CARRY ME HOME

I just finished three books: Carry Me Home, by Diane McWhorter; Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman; Saved in Hope, by Pope Benedict XVI.

McWhorter’s book (570 pages of text) moved me and inspired me. A native of Birmingham, she tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on what happened in Birmingham in 1963, but also putting that year in the context of the earlier Movement in Alabama. This big book read like a novel to me. Even though I knew the story in its general outline, I couldn’t wait to see what came next because McWhorter tells it in such detail, having interviewed dozens of people who were there or knew those involved, as well as studying FBI reports, police memoranda, and many other sources. She seems to have overheard every conversation behind the scenes that maneuvered the events on both sides of that intense struggle. What also makes her story intriguing is that some of the characters involved were related to her. Her own father’s role is a mystery she hunts down with passion.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (after whom the airport in B’ham is named) became a new hero for me as I learned more about his courageous and tenacious part in this story. The role of Communists in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham also intrigued me (as it did Herbert Hoover).

Politics and religion—the two most emotional and controversial areas of life--come together in this book. Bull Connor, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, and many other cast members play out this drama with such meanness and faith and pragmatism and idealism that the story of human dignity and freedom takes on flesh and bone, as well as compassion and wildness.

I reflected on how the sermons and writings of Martin Luther King have guided me through my journey of faith; and how little I have done to actually stand up for the rights of others, even though I have talked and preached about it for years. The only ‘march’ I was ever involved in was in Fort Wayne—a NARAL rally—at which I was asked to speak for the Pro Choice movement. 

When Martin Luther King marched down the street in front of the Baptist Church I grew up in, my parents would not allow me to go and watch, because they were afraid violence might break out. I did participate once in a demonstration to end the Iraq War, a demonstration that took place in downtown Dayton. But all in all I’ve been a slacker compared to the brave Blacks in Birmingham.

Now that I live here in B’ham I feel more connected to the history of those courageous men, women and children (the Children’s March was a determining factor in the 1963 struggle). I now walk down the streets where demonstrations took place, and drive by places where the KKK met to plan bombings, and I feel the spirits of those who fought for and against human dignity.

I thank God for this sacred place where I now live: ‘sacred’ because it is here that Goodness defeated Evil through the agency of faithful ministers and ordinary people.

(next blog will be about Leaves of Grass)

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