JOURNEY TO SELMA (03/15/15) Scripture Lessons: Micah 6:6-8 Galatians 3:28

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1 Scripture Lessons: Micah 6:6-8 Galatians 3:28 JOURNEY TO SELMA (03/15/15) There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Several themes came together the past few weeks to find expression in this sermon. The first was that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. The second was Bob Farmer asking me if I would share my experience in Selma in more detail than I have in the past. The third was the release of the movie Selma, which I have not seen; I procrastinated and now it is not playing anywhere. There is a lesson in this: don t put things off. The final piece is the theme of the United Parishes Lenten series this year: The Journey to... Each speaker completes the phrase with the description of a journey that was meaningful to him/her. This past Tuesday Julie Cedrone described her 500-mile walking pilgrimage through Spain. I guess you could say that I have taken four major pilgrimages. One was the journey to live in Germany and study at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. The second and third would be my two trekking pilgrimages through India, Nepal and Tibet including my 33-mile circumambulation around Mt. Kailas. The final one is a trip I took to Alabama in March of It sounds funny to say that I went on a journey to Alabama, but it is true. It was a journey in many different ways, and it changed my life. At the time of the march I was a graduate student in philosophy, preparing to get my doctorate and teach philosophy at the college level. I was not involved in the civil rights movement in any way. In fact, I had little awareness of it even though Hubert Humphrey, one of the champions of equal rights back in the day, had been the keynote speaker at my graduation the previous May. I was like many students in their early twenties: self-centered and focused on creating my future. I did not consider myself prejudiced. My father wasn t prejudiced, at least not toward black people. He did, however, think Roman Catholics were stupid for believing that Mary was the Mother of God, for worshipping saints, and for knowing so little about the Bible. My mother wasn t prejudiced though she never missed the opportunity to 1

2 point out that she was of German, not Polish ancestry, even though her family s Prussian name had a Polish ring to it. I don t think there were any black people in our town. The first hint I got that I was prejudiced came in my junior year of college when I took a marketing course just because it sounded interesting. The professor was African American. I remember being surprised at how smart he was (he actually had his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard). I gradually realized that if I didn t unconsciously harbor the belief that all black people are either stupid or not well educated I would not be so surprised to encounter one who did not fit my stereotype. At the time of the march I was teaching Sunday school in the First Congregational Church of Amherst, where Rob Greene was the pastor. Rob, who went on to become a Jungian psychoanalyst, was there for me when my childhood belief system began to fall apart, as I tried to reconcile my readings in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Tillich, and my explorations in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism with my Christian faith. During the worship service following Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965), when a march led by Josiah Williams and John Lewis was beaten back by Alabama state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Rob announced that several area clergy were going down to participate in a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, and anyone who wanted could accompany them. On the spot I decided to go. I still have no idea why I made this decision. I packed my stuff, including my sleeping bag, told my professors that I would be away for a couple of weeks, and I also told my parents. My mom and my dad were concerned about my safety, but said that if I felt I had to go I should go. The ride down with Rob, Darrell Holland, and Tom McLachlan, another UMass student who went on to be a minister was an eye opener. We talked about the plight of blacks in this country. We talked about Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and their commitment to nonviolence. I learned about the connection between my Christian faith and the moral stands that a Christian needed to take in the world. When we entered the south we had the unpleasant experience of being refused service in restaurants and gas stations. It wasn t difficult to figure out what four white men with New England accents driving a car with Massachusetts license plates were doing traveling through South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. I remember a restaurant 2

3 where we waited for a half hour to be served. There were two crossed axe handles affixed to the wall on the other side of the counter. Finally we got up and left. When we arrived in Selma we slept on the floor of the fellowship room of one of the black churches. During the day we received instruction from the organizers of the march. We were told how to run into the wind if we are tear gassed, and how to protect ourselves from being hurt by a baseball bat or a police officer s night stick: curl up in a ball with your arms protecting your head. They can break your hands and your arms, but you won t get brain damage and they probably won t hit you hard enough to break your spine. This is when I began to grasp that this was serious. We were told that if we couldn t commit to nonviolence, we should go home. If we struck back, even in selfdefense, and the attacker fell, hit his head on a curb and died, it would be all over the southern newspapers the very next day. It was a difficult decision, but I made a commitment to nonviolence. We were shown a map of the town and were told in no uncertain terms where we could go and where we could not go. As long as we stayed within the black community we were safe. This was not entirely true, for gangs of white youths would drive through the black community at night and shoot at us or get out of their car to beat us up. This, however, never happened to me. Just a few weeks prior to our arrival, Reverend James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Cambridge, and two friends went into the white area, the downtown, to talk to people about the sin of racism. A group of white men beat him to death on the street just outside the Silver Moon Cafe. This was unsettling. Back home, if I were in Chestnut Hill or Back Bay I would be safe; if I were in the South End or Roxbury my life would be in danger. My world had been turned upside down. I wasn t sure where I belonged. Most of us, at least most of here in Massachusetts know the name of James Reeb. But how many of us know or remember the name of Jimmie Lee Jackson? Just a week or two before the first Selma march a march in Marion, Alabama, a little town near Selma, was also turned back violently. Jimmie Lee Jackson was at this Marion march. He was 3

