Encountering the Wisdom of Others

This meandering post is Session 2 in "Reconstructing the Gospel with the Best of Enemies" materials by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrave.  Here is the link to those materials. This is my personal journey of engaging the materials from both his book and the movie as we walk our way to Easter Sunday. I hope you'll find his material in the link of Session 1, download them, go see the movie, and find out what is to experienced in your own personal narrative.

God has a way coaching me up, of moving me into spaces where my discomfort is intense and the learning curve is steep. God oftentimes uses others as instruments of peace, and sometimes leaving me initially troubled. 

Jonathan’s relationship with Ann is fascinating and multi-layered. She lived in the same HUD housing project as she’d always lived and when Jonathan observed her, wanted to learn from her, amongst other things she said yes, and that he would have to become her son. Though she has passed now, and though the Durham integration struggle of 1971 is history, she lives on in his memory and in the stories she told that are chronicled on video for all the world to see. Her philosophy of listening to the other person, getting to know then, and helping them to get what they want, and then half way there, telling them what she wants, so that they both get what they want.

That played out with C. P.  Ellis and the rest is history for all the world to learn.

My own narrative has one starting point with the call from the attorney that Friday afternoon. His challenged of “Sir, I think I have failed to communicate to you the seriousness of our concerns” sent me down a road where I learned much about the Black farmer, and family, and their plight.  I learned much about their struggles and how strong there were against enormous and relentless forces that resisted change.

Along the way, however, I may have learned more about myself than I did about them. While I am pleased to have participated in their successes before the USDA and DOJ, realizing that my role was minimal, nonetheless, I learned much more than I contributed.

Whiteness is a valuable commodity. It is worth a lot in the social, economic, educational, employment, and other places and spaces of the marketplace. With my white skin, though I was dirt poor and wore used clothes handed to me and though I had to work to put myself through high school and college, my whiteness was an advantage. I am not sure how many people of color from my hometown of Trinity were about to step across the color line and the racial barriers set. I hope there are a lot.

Then, when I began to work in the Black farmer movement, one particular gentleman took me under his wing, something like he has done again and again through the years. I will withhold his name for now, given some things we are working on, but suffice it to say that while I was useful for him, I was a person to him. He challenged me directly and indirectly to move away from my prescribed ways of thinking, perceiving, and doing. He was challenging and at times it was intense, and then at some point, it became less intense and more laced with humor and two-way conversations. 

Little did my wife and I know, but we were becoming family. We were becoming a part of a larger cause outside of our prescribed white color and roles and all.

He influenced us in ways similar to the way Ann influenced C. P. and Jonathan. On one occasion my wife and I went to a community meeting organized around the school issue.  Blacks were not getting the same advantages of the whites in their area.  They were organizing to march and to address the school board. He was also mentoring a younger man to step up into the role of a leader of the movement. In the rural south, whiteness is still powerful.  It gets people elected by other white people who vote their convictions and those convictions do not always include people of color. 

On another occasion, I watched from the sidelines as the Halifax Black Caucus marched and protested at a Halifax County Commissioners meeting.  Some spoke and some did not. After that meeting, I met via cyberspace with one of the white women on the commission who had offended people of color with her racist language.  It was an interesting conversation that last three or four months off and on. She was invested in the righteousness of her cause and intentions and was unwilling to apologize for her offensive language. Her daughter even challenged me by saying that her mother was a good woman, and was a product of her times.

I was learning about Black people and causes.  I was learning about white people and retrenchment. I was learning about myself.

C. P. Ellis had concerns that Ann realized. His son was hospitalized with a severe physical and mental condition that precluded the family from taking care of him. His children were not getting the education that they needed. When the Black elementary school burned down, eventually Ann and C. P. were appointed co-chairs to develop a plan. His KKK friends saw him wavering and once the decision was made that he’d vote for integration, he lost his business in the white community and had rocks thrown and a fire started at his gas station.

I do not know someone impacted by our community as Jonathan suggested in his materials. However, I have gotten to know a gentleman who is running again for Denison city council. Rayce “Coach” Guess and I have conversed on at least two occasions and are now connected on Facebook. We talked last Sunday for about a half hour about racial issues and our community.

He told me that there is a predominantly Black area of Denison in which people of color are losing their lots because they have not kept up with the taxes.  Or, the elders have died, the younger are not paying the taxes, or have no idea that taxes are owed, and white people are coming in and building newer and bigger homes and the neighborhood is changing rapidly.  He wants to stop that from happening. From the get-go it sounds like Denison’s version of gentrification.  I’ve seen it in Memphis, Georgetown, Austin, and other places. It looks pretty on the outside but on the inside older citizens who were born and raised in those communities are being forced out.

I do not know what poor and marginalized people in my community want. I do not know them. Mr. Guess knows, so I will follow his lead until I get to know them personally.

I will, however, study that text found at Luke 4:24-26. Maybe Jesus can coach me up there as to the meaning and application of that text.

I do not know precisely why Ann and Jonathan linked up except to say that like me, Jonathan had much to learn and Ann was the designated teacher for him.  That sounds familiar.  For me, the gentleman who is unnamed above became my teacher and remains so to this day.