Buses are a' comin'

Today was the kick-off event for our semester long celebration of the 50th anniversary of theFreedom Rides organized by UMW's very own James Farmer.

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Around lunchtime, rumors began swirling.

They planned to encircle the entire high school building and prevent us from leaving.

Those of us considered lesser. Less accomplished, less learned, less worthy.

Those of us considered less.

This was discrimination. One of my only real experiences with it.

I was at the mercy of my senior classmates. And their water guns and balloons.

Even that was shockingly frightening. We were scared to exit the building that day. They only had water. Those "wounds" healed about at quickly as it took my collared shirt to dry-- the duration of my carpool ride home. And it wasn't really discrimination-- they were just having a little fun practicing their seniority one last time.

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Some wounds run deeper.

I didn't inflict them, they aren't my fault and since I'm not responsible I shouldn't have to apologize for them. I wasn't at the lunch counters or surrounding the bus stations. I wasn't shouting death threats or picking up lead pipes. I was neither the oppressed nor the oppressor.

This is a new era.

That much I know to be true.

I also know that a great amount of the argument for color-blindness-- the idea that we'll put aside race altogether, forget skin color and consider each other no different-- is good. We've generally reached the point in this country when we're just sick and tired of racism. We're tired of being accused of it, we're tired of watching it in practice.

We want the dream. We want this chapter to be closed.

We want to wash our hands of the iniquity that split this country and Woolworths down the middle. And it was sin. The hatred was sin.

^"8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. ⁹ But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

...

¹² Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, ¹³because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment."

(James 2:8-10, 12-13)

Maybe some didn't know it to be sin. After all, all they knew was what they knew-- and that was segregation. Story after story, white southerners come forward to say, "I didn't know better."

Many don't come forward because they fear they won't be believed at their word. They fear they will be met with "How couldn't you have known? When you saw the beatings and the blood and you heard the suppression of peace songs, of God songs, how could you have missed it?" They feel they'll be accused before they are able to give witness. They feel shut down, possibly even ashamed, and they aren't looking for more shame at the hands of people who they believe will inevitably respond with bitterness. Instead, they let the guilt they feel accused of fester, until they've come up with a defense. I didn't do anything to you, how dare you accuse me, why do you keep making this an issue?

On the other side-- in the 60's dubbed the integrationists, or agitators or negro-lovers-- a counter-argument brews. You made this an issue first. When you made the signs and nailed them to your businesses, when you shut down schools rather than have black students, when you burned down buses rather than let black men and women-- boys and girls, really-- through your state, you made it an issue.

When you bombed the churches and killed the school girls and shot our leaders, the men standing in the gap, you made it an issue.

Then the rebuttal. I wasn't there, I didn't do those things, and I resent that you'd make that accusation.

And in the back and forth, an answer of grace:

I'm not saying you did it. Put your pride aside. This isn't about you. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad that I couldn't hold a meeting in a church or bus terminal without fearing my life upon my exit. Not at you. At it. Mad that it happened. Not accusing you. Just wishing someone would acknowledge that it happened. Wishing the oppressors would admit they were wrong, not just declare us moved on. I'm hurt. You're hurt. We all have an opinion on these things. I'm sick and tired of feeling deeply about these things but the different sides not talking through this for fear of judgment and accusation from the other side. Let's lay our pride down. Me first. I'll say I'm sorry you felt prematurely judged, accused. I don't mean to make you feel responsible. I just want you to know. I want to be known. And you? Don't you want to tell your side? Don't you want me to know your story? The story of your life and why you felt these things were okay? I'm willing to listen. Not talk. Just listen.

I want to know you. I want to love you. If the sixties were a time of oppressor v. oppressed, I don't wish for a reversal of roles. I don't mean to harbor bitterness in an effort to achieve betterness or hold on to an attitude of superiority. I don't want to make this an issue or raise my voice. I don't want special treatment or a handout. I just want to be known, loved.

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I was a junior in high school. Scared of my own classmates, friends with their water pistols.

I can't imagine the fright of the junior in college, surrounded by fully grown men with bulletpistols.

And I can imagine why she wants me to know her story. I can imagine why she might want someone to acknowledge that that was never okay. She's not trying to pester or agitate. She just wants me to think. She wants me to understand. And she wants me to move on. Move forward. The image of the prison matrons of Parchman (the most notorious maximum security prison in the country at the time) will not unburn itself from her memory. The smell of pinesol and the feeling of abrasive vaginal exams wont erase from her mind.

She's not making this an issue, it is an issue.

It is her story and it is littered with injustice. Not an exaggeration or sob story. She doesn't want my pity. She wants my respect. She deserves my respect. She isn't perfect. She knows that. And I can know that she isn't perfect, I can know it's not my fault she experienced what she did and still look into her deep blue eyes and say, "I'm sorry."

Funniest thing. When I do that, I get what most white southerners yearn to hear as they make their defense against a presumed accusation of racism. "Oh, well. It's not your fault."

