"DREAMING OF AMERICA"

 “DREAMING OF AMERICA”

While I’ve been taking care of Caroline in her recovery from back surgery, I’ve had some time to look through my files and papers.  The Presbyterian Historical Society has graciously asked me to archive my papers and files with them, and I give thanks for that.  Rather than send them 6,000 pounds of papers and sermons (or so it seems to me), I am sorting through stuff.  Tedious and time-consuming, but usually fun as I encounter sermons anew;  sometimes painful as I engage places where I was obviously wrong or insensitive.

We started celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday in 1985 at Oakhurst.  One of our former members, Wanda White, had been on Coretta Scott King’s staff, and she remembered the breakfasts that they had with and for the staff.  So, in 1985, we started having a Sunday MLK Breakfast on his birthday weekend, with speakers and/or youth, followed by a sermon on MLK.  That tradition continues at Oakhurst, so we thank Wanda White, Azzie Preston, Choquita McGriff and others for getting it started!

Looking through my files this weekend, I’ve begun engaging the many sermons that I was privileged to preach on Martin Luther King, Jr.  We covered many of his themes, and over our last decade at Oakhurst, we would pick particular speeches and sermons of his and focus on its context and its content.  In looking at all these again, I was reminded of how much MLK believed in the dream of America.  My favorite speech of Dr. King’s was “Drum Major for Justice,” but the one that influenced me the most was “I Have a Dream,” delivered by King most famously at the March on Washington in August, 1963.  It was the most influential in my life because it helped me to see a different vision of America, of Black people, and of myself.  I first listened to it by myself in my house on the day that King preached it in DC – I was deliberately by myself.  My mother was working, and I did not want any of my white friends to know that I was listening to it.  I had begun to feel some churnings in relation to the racism that I had been taught – and that I believed.  I had heard and had believed that King was just trying to make money off unsuspecting people.  I also believed that all those who agreed with him – Black and white alike – were fools.

Something drew me to him and to that day, and his speech was one of the motivating factors in my beginning to step out of the bounds of the racism which held me captive.  His eloquence, his ideas, and his emphasis on the American dream all touched me deeply.  And, with 250,000+ people there, it was hard to think that all of them were fools.  This speech was given the week before I began my senior year in high school, and although I did not make any real changes in my life in regard to race at that time, I did decide that there was more to the story than I had been told.  And, I did decide that I would make an effort to learn that different story.

Dr. King believed in the American dream when he gave that speech in 1963.  As he engaged the racism that is so deep in the American character, he began to lose hope in that dream, in the capacity of those classified as “white” to hear the truth, to receive the truth, and to begin to change our lives and our minds and our actions in relation to race.   His overall mood about the American dream - especially in regard to the Vietnam war and the racism that undergirded it – began to change.  His belief in the power of the arc of history to move towards justice began to be shaken.  By the time of his assassination by the very people he sought to love, he was deeply depressed and angered about the possibilities of America.  As the fine writer and theologian James Cone (a fellow Arkansan, I might note) put it so well in his book on Malcolm X and MLK,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm began with justice and moved towards love.

That American dream – a dream of justice and equity that is also at the heart of American history – looks shaky again.  Though we have made significant progress since King’s speech, the power of racism remains deep and wide in American culture.  With Donald Trump’s rise on the back of white supremacy, we hear the voices of racism returning to a full-throated blast, and many fear that the next elections will be like those of the 1890’s:  a repudiation of past gains on justice and equity and a return to the repressive forces that have dogged us and shaped us in so many twisted ways.  

    In her 2016 book “Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America,” my friend and co-author Catherine Meeks suggests that it is possible to recover the American dream that drove Dr. King and many others.  In order to find such recovery, however, we will need to do a lot of work for ourselves and for the world, and as Catherine so aptly puts it, we are all called to be just a little bit braver each day.  We may not be able to take giant steps each day – I sure couldn’t do it on that day in August, 1963 – but we can all take some baby steps each day.  Let us find those steps to take in our lives and seek to live into God’s dream for us.

"TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY”

When I was growing up on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta, I inhaled the racism that flowed through the physical and psychological air there.  That racism was one of the reasons that I always felt weird about Columbus Day.  Although Americans of Italian heritage had made it into the classification of “white” by my time, that classification had not quite made it down to Helena, Arkansas.  Those of us who were “truly white” (whatever that means) were sure that people of Italian heritage were somewhere in the middle between the exalted category of “white” and the degraded category of Black (most often described by the N-word).

The celebration of Columbus Day was strange to me as a boy – our segregated school system did not recognize many days as national holidays, and Columbus Day was one of the unrecognized ones.  I have since later learned that my feeling of weirdness about Columbus Day was correct – I was just feeling it for the wrong reasons.  As I learned more about American history, it turns out that Columbus Day was a main focus of the savaging of the land and the indigenous peoples of the land by those classified as “white.”  Now it is called “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as it should be.  Though Columbus did not “discover” America, his landing in a place that he thought was India would become the opening for huge exploitation of the native peoples and the land.  

    Caroline and I had our first pastorate in Norfolk, Virginia, and there we learned that American history actually began before the Civil War.  We visited Jamestown several times , and there I learned about the hospitality of the coalition of native tribes led by Chief Powhatan.  While not all native tribes welcomed the immigrants known as “whites,” many of them did.  Or at least they did until it became clear that those classified as “white” intended to do them harm and to take their land and resources.  Chief Powhatan noted this shift in his speech to Captain John Smith in 1609:

“Why should you take by force from us that which you can have by love?  

Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food?  What can

you get by war? And then you must consequently famish by wrongdoing

your friends…….I therefore exhort you to peaceable councils, and above all

I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness,

be removed and sent away.”  

I am grateful to John Peacock and Ed Loring of Baltimore for calling my attention to this speech, and our hope is to print the full version in Hospitality Magazine early in 2022.  Chief Powhatan’s speech is part of a long litany of laments and anguish and anger directed at the rapacious appetites of those classified as “white.”  This approach to “non-white” peoples on the land continued for centuries.  Indeed, in a speech almost 250 years after Powhatan’s speech, Chief Seattle gave a similar one to the “white” governor of Washington in  1854:

            “Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt

 from the common destiny. We may be {brothers} after all. We shall see.    We will ponder your

 proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make

 this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will

 the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side,

 every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of

 my tribe.”

In Chief Seattle’s response, we should note one of the great gifts of Indigenous people to all of us:  his sense that the land belongs to God, that we all are siblings, and especially that there is special connection between the earth and humanity.  As we swelter with global warming, as we worry about the rising sea levels, as we see the dramatic climate change brought on by the human greed noted by Chief Powhatan, let us remember that there is a different way of approaching life, a different way of approaching one another.  

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, let us remember the horrific suffering brought by those of European heritage, but even more strongly let us remember this gift that is still available to us from current Indigenous People, from current Native Americans – a vision of life that sees all of life as part of the same web.  Let us live by the love noted by Chief Powhatan and the connectedness lifted up by Chief Seattle.  It is a calling and a struggle that offers us life.  It is a struggle which we cannot avoid on Indigenous Peoples Day. Yet, it is the way to life.

"100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN - WOW!"

 “100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN – WOW!

On September 25, 1921, some 66 people came forward in a tent meeting at the corner of East lake and Second Avenue in Decatur, Georgia, to sign a charter to become members of the newly forming church, Oakhurst Presbyterian.  In those segregated, neo-slavery days, it formed as an all-white church, and it stayed that way for 50 years, almost losing its life to its belief in white supremacy.  When the city of Atlanta took housing from Black people in the 1960’s in order to build stadia for budding professional sports teams, the people moved east and south, many coming into the Oakhurst neighborhood.  As those of us classified as “white” usually do, we fled when Black people moved into the community.  Oakhurst Presbyterian was no exception – its membership dropped from 850 to 80 over a 15 year period. With a huge building, a huge mortgage, and rapidly dwindling membership, the Presbytery gave serious effort to closing the church or forcing it to merge with another congregation.  

