"ERA - JUST ONE MORE STATE"

“ERA – JUST ONE MORE STATE!!!!”

            For baseball fans like me, ERA stands for “earned run average,” which used to be a pretty good measure of a pitcher’s ability.  It has been replaced (sort of) by more modern measurements, but it still remains a good one.  I’m thinking of that because Major League Baseball season starts this week, and though I’m not a fan of a particular team (I would be more of a Braves’ fan, if they would drop their racist name and “tomahawk chop”), I do enjoy the game.  Baseball at least has minor league teams in which the players get some of the money.  Many of us are now watching college basketball’s March Madness – none of those players get any of the billions made on the tournament.

            But, the spring has made me digress – the more important definition of “ERA” is Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1921 by Alice Paul and others of the National Women’s Political Party.  The National Women’s Party still exists, and their headquarters is in the amazing Belmont-Paul National Women’s House in DC – go see it, if you have not already done so!

            The current version of the ERA reads like this: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”  This past week (March 22) was the 47^th anniversary of Congress and the Senate adopting the ERA as the proposed 27^th Amendment to the Constitution and sending it on to the states.  The first state to approve it was Hawaii, and in the early 1970’s it looked like it would pass the necessary 38 state legislatures.  The right-wing got fired up, however, because they correctly perceived that the ERA would permanently codify the fact that women should control their bodies.  The FGFBM (Forced Gestation and Forced Birth Movement) started a campaign of fear and repression and appealed to the male supremacy that is deeply embedded in our culture.  The movement to pass the ERA in the 1970’s stalled at 35 states, but many people continued to work on its passage.  Especially after the election of the misogynist Donald Trump as president, the movement has regained some momentum.  Two more states (Nevada 2017) and Illinois (2018) have approved the ERA as a constitutional amendment, so only one more state is needed to ratify it – yes, that’s right – JUST ONE MORE STATE.

            Some of the states that have ratified it have since rescinded their ratification, but that act will not likely stand up in court.  If you’re wondering if we still need the ERA, just remember “Brett Kavanaugh” and just remember that three white, male supremacist states from the pro-slavery South (my state of Georgia being one of them) have just adopted the “heartbeat” bill, which would effectively institute the FBFGM in these states.  There are 13 states left who have not ratified the ERA:  nine states in the former Confederacy, and these four outside the Confederacy:  Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah.   Tennessee and Texas legislatures have ratified the ERA, and these 9 pro-slavery states are still holding out:  Arkansas (my home state), Alabama, Florida, Georgia (my current state – it was introduced this year but got nowhere in the white male supremacist culture of the state legislature), Louisiana, Mississippi (my forebears’ home), North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. 

            Why all this detail?  So that all of us in these 13 states can work for one (or more) of these states to adopt the ERA.  It would be a fitting tribute for the 100^th anniversary of the passage of 19^th amendment, giving women the right to vote, in 2020.   The work towards the passage of the 19^th Amendment officially began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, at the first national women’s convention to obtain the right to vote for women.  Seventy-two years later it became law, and only one person (Charlotte Woodward Pierce) who had attended the 1848 convention was still living at that time.  In last week’s blog, I talked about “intersectionality,” and I noted how women’s rights were always at the center of the discussion of intersectionality.  Nowhere is that seen more clearly than in the struggle for the ERA – its passage would not end the struggle, as we have seen with the 14^th Amendment, but at least fundamental, constitutional rights for women would finally be codified.  If you’re living in one of the 13 states named above, join me in getting to work on our state’s passing of the ERA – JUST ONE MORE STATE!

"INTERSECTIONALITY"

“INTERSECTIONALITY”

            One of the truly surprising movements of the 19^th century was the abolitionist movement.  The Constitution of the United States had enshrined slavery and stacked the electoral deck to favor Southern white slaveholders (a stacking that remains today in the Electoral College).  Although Congress abolished the international slave trade in 1808, slavery itself was allowed to remain legal and viable.  In the middle of this ongoing struggle between the idea of equality and the reality of slavery, folk rose up in opposition to slavery – a few at first, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Sojourner Truth, David Walker, and others.  One of the other leaders of the abolitionist movement was also a woman named Abigail Kelley, though her role has been largely forgotten (what else is new in the patriarchal annals of American history?)

