Prejudice and Pride

The year is 1961. I’m on a “missionary-on-furlough” lecture tour in the Deep South. My primary target: black Lutheran churches in Mississippi and Alabama.

Even though I grew up immersed in the racism and prejudice of central Texas, I am struck again by the racial arrogance of the whites, color segregated schools, restaurants, water fountains, motels, churches. When my black driver picks me up from the airport in Birmingham to take me to a black church he asks me to sit in the back seat. I refuse, “You’re my brother, not my chauffeur!”

I get in the front seat next to him. At the first stop light the white in the car in the lane on our right at us and cuts us off. We narrowly avoid colliding with his vehicle.

In Montgomery the white taxi driver almost refuses to take me to a black church. He’s both afraid and very skeptical of my intentions. He’s suspicious of outside agitators who go to black churches.

I grieve at the facilities and resources in our black Lutheran schools. I can hardly believe the diet at the Lutheran college dining room. I bask in reverent awe as I sit together on her front porch swing listening to a black saint, Rosa Young. She tells me about her unflagging ministry through black schools and churches.
After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Act, Brown vs Board of Education, elimination of the poll tax, no more water fountains, busses or restaurants designated “For Colored Only”, surely the 1960’s or at worst the 70’s would see the end of segregation and racial prejudice in the USA.

It’s a Sunday evening, 1999. We are sitting in liberal California, enjoying a dazzling sunset over the multi-hued Pacific, enjoying a glass of crisp California Chardonnay.

Our guest, a teacher in a nearby public high school speaks. He tells us of a story nowhere reported in the local press. One of his students, Roxanne, has committed suicide. She, the only black in her class, was hounded to death by racial slurs spoken to her, written in her books, scrawled on the blackboard. She was shunned, spit at, known only as that damned n________. It went on for three months. Our guest had tried to be a friend and counselor. He sought assistance. The community claimed he must be a communist. A promising young woman is dead.

I hang my head in shame for my own failures at not more intentionally confronting racism. I feel anger at any system, which still claims some sort of superiority by virtue of a white skin. Once more I examine my own heart. I image the face of a Creator God with tears streaming from his eyes, watching us humans still failing to see that we are all of one blood, all of us sisters and brothers.