The first Black member joined in 1970, and the ministers and members were dedicated to developing that diversity and to keeping the church open.  Dr. Lawrence Bottoms was the senior pastor in the mid-1970’s.  He was one of the first Black ministers in the PCUS denomination to be called as senior pastor of a majority white congregation, and while he was pastor at Oakhurst, he was elected as the first and only Black Moderator of the denomination.  His leadership and ministry enabled the church to survive, along with that of the Reverend Jim Andrews, who was stated clerk of the former PCUS denomination, and later first stated clerk of the re-united PCUSA.  The other pastors, Rev. Jack Morris and Rev. Bruce Gannaway, were also powerful leaders in helping Oakhurst to develop its diversity and to keep its doors open.

Caroline and I were blessed to join in that leadership in 1983 and to stay there until she retired in 2012, and I retired in 2017.  The Presbytery leadership had given us two years of funding to try to get Oakhurst stabilized. Through God’s power and with the hard work of the members and elders and friends of Oakhurst, it worked.  Presbytery continued to fund Oakhurst through 2006, when the membership and budget had grown to a size that would sustain the church.  At that time, the Session asked Presbytery to share the funds with other congregations and ministries.  

Through Christine Caliier’s initiative to contact Sylvester Monroe of Time Magazine, we began to receive national publicity, including a full-page article in Time in April, 1995, which included these words: “Oakhurst, which has a congregation that is roughly half Black and half white, is what diversity is all about:  people of different races coming together not in the mournful, candle-bearing aftermath of some urban riot or the artificially arranged precursor to some political photo op, but because they want to be together.”  That article led to many others in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and on NPR, CNN, NBC News, CBS Radio, and the Christian Science Monitor, and others.

There were many factors in the survival and the thriving of Oakhurst, but today I want to give thanks for Caroline’s powerful, visionary, and dedicated ministry at Oakhurst.  Her leadership enabled us to make tremendous progress in two vital areas:  community ministry and Christian education.  She was a whirlwind in getting the ministry and the building open to the community, motivating people to get out of their houses to come see what all the energy and work was at the church.  She also had the vision to see that if we were to get new members who would sustain the church over the long haul, we would have to have first-rate Christian education programs, especially for families with young children.  She went to work on that and brought it into being.  Her ministry paid off on so many levels for Oakhurst, even though she never received a full-time salary until the last year before her retirement.  On the Sunday of her retirement, Inez Giles arranged for a parade of 75 children and young adults, who had grown up at Oakhurst, under Caroline’s leadership.  They came into the sanctuary and brought her flowers– a powerful moment.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what one of the books about Oakhurst had to say about her.  The quote is  taken from “We Are the Church Together: Cultural Diversity in Congregational Life,” written in 1996 by Chuck Foster and Ted Brelsford, based on a Candler at Emory study of three diverse churches in Atlanta:

“Caroline, Oakhurst’s associate pastor, greets us also.  Caroline is strikingly friendly in this setting.  For the most part, I have seen and heard of Caroline before primarily in her capacity as minister of outreach: challenging the status quo at school board meetings; taking commissioners to task for feeble and discriminating housing policies; advocating for the community health center, drug addicted children, illiterate adults, low income parents.  This morning she is not carrying those burdens.  She seems excited and buoyant.  She is delighted to meet my family and eager to make us comfortable.”

So, thank you, Caroline!  And, thanks to so many others who made Oakhurst possible and who continue to do so.  Under the leadership of Reverend Amantha Barbee, the congregation just began a celebration of its 100 year history and visioning of its future.  Check it out sometime!

"FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS: THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK"

 “FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS:  THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK”

        Caroline is recovering slowly but surely from her major back surgery two weeks ago on August 30.  Thanks to all of you who have prayed and called and written and e-mailed and provided food and respite care!  We’ll keep you posted – her next scheduled doc appointment is October 6 via telemed, and we hope that her progress remains steady enough that she will not need anything else.  After being blessed to have not been in the hospital overnight since 1982, we both have learned a lot in this process.

The headlines move fast in the 24 hour news cycle, so I am a little bit behind in this blog.  Yet this phenomenon of the patriarchy striking back never seems to go away or seem dated.  There are many examples of it in our world, but nowhere more clearly seen than in the events in Afghanistan and Texas, where the same kind of political mindsets seem to have won the day through violence and seizure of political power.  The Taliban truly are scary in their approach to women and to political dissent.  One can admire their staying power – at least 30 years of Soviet and American occupation, and yet here they are, back in power.  Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” seems appropriate reading for these days in Afghanistan, as it is for all days.

