (and a few middle fingers too).  Find some place to make this kind of public witness – this one was started by several older folk in a senior living residence, and it has grown and grown.  So, find a group to join in expressing public dissent, or start your own.

A third step is to assist in smaller groups who are working for social justice and equity.  There are lots of groups around – if you are not already part of one or more, join in so that they may be bolstered in their work.  Our friend John Vodicka coordinates the Court Watch program in Athens, Georgia, and they have developed a Bail Fund to help people with minor offenses make bail so that they can get out of jail.  You would be surprised at the number of people held in jail because they do not have funds for a $100 bail (or less).  Our friend Mary Catherine Johnson directs New Hope House in Jackson, Georgia, a residence for families to stay while they visit their loved ones on death row in Jackson.  Our friend and co-author Dr. Catherine Meeks directs Turquoise and Lavender Institute for Transformation & Healing, and she is constantly writing and speaking on behalf of justice and equity.  Find ways to support these groups or ones like them.  Or, find them in your locale and begin donating time and money.  

These are dangerous and scary times as the river of white, male supremacy bursts out of its borders and threatens to flood us all with the pollution of racism, sexism, materialism, and militarism.  Let us work on these three steps in order to combat these forces.  As Sweet Honey in the Rock put it their song “Battle for My Life:”  “the white man’s disease is the same across the seas.”  We are in a battle for our lives.  Let us rise up to meet the occasion.

"IS THE REAGAN REVOLUTION NEARING COMPLETION?"

 “IS THE REAGAN REVOLUTION NEARING COMPLETION?”

I’m a little late coming to Imani Perry’s fine book “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,’ but in reading of her travels South and her reflections on it, I am reminded of how the deep the resistance is to the justice movements of the 1960’s:  movements on race, gender, sexual orientation, class, capitalism, and environmental justice.  And, as Dr. Perry’s book demonstrates, the resistance to these justice movements is not just located in the South – it is a deep part of our national history.  She was born in Alabama, so she knows our language and our approaches to life, but in them, she also sees the depth of white, male supremacy that continues to plague us all as a nation.

As SCOTUS continues to strike down basic civil rights protection, I am taken back to the part of my life where I began to change on these issues:  in the decade of the 1960’s.  One of my friends scoffs at the 60’s, calling it a time of self-indulgence,  the rise of the individual, and the breaking of community in America.  While some of that is true, it was also a time when old ways of oppression and death began to be mitigated, including the thundering resistance to the Vietnam War, and when new communities - more centered on justice - began to form. Whatever one thinks of the 60’s, however, the movements for justice in that decade were strong enough to call forth a powerful counter-revolution, a revolution that got its sea legs under Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  Nixon began it in the 1968 presidential election with his “Southern Strategy,” teaching white males how to re-institute racism without ever mentioning race.  It is a strategy that they have followed ever since.

Nixon’s own personal shortcomings short-circuited this counter-revolution, and this movement would wait on a TV star/actor from California to lead it.  Reagan came into office in 1980, beginning his campaign for the presidency at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the kidnaping and murdering of three civil rights workers in 1964: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.  He never mentioned any of that, but his unspoken message was that he would be the candidate to restore white, male supremacy.  His approach would be that government is the problem, not the solution.  To those white people in the South and beyond who railed at the federal interventions on education, civil rights, and women’s rights, this approach was music to their ears.  In this way, Reagan began a counter-revolution that continues – don’t tell those of us classified as “white” how to live our lives, don’t mess with us.

This revolution has continued to move forward – from the defeat of the Equal Rights Movement to Lee Atwater’s use of Willie Horton to propel George H.W. Bush to the presidency to the ascendance of a right-wing Supreme Court to the invasions of Iraq by the Bush dynasty, to the cuts in public assistance and the growth of prisons under the Clinton administration to the disasters of the W Bush administration to the blasphemy that is the Trump administration.  We should be clear here – the presidency of Donald Trump is not an aberration.  It is rather the culmination of a counter-revolution that began almost 50 years ago, a movement that began in response to the push for justice and equity in the 1960’s.

