Civil Rights Tour of the South

by Monique Swaby


Over nine days and five cities, from Friday, March 8th – 16th, thirty three people from various racial identities headed on one of Wake’s Alternative Spring Break trips, to the heart of the South. The goal: to explore the deep history, past and present, of our segregated nation. By exploring the era of Jim Crow the trip hoped to foster change makers. We toured all the major sites and places that commemorated the movement such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, National Voting Rights Museum, Dexter Ave. Church and Parsonage of MLK Jr., University of Mississippi, Kelly Ingram Park, and the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, AL where four little black girls were bombed on a Sunday morning. During our daily drive, we watched films such as Soundtrack for a Revolution, Ghosts of Mississippi, 4 Little Girls, and Mississippi Burning.

I remember the following during our visit in Reverend King’s home. As we stood at the edge of the door frame in the King’s kitchen, all the students circled inside, my colleague and I could not help but turn away as we listened to the recording of Dr. King’s words explaining his call from God in this very place, to stand for justice. I turned my eyes to the ceiling in hopes of containing the tears burning in my heart.

The days to follow would be no easier, yet it empowered us all to hope and re-imagine our world as we  crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge where Bloody Sunday occurred, or engaged in a slave trade simulation. We ended the tour at the Lorraine Motel and Museum where MLK Jr. was assassinated. This site was haunting and powerful, yet what was uplifting was the “Freedom’s Sisters” site, a traveling company from the Cincinnati Museum Center and Smithsonian Institution. This showcased some women who participated, propelled, or sustained the movement who we rarely discuss. Women such as Ella Jo Baker, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sonia Sanchez, Dorothy Irene Height, Septima Poinsette Clark, Kathleen Cleaver, and so many more. Many of us have heard the popular names, such as Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Medger Evers, James Meredith, Loretta Scott King, but on this trip we also learned the silent names and faces of everyday people called Freedom’s Foot Soldiers. Those who risked their lives; children, women, men, black, white, Jewish, LGBT, rich, poor, people from all walks of life because they saw and heard the outcry of a people. They understood truly that their freedom was wrapped in the freedom of all people.

Did you live through this era? If not, what would you have done? For many black communities and some white, the institution of Church was a centerpiece for empowerment, community, hope, love, and change. For others, it was a place of oppression, against speaking out, a point of guilt, shame, or ignorance, as their pastors and other church going folks donned themselves at night in KKK dress or silently participated in American apartheid, becoming a torment and terrorist. The church was a major player in the battle for civil rights during Jim Crow, but it was not always cut and dry as to what side you were on. I recall a conversation my supervisor and I had where she proclaimed, “If it was not for the Church’s role during the Civil Rights Movement, I would have left the Church a long time ago.” I believe she was only referring to the church that hoped for a new and better world, not one that demanded its rights remain the same, separate and not-so-equal for all. There is much re-education to be done, from the people of courage, to the visible signs that remain from our tortured past. We as the next generation must advance the struggle for equity to ALL people. Do our part by becoming aware of the issues and taking a step to action. If we do not, who will? Yes, some change has come, yet there is still work left undone because “the Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends toward Justice.” God is calling us to listen and act in love. Will we, the next generation presently, only two people removed from the Civil Rights Era, take up the baton of practicing and manifesting true racial reconciliation? Let us do our part, together.

Monique Swaby is a first year student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. This post originally appeared on Wake Div's blog, Unfolding.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

                                                          by Rev. Laura Barclay
 Yesterday, I attended a Martin Luther King, Jr., march in downtown Winston-Salem. We sang songs along the route from Mount Zion Baptist Church to Winston-Salem State University. It would have been easy for us to end there, pat ourselves on the back for getting together as a community and call it a day. Instead, the march led us to the first-annual program sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Coalition (made up of several local non-profit groups). This group realized that we could take some extra time to further MLK’s dream of a just and equal society.

We all filed into Anderson Auditorium and listened to community leaders talk about problematic issues in our neighborhoods before we broke up into workshops. One leader shared that while the 2008 infant-mortality rate was at an all time low in North Carolina, it was at a 15-year high in Winston-Salem. The workshops covered topics from the Racial Justice Act to inequities in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Public Schools. Once the brief educational sessions concluded, attendees helped leaders come up with action plans to move forward on the issues. People made commitments to continue to meet, contact city leaders, and increase parental involvement in their schools. Additional meetings will take place throughout the spring with a progress report meeting in May.

