Lewis and Sanders-On Almost Going Viral Thanks to everyone who read & passed along my Feb. 12 post about John Lewis, Bernie Sanders, and the 1960s civil rights movement. To my great amazement, the post went, if not quite viral, then at least contagious: as of Monday afternoon, it has garnered almost 12,000 hits; the … Continue reading Lewis and Sanders-On Almost Going Viral
I remember Selma, Rep. Lewis, when they tried to kill you on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Whips, tear gas, clubs, horses. But you’re indestructible.
Yeah, I was in Selma too. In our ragtag civil rights army, you were a general. I was a grunt. So you didn’t see me, never met me.
That’s okay. It wasn’t about me. It was about you and Dr. King and the hundreds of heroes from Selma who made history there.
I was going to review Ari Berman’s book, “Give Us The Ballot” for this Dr. King Day.
But I can’t. I can’t bear to. It’s too awful. I’m Sorry, Ari. I’m sorry, Dr. King.
But wait — I don’t mean “Give Us The Ballot” is an awful book. It’s up for some awards, and probably deserves them. And the part I read was well-written, and its clear ‘s researched the hell out of the subject.
But that’s the thing. I only read one chapter: the last. It’s called “After Shelby.” As a writer, I have no complaints with Berman’s work. In fact, it’s a fitting counterpart to my book, Selma 1965: The March that Changed The South. He even cites mine a couple times.
But I could just barely get through that one chapter, “After Shelby,” even though I’m in it (not named, but still). My book shows how the Voting Rights act of 1965 was made possible. Berman’s book tells how the Voting Rights Act was destroyed.
“Shelby” is the June 2013 Supreme Court decision that cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Berman shows in careful detail how this decision came about. (I didn’t read those parts, but I know they’re there.)
The last chapter is about good ole NC and the NAACP’s Rev. William Barber and the Moral Monday protests in 2013. I was one of nearly a thousand who got arrested in that classically nonviolent “uprising,” and weren’t those the Good Old Days??
Well, yeah, but not good enough, if you know what I mean.
What kind of archetype is Santa Claus? One psychologist says he is the carrier of deep memories of “the Good Father.” Most of us, even many who had overall “bad childhoods”, can summon memories of times, moments, when a father figure was good to us: comforting, bountiful in comfort and generous in things we wanted as well as what we needed. Indeed, the rarer these occasions were, the more tenacious can be the memories.
Others note that Santa’s character accords with various ancient gods: his knowing all our “lists” of hopes; the ability to get all around the planet in a single night; even his ample belly bespeaks abundance and generosity.
Also, he is innocent; we only see him in this time of giving; he asks only that we be good, without getting very specific, or judgmental about our shortcomings. And beyond all the merchandising, we know that even tiny, homemade gifts from him can be as magical as the latest high-end gadgets. Or if we don’t know that, when we learn it, he will still be there.
My own experience this fall points to one more feature, perhaps the most marvelous in these troubled times, verified again and again: it turns out that there seems to be one white man that most black Americans do trust (maybe the only one): not me, but the Santa I have passingly embodied. If he too has “white privilege,” his mission is to give it all away, then make more, for more giving next time.
Santa-Dont-ShootSo I’ve been humbled each time by this repeated recognition: for one thing is clear to me, Chuck Fager, is that I do not live up to that Santa Claus archetype. (And I shall not impersonate it much longer: that fateful, long-delayed Monday visit to the barber, and return to incognito status, is coming again very soon.) But I’m grateful to have had the chance to see that this larger figure is still active.
And who is Pauli Murray, a few of you may ask?
She was — and is — many things. One of them is my neighborhood saint.
Yes, she spent most of her childhood just a couple blocks from my place, in a house we’ll see in a moment.
But neighborhood bragging rights are only a small part of it. A major exhibit about her is up at a nearby place called The Scrap Exchange (a very interesting and unique project itself; but that’s another story), and yesterday I re-visited it, with some folks from my Carolina posse.
Scrap-Exchange-sign
The Scrap Exchange: google it and come visit!
We were all completely smitten by her, yet again. So let’s get a few facts out there:
Pauli Murray was born in 1910, in Baltimore, but soon afterward orphaned, she came to Durham NC and was raised by aunts and grandparents.
Thereafter, in her life she was, among other things (hang on to your hats!) —
— a pioneering civil rights crusader, who had a big hand in the behind the scenes work on the landmark 1954 Brown Supreme Court desegregation decision;
— a pioneering modern American feminist, even if many feminist-identified folks never heard of her (tsk tsk if you haven’t); she was even a founder of the National Organization of Women;
— a pioneering women’s lawyer, who helped put gender equality in the great 1964 Civil Rights Act;
Imp-Dude-Crusader-Cropped
“Imp”; ‘Dude”; “Crusader”; how was Pauli Murray to fit these identities together?
— a pioneer in bending and busting the boundaries of gender; kind of a lesbian, kind of not, kind of trans, kind of not, all and none of the above;
–and a pioneer in religion, the first black American woman ordained a priest in the Episcopal church; and
— yes, as of the summer of 2012, eighteen years after her death in 1985, she was declared a saint by the Episcopal church (her gender nonconformity notwithstanding).
That’s for starters. (Sorry if I said “pioneering” so many times, but that’s just what Pauli was for most of her life.)