Today is my father’s Jahrzeit (the anniversary of his death). My usual commemoration takes the form of an outdoor adventure, honoring the curiosity about the natural world that he passed down to me. But recently I’ve been spending time communing with him – through his writing – about something else he passed along to me.
I’m going to call it anti-racism even though I don’t remember him ever using that term, and I’m not sure it’s the right term. But his life as a United Methodist pastor in Mississippi was spent speaking out and acting against racial injustice. Some of his words are published and documented, but he also told stories to me and my brother that I’m not sure are recorded. He had a habit during long car rides of using his captive audience to tell uncomfortable and painful stories about his encounters with racial injustice and transformation.
Today, I want to share just one of my father’s stories, out of so many.* I handwrote a version of this in my journal on April 17, 2020. That was before the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing international racial justice movement that it sparked. The reason I wrote it down was that I was having trouble dealing with the emotional stress of social distancing, particularly as I was volunteering to deliver food to elderly and homebound people in DC. The vast majority of the people I delivered to were black women over 70. It cut deeply against the grain of my being that I had to keep my distance and keep conversation to a minimum, leaving a food container on their porch furniture and waving as I got back the car, or handing it to them at arm’s length, all the while suited up in surgical gloves and a mask that covered my entire face below my eyes. I think the following story has something to do with my experience.
In the 1960s in segregated small-town Mississippi, justice-minded people began timidly finding each other, often in churches. White people would have clandestine, word-of-mouth meetings in someone’s home to talk openly for the first time about their own racial prejudice, assumptions, fears, and beliefs, which they had only recently begun to examine. There were confessions, realizations, and discussions about what to do, in a society where the Klan held a tight grip on police, clergy, business owners, and respected family members.
Black people were having meetings about racial justice, too, separately from white people. They talked about the way forward, how they might proceed in breaking down the entrenched systems that were designed to keep them as second-class citizens in every way. The national spotlight had begun to shine in some of the most hidden corners of Mississippi, and this might be the time to act.
But these activities were dangerous: no one knew whom they could really trust. Black and white people seen together faced anything from threats to professional ruin to imprisonment to death. It was not something to take lightly.
Some of the bolder leaders did find ways to meet, with black and white people together in secret. They realized the value of the empathy that comes through telling and hearing personal stories. After much prayer, discussion, and discernment, a young white couple, Don and Emily Davis, offered to host a dinner in their home in which both white and black people would be invited. The idea was simply to share a meal and get to know each other, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
The date was set, and Emily got the house in order and set the dining room table. Finally the guests started arriving. Since Emily was busy in the kitchen putting the last touches on dinner, Don welcomed the guests who exchanged pleasant conversation and smiles and snacked on the fruit, nuts, and cheese that Emily had laid out in the living room. She popped in, wearing her apron, to welcome everyone with a smile and to tell the guests that dinner would be ready soon. She returned to the kitchen, enjoying the sound of laughter and conversation making its muffled way to her. Emily was so thankful for this opportunity to break down barriers. It felt right.
When dinner was ready and on the table, Emily summoned everyone to the dining room. Some of the attendees were good friends from church. But it was the first time Emily had met the black guests, Ernest and Diana Singletary, and Marcus and Joanne Mason, who came with their teenage son Anthony.
As they had planned in advance, everyone stood around the table and held hands to bless the meal. Emily stood between her husband and Diana Singletary, who was about the age of her mother and had a kind face with laughing eyes. Marcus Mason, a tall, lanky man who was a deacon at his church, offered a grace-filled blessing. They all squeezed hands and smiled as they said “Amen,” and Emily went back into the kitchen to get the iced tea. Without thinking, she turned on the faucet and began washing her hands.
It hit her like a stroke of lightning. She was washing her hands not out of a hygiene concern, but because she had touched the hand of a black person. It broke open her mind like she had never imagined, and she struggled to hold herself together during dinner. When the last of the guests left, she broke down sobbing and told Don what had happened and how vile she felt for succumbing to her unconscious prejudice.
That was the story as my father told it. The story didn’t end with Emily becoming a civil rights lawyer or a national spokesperson or an anti-racist author. But the implication was that she would never be able to live another day of comfort in a society that taught people that it was wrong to hold hands in prayer with someone because of their skin color. And that she would teach her own children (myself included, even though I never met her) about the brokenness of that society.
It’s one of millions of personal moments that serve as important pieces in the puzzle of past, present, and future racial justice. It may no longer be illegal for people of different races to meet, pray, marry, and work together, but the struggle is far from over. May we all examine ourselves deeply to determine how each one of us can contribute to repairing the world.
* I do not remember every detail of this story, and I can’t be absolutely sure whether it was my father’s first-hand experience or whether it was told to him by someone who was there. In the interest of bringing the narrative to life, as he told it to me, I have assigned names and biographical details to people. Any resemblance to any person, dead or alive, is not intentional.
