Listen:
OPENING READING: "Every parent at some time..."
Every parent at some time faces the problem of explaining the facts of life to his child. Just as inevitably, for the Negro parent, the moment comes when he must explain to his offspring the facts of segregation. My mother took me on her lap and began by telling me about slavery and how it had ended with the Civil War. She tried to explain the divided system of the South - the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories - as a social condition rather than a natural order. Then she said the words that almost every Negro hears before he can yet understand the injustice that makes them necessary: "You are as good as anyone."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
MEDITATION READING: "Empowerment implies mutuality..."
Empowerment implies mutuality. No one is on top, no one is on bottom. No steps, no rungs, no ladders. Diversity exists, but so does pride. Differing talents and responsibilities are equally merited. Nobody plays judge, nobody plays victim. No dominance here, no power mongers. No hierarchy. Individuality exists harmoniously within the community.
In this ideal state of co-existence, each person actively seeks to empower the other, and expects such in return. People do not avoid one another, but seek one another out to accomplish the ideal. At the heart of the matter lies the quality of caring - love and respect beyond one's own particularized world, out into the world of others, embracing the intricacies of being human.
Racism in all its manifold forms, - some of it so obviously insidious, some of it so murderously subtle - prevents empowerment. It is everything that empowerment is not. It is power OVER others, deeming the ones who possess it superior - genetically so. Born to the manor. Higher-up, nobler, more intelligent, more accomplished. Racists believe that they are entitled to authority. They portray themselves as the decision-makers, the care-takers (although in this sense "care" oftentimes implies brutality rather than love).
There are direct and overt forms of racism and indirect and covert forms of this human failing. Lynchings and curses are of the former category; avoidance maneuvers and uncomfortable feelings are of the latter. All that cultural conditioning of which we are the heirs produce racism within us - all that perdition seething beneath our consciousness that springs up every so often like a rattlesnake coming out of its hiding place, fangs ready to strike.
May we seek mutual empowerment, instead. May we choice love rather than racism.
-- Don Beaudreault
SERMON: "Celebrating the African American Experience"
As we celebrate the life of Dr. King, let us recall his stirring words:
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
He is talking about freedom; how if one of us is imprisoned by whatever circumstance in our existence, each of us is imprisoned.
Can't you hear Martin singing for himself and us that hymn we will be singing at the close of our service: "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free."
That was his message on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
"I Have a Dream," he said - over and over again. "I Have a Dream....I Have a Dream."
Part of that dream was realized in 1954 when the United States Supreme Court decided in "Brown vs. the Board of Education," that our nation's public schools must be integrated.
Part of the dream came true when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
And part of the dream came true when the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
This morning I would like to tell you a story that relates to the desegregation of our public schools.
It is 1956 in Washington, D.C., specifically in Southeast Washington, more specifically the Kimball Elementary School on the corner of Minnesota Ave. and Ely Place.
An eleven-year-old boy - hefty, flat-footed, pimply, terribly near-sighted (he has yet to be fitted with glasses), gay (although he doesn't know the term for what he was back then) - is about to begin sixth grade.
Oh, let us also note that based upon academic testing and personality assessment, the boy has been in a "special class" for those kids who need a bit more attention. You see, he stutters.
This year his teacher is Mrs. Ryan. This is the first class she has taught as a fully certified teacher. She is in her early 20's, attractive, and African American. She is, in fact, the very first black teacher the boy's school has ever had.
Among those students in the class is his best friend, Myron Givets, a little guy with thick glasses whose family never puts up a Christmas tree because they are Jewish. Two boys he didn't like were in the class, too: Alex Kozar and Jimmy Jenkins. Both of them are jocks who always make fun of the boy and Myron because neither of them knows how to do anything athletic but jump rope - and they don't do that very well.
The boy is aware, too, that what he, Myron, and the two bullies have in common is that they are the only white students in the class.....
A couple months go by and during that time the boy studies very hard to please his teacher because he likes her very much. She is kind, understanding, and organized. She has a beautiful reading voice. And she makes the classroom bright and cheery with many interesting displays.