            For Women’s History Month, I want to revisit her story a bit, because it is  testimony to the necessary problem of “intersectionality,” which we saw played out in the struggles over the recent Women’s March.  Kelley was born in 1811 in Massachusetts to a Friends family and seemed to be destined to be a typical white woman of the 19^th century.  She was converted to an active anti-slavery life by Garrison and by the Grimke sisters, although there was already strain showing in the relationship of those three.   As she got more involved, almost immediately her skills at organizing, fund-raising and public speaking became apparent to all.   Kelley was committed to the abolition of slavery and to equal rights for women, and this intersectionality would cause her, and many others, problems for the rest of her life. 

            Her father died in 1836, and it provoked a deep crisis in her:  “Who am I?  What shall I do now?  How can I know God?”  She was 25 and unmarried, and she wondered if she should begin to look for a husband and settle into domestic life.   After hearing Garrison and the Grimke sisters speak, she decided that her future did not lie in female submission.  She did marry Stephen Symonds Foster, and they became a powerful couple in these intersectional movements.  She answered the call to throw herself into organizing women to oppose slavery.  She helped organize the first national convention of women against slavery in 1837.  The reaction from most males in the anti-slavery movement was ridicule and scorn – woman’s place was in the home.  Yet, Kelley’s talents were clear to those in the leadership of the movement.  She became a lecturer on the payroll of the all-male Anti-Slavery Society.

            She went on the lecture circuit in the West (Ohio and other places) and was an instant sensation.  She was reviled because she was an advocate for two causes at once: abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.  Her growing influence caused riots in public when she spoke.  Women who associated with her were tried in church courts for it.  The anti-slavery movement was split in two because she was a leader in this intersectionality of abolition of slavery and equality of women.  The great Frederick Douglass would criticize her for splitting the movement – he later repented of this and indeed attended the regional Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848.  And speaking of the difficulty of intersectionality, she and Douglass had a nasty split for several years over this.

            Yet she persevered – she recruited powerful women’s rights advocates Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. She traveled all over the North organizing and lecturing on abolition and on women’s rights.  Her journey did not end at the close of the Civil War.  The Anti-Slavery Society decided to disband because they thought that slave power had been defeated, but Abby Kelley knew better.  She was the first to speak against the disbanding, because she knew the depth of the slave power in American consciousness.  She and Frederick Douglass became allies again, and they formed a formidable partnership to work for the passage of the 15^th Amendment to extend the vote to black men.  Here came intersectionality again:  her former protégé Susan B. Anthony and others harshly criticized her and Douglass and others for supporting this amendment which gave men the right to vote but not women.  As we know, that amendment passed but was gradually gutted over the next 30 years by the powerful slave lobby.  It would be over 50 years before women won the right to vote. 

            The life of Abby Kelley is worthy of study and remembering because of her powerful witness and the difficult issue of intersectionality.  Throughout the decades of the 19^th century, the issues of abolition and women’s rights intersected and often clashed.  We should learn from her life and the life of others like Frederick Douglass, where these issues formed core values and forced difficult decisions.  Because of the power of patriarchy, women’s rights are almost always one of the roads in intersectionality.  We saw that in the recent struggles over the Women’s March of 2019, where race and gender and anti-Semitism intersected and clashed and weakened that particular movement, yet all the while, all of those issues were important and relevant.

            The support of the 19^th Amendment to give women the right to vote seems to be a no-brainer, but the issue of intersectionality came into that one, too.  The white leaders of that movement repeatedly used race to try to keep out black women’s leadership and to insure that white women and white men in the South would support the 19^th Amendment.  Indeed, the deciding vote in the deciding state for the 19^th Amendment was cast by a white man in the South – Harry Burns in Tennessee.  

