The Promised Land (2)

On June 11, 1963, a reluctant young President Kennedy addressed the nation. For the second time in his administration he was forced to federalize a state’s National Guard to ensure that black students were able to enroll in universities, which were deemed “off-limits” to people of color.

            Kennedy was not a champion of civil rights at the time. His ventures into the increasingly violent white reaction to a black minister’s call for an end to “Jim Crow,” a call for equality under the law regardless of the color of one’s skin, were often politically motivated. But now, with a Southern Governor standing on the threshold of his state’s flagship university and refusing admittance to two qualified black students in defiance of a Federal court order, with fire hoses and attack dogs let loose on peaceful children (some as young as six) marching and singing, Kennedy had seen enough.

            Race, he said, was a moral issue. America cannot be the land it professes to be as long as some of its citizens are denied the American dream, denied equal citizenship because of their color. He said, “Race has no place in American life or law.”

            That night, a young black wife and her children waited for a husband and father to arrive home in Jackson, Mississippi. This man – soft spoken and well versed – was the face of the civil rights movement in his state. As his wife and children walked out the front door of their home to tell him of President Kennedy’s words a shot rang out. Medgar Evers lay dead in his driveway. His crime? He believed in “the promised land.”

            Race in America. President Kennedy was right. Until we deal with it, lay it out there and move forward, America will never get to the Promised Land. I write this blog in a moment of deep distress over what I saw in here this week among young men who are – purportedly – seeking an education and a future. As I have written so often, prison is a reflection of the society at large. The views, the prejudices, uttered in here are the same as those out there. That thought distresses me.

            A Humanities class is being taught. The subject the African-American experience. It is taught through great American literature and it is taught by a petite white woman. The class is equally divided: eight whites, eight blacks. It wasn’t intended that way; that’s just how the college student pool in here breaks down.

            From the outset of the class I heard carping from white students. “Why do I need this bullshit?” My response: Have you ever read ‘A Raisin in the Sun”? Have you ever read Richard Wright? Do you know who Langston Hughes is? Maya Angelou? Have you ever dissected Dr. King’s letter smuggled from the Birmingham Jail?

            They reluctantly agree to give the class a shot, all the while muttering code words for the “N” word: “Yams,” “Canadians.” There are dozens of words tossed around in prison that white guys use to degrade blacks without uttering the “N” word.

            So now I’m pissed. I can’t believe I’m having to justify Dr. King to a bunch of idiots – worse, idiots who profess a belief in the teachings expressed by Jesus yet they fail to see that everything Dr. King wrote and preached began with this pure statement of faith:

            “We as a people will get to the Promised Land … Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

            Powerful, heartfelt words of faith and determination, and hope, uttered-ironically – less than 24 hours before he too was cut down by an assassin’s bullet.

            In frustration I run and wonder how professing Christians can ignore Paul’s words to the citizens of Athens (Acts 17) as he proclaimed “the God who made the world and everything in it … He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth.” We are so far from the Promised Land.

            I was frustrated and angry … and it got worse. For now there were the black students, members of offshoot black supremacist groups acting under color of religion: the IVOI, Moors Temple, 5%ers. They profess intellectual acumen yet they are forged and schooled in the same dearth of prejudice and ignorance I just confronted with the whites.

            “Why do you want to teach this material?” One guy asks in class. The question, at first blush, seems innocuous; but it isn’t. Moments before, I heard this same Einstein shake his head and say, “I got to listen to this European lady talk about black issues.” “European,” that’s black “supremacy” lingo for “cracker.”

            “Why do you want us to read Native Son? Why do you want us to read 12 Years a Slave?” Each question is a challenge to her. He might as well say, “What gives you the right to delve into the black experience? You aren’t black!” And I get more frustrated, pissed off, angry. “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

            “I don’t know what the future holds … but I know who holds the future.” On one of the darkest days of the civil rights struggle – bombings, murders, beatings, - a fearful group of parishioners gathered in an all-black church on a sweltering day. Dr. King, from the pulpit, uttered those words and from around that church came soft murmurs of “Yes, Lord.” “The Promised Land” is so because He deems it to be so. God – not man – will deliver His people to the Promised Land.

            A story I have never shared with anyone. I was a sophomore in college living in a wild party-filled dorm across campus. In the room next to mine was a young black guy from Dayton, Ohio – Johnny D. Johnny and I shared some common interests in music, food, girls. I thought I was cool – I had a black friend.

            One night we had a party on our floor. There was way too much alcohol and weed; there were girls everywhere and we were all getting way too sloppy and out of hand. I’d spent some time with “Charlotte” a tall, gorgeous girl from Valdosta, Georgia. We were making out, getting friendly, when she saw Johnny looking our way. In her sexiest Southern drawl she told me the “N” was making her uncomfortable. I turned toward Johnny and laughing said, “he’s a harmless n-----.” … As the word came out of my mouth I had a flash of sobriety. I saw his face and what my saying that word had done. In my rush to win over some beautiful, though obviously ignorant, girl I had done something harmful.

            “Look, Johnny, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to impress her.” He looked at me and said, “It’s ok. I’m used to it.” The truth is you never are used to that.

            I have never used that word since. I still feel guilt over saying it then. “The promised land.” Will we ever get there?

            “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Powerful words that describe the dream of America written by a slave owner from Virginia.