There are, of course, movements for justice and equity that continue.  The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States was a stunning achievement, but it scared many white folks to death, and it led us to Donald Trump as president.  Black Lives Matter, the renewed fight for the ERA, Gay Pride, the fight for preservation of the earth – all these speak of the continuing powerful and deep energy for the idea of liberty and justice for all.  I’ll continue this conversation next week, but for now, I want us to be mindful that Trump is not an aberration.  In many ways, he is the culmination of the Reagan counter-revolution.  And, yes, it will be wonderful if the Democrats can regain control of Congress in November but let us be clear-eyed on this:  the Reagan Revolution will continue.

"MEMORIAL DAY"

 “MEMORIAL DAY”

      According to historian David Blight, Memorial Day was started by formerly ensIaved African-Americans on May 1, 1865, just a few weeks after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  It happened in Charleston, SC, to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.  They dug up the bodies over a two week period and buried them properly, with a processional of many thousands bringing flowers to honor the service of the soldiers who had helped to end slavery.  

         I served my country as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War from 1970-72.  My alternative service was as director of Opportunity House in Nashville, a halfway house for men being released from prison.  It was here that I got my first glimpse of the horror that is the American prison-industrial complex.  It was quite an education for me, and ever since then I have been involved in ministry to those in prison in one form or another.  

         Because of my CO status, Memorial Day is always complicated for me.  I honor the men and women who serve our country in the military.  My adopted father, Gay Wilmore, served in the US army in World War II.  In the midst of my ambivalence about Memorial Day and about nonviolence and the efficacy of violence in service of social justice, I want to give thanks to my father-in-law Herman Leach, to my father, to Charlie Callier, to Bob Wetzel, and to so many others who served our country in WW II.   My mother’s almost fiancé, Bob Buford, was killed in WW II.  I was in seminary and gave up my deferred status in 1970 in order to try to start a movement with others to end deferments for ministers and seminary students.  I never felt that the Vietnam War was anything but a covert attempt to kill and maim people of a different color.  In saying this, I do not intend to demean the Americans who served there – I had two friends killed in that war.  

         My longtime friend John Cole Vodicka also has a complicated history with Memorial Day, but I will save that story for another day.  In his great ministry as a human rights’ advocate and prisoners’ rights advocate, he has found a powerful way to recognize Memorial Day – to honor those Black veterans of World War II who are known to have been lynched in Georgia after they returned home from serving their country.  In 2023 he led a group of 60+ people in remembering these 9 men, some of whom were lynched while still in uniform.  

Here are the names of the 9 Black men who fought for freedom overseas and were lynched in Georgia as a result of their service:  Felix Hall, Willie Lee Davis, George Franks, Curtis Hairston, Maceo Snipes, George Dorsey, Walter Lee Johnson, Joe Nathan Roberts, and Lemuel Penn.  With his permission, I am including John’s remarks at that service.

“Why we are here:

The Memorial Day weekend is a time for all of us to remember the nine known African American WWII veterans who died not in Germany or France or North Africa or Japan or on some remote Pacific Island, but who were lynched by their own countrymen in Georgia. In the United States of America.  

 These nine men enlisted, perhaps with the hope that fighting for America in the “war to destroy fascism and preserve democracy” would earn them respect and human dignity at home—something they’d not experienced in their own country. 

 Instead, these Black soldiers were targeted by white terrorists while they were on active duty or after returning to their homes. White America feared that Black veterans asserting and demanding equality would disrupt the social order built on white supremacy, and that Black soldiers would reject their second-class status in the country’s racial hierarchy.  These nine veterans became a threat to the country’s—and especially the South’s, and Georgia’s—caste system.  Black WWII veterans threatened to upend the myth of racial superiority.  Racial insubordination had to be swiftly and violently crushed. 

 Athens’ Veterans Memorial Plaza sits adjacent to the county’s courthouse. The courthouse, in my estimation, is in many respects the present-day place where Black women and men are routinely and systematically subjugated by a system that believes Black lives don’t matter.”

    Thanks, John, for your witness and courage, and thanks to all who have served (and who now serve) to develop and deepen our commitment to the idea of equality:  that all people are created with equal dignity in God’s eyes.  

"WHAT A WEEK!!!"

 “WHAT A WEEK!!!!”

This week of May 17-24 has always been an important one in my life, even before I knew it.  On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was the law of the land.  This ruling firmly and legally established “neo-slavery” that would be king of the USA for almost 60 years. It filled the atmosphere of my boyhood with the authority of white supremacy and racism that so captured my perceptual apparatus.