            Wherever we find ourselves in this discussion, let us remember all these witnesses and find our place.  Women’s History Month reminds us how difficult, and yet how vital, the issue of intersecitonality is. Women often pay the price for this issue of intersectionality, so let us find our place and make our witness:  the ERA needs one more state for ratification.

"UNBOSSED AND UNBOUGHT"

“UNBOUGHT AN UNBOSSED”

            Fifty years ago on January 21, 1969, Shirley Chisholm took the oath of office to become the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress in United States history.    Her campaign theme had been “Unbossed and Unbought,” and it served her well until her retirement from Congress in 1984. Born Shirley Anita St. Hll in New York to parents from Barbados and Guyana (known as British Guiana then), she shared a similar heritage with Rhianna.

            She got a degree from Brooklyn College and began a career as an educator, running two day care centers.  It was here that she discovered the importance of politics in education, and later got elected as a state “assemblyman” in New York – the title did not yet reflect the astonishing idea that women could wield political power.  She decided to run for Congress from the 12^th District of New York (now represented by Carolyn Maloney), and she won handily.  It was a surprising upset in the election, and she held the seat until she retired. 

            She built up a powerful record of supporting and leading progressive causes in the House.  She was a strong supporter of rights for women, for people of darker skin color, and for those who were poor.  After she was elected to Congress, she was assigned to the Agriculture Committee, which she took as a deliberate slap, because her district was obviously urban.  During her complaining about it, a local Brooklyn rabbi suggested that she take the lemons and make lemonade.  He reminded her that the Ag Committee oversaw the surplus food program, a surplus created by the Agriculture Department’s purchase of farm products in order to keep farm prices up (no welfare here, of course!).   Chisholm got his point and used it to deepen and develop the distribution of these surplus foods to poor people in her and in other districts.  Indeed, when Caroline and I became pastors at Oakhurst Presbyterian, we were approached by the Ag Department to be a center for the distribution of surplus food.  We decided to do it, and we were astonished that each week that we did it, over 1,000 people came in to receive the food – cheese, powdered milk, flour, and other items.  Taking a page from Shirley Chisholm’s book, we never had any surplus food left over, causing the AG Department much chagrin.  They eventually ended the program at Oakhurst a few years later because we gave away too much food!   Chisholm would later use her experience on the Ag Committee to deepen and broaden the food stamp program and to create the WIC program.

            On August 10, 1970, she gave a strong speech on the floor of the House in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, which had not yet been adopted by Congress.  Here is some of what she said:  “The time is clearly now to put this House on record for the fullest expression of that equality of opportunity which our founding fathers professed.  They professed it, but they did not assure it to their daughters, as they tried to do for their sons.  The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens.  As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers – a great pity on both counts.  It is not too late to complete the work they left undone.  Today, here, we should start to do so.”  It would be almost two years before Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment, and as we all know, we’re still awaiting one more state to approve the ERA, so that it can be ratified and added to the Constitution.

            In January, 1972, Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President, making her the first woman ever to do so and the first African-American to do so.  I remember her announcing her candidacy, and still being in deep captivity to male supremacy, I thought that she was foolish to do this.  We needed to defeat Richard Nixon in his run for re-election, and I felt like Chisholm would only muddy the waters.  We, of course, hear echoes of this in the 2020 presidential announcements.  Chisholm was stung many times by males attacking her in this run, and her retort was simple and sweet:  "I'm looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I'm doing." 

            As we know, she failed in her bid for the presidency that year, but her candidacy set the stage for many others to follow.  Her record in Congress is pretty stunning:  a leader in the opposition to the Vietnam War, a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, a founder of the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977, the first black woman to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee.  She retired in 1984 to do her “divided duty,” as Susan B. Anthony had chided Ida Wells for doing almost 100 years before.  She was burned out, and she needed to take care of her husband, who had been badly injured in an auto accident.  She remained active in politics and in teaching, and her mantra for political life would serve us well today:  "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."   In this Women’s History Month, as we seem to hang in the balance on women’s rights, let us give thanks for pioneers like Shirley Chisholm – unbossed and unbought!