One day, while the class is reading silently, he is distracted from his book, by Alex and Jimmy who are laughing and passing notes to each other. Mrs. Ryan, kind but firm in her discipline, asks them what is funny. The boy sees their faces turn red. Then the teacher asks them for the note."C'mon, give it to me," she asks. Alex hands her the note, looking at Jimmy as if to say "Boy, we're in for it now."
The whole class looks up from their books. It becomes deadly quiet...
The boy will never forget what happens next. Mrs. Ryan begins to read the note to herself. Her face changes. Her eyes open wide. Her lips begin to tremble. She slowly puts the paper down on her desk and the boy sees tears beginning to form in her eyes. She blinks them away, attempting to gain her composure. But her shaky voice tells all the kids what she is feeling. Looking directly at Alex and Jimmy she says softly but passionately:
You say in your note that I am a nigger. That is a very bad word. You are never to say it again to me or to anyone else. We are all God's children. And we are all loved by Him.
It remains quiet in that classroom for a very, very long time. Mrs. Ryan continues to stare at the offending boys. And the rest of the kids are so shocked that they can't speak had they wanted to...
Months go by. The school year is coming to a close; and, as it has been the custom for the boy's mother at the end of every school year to invite her son's teacher home for lunch, she will ask Mrs. Ryan.
"See if she likes steak," the mother asks her son when she sends him off to school with a note of invitation for Mrs. Ryan.
"Oh, yes, I will be delighted to come to your house," Mrs. Ryan tells the boy.
And so it is a few days later, that the boy and his teacher are walking the few short blocks from the school to have lunch at the boy's house with his mother. The boy notices that some of the neighbor women are glaring at him and Mrs. Ryan as they walk down the sidewalk. Old Lady Cox, the next-door neighbor, who is pulling weeds from her rose garden, looks up and makes an ugly face before suddenly turning away and going inside her house. The boy looks at Mrs. Ryan, not knowing what to say.
"It's alright," she tells him in her sweet voice, "I'm kind of used to it."
The boy's mother outdid herself in preparing lunch. All the "trimmins.'"
"That was quite a meal," Mrs. Ryan tells her hostess, smiling. "You are most kind to me," she says.
The boy's mother only replies: "I've had all my son's teachers here for a meal. Only too pleased to have you, as well."
What happens next would be yet another incredible moment the boy will always remember. He sees Mrs. Ryan begin to cry again, and this time, she doesn't stop the flow. Through her tears, she says to the woman who has served her the meal, "This is the first time in my life that I have ever been in a white person's home. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart."
...Fifty-four years later, can't you hear Mrs. Ryan singing "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free?" She is saying to all of us that she, too, has a dream. Not just for herself as a young African American professional woman - but also for each one of us, no matter what our personal prison might be from which we seek to be set free.
Like Martin, she is proclaiming how each of us is connected to the other; that as long as one of is in chains, each of us is in chains. She is saying that, truly:
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Hear these words from Maya Angelou, which resonant with Martin's and are exemplified by the life of Mrs. Ryan:
It is time for the preachers, the rabbis, the priests and pundits, and the professors to believe in the awesome wonder of diversity so that they can teach those who follow them. It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.
Our young must be taught that racial peculiarities do exist, but that beneath the skin, beyond the differing features and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend than we are unalike."
And hear the words of Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother, Alberta King, trained as a schoolteacher like Mrs. Ryan. Said she to her son when he was a boy and she took him on her lap: "You are as good as anyone."
It is 2010. So, what is the reality today when it comes to the African American in our nation?
Statistics for a moment:
While constituting roughly 13% of the total population, Black America represents nearly 30% of America's poor.
43% of all Black children live beneath the poverty line-a figure almost identical to that which existed on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Blacks are incarcerated at a rate that is more than 6 times that of whites.
The number of college-aged Black males in prisons and jails in the U.S. is greater than the number of Black males enrolled in higher education.
HIV/AIDS is the number 1 cause of death for Blacks aged 25 to 44.
Whites live 6 years longer than Blacks.
Black infant mortality is more than twice as high as that for whites.
80% of America's homeless are Black.
Single women now head 62% of Black families.
67% of Black children are born out of wedlock.
Black adult unemployment has remained twice as high as white unemployment for more than 30 years.
40-44% of Blacks are functionally illiterate.
The high-school dropout rate for blacks in some inner-city communities approaches 50%.
(The American Directory of Certified Uncle Toms (Chicago, Lushena, 2002):
What do we do, we people of a liberating faith who have historically spoken out and then acted upon our words to help others be free from the chains of their oppression?
First, we must - we MUST - own our individual and collective culpability in creating and maintaining racial inequality.
But you know, our hearts could bleed a long time if we choose to merely maintain a mea culpa attitude. We must get on with the tasks of doing something to make things better.
Mrs. Ryan did this - person-to-person - expanding freedom out to others like a stone dropped into a pond.
But institutions need to change as well. Recall the words of Dr. King that were used in our meditation reading this morning:
The churches and synagogues must become increasingly active in social action outside their doors. They must take an active stand against the injustices and indignities that the Negro and other non-white minorities confront...
We Unitarian Universalists must continue to believe and apply Martin's words. We were there (some, not all) during the fight for Abolition of Slavery in the 19th century; we were there (some, not all) in the 20th century: for civil rights when it came to voting, to where a person could have a front seat on a bus or drink of water or a meal or a place to live or a job or a spouse of one's choosing - or, thanks to people like Mrs. Ryan - a place to learn.
We were there (some, not all) on the March to Selma (where our own Unitarian minister, James Reeb from All Soul's Church in Washington, D.C. was murdered; we were there (some, not all) in the South attempting to help African Americans register to vote (where our own Unitarian member from the church in Detroit, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five) was shot in the head at point-blank range by members of the Ku Klux Klan. We were there (some, not all) to hear Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Through the years, we were there (some, not all) as individuals and churches proclaiming freedom for those who were imprisoned because of their color and ethnicity - and for a whole hosts of other reasons, too.
And we UU people today in the pews and behind the pulpits need to keep walking the talk for racial justice step by step.
We must proclaim who we are - a people who have historically championed the rights of one and all united around a common mission of liberation for all people.
Perhaps you have taken to the streets in protest; written letters to the editor and to your congressional representatives; lobbied; preached; sat on committees; gone to lectures; donated money; fed the hungry; given clothing; helped find jobs for others.
All of these and other activities have proclaimed our cherished beliefs.
It has been said of us: "We don't STAND for anything, we MOVE!"
But it is totally foolhardy to think that we as a very small movement on the world's stage have to go it alone. We should be working with others - Unitarian Universalists around the world, and inter-faith and inter-racial organizations - and with all people of good will - "To comfort the afflicted; and afflict the comfortable."
Times are different, my friends, indeed. But issues of injustice are still there - in some cases, worse than they were a half-century ago in this nation. Martin's dream, and Mrs. Ryan's dream are yet to be fully realized.
I do not know what happened to Mrs. Ryan, but I do know that 38 years ago when I was writing my application to seminary and was asked to describe a profound experience that had led me to want to be a minister, I told the story about that fateful day when I, the boy in the story, had Mrs. Ryan as my teacher. She was a major influence on my life and remains so to this day. And I imagine that she has been that for many others during her lifetime.
She knew about changing others by educating them, one by one by one...
Thank you, Mrs. Ryan. Thank you, Martin. Thank you to all who struggle in the name of freedom; who believe the words of Maya Angelou when she tells us that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, where "all the threads...are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.
Words similar to Dr. King's:
"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
Let me close this sermon by telling you that today the student enrollment at Kimball Elementary School is quite different from what it was 54 years ago when I was a student there and the majority of the students and teachers were white. Today's statistics show that the student body is composed of 99% African Americans and 1% Hispanic.
So be it.
CLOSING READING: "I am cognizant..."
...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, and in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
-- Dr. King