    Yet, while I was not aware of it because I was only 7 years old, on May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, SCOTUS reversed the Plessy decision and ruled unanimously that legal segregation was no longer lawful because it established inequality as the law of the land.  I don’t remember knowing about that decision until I was somewhere in my college years, but that decision had set off the beginning of a revolution in regard to the legality of white supremacy, declaring that it was no longer the law of the land.  Yesterday marked the 72th anniversary of that landmark decision.  Unfortunately, we have not decided as a nation which decision we want to affirm – the “neo-slavery” Plessy of 1896 or the “created equal” Brown decision of 1954.  The recent SCOTUS decision that further eviscerated the Voting Rights Act makes us now lean back towards the neo-slavery of Plessy.

    Most important to me, however, about this week is that it marks the 52nd wedding anniversary for Caroline and me.  We were married in Ed Loring’s backyard on May 18, 1974 with Ed and Sandy Winter officiating – Sandy had been a long-time mentor of Caroline’s.  Caroline was a campus minister at Georgia Tech at that time, having been ordained as a minister in 1973 (the 21st woman to be ordained in the former southern Presbyterian Church).  I was in my final year at Columbia Seminary, having transferred there from Vanderbilt Divinity School, with a two year hiatus in between while I performed as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.  We had met at the wedding of Robin and Linda Williams in Nashville, Caroline having accompanied her friend Murphy Davis, who was Robin’s cousin.

    It has been quite an adventure, with many milestones along the way.  Even before I graduated from Columbia, we had received a call from St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk VA, to be the co-pastors at a small church there, which also served as the base for a developing community ministry in a 5000 resident low-income housing complex.  We cut our teeth on urban ministry there, and we were fortunate enough to receive the Women of the Church Birthday Offering in 1978.  That great gift established St. Columba Ministries, which does ministry with those who are poor and especially those who are homeless.  It is still doing ministry today.  

       After our son David was born in Norfolk in 1980, we wanted to get closer to our families in Chattanooga and Arkansas, so we moved to Nashville where I worked on the staff of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons.  I also served as part-time supply pastor at Second Presbyterian while they looked for a fulltime pastor.  Our daughter Susan was born in Nashville on a Sunday morning in 1982.  My time at Second Church convinced me that I wanted to return to the pastorate full time, and in February, 1983, I gladly accepted the call to become the full-time pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian in Decatur.  Since Susan was still an infant, Caroline stayed home for another year.  She came on staff at Oakhurst in September, 1984, and we shared ministry there until we both retired – Caroline in 2012, and me in 2017.  Whew!  Quite a journey – you’ll hear more one of these days.  We are working on a book about our pioneering and partnering ministry.  If you have any stories or insights, please share them with us.  In the meantime, raise a glass to us this week!

"THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY"

 “THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY”

The stunning events of last week remind us that the maintenance of white supremacy IS the American story.  With the SCOTUS 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to further eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, most of the Southern states wasted no time in seeking to redistrict so that Black people would be deprived of their votes.  It was as if they were all lining up to get a date with a hunky matinee idol.  Then the Virginia Supreme Court overturned Virginia’s voter referendum by a 4-3 vote to redistrict their state, and the white supremacists are cheering it on.  

Though I am hoping that this is not true, it is likely that this is the culminating point of a long period to suppress the votes of Black and Brown people.  When the federal troops pulled out of the South in 1877 in the “Great Compromise,” it pointed to a long slide back into neo-slavery.  The Mississippi Plan of 1890 led the way for all Southern states to strip Black people of their voting rights.  In 1896 SCOTUS decided 8-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was the law of the land, thus codifying neo-slavery for almost 70 years.  It is interesting to note that both the Plessy decision of 1896 and the Callais decision of 2026 came out of the state of Louisiana.  

Neo-slavery (not “Jim Crow,” as it is often called – a misnomer that seeks to soften the blow of reinstituting slavery as much as possible) ruled as a center part of the American story until the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was passed in 1965.  John Roberts came into the Reagan Administration in 1980 as a lawyer determined to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, so that white supremacy could be clearly re-established again.  He led the SCOTUS decision in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder, which was the first major blow to the VRA.  It dismantled the provision of the VRA that required that all election-related changes in the Southern states had to be pre-approved by the Justice Department.  In the current Trumpster Department of Injustice, this might not have mattered, but for almost 50 years, it forced Southern white legislatures to seek some bit of equity as they sought to revive and continue the power of neo-slavery.

