14 

 Fayetteville County Tennessee A.D.1959

So, Lucas, you called for this here'ns White Council’s meeting, what’s it all about.

Some of our colored have gotten the high minded notion that they could register to vote, so we alls had better reckon about just’n hows we’s gonna deal with that.

Whatever in  blazes gave them a crazy idea like that.  It ain’t even legal is it - I mean them being nigahs and supposing they got rights?

You know, we’ve always been good to our black neighbors; treating them just like they were practically kin.   Course they hain’t and never could be.  Having received the curse of Ham, God intended them to be our hand maids and servants.  Ain’t necessarily anyone’s in particulars fault, them being inferior to us, but it is what it is, and tarnation if we just twiddle our thumbs while they try and imaginate themselves our equals.

So can they vote?

Oh, you better believe it’s legal according to the civil rights bill congress passed in ’57, but that only makes it legal, it sure as rain don’t make it right.  In the natural order of things,  Black folk, being of lesser industry and intelligence, need us’n White folk to rule over them.   Else wise they’d get in a heap lot of trouble trying to make complicated decisions for themselves.  Most of ‘em, I thought, understood and appreciated the necessity of White rule.  God knows they couldn’t do it for themselves.

Well, they do, and did, pretty much respect the natural order of things ’til this black agitator, John McFerren, began stirring the pot.   T’ain’t so much that John gives a lick about his kind voting, but unregistered black folk are excluded from being called for jury duty.   You heared how Burton Dodson was finally convicted of murdering a white deputy sheriff.   So, McFerren thinks, had African-Americans who make up 70% of our population served as jurors, Dodson wouldn’t had been convicted.  That’s the real bug in McFerren’s crawl.  He wants Blackies serving on jury duty.

Holy Moses!  We can't let that happen?  Think about it.   Blacks won’t just be serving on trials of other Blacks, they will also be sitting in judgment over us.  And that is just fundamentally as wrong as wrong be.  Can you Imagine it?  Yourself being tried by nigahs?  What possible justice could you expect?  

As bad as that sounds, I don’t want  them voting neither.  They outnumber us in this here county nearly 2 to 1.  Enough of ‘em voting and you’ll never see another white face elected to office.  It just ain’t right.  It ain’t natural.  It ain’t what God intended.

One thing for sure I’m gonna do.  Any black tenant renting from me that haps to register to vote is gonna be evicted lickety split.

Well now there’s a doable plan.  I don’t rent no property but I certainly have enough of ‘em buying groceries from me.  I don’t see the need to sell vittles to any of ‘em I hears is registering to vote.  Nope, it just wouldn’t be right feeding the uppity ones.  

How about you, doc?  They is always mucking up your place.   Times I’ve seen the colored section totally filled, and white folk hav’n to wait just for a simple shot or some pills.

Count me in.  Just keep me up to date with the latest  registration list.   If they want to vote they can see a midwife or one of their own herbalists.  I hear fat back and collard greens will cure most anything.  

Okay, I’m sure we’re on to something here.  It’ll be simple enough to keep track of who’s showing up to register.  It’s public record, you know.  If we pull together, we will put a kibosh on all this nonsense from the git-go.   Congress wants darkie to vote, then congress can provide him with food, housing, and medical care.  Because we ain’t having none of it.

    The white citizen's council dutifully kept a blacklist of African Americans who registered to vote.  Most white business owners in the county refused to sell goods or provide services to anyone whose name  appeared on the list, and most white farm owners evicted Black sharecroppers who had lived on their land for decades. The few white citizens who dared to stand against the blacklisting were themselves boycotted and shunned by other white citizens in the county.

    Many evicted families moved into encampments, living in surplus Army tents, on land owned by black activists Shepard Towles and Gertrude Beasley. 

    Asked for help, the local Red Cross claimed aid was not required and refused to provide assistance to the displaced black citizens.  

    Television and other media drew public attention to “Tent City,” and  newly elected President John F. Kennedy took notice and had his brother, the Attorney General Robert Kennedy, investigate civil rights violations in Fayetteville County.   He also ordered the federal government to send food to feed the homeless families. 

    The spotlight of national media, also evoked national sympathy that resulted in direct assistance from organizations nationwide: including the AFL-CIO, the UAW, the Teamsters, Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin, and the Quakers.  Voter registration drives intensified and Black registered voters did become the majority in the county, although that did not translate quickly into a controlling majority.  

    Tent city dispersed as its residents mostly moved in with friends and relatives or left the county altogether.  Only a very few returned to the tenant farms they were evicted from. 

My Town

No Negroes were being evicted from my hometown, not that my hometown was any less racist, it wasn’t, it was because no Negroes lived there.  I can’t think of any reason they would want to live there, but that point is mute because, like most other towns in downstate Illinois, my hometown had an ordinance that banned Negroes from sundown to sunup. 

My small town was in rapid decline during my youth.  It was a County Seat that otherwise depended wholly on merchandising to local farmers for its welfare.  But local farmers were rapidly becoming scarce as mechanization exponentially expanded the acreage one person could cultivate, so the community was dramatically losing its market base. 

During my early primary school days the town had 3 barbershops, 3 farm equipment emporiums, 4 gas stations, an appliance store, a five and dime, a furniture store, a dress shop, a shoe store, 3 eating establishments and 4 grocers.  When I left to go to college there was 1 barber working out of his home, 1 farm equipment dealer, 1 gas station, no appliance store, no five and dime, no furniture store, nor dress shop, or shoe store, and only 1 greasy spoon diner.  The theater had also closed down, and the local blacksmith had shod his last horse.   The welding shop, after exploding when torch was applied to a not quite empty oil barrel, was not rebuilt.  The train depot and bus station had long gone the way of the horse and buggy. 

