"Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the
chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"
Isaiah 58:6
Last year, my oldest daughter read a book about the sit-ins that occured during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. She was telling me about the book she read (can't remember the name) and I thought immediately that while her interest was still peaked, she should try to contact an old friend of mine whose father participated in some sit-ins in North Carolina. I wanted her to talk to a real, live person who participated in the history changing events of that time. To make a long story short, George, my friend's father, contacted her and here is an excerpt of the note that he wrote:
Dear _____ ,
I was 20 years old, from Georgia, and, like everyone I knew, believed black people and white people should be separate in every way. No one had ever told me any differently. In those days, black people were not allowed to eat, or play, or go to movies, or, really, do anything with white people. Then, one day, I saw something on TV that made me think. It was something that happened in Greensboro, NC, just a short way from where I (and, many years later, your mommy) went to college. Some black college students had gone into a store that had a lunch counter, had sat at the counter, ordered food, been refused and told to leave, and had refused to leave--just sat there! I saw it on the news. They interviewed one of the black students, who said something that changed my mind--and, really, my life. He said, "I can shop at any counter in Greensboro, by the lunch counter. When I get hungry, I have to go back to the black neighborhood to eat. That isn't fair." Listening to him, I had to admit that it wasn't fair, and began to think about it.
Next day in my philosophy class at Wake Forest, we talked about that, and I thought about it some more. A few days later I saw one of the people from that class, and he was all dressed up. I asked why, and he said, "We're going to meet some black students, and do what they did in Greensboro. Want to go?" It sounded exciting to me, so I said yes, got dressed up too, and went. After I got downtown, where we were to meet the black students, I realized I'd never really known a black person who was like me before. So this was a big deal for me. We met the black students, and paired up. My partner was named, Skeet Diggs. It was scary, but exciting, to meet somebody so different, but, really very much like me. So we went to the store with the lunch counter. As soon as we entered, the manager came out and closed the store (because there were black people there). So we went to another store. There, they'd called the police, who were waiting for us.
The policeman said we had to leave, or be arrested. We didn't leave, and got arrested. Over the next few months, people all over the South did the same thing we'd done, got arrested, and got people thinking. Within a year, all the lunch counters in the South were desegregated--which means, black people could eat there.
It was very scary to be involved in that. I never thought I'd be arrested by the police for anything. I'm not sure I understood what I was doing at the time, but people who did understand, and who got arrested for reasons like that, did so because they believed that the law itself was unjust, and that it should not be obeyed--in this case, the law that allowed lunch counters to decide that only white people could eat there.
_____, I'm very proud of you for being interested in this. You will probably be in situations where you will be told, by older people, by friends, or, even, by the law, to do something you know is wrong--or not do something you know is right. I'll bet you will be brave, and do what you know is right, whatever the risk or the cost.
Needless to say, this note to my daughter was more inspirational and real than any story could ever be.
Reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett inspired me even more. The story is written in the voices of two black maids to Jackson, Mississippi families and one white young woman who endeavors to write their stories during the 1960's. I don't think I am giving anything at all away when I say that the book is filled with the kind of tension and intrigue akin to stories of Jewish resistence in Nazi Germany. The story is fiction, but for all intents and purposes, it is real.
Stockett manages skillfully and respectfully to tell the stories of personal injustice that many of us would rather not think about really happened in the not too distant past...in our own country. The book so captures the wide reaching effects of prejudice on a community, on a nation and on individual men and women, both white and black. It also highlights the bravery of a few individuals who risk everything for simple freedoms and relationships.
As my friend, George, so skillfully wrote in his letter to my daughter, one person can make a difference, one person's bravery does move mountains...as a matter of fact, it is only one person that each of us can account for...ourselves.
This story made me ponder what injustice I am willing to overlook, what wrong do I turn away from without thinking, and how can I open my eyes and begin to see what just me, one person, can do to loose the chains of injustice.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I am incredulous to the fact that I know many many people who were young adults during the events of the Civil rights movement, and yet, I had heard so little about it growing up. What we now take for granted (a societal disdain for prejudice) was once completely accepted and expected. Prejudice is insidious, it exists in the minds and hearts of unknowing people. The reality is we ought to know, we ought to consider how everyday actions reinforce situations in which people needlessly are diminished.
"Let us not become weary of doing good, for at the proper
time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." The Apostle Paul