Now the floodgates are open for re-establishing neo-slavery, and though it is hard to imagine that being done, we only have to skim the surface of American history to realize that this pattern of establishing and protecting white supremacy IS THE American story.  In the Constitution, Black people and Indigenous people are deemed “three fifths” of a person, so this American story is deep and long and wide.  Women had no right to vote in the Constitution, and it took over 70 years of labor and protest and marching to get that right in the Constitution in the 19th Amendment.  It is hard not to be discouraged in this kind of atmosphere, but we must start where we are – THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY.  The desire to establish white, male supremacy is at the heart of American history, and whether we have the 19th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act, all of the efforts to move us to codify our ideals of equality and justice and equity fly in the face of this American reality – we want, we believe that white men should be in charge of things.

In these discouraging days, we must remember witnesses like Ida B. Wells, who was born into slavery in Mississippi and who lived almost all of her life under the power of neo-slavery.  She refused to accept the definition of herself as unequal because of her racial classification, and she refused to stand down and defer to men of any racial classification because she was a woman.  If you want to know more about her and her relevance, read the book that Dr. Catherine Meeks and I wrote about Wells “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  In the midst of raging racism and sexism, she was fearless, ferocious, formidable….Now, we are not Ida B. Wells, but her witness for such a time as this calls on us to find our place in this small but great parade of witnesses who stood for justice, equality, and equity.  

"WHO IS MY MOTHER?"

 “WHO IS MY MOTHER?”

“Who Is My Mother?”  This is a question that Jesus asks in response to those who tell him that his mother and his siblings would like to see him – they are coming to take him home because they think that he has lost his mind with all of his “weird’ ministry and teachings.  He then says that whoever does the will of God is his sibling and his mother.  I’ve always thought that such a response must have hurt his mother’s heart, but she raised him to be a prophet for and to the world.

This complicated approach is appropriate for our current political moment when SCOTUS has voted to force motherhood on every woman who becomes pregnant without doing anything to enforce the “fatherhood” part.  This year’s Mother’s Day is fraught with complexity, and in that manner, I give thanks for my mother, Mary Armour Stroupe.  We had many discussions about a woman’s right to choose in regard to her body, and Mother said:  “I’m opposed to abortion, but I’m even more opposed to forcing women to have babies.”  

My mother saved my life by sticking with me and by showing me the power of love.  I give thanks for her!  Though she did not consider herself a radical, she often demonstrated radical power in her “ordinary” stands in her home of Helena, Arkansas.  One of her friends once told me that the white neighbors considered Mother a radical because she allowed a Black friend and colleague to come in her front door when she came to visit Mother – this was in the 1990’s, not the 1940’s.

Mother also took some stronger communal stands in her work as the lead instructor at the Phillips County Community College School of Cosmetology.  Most of her students were poor, and many of them were Black.  They had heard all their lives that they were not worth much.  Mother sought to teach them not only how to do hair but also to teach them that they were children of God and American citizens.  As elections drew near, she would urge her students to register to vote.  Most of the students did not believe that voting made any difference, so most of them did not heed her advice – most of them also had heard stories of the danger in which Black people put themselves when they voted.

Mother emphasized, however, that the right to vote was fundamental and that her students should not take it lightly.   In a move that would likely not be allowed now, she told her students that if they did not vote on election day, then they would not be allowed into class that day.  If they did not wear an “I have voted” sticker on election day, then they failed the class for the day.  That got their attention, and she ended up with almost 100% voting by her students.  I give thanks to Mother for her nurturing of me and of so many others.  Though she gave birth to one child, she was a mother to hundreds.  If you want to know more of her story (and mine), get my most recent book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in A Deep South World.”