"LENT AND WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH"

“LENT AND WOMEN’S HISTORY”

            The Season of Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday.  Lent is a time in the church calendar that allows and even invites us to consider our captivity to the powers that lynched Black Jesus on the Cross.  The church has often emphasized that worshippers should give up something for Lent, so that we may know the suffering of humanity and of Black Jesus.  My Protestant heritage has downplayed this “giving up,” and I prefer to focus on my many captivities in this time.   As the man told Black Jesus in Luke 8 when he was asked to give his name, I join him in answering “My name is Legion,” meaning that my demonic possessions are many – so many and so powerful that I have given up my identity to them.  It is this captivity that we are all asked to consider in Lent.

            The Season of Lent usually intersects with Black History Month, and that intersection is a fruitful one for reflection in Lent in the American context. As has often been said, white supremacy is our original American sin, and we would do well to always keep that before us, no matter the liturgical season.  Yet this year, because Easter comes so late (April 21), Lent intersects with Women’s History Month, which exposes an even deeper and wider captivity:  patriarchy and the ideology of male supremacy.  These two forces – white supremacy and male supremacy – often intersect, and Catherine Meeks and I will explore this in in our forthcoming book “Passionate Justice:  Ida Wells as Witness for Our Time,” to be published this fall.   No matter one’s racial classification, however, patriarchy cuts across all of them and runs deeply through them.

            So, in this season of Lent, I’m going to focus on my captivity to male supremacy, and I’m hoping that all of us will do so.  Such a focus will ask us to first celebrate the personhood and witness of women in our lives – particular women in our histories, and women in general in the life of humanity.  That’s what Women’s History Month is about.  Take some time this month to celebrate the women who have literally and figuratively given you life.  Take some time this month to celebrate those women whom you have never met, who have been witnesses for justice and equity for all of us, but especially for women. 

            Second, on the Lent part of the cycle, let us remember our captivity to patriarchy, which seeks to prevent all of us from celebrating the humanity and the equality and the witness of women.  This captivity permeates all of us, telling males that we are superior to women, and telling women that they are inferior to men.  It only takes a nanosecond for me to note how deeply captured I am by patriarchy.  And, in a world that is saturated with seeing women as bodies only, as property of men, these reminders of patiarchy are everywhere in my life.  In this intersection of Women’s History Month and Lent, I want to wrestle with my captivity to patriarchy and to continue to seek some liberation from it.  Women’s History Month helps me in this journey by lifting up women who have worked and struggled and screamed and fought and witnessed for the human dignity of women, and at the same time, offered a glimpse of liberation to us men who remain captive to male supremacy.

            So, I want to start with those women in my life who have given me a glimpse of the world that Black Jesus desires: a world where women are judged by the content of their character and not by the content of their bodies.  My mother Mary Stroupe was the primary witness, along with my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins (whom I called “Gran”) with whom we lived.  In those days, they would have said “no” to my characterization of them as feminists, but they were strong, independent women who refused in the end to be defined by men.  I was blessed to be raised by these women, with no men in the house.  There are many stories that I could share (and will someday), but the main value that they gave me was this:  compassion and community are at the heart of life.  In an affluent, American world so determined by money and males and the lying idea of independence, this was truly a great gift.

            Five other women in my life leap out at me:  My partner Caroline Leach has changed my life dramatically and deepened my commitment to equity for all, especially for women.  She and our daughter Susan Stroupe have helped me see the need to steadily resist the Forced Gestation and Forced Birth Movement (sometimes known as the anti-abortion movement).  I refuse to call it pro-life, because it does not care about life – when the baby is born, the FGFBM is ready to cut off all support for the baby.   No, the FGFBM has only one focus:  control of women’s bodies.