The fiasco in Texas over women’s rights and the need for safe and healthy abortions are another sign of the patriarchy striking back.  The refusal of SCOTUS to intervene in the Texas law that allows only 6 weeks for legal access to abortion is a portent of more bad things to come for all of us, especially women.  As many people have pointed out, many women do not even know that they are pregnant by six weeks into the pregnancy, so this is clearly designed to end legal access to abortion in Texas.  It is still hard for me to believe that the political party that preaches  individual rights and local governments is now preaching about total control over women and their bodies.  Texas has also picked up a Soviet style manner of enforcement – neighbors telling on (and suing) neighbors.  

One other disturbing aspect of SCOTUS’ refusal to intervene in the Texas law is that such a refusal basically endorses the idea of “nullification,” the doctrine that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina tried to use in order to preserve slavery.  Calhoun  called it out in the 1830’s in response to a federal taxation act, but everyone knew that lying underneath this argument was the struggle over the legality of slavery.  Calhoun claimed that states had the constitutional right to “nullify” federal laws that the state felt were unconstitutional, looking towards a time when the federal government might outlaw slavery.  President Andrew Jackson came down hard on Calhoun and this approach, but Jackson knew that this was no political foil for power.  The antipathy was so deep that Jackson prepared federal troops to enter South Carolina and defend the law if necessary.  Calhoun and his followers backed down on this one, but it prepared the groundwork for the next generation in South Carolina to start the Civil War 25 years later.

Texas used the doctrine of nullification to develop its law on making abortions illegal, and SCOTUS has seemed to endorse the doctrine in its response last week.  As awful as this law is for women’s rights, let none of us think that it will stop there.  In this approach, states can seek to “nullify” federal laws and federal rights in many areas, especially voting rights, as we see happening all around the country.  In striking back, the patriarchy has moved not only to nullify women and their rights but the rights of all of us.  The redistricting battles and decisions of this fall will tell us a lot about where we all will come out in this struggle, but whatever those decisions, voter turnout in 2022 will be crucial.  And, however the patriarchy and Soviet-style politicians choose to strike back next, let us find those Jedi warriors in ourselves and together so that we may find ways to assert the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of all human beings.

"SURGERY LOOMING - OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY"

 “SURGERY LOOMING – OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY”

Neither Caroline or I have had an overnight stay in the hospital since our daughter Susan was born in the early 80’s.  We are so grateful and blessed that our health has taken us this far without hospitalization.  We have both had outpatient surgeries that did not require an overnight stay, and we are grateful for the surgeons, nurses, support staff, and technology which enabled that.  

Caroline has been experiencing major back, leg, and hip pains since early last fall.  She has been consulting with Emory nurses and physicians and has received spinal steroid injections, which have provided temporary relief but have worn off quickly.  Her pain level has consistently remained at a 7 or 8 level for a long time, and with the advice of the surgeon, she is now scheduled to have major back surgery this Thursday, August 26 at the Emory Spine Hospital.  It had been scheduled for tomorrow, but we learned late this past week that a major surgical X-ray machine had broken down, so the surgery was moved to Thursday – we want the equipment to be working!  We’re hoping that the surge in Covid cases does not postpone the surgery again.  We should find out at her  pre-op this Tuesday.  If it is a go, we will give thanks and get ready for surgery, for the 2-3 day stay in the hospital, and the long recuperation at home.  As pastors, we have seen many people in the hospital, but this will be our first time in almost 40 years as a patient.

In this sense, we are turning a corner in our journey.  Caroline is longing for relief from the pain, so while she is dreading the surgery and recovery, she sees this as an opportunity for new possibilities with much less pain.  Since I am not experiencing the pain directly (though certainly indirectly) and given our different personalities, I am seeing this corner turn with anxiety.  Will she make it OK through the surgery?  Can I be an adequate caretaker for her over the six week recuperation period?  Please be lifting us both up in this turning the corner, especially Caroline who will be experiencing the roughest part of this turn.  We are grateful to many friends who will be assisting, and to North Decatur Presbyterian Church, which has set up a mealtrain for us.