On this Mother’s Day, I also am remembering all those people who gave me mothering love, both women and men.  Mothering love is rooted in loving and in engagement, not in biology.  One of our good friends, Lorri Mills, died about this time four years go after a long struggle with many illnesses and attacks on her body.  She did not have any biological children, and she always told us that she was not any good with little kids.  But, she gave mothering love to so many people!  We heard from cousins that she was a mentor to them, that she was one of the first women in their family line to go to college.  We heard stories of her urging her women cousins to think of themselves as human beings capable of so much more than they thought.  We witnessed her sharing this approach with so many people at Oakhurst Presbyterian, where she was a member and elder and leader.  She was generous and loving and nurturing – she showed us what the answer to Jesus’ question “Who Is My Mother?’ looked like.

In this time of Mother’s Day, let us give thanks for our biological mothers and for all of those people who have given us patient and demanding, nurturing and ever present, visionary love. I give thanks also for my life partner Caroline Leach, who has offered me and so many others this kind of mothering love.  When Caroline retired in 2012, one of the most moving parts was the 75+ children, youth, and young adults who came forward to give her roses in gratitude for her mothering love for them.  Let us seek to live our lives in this way.  And, if your “mothers” are still around, take time to thank them while you can.

"BATTLE FOR LIFE"

 “BATTLE FOR LIFE”

This week marks the 51st anniversary of the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in what was then South Vietnam in 1975.  It was the final, collapsing ending of the Vietnam War, which cost 58,220 American lives over a ten-year period – two of my friends from Helena were among those lost.   The chaos of the photos associated with the fall of Saigon reminded us of the great chasm that had been opened in American society because of the Vietnam War, a chasm which still permeates our culture.  We gained very little in that war, and we lost, oh so much.  At least the war had been approved by Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August, 1964, the same month that the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were found in shallow graves in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  

Caroline and I were pastors in St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia when Saigon fell.  We had just arrived there as the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Presbyterian Church (US) in the South.  We were not aware that soon several Vietnamese families would be arriving at Robin Hood Apartments, where St. Columba Church was located.  We would get involved with several of those families as they encountered poverty and a new system of family life.  The Vietnam War was also the war which led me to seek conscientious objector status, which I received in the fall of 1970.  I did my alternative service at Opportunity House in Nashville, where I was director of a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  I participated in many protests about the Vietnam War, and I joined millions in those protests.

The Trumpster brought up the Vietnam War last week in talking about his war of choice in Iran.  When he got questions about the length of the Iran war, he noted that it had not nearly been as long as the Vietnam War.  In bringing up the Vietnam War, he also inadvertently reminded many of us that both wars are similar in that there never was any clear motive or objective or even national interest in these wars.  While we were told that the Vietnam War was being fought to protect us from communism, we are being told now that the Iran war is being fought to protect us from a nuclear Iran.  One big difference – with the new technology, we can drop bombs on people without having to use ground troops.  However, like Vietnam, if we want a “victory,” we will need troops on the ground, and if we go there, it will be Vietnam all over again – or, at least the Iraq War all over again.  The Viet Cong were not overwhelmed by our “shock and awe” demonstration of the bombing campaigns, and as we are seeing now, neither are the Iranians.  Let no one hear that I am defending the Iranian government – they are brutal and inhumane.  Yet, they play the long diplomatic game rather than the short, social media game at which we are accustomed in the West.

Like Lyndon Johnson with Vietnam, the Trumpster seems out of his depth with the war in Iran.  It is a war run by political Americans who have never been in a war, and who - because of that – seem to glorify war and the killing culture that it brings.  Like the hubris that brought us down in Vietnam, there is a similar hubris in the Trumpster and in the Secretary of Defense.  Do we have lethal power? Yes.  But will it win us this war? Using Vietnam and Iraq as guides, there is no “winning” this Iran war, and that is why the Trumpster has been so equivocal in his goals on the war.  He did not know what he was getting into, and he does not know what “winning” would look like.  The Vietnam War brought down the great presidency of LBJ, after he had ended neo-slavery in 1965 with the passing of the Voting Rights Act.  Though I am ready for the Iran war to be over, I’m also aware that it may be a turning point in the support for the Trumpster.  As Sweet Honey in the Rock put it in their song “Battle for My Life,”: “Your hunger for war is nothing new, Cowboy.”

The connecting dots are that we believe in the power of death, and we now have a president and a Congress that use this power of death to seek to deepen power and a hold on our hearts.  Let us hear a different song in our battle for life.  And, if you haven’t picked up your implement of resistance which I mentioned a few weeks ago, please do so now.