            Three other women are relatively new to my life, but they have influenced me so deeply:  daughter-in-law Erin Graham and granddaughters Emma and Zoe Stroupe.  I look forward to learning even more from them in the years that I have left.  And, of course, though he is not a woman, our son David, has been so important in receiving these values and growing them in his own way.  I am grateful to these seven women who have deepened me and helped me to begin to find some liberation from male supremacy.  There are many other women, of course, who have helped me to see the humanity of women and my continuing captivity.  In this season of Lent, so I am aware of my deep captivity, and I will be focusing on the intersection of the celebration of women and the ongoing struggle for liberation for all of us from the ideology of male supremacy.  I hope that you’ll join me in this journey in this season.

"THE GREAT MIGRATION"

“THE GREAT MIGRATION”

             Caroline and I heard Isabel Wilkerson speak a couple of week ago at Agnes Scott College on the issue of migration.  It was right in the middle of the Congressional negotiations over the Trump Wall, and she used her fine book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” as the basis for her presentation.  In her talk, she noted that there were three main routes of the great migration of African-Americans from the South from 1915-1970.  Some went northeast to New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.  Some went north to the Midwest – Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago.  And some went west to Los Angeles.  In all of these migrations, she emphasized that America gained greatly because, while these new regions were not free of neo-slavery and segregation, they were dramatically more open to the humanity of African-Americans than the South had been.

            She shared many stories of these contributions of African-Americans once their dreams could begin to bear fruit, but this one stuck with me.  One such family lived in Oakville, Alabama, in the early 1920’s, and they were hoping to migrate to Cleveland, Ohio.  The parents were sharecroppers, meaning that they were held in neo-slavery, and they had ten children, because they needed them to work on the small amount of land that they leased.  They had been dreaming of going north to Cleveland, as many other African-Americans had done from their area.  The mother was anxious to migrate, but the father was hesitant – he was scared, because the white supremacist society in which they lived heavily discouraged migration.  Some immigrants were arrested before they left, some were thrown off their farms or lost their jobs, and some were beaten or killed.  The message was clear – stay here and provide the cheap labor, or great harm will come to you. 

            Things changed for the family when their youngest was born.  In hope of going to Cleveland, they named him that:  James Cleveland.  As the baby grew, he was thin and sickly, and he could not work in the fields without getting deathly ill.  This situation pushed the dad to take action on migration – they would head to Cleveland and the new world there.  As Wilkerson tells it, as they were preparing to leave, the little boy happened to bump into the dad, as they were packing to leave.  The dad put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to steady himself, and it was only then that the boy noticed how afraid his dad was – his hands were shaking with fright. 

            They did safely arrive in Cleveland, and on the first day of school, James Cleveland went to school at age nine.  The teacher asked him what his name was, and he replied that he was called “J.C.”  She could not understand his strong Southern accent, so she took his name to be “Jesse,” and she called him that.  When JC went home to tell his parents about the mistake, they advised him to stick with the name “Jesse,” and he did.  So did everyone else, and instead of being James Cleveland Owens, he became Jesse Owens.   He became a track and field star, and as we all likely know, he went into another white supremacist venue in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, presided over by Adolf Hitler.   He would win 4 gold medals in these Olympics, the first American ever to do so in track and field.  In so doing, he burst wide open the white supremacist theory that was the foundation of Nazi Germany and white America.  Had he stayed in the fields of neo-slavery Alabama, he likely would have shriveled up there, if not dying of his respiratory disease. 

            Of course, Jesse Owens did not end white supremacy.  Hitler went on to the horrific suffering of World War II, and when Owens returned to the USA, he was greeted with segregation.  In a reception given in his honor at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, he was forced to ride up the freight elevator rather than be allowed to ride on the “white” elevator.  Yet, he put a dent in the armor of neo-slavery and segregation, and his witness resonates now to us, so much so that those twins of white supremacy have been put back in the basement of American history.

            As Trump rattles on about the wall, let us remember the migrants, let us remember all the doctors and lawyers and artists and preachers and athletes and justice workers who have come here as immigrants, and let us dedicate ourselves to justice and equity for them and for ourselves, not only because it is right but also because it is our salvation.