We just had a great visit with both of our children, Susan and David (and granddaughter Zoe as a bonus!)  They were both reminding us of how grateful they are that the surgeons and surgical techniques are available for the procedure, which seems very likely to provide major pain relief for Caroline.  At this kind of corner turning, I am glad that in our rationed health care system, we are one of those who are given the care.  It reinforces our continued commitment to working for this kind of health care for everyone in our society.   

From my point of view, it is also turning a corner to acknowledge fully our aging and the limitations that come with that.  That is a hard awakening, but it is upon us. I am grateful to so many of you who have made that transition so well and who have  modeled it so well – with determination, with commitment to your own humanity and that of others, and with humor!  I am reminded of the closing lines of the Tennyson poem “Ulysses” that I learned in high school:  

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I don’t know that Caroline and I moved earth and heaven, but we have been trailblazers in many ways.  And, though my heart doesn’t often feel heroic in these days, I do resonate with the poet’s image of continuing to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.   Please be lifting us up in this next big step in our journey.  I know that many of you have come through major surgery well, and your work and recovery and strength are inspiring to us.  In the days  of recovery, I’m not sure when my next weekly blog will be, but I will be posting updates on Caroline.  We give thanks for you and for your friendship and support and prayers.

"WORDS FROM GERMANY"

 “WORDS FROM GERMANY”

At the end of May, the Rev. Andreas Holzbauer asked me to lead one of his seminars for college students in Germany at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.  The class was on “White Christianity,” with an emphasis on the rise of white supremacy in USA under the guise of Christianity.  Due to the time change, I had to be ready to talk on Zoom and lead about 30 students at 7 AM EDT.  I was honored to be asked to do it, so I jumped right in!  Andreas had asked me to share my story for the first part of the seminar.

I shared the usual parts of my background.  I had been raised by a loving, single mother in the racist South in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I learned and accepted racism and patriarchy and homophobia and militarism and other demonic forces.  I had been taught these forces by people who loved me and whom I loved, and because of that, I believed that they were true.

I also shared some of the leverage points where I had begun to change my mind and my heart on these forces.  One was my mother – though captured by these forces herself, she worked in subtle ways to shape me in another view, ways such as not allowing me to say the “N-word” or call Black people by their first names.  I recalled hearing MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and thinking that there were other realities out there, realities that I had not yet allowed myself to encounter.  I lifted up my college experiences, and I talked about the most powerful experience that changed me:  working for a summer at a church in Brooklyn, where for the first time in my life I experienced Black people as human beings like me.  I also shared how my time as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church had challenged my continuing captivity to racism, and how it had deepened my understanding of myself and others and of how demonic forces like white supremacy can take us over.

I concluded by discussing the rising tide of white supremacy in the Obama and Trump years, and how such forces seem to be a permanent part of our life together.  When I opened up the seminar for questions, I noticed that all of those who asked questions (about half the students) spoke fluently in English, and I remembered my own provincialism – I speak only English.  The first question threw me for a loop – “Do you think that there will be a civil war in the United States again soon?”

That question had been hanging around the corners of my mind ever since the January 6 insurrection and the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.  It had persisted because Trump promoted the “Big Lie,” and so many people seemed to believe it.  Still, I was taken aback by the question from a German student, until I remembered that Germans have such a better memory than we do on how democracy is undermined.  I had started re-reading David Potter’s excellent book on the prelude to the Civil War called “Impending Crisis 1848-1861,” published in 1976.  In it he names many steps that led to the Civil War, and he emphasized 4 main ones:  the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the horrible SCOTUS decision of 1857 when Dred and Harriet Scott were deemed not to be human beings because of their racial classification, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

As I pondered the German student’s question, I tried to run through what similar steps might be in our time.  I came up with my four, and I invite you to think of your four.  My four steps are the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 (triggering a huge surge in racism), the horrible SCOTUS decision in 2013 Shelby v. Holder which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, and the January 6 insurrection connected to the continuing “Big Lie.”  Added to these four steps is the Covid crisis which has put everyone on edge.

We live in crucial times – will there be a civil war in our time?  At this point, I do not think so, but we seem so divided and so volatile.  The US Census data released last week shows a drop in population for those classified as “white” for the first time since the census began in 1790.  That is not news, but it still gave me pause in these times.  Rather than celebrating this glorious vision of democracy and diversity in USA, I am afraid that my “white” siblings will see this as a time to act in order to preserve the “white” nature of the USA.  

Words from Germany are provocative at this time, and they leave me wondering. Yet they also make me more determined to work for justice and equity for all of us counted in the 2020 Census, while at the same time giving a loud “YES” to this growing, sprawling democracy, even as the forces of repression and oppression growl more loudly.  

"A MAN NAMED MOSES"

 “A MAN NAMED MOSES”

Amzie Moore was an African-American WWII veteran, living in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the late 1950’s.  After fighting for democracy in Europe, when he returned to his native Mississippi, he owned a gas station, but he was determined to work for democracy in his home state.  He began to work on getting African-Americans to vote, and it was a heavy slog.  He asked his friend, Ella Baker, part of SNCC, to find someone to send to him to help him work for voting rights in Mississippi.

In August, 1960, Ella Baker’s emissary knocked on Amzie Moore’s door.  Moore was astonished at the physical presence of the emissary, a young man named Bob Moses.  Moore later recalled that Moses was frail, wore glasses, and was soft-spoken.  Is this the man that Ella Baker sent?  How could he stand against the Pharoahs of Mississippi, with their armies of sheriffs and police and state patrols and white mobs?  Moore was not the first, nor the last, to be surprised by Bob Moses.  He and Moses would work together with others to change Mississippi and national history.

Bob Moses died last month at age 86, and though he had never sought it, he had reached legendary status as a civil rights organizer and later as the founder of the Algebra Project, which was designed to ensure that “minority” kids received the math skills and thinking that they needed.  He was born in Harlem in 1935, whose parents were a janitor and a domestic worker.  He was a brilliant student and got a scholarship in 1952 to almost-all-white Hamilton College.  There he was attracted to philosophy, math, and the Quaker philosophy of non-violence.  He later stated that he was convicted and inspired by the Black student sit-ins in 1960.  He was inspired that they were no longer being passive in an oppressive and racist system.  He decided to go into the belly of the beast to help secure human rights and voting rights.  And, as Nina Simone once sang, “Everybody knows bout Mississippi.”

He arrived there and began to organize people to seek to throw off the idea of the internalized oppression from the system of race, an oppression that told them that they were inferior and deserved inferior status.  He began organizing in McComb and was beaten up and shot at, because of these efforts.  He was also attracted to Sunflower County, where the poverty and fear were so great.  He organized there, and he ended up taking eighteen people to register to vote in the county seat of Ruleville.  One of those eighteen people was Fannie Lou Hamer.  They were not successful, but the fires were being lit.

After months of frustrating and dangerous activity, Moses made a fundamental decision, which would change the course of history and eventually end neo-slavery in the South.  Black friends had been beaten up and even killed for their efforts, with very little coverage from the media and no support from the federal government.  Moses decided to organize Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, with the express purpose of getting “white” young adults to come and work for justice.  He made the calculated decision that if white people (especially from the North) were beaten up in Mississippi, there would be a lot more coverage and attention paid to the Mississippi movement.  

In 1964, hundreds of white and Black volunteers streamed into Mississippi. And, tragically but not surprisingly, some were killed.  Two whites, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney were killed together in Neshoba County.  During the search for the bodies of these three men, many other Black bodies were discovered.  Moses’ non-violent, costly strategy had worked.  One year later, the Voting Rights Act would be enacted into law – it would end neo-slavery in the South.

Moses was also a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War.  He applied for conscientious objector status.  One of the most non-violent men of all, his application was denied – I still can’t believe that I was granted a CO, but he was not.  He moved to Canada and later to Africa, returning to the USA after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty  in 1977 to those who had left the country in opposition to the war.  

Then, he began his next monumental work:  the Algebra Project, designed to make certain that poor kids, especially poor kids of color, would get the math skills and critical thinking that they needed.  He began the project in 1982 with a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and it is still going today.  Moses was a giant in so many ways, a non-violent but definitely not passive genius and organizer.  There is so much more to his life and witness, so if you don’t know his story, please look him up.  Like the Moses of the Hebrew Scriptures, he has shown us paths in the wilderness to find our home.