            “Jesus loves the little children

            All the children of the world

            Red and yellow

            Black and white

            They are precious in His sight

            Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            Will we ever get to the Promised Land? We have to walk through the valley of fear and ignorance. In God’s eyes there is no black or white, no yellow or brown. In spite of this week’s race baiting and ignorance on both sides I still have hope. As Dr. King so eloquently put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, America will overcome the scourge of its racial past because,

            “The sacred heritage of our nation and the

            eternal will of God are embodied in our

            echoing demands.”

Missing the Message

The nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the other day.  In a strange twist, it fell on the same day that the nation’s first Black President celebrated his inauguration and the beginning of his second term.  Living in a place with such a large percentage of Black men you would assume the day resonates with them.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of ambivalence among the young, incarcerated Black men in here.  And in the white ranks, it borders on contempt.  Much of it arises from ignorance, from missing the message.

There is an old political story from the days of Ronald Reagan’s election.  A well-off Park Avenue liberal was bemoaning to her friends that Reagan won a landslide reelection.  “I don’t know how”, she said.  “I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”  And so it goes for most of the young Black men I know in here.

“I don’t know anyone who respects King,” said Will, a normally very bright studious twenty-eight year old.  “He sold out.  He isn’t a leader of our community.”  As he spoke, three or four other equally young bright Black men nodded in agreement.  “White people like King.”  I could only smile.

I then pointed out that according to surveys among Black Americans; Dr. King is the single most revered figure in American history.  No other person even comes close.  Whites, on the other hand, hold mixed feelings, partly out of the battle over enshrining his birthday as a national holiday and partially over the ugly strains of prejudice that somehow continue to lie just below the surface.

“How can that be?”  My young friend asked.  I don’t know anyone who likes him.  I thought of the wealthy liberal in New York who couldn’t grasp that her view wasn’t the norm.  And I wondered how so many could miss the true meaning of Dr. King’s words, how so many miss the message.

Imagine a young Black man who graduates college in his teens.  He comes from an educated family of ministers in the segregated South.   He heads to Boston to begin graduate studies in Theology, and he discovers the words and works of a half-naked Indian lawyer named Gandhi.  King reads Gandhi’s words and sees in Gandhi’s message of peaceful, nonviolent protest the Christian response to oppression. 

All during his time in Boston King honed his message of using a nonviolent response to evil.  At age twenty-six, King earned his PhD.  He and his young bride accepted a call to a church in Montgomery, Alabama.  It is difficult to imagine America, the South, back in the 1950’s.  Most of the young men in here are quick to use the term “Jim Crow”, but they know nothing of it.  Theirs is a world of Rap singers being number one on the charts, of interracial couples, of a Black President winning a second term.  They know nothing of “colored only” bathrooms and water fountains.  They can’t fathom that you could be arrested for sitting at a lunch counter in a public restaurant or refusing to give up your seat to a white person on a public bus.

This was the world Martin and Coretta King ventured into in Montgomery, a world of separate but woefully unequal.  King preached nonviolence, and forgiveness, and mercy while his flock was regularly embarrassed, humiliated, or worse by their white counterparts.  It didn’t take long for King to find an issue to rally the Black community.

It came in the package of a petite, quiet Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery public bus to a White passenger.  When asked year’s later why she subjected herself to arrest and death threats, Rosa Parks simply replied, “I was tired.”

“I was tired.”  Tired of indignity, and disrespect, and disobedience to the laws of her God, that all men and women are God’s precious children.  In those three words the Civil Rights movement found their direction and Dr. King became the movement’s Moses.

Dr. King led marches and boycotts and protests – always nonviolent protests – to challenge the conscience of a nation.  So often he and his followers were met with arrest and violence, horrible violence.

“You must love your enemy,” he would tell anyone who would listen.  Loving your enemy, seeing the Godliness in the most evil of men, is usually easier then liking your enemy.  It’s tough, he would say, to like someone who is beating you, or opening up a high-powered fire hose on you, or lynching you.  “Love your enemy.  Do not return his evil with evil.”

No American orator or writer captured the affirmative duty of a man of faith to nonviolently challenge evil – even to the point of death – as Dr. King did.  His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” stands as one of the great written statements of Christian faith in action.  His, “I Have A Dream” speech eloquently captures the Biblical dream of America as a land where all God’s children are truly free. 

Freedom.   I watch these young, Black men miss the poetic beauty of freedom.  Freedom isn’t about purchasing power or the ability to say and do whatever you want.  Freedom is a peace that is given by the Almighty that no tyrant, no nation, can suppress.  Dietrich Bonheoffer knew real freedom even as the Nazis hung a noose around his neck.  Martin Luther King knew freedom even as he understood his life would be cut short.

“You have to fight back.”  “We need to live separately.”  Over and over I hear these young men utter the same words Dr. King faced from his own community.  Violence, he knew was never the answer.  We are called to be better, to be merciful even when confronted by evil.

And Dr. King provoked anger.  He condemned America’s involvement in Vietnam.  War is never the answer he courageously argued.  Inmates who are confronted each day by violence and “might makes right” just shake their heads in bemused wonder.  “He was so foolish”, they’ll say, and I can’t help but think he was the wisest man alive during my lifetime, a man whose vision of America and the world was so much closer to God’s view than most of our national leaders.

This is not to say he was without faults.  King, like all men and women, had foibles and sins and failures.  But the mark of a man is how he behaves in the worst of circumstances.  In that, King proved himself heroic.

So it was with this year’s MLK Day.  They showed a documentary on his life, his legacy on our internal movie channel.  I noticed many TV sets turned to his story.  A few of the guys came by afterward.  “Did you know all that?” they asked.  I did.  And I gave out my dog eared copy of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, so a few could read it and understand the message.  It’s always been about the message.