This group realized that it’s easy to remember and be grateful for Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s even easier to think that we’ve already accomplished his dream. The challenging work is to roll up our sleeves, become educated about problems that effect people in our community, and work toward positive change. What is your community doing to make King’s dream a reality? What can you do to help?

The Beloved Community - A Review and Proposal

by Rev. Laura Barclay

Dr. Charles Marsh, director of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia and son of a Southern minister, brings us this scholarly, yet practical analysis of the Civil Rights Movement and the concept of The Beloved Community in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. Marsh profiles Dr. King’s early ministry and calling into civil rights work in Mobile, AL, with the community involvement that ensued and led King out of his pastorate and into the struggle. He follows Charles Sherrod and the rise of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as a religious fellowship that embodied kingdom work, only to abandon its vision to infighting and radicalism. He follows former pastor Clarence Jordan’s work with the interracial, intentional farm of Koinonia Community in Americus, GA. Marsh then tells the story of John Perkins, whose brother’s murder at the hands of local police led him to flee to California and outside the church, only to come back to and through the church toward intentional community in Jackson, MI, and out into the world as one of the most respected faith-based organizers and religious leaders in America.

These men all had their grounding in Christ. They were open and accepting of people of other faiths and no faiths in their organizing, but they always identified their reason for doing the hard work of justice with their organizations as the historical event of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection made real in the church. They believed that we could not allow our brothers and sisters to be beaten, killed or excluded because of the witness of the Christ. If Christ is in us, then we cannote be separate from our neighbors. This underlying message of love made the leaders of the religious movement of the civil rights struggle committed to non-violence against even those that cursed them (37). The intentional relationships they made as King listened to the imprisoned African Americans sharing his jail cell, or that Jordan made in the black church in Louisville during his seminary days, or that Charles Sherrod formed during his work with fellow members at SNCC meetings, or that Perkins made working on intentional community in Jackson transformed these men into dynamic disciples for Christ. They listened with their hearts open and reflected the concerns of their harassed and broken neighbors. Their firm belief that all are created in the image of God matched with their seminary training helped them to focus these relationships through the lens of the body of Christ.

Marsh shares these stories to make a point—the church is not necessarily the beloved community, the kingdom of God, though it has been that during certain times in the past. The church can foster and encourage the kingdom, but it can also fail to be on mission in the world. It can submit itself to the concerns of the state and one’s selfish desires—slavery, war, oppression, economic inequality, discrimination, etc. The church can and has in the past forgotten its prophetic voice and the call to nurture the kingdom of God. However, the church is globally an incredibly diverse body that points us toward right ways of being, lifting us out of our single ethnicity congregations into a universal Christ-moment that allows us to be open to the communion of all creation (215). Marsh notes that we must be cognizant of where God is breaking through in the world and to go follow that Spirit. This can and should lead us out of the church doors and into the community to build relationships and participate in the world as Jesus’ disciples, but it should also leave us connected with the church, as King, Sherrod, Perkins, and Jordan were. If we believe God created all in the image of God and that God reigns everywhere, not just behind the walls of church, this should not be a radical proposal (214).

Near the end of the book, Marsh shares examples of intentional religious communities that have organized for better neighborhoods from Jackson to Philly, and encourages readers to join their efforts. He notes that the students coming into our university system today who hear his stories of the beloved communities that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement--the hymns sung at the SNCC meetings and the glory given to God during the marches for the victory in the Montgomery Bus Boycott--become inspired and commit themselves to Habitat builds, organize multiracial prayer groups, advocate and empower single mothers and undocumented immigrants, and many other endeavors. Let us foster their zeal and excitement to help their brothers and sisters, and let the light of God shine in the darkest of places. May those students in the past and present who commit to loving and empowering their neighbor inspire us to let our light shine as well, and show the people of God to be “a light among nations” (Is 60:1-3).

If you are interested in learning more about racial reconciliation, check out upcoming Racial Reconciliation Workshops in Charlotte, NC, (July 13) and Wilmington, NC, (July 29) at the following website: http://www.cbfnc.org/Congregations/UpcomingEvents/RacialReconciliationWorkshops.aspx