4 killed, shot by an Alabama State trooper while he was protecting his mother from being beaten. He died eight days later. SNCC wanted to dump his body on the state capital. Martin Luther King, Jr. identified the murderer as the irresponsibly of people who don t speak out. He identified the enemy as racism and timid politicians. But there was no national outrage following Jimmie Lee Jackson s murder, and most of us don t even remember his name. This may be because Jimmie Lee Jackson was black. It is sad that it took the death of a white minister to stir up the outrage of American and to catch the attention of our politicians. During the day we went door-to-door encouraging black folk to try to register to vote. Even though 50% of the citizens of Dallas County were black, only 1% of the black citizens were registered to vote. I listened to accounts of how people had tried to register. The town hall in Selma was open for voter registration only one hour a month. The literacy test was, you might say, difficult. One woman was asked how many panes of glass there were in the State House in Montgomery. A man had been asked to recite the entire Constitution of the United States of America by memory. You could see why so few black people had managed to register. The realization that black people were denied the opportunity to vote troubled me deeply. We in the United States of America live in a democracy. If entire groups of people are not allowed to vote, it s not a democracy. Racism was destroying the very fabric of the country I loved. I also began to have empathy for these oppressed black people: their segregation in poor sections of town; the denial of their basic constitutional rights; their disenfranchisement from political power; and the inability to access good schools or jobs. I was deeply troubled by white only and black only drinking fountains, rest rooms, and laundromats. One of the saddest scenes was the sight of segregated churches. Not the black churches they were full of life and spirit, but the white churches. I remember walking by a church with six very large white deacons standing on the front steps refusing entry to blacks and also to northern liberal whites. It used to be said that the most segregated hour of the week was 11:00 on Sunday morning. That must have broken Jesus heart. 4

5 At one of our morning meetings the organizer said he needed people to picket in front of the mayor s house. He told us that we would probably be arrested. I don t know why, but I stepped forward. We were dropped off at the end of the street where the mayor lived and slowly walked up and down carrying signs demanding equal rights. As predicted, the Selma police arrived. Wilson Baker, the Public Safety Director, informed us that we were arrested for parading without a permit, loaded us into a bus and took us off to the police station. They lined us up in the parking lot behind the police station and told us to keep our mouths shut. We were surrounded by a group of very large, very mean-looking police officers with their nightsticks at the ready. After a couple of hours, during which we were not allowed to make a phone call or go to the bathroom, Sheriff Jim Clark, whose feelings about integration were succinctly stated in the button he always wore which had a single word on it: Never! decided that there were too many of us to fit into the jail cells so we would be incarcerated in a second-floor room of a recreation center. It was pretty bleak, the cockroaches were really big, and we didn t even have our sleeping bags, but at least it had a bathroom. My second realization of danger came when our leader took out a piece of chalk and drew a semi-circle on the floor extending approximately fifteen feet out from each of the windows. He told us that under no circumstances were we to go inside these semicircles. When asked why, he told us that snipers on the rooftops of adjacent buildings couldn t see any further into our room than that. He said that anyone who managed to shoot one or more of us would become a local hero. This was when I realized that (1) some people down there really didn t like us; (2) some people actually hated us; and (3) some people sincerely believed that killing us would be a good thing to do. I m not exactly sure about the time line since I wasn t keeping a journal, but I think we were imprisoned only one night. The rest of the week was spent getting ready for the march, which was to take place the following Sunday. I don t remember much about that time except for the evening prayer services at the Green Street Baptist Church. The prayer services were packed with church members, local citizens, and those of us who had come down for the march. The preaching was amazing! I particularly 5

6 remember the Reverend Jim Bevel, who may be the greatest preacher I have ever heard, preaching on the power of forgiveness. Reverend Bevel told us we were called to forgive those who oppressed us, persecuted us, beat us, or might even kill us. I realized that this message was addressed mostly to the black people in the congregation, but because of my brief experience in jail I had the sense that it applied in the smallest of ways to me as well. I say in the smallest of ways because as a white well-educated male, as a member of the ruling class I had never suffered discrimination. The future I was creating was very different from the limited futures that could be envisioned, let alone realized by the black people of Selma. One particular night Reverend Bