Today, JD and I drove to Buda(don't even ask) for him to have an interview for an Amazon Driver. Amazon has seen incredible growth through the pandemic, and so they cannot open delivery warehouses fast enough. The Round Rock warehouse is 3 months from completion, but there will be a need.
While JD was interviewing, I moved deeper into this very troubling book recommended by our pastor, “The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic story of America's Great Migration.” I share my pastor's recommendation because it is the true stories of Southern African American families who were oppressed after slavery to keep them in “their place.” In southern culture “their place” was a lower caste than the whites, and in every way subservient to white southerners.
Today, I was reading about a family of black educators. I found this stirring because education has played such a large place in my life and my family. My father often said he had a third grade education, but aspired for his sons to graduate from college. It was important for our family and set a course for goals and aspirations that was handed down to my sons.
This family story was especially compelling. In fact when I got home from our trip for JD's interview, I pulled down my Permian High School Annual to check if my remembrance was correct. It was. Even though the Civil Rights movement had some victories with Dwight D Eisenhower, and Lyndon B Johnson, when I entered grade school our schools in Odessa were still segregated. That did not change until 1980, long after I had left high school and had finished college and seminary.
I remember some African American students at Howard Payne College, but few at seminary.
The history I was reading in the “Warmth of Other Suns” made my heart sad. The story of this educator, his wife who was also a teacher, and children was set in Monroe, LA. Interestingly, I had a beloved aunt and uncle who lived in Louisiana out of Opelousas on a former plantation. As much as I loved them, I could never understand their bitterness and hatred toward the Blacks where they lived.
So, here is a nutshell of the story. The father had a BA from a black college, and because of that he was called Professor Foster or 'Fessor Foster. He functioned as the Principal of all the grades. He had 1200 students in the all black school from 1-12 grade with one teacher per grade level. Every year, he would take a flat bed truck with several students to the back parking lot of the white high school. The white school was throwing out last year's books, and the kids would help Foster pick them up, stack them, and carry them back to their school. It would be their texts for the next year. The text books had missing pages, many without covers and many with doodling in the margins. That was good enough for the black children. One time there was a fire in the basement of the school and the school district would not help replace what had been turned to ash. So, the parents out of their meager incomes had to resupply what had been destroyed. It is also good to note history and government books told the noble story of the white southerners, with little mention of blacks.
As I read this material there are several things that crossed my mind and even more my heart. First, I am ashamed that I did not dig deeper into this great cultural divide that existed even in the somewhat remote West Texas. Why would our maid not sit down and eat with me having prepared my lunch. She just said it was not done. Mom had little to say when I told her the story of the conversation. It was actually not much of a conversation, I asked, she said no, I asked again, and she finally said, “It is not done.” I did not understand but now, stripping away the poison of slavery and what followed with the Jim Crow culture, it is becoming more clear and even more sad.
I also believe this history is a huge fail, a huge fail for the Christian church in America which, in my opinion, has not fully faced their part and their sin in the oppression of black families from the moment they were captured and put on slave ships for America. Black men and women, Black teenagers have been shot and hung for something as little as not replying with “Sir” or not getting off the narrow sidewalk when a white person approached. Countless thousands have been subjected to mob justice from men too ashamed to show their faces so they covered themselves with white robes and white hoods and made a mockery of the Cross. Jim Crow laws attempted to oppress those who had been freed and they were preyed on by white land owners who allowed share croppers to work the land, but always kept the books.
I believe the anger and rage I saw in my time working in the prison is a direct result of this oppression, the continual injustice, the ongoing lack of opportunity, and the disproportion of wealth that still exists between the races. I see it in the riots and property damage of today. I don't approve of it, but I see it. A culture of suppression and oppression does not just “go away.” It does not immediately lift the stigma of a culture, or automatically open doors of opportunity and appropriate education when 300+ years of social impoverishment, lack of kindness, lack of respect, lack of basic human dignity have not been accorded to a people group whose only “defect” was being born black.
These days of Black Lives Matter, is both a bold statement and a call to people of faith to allow God to work in our hearts, and reach out with hearts opened wide, expansive with kindness and repentance to a people who have born the heat of day, the crushing burden of being different, and still found hope enough, faith enough, courage enough to move into the next day.
Wash your hands, wear your masks for others, and be kind.
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