Who was to blame for this devastation?  I’m not sure a finger could rightly be pointed in any one direction.  I’m darn sure it wasn’t a result of integration.  I’m equally sure it wasn’t because of uncontrolled emigration across the Rio Grande.  Maybe it was fluoridation, or possibly the Trilateralist Commission; or could it be the U.N., the Elders of Zion, or, more than likely, the books school kids were being allowed to read.   

I know books have a great influence.  Reading The Robe and then rereading it, I became convinced I was every bit the lost soul Marcellus Gallio was, and I desperately needed to accept the faith of Demetrius. 

 

There’s a Fountain Flowing Deep and Wide

In the Campbelite tradition atonement was a 5 step process,  a fact I was fully taught in Vacation Bible School, where during craft time I used a wood burning iron to emboss Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess, Baptism into five plywood plaques jigsawed to represent five footsteps.

After my baptism I made it a point to not miss a church service.  I even went to the Wednesday night men’s prayer meeting.  While all male members of the church are invited, it actually turned out to be a meeting of only the church leadership, and they were required to attend.  The pastor, two elders, four deacons were there, as were the song leader and Sunday school superintendent.  Two Sunday school teachers also attended.   The female Sunday school teachers were not expected to attend this male exclusive club, and, of course, there were no women in leadership roles.

I obviously was the youngest one there, by at least twenty years, and I thought this might cause some consternation, but if it did, I didn’t pick up on it.  They reacted to my presence as if it were an expected normal thing.  No one made a fuss over me.  No one talked down to me.  I was just there like everyone else was just there.

The meeting began with the Pastor presenting a list of prayer concerns to consider.  So and so was in the hospital.  So and so was home from her bladder operation.  So and so’s army son was stationed overseas in a hot zone.  So and so’s husband had a wandering eye.  So and so hasn’t attended a church service in over 5 weeks.  etcetera and etcetera 

Attendees dutifully jotted down the concerns on pads and then offered the Pastor a few prayer needs they were aware of that he had not mentioned, which he then added to his list.  This all took approximately 15 or so minutes, after which the pastor adjourned us.

Instantaneously, like a designed football play, upon pastor’s departure, the men moved to new positions in the church.  Ready for action.  Of course I was unprepared and like a dummy remained seated not knowing where to go.  But only a few seconds passed before one of the elders suggested I join him.

I was obviously observing a routine maneuver.  The elder I was not with laid hands on the open lectern Bible and prayed fervently.  The song leader paced around his position on the dais, and with hands lifted and eyes closed made appeals to God.  Two of the deacons prayed kneeling with hands stretched out over various individual pew positions in the nave addressing the needs of the member who sat there, or maybe who was absent on Sunday morning last.   A third deacon did the same in an anteroom reserved for mothers with squawking babies.  The fourth deacon, standing erect as if greeting people, prayed in the vestibule.

The Superintendent and two Sunday school leaders went off to the annex where the classrooms were located, while the elder who rescued me led me to the communion table and directed me to pray over the host while he prayed over the wine - which was actually grape juice according to our tradition.  No prior life experience had prepared me for this role.  Now I lay me down to sleep… wasn’t going to cut it any more than God is great God is good… so I recited as best I could remember the Lord’s Pray and 23rd Psalm while the elder, in unintelligible deep guttural groaning utterances, poured out his heart and soul.  I felt assured that his fervent pleadings more than compensated for my feeble effort.

The prayer part of the meeting broke up when the deacons had finished praying over the last pew. I then came to understand that some of these prayers were specific requests by certain family members for certain other lost family members to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.   I wondered if my name hadn’t recently been one of those poor lost wretched souls.

After exhausting intercessory prayer, the men now spent a few minutes of unwinding with small talk about crops, sports, the weather, and what not.  You could tell they genuinely liked and respected one another.  A true family of God.

As I walked home I felt refreshed and elated about my choice to join the family.   I realized it would take a lot of growing-up to achieve the faith these men exhibited, but I did not feel inadequate.  I felt sure I had what it takes.

It never for a second occurred to me these men could be racist pigs.  Everything about their exhibition of faith contradicted any possible animosity towards another creature of God.  

The maxims of Christ were love one another, treat others as you wished to be treated, and love thy neighbor as thyself.  The lessons of the Old Testament, as practiced and illuminated by Christ, were to treat the sojourner as family, forgive those who trespass against you, and turn the other cheek.   What separated Christianity from many other world religions was, in the mind of God there was no distinction between rich and poor, slave and freeman, neighbor, kin, and foreigner. 

The book of Ruth, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Woman at the Well, the Sermon on the Mount, ad-infinitum the overall text of the Bible screamed out the equality of all humankind.

Matt. 5.34-36 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:  for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in;  I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

I am sure the Wednesday night prayer meeting men would be horrified if they thought for a split second that they were on the King’s left hand.  And our merciful Lord, through His infinite grace, may anyway deem them as righteous.  But to my knowledge never once did one these men acknowledge fault or object to our fair village’s sundown ordinance.

And in my boldness, when I asked a minister of our faith how he would respond to a person of color attending our service, he, without hesitation, replied that that person would be most unwelcome.  They had their own Christian Churches to attend.  That’s the way it's always been.  That’s the way it’s meant to be.  So that’s the way it’s going to be. 

World without end, Amen, Amen