"A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM - BARBARA JOHNS PART II"

“A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM – BARBARA JOHNS PART II”

            The Superintendent of Prince Edward County’s (PEC) segregated schools was the son of Presbyterian missionaries named TJ McElwane. Since his appointment in 1918, he had expended a lot of energy on keeping neo-slavery in power in the schools.  However, Barbara Johns was coming for him.  As we noted last week, she was a 15 year old student in Farmville’s rundown, “separate and unequal” black school.  Black parents were working for a new black school, and black leaders like Rev. Francis Griffin, Negro county agricultural agent John Lancaster (yes, there was a separate agency for African-Americans), and Boyd Jones (principal of black Moton High School) were lobbying heavily.  During the summer of 1950, Barbara Johns began to think that she must act. 

           

            As she began her junior year in high school, she talked with teachers about it, and one of them challenged her:  “Why don’t you do something about it?”  It stung her, but it also inspired her.  She met with Connie Stokes, president of the Student Council, and Connie’s brother John, who was a star athlete.  As John remembered it, she spoke with great effectiveness:  “She opened our eyes to a lot of things.  She emphasized that we must follow our parents, but in some instances, a little child shall lead them.”  They signed on and recruited a few more students – but no adults allowed –no parents, no teachers, no principals, no ministers.  The plan?  To go on strike, to boycott classes until the white school board agreed to build a new black high school.  It was a plan hatched and carried out in secret.

            Over the weekend of April 21-22, 1951,  word was passed among the students – take action on Monday.  On Monday morning, Principal Boyd Jones got an urgent phone call, saying that two of his students were at the Farmville bus station being hassled by the white police, and they were likely to be arrested and beaten up.  As soon as he left for the bus station, student monitors passed out notes from Principal Jones to the teachers, calling for an assembly at 11 AM.  Barbara Jones had forged the notes, and when all the students and teachers were gathered, the curtains were pulled back to reveal 16 year old Barbara Johns at the podium, with the strike committee seated behind her and the football team acting as marshals in front of her.  She called for order and invited the teachers to leave.  Seeing a dangerous situation developing, several teachers stepped forward to take over the room, but on Barbara’s cue, the marshals stepped up to block them.  Barbara then took off her shoe and rapped it on the podium – “All teachers must get out of this meeting!”  Most left, but some stayed to try to gain control. 

            Barbara Johns then spoke eloquently from her heart – it was time that they were treated equally with whites, time to have a decent black high school, time for students to take leadership.  The strike committee’s proposal:  they were going to march out of the school right then, and they were going to stay out until the white school board agreed to build a new and decent black high school.  The vote was taken, and the students marched out, up to Rev. Griffin’s First Baptist Church.  The boycott held, despite great stress and duress.  When Barbara Johns got home that night, she told her grandmother Mary Croner, “Grandma, I walked out of school today and took 450 students with me.”  Mary Croner later recalled:  “It took my breath away – you reckon you done the right thing?”  Johns answered:  “I believe so – stick with us.”

            Reverend Griffin helped them contact the NAACP to get legal assistance, and Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson arrived at a meeting on April 25 in a room overflowing with black students and adults.  The lawyers indicated that the NAACP was changing strategy – they no longer were seeking “separate but equal” schools – they now were seeking to end segregation and neo-slavery.  The assembly decided to accept that challenge, and a 14 year old girl, Dorothy Davis, was the first name listed on the lawsuit challenging segregation itself.  It became known as Davis v Prince Edward County, and though it lost in federal district court in Richmond in 1952, the NAACP filed an appeal to SCOTUS.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear it, but it grouped it with several other NAACP lawsuits, consolidating 5 cases into what became Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

            In that case, SCOTUS overturned “separate but equal,” but as we all know, racism and white supremacy run deep.  For her own protection, Barbara Johns was sent to New York for her senior year.  The state of Virginia closed all of its public schools for awhile in response to Brown.  PEC closed its schools from 1959-1963, being the last county in Virginia to re-open the public schools.  If you go to PEC today, you will find the public schools there as segregated as they were when Barbara Johns rapped her shoe on the podium in 1951.  A little child did lead them then, but her teacher’s question to Barbara resonates to us in our time: “What are you going to do about it?” 