From the Reverend, once a 21-year-old sophomore in Richmond who got on a bus headed south in the name of freedom, just a piece of advice. He speaks in the imperative. "You just have to find something you are passionate about and do it. Get on your bus."

Later, after I've thanked him for being here today, for sharing his story even now, 50 years later, he sings. On stage, on the spot, the songs that carried a movement. In jail cells, their matresses were taken away as punishment for singing. Joan says it made for better acoustics.

One of the most striking things is their sense of humor.

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me And before I'd be a slave I'll be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free

He sings it from the stage as I watch from across the room. He looks over and I can tell he remembers me from the meet and greet session earlier today. For a moment he stares into my soul and I let him. I sing along and keep contact. He respects my story and I respect his.

These riders aren't here for international acclaim. Mary Washington isn't exactly the place to come for that, anyway, if you know what I mean. They deserve it, and the institution will do its best to recognize that. But. This is about honoring their legacy. Honoring their boldness and courage. Not an exaggeration or a sob story. People who stepped on a bus with trembling hands and voices still moved to sing.

They aren't trying to make me feel guilty. They aren't imparting to me a need to return to the bitterness of 1961 or rallying me around the cause of the black person during the civil rights movement. Indeed, that time has passed. And though it is etched in their memories and carved into their own being, they don't wish the anger on me.

They don't want it for themselves.

They do want me to know the power in numbers. The joy that is possible in the worst strife. The importance of practicing what I believe. Of finding some injustice-- human trafficking, inner city school conditions, poverty, abandonment-- and getting on a new bus.

They aren't fooled. It's 2011 and they know it. They feel every bit of the passing of time. They see that a man born the year of these rides is now president. They see that he's black-- and though he'll have to own his own merit politically, the possibility of a "Negro" in the White House felt so impossible from a jail cell in 1961. His election, whether we whites want to acknowledge it or not, is a triumphant moment. The principle of which King, Lewis, Nash, Farmer, Green, Mulholland, R.Kennedy and literally countless others lived and died for. Not for him, but for his opportunity.

I have a lot of love for black people. It reaches levels of jest when I bust out my "ghetto" accent or express such delight when songs like "Lift Every Voice and Sing" come on in the car.

But it isn't really a joke. I don't want my appreciation to be mistaken as mockery.

I really believe in King's dream. Sure, the tactics of my elementary school to bring about such a belief are at times hilarious and laughable.

But they succeeded in one thing that I am forever grateful for: they imparted empathy into my very young heart. They said "hey, Sadie, you are every bit as worthy of opportunity as Courtland is. Cecil, the girl who throws up on the carpets all the time and Joe, the bully aredifferent from you. But they are not better and neither are you. Every one of you in this classroom, regardless of race or background, are capable of being great."

Okay, they didn't put the descriptions of the kids in there. But they really did bring race and background into the conversation. So that I could know that racism was an issue, that it historically did make a difference, and so I could know that that wasn't okay and I should love everyone regardless of the past.

Even regardless of the bitterness that people on both sides hold onto.

That will fade with time, the bitterness. It just can't last.

Love conquers all.

There goes the idealism in me. But it isn't just Dr. King's dream. It is the Word of God. And according to His word, segregation shouldn't have ever happened.

But it did. We can't change that now, black or white. And there is no longer a physical bus to get on in order to show our solidarity. If there was, I'd be on it in a heartbeat, no doubt.

Which is easy for me to say today because a heart of empathy isn't punishable by a punch or beating or a prison sentence in 2011. For that, I do owe a debt of gratitude to the students who were willing to take both, willing even to accept death for the right to empathize with freedom in 1961.

Mostly, though, if a heart of superiority or betterness is a sin, it is committed first and foremost to God. He is the first to apologize to, which is easiest because we can be assured that he won't hold on to accusations.

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

(Psalm 51:3-6)

We are then forgiven. We can apologize to those still hurting from a hurtful time. We can spread the forgiveness as we hold fast to the Word of God and embark to hear other people's stories. As a Christian, I feel responsible for being at the forefront of that movement. The one that says to society, I am sorry that if in my service to God I've neglected to humble myself to be a servant of man, that you might see the humility of a person truly forgiven of their sins.

Not responsible for the wounds or the beatings or the scars. Not even alive in 1961.

But alive in 2011. And, in being alive, affected. And, affected, wanting to help. And, in wanting to help, willing to say "I'm sorry." Willing to put aside pride. Wanting no glory, just wanting to love God and love people.

That's not even black civil rights specific, and neither does your mission have to be.

I'm not just a lover of Negro spirituals or all things black history for the sake of a hobby.

I love it because I like stories of courage and humility.

Of love, not glory.

I like them because they affect me, make me feel like I'm living in the shadow of great legacy, in a time of great opportunity.

I like black history and music because it reminds me to love God first, and in a way that will reflect love to his people.

Could I?

They remind me that I am to be an agent of peace in a bickering world.

The buses came, the buses went.

History.

There are new buses.

Will you?