(For more information on this story and on all the cases that led to the Brown decision, see Richard Kluger’s excellent book on it:  “Simple Justice.”)

"THE STATE OF VIRGINIA MEETS BARBARA JOHNS"

“THE STATE OF VIRGINIA MEETS BARBARA JOHNS”

            The state of Virginia has been in the news a lot lately, as well it should be.  With the three top elected officers of the state facing their racist and abusive captivity and with the leader of the Republican Senate facing the same captivity, it is hard to know what to think or where to put one’s allegiance.  Except, one thing remains clear – the racism and sexism of Virginia and the United States continue to endure.

            This is a big anniversary year for Virginia – it is the 400^th anniversary of Virginia’s General Assembly, making it the oldest continuous legislative body in America.  It is no coincidence that it is also the 400^th anniversary of the coerced arrival of African people to Jamestown, having been captured and forced to become slaves in the first recorded passage of Africans to America.  It is also the 60^th anniversary of Prince Edward County closing all of its public schools in order to avoid integrating them.

            Prince Edward County (PEC) is in the center of the state of Virginia, and it was in the center of the civil rights struggle in the 1950’s.  Farmville is the small town in the center of PEC, and PEC is at the northern end of the great Black Belt that forms an enormous curve back towards the southwest for over 1000 miles to the Mississippi River and beyond.  Along this belt of African-American population came some of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights movement in the 20^th century.  So it would be in PEC,in which a series of actions there would alter the life of everyone in the USA.

            For all its contrariness, indeed because of its contrariness, PEC has produced some powerful witnesses for racial justice.  One was Robert Moton, right-hand man to Booker T. Washington and Washington’s successor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  Another was the Rev. Vernon Johns, one of the Big Three of black preaching in the middle of the 20^th century, and predecessor of Martin Luther King, Jr., as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.  A third was Barbara Johns, niece of Vernon Johns.  She was born in New York City in 1935, but several years after her birth, her family moved back to PEC to her mother’s family farm, where maternal grandmother Mary Croner ruled the roost.  At Grandmother Croner’s feet, Barbara would learn about an unshakeable love, a love that was strong and enduring, a love that would not let her go, no matter what white folk said about her or did to her.  But, she also learned at the feet of her paternal grandmother, Sally Johns, mother of her father Robert and uncle Vernon Johns.  At her feet, Barbara learned about justice and courage and dignity.  She would later say of Grandmother Johns: “She had no fear and was not the slightest bit subservient to whites.”  From Mary Croner, she learned about the enduring power of love.  From Sally Johns, she learned about the enduring call to justice.

            She would need both of these dimensions, as she encountered the powers and principalities of racism and sexism in Prince Edward County in the state of Virginia in the late 1940’s and 1950’s in the age of neo-slavery.  PEC did not even build a “separate” high school for African-Americans until 1939, named after one of its most accomplished sons, Robert Moton.  It was awful from the start – though built under the “separate but equal” clause of the SCOTUS decision of 1896, there was nothing “equal” about it.  It was little more than a large shack – no heating, no place to eat, no adequate facilities.  Despite its woeful nature, black students came.  By 1947, the enrollment was twice the number that it was supposed to hold.  Black parents began to petition the all-white school board of PEC to obey the “separate but equal” clause and build an adequate, separate school for African-American students. They received little or nothing for their taxes – wasn’t Virginia a leader in some earlier movement about “taxation without representation?”   

            It will surprise no one that the school board denied their request many times, indicating a lack of funds in the budget.  Leading this resistance was the white superintendent of schools, T. J. McIlwane, son of Presbyterian missionaries in Japan.  Indeed, he had been born in Japan.  He became superintendent of PEC schools in 1918 and held the post until 1958.  He worked hard to keep neo-slavery in place, never calling it that, of course, but always working for it.  Waiting for him, though was a 15 year old student named Barbara Johns, and we will engage her part of the story next week.  You can, of course, look her up, if you want to know more of the story before then.  Suffice it to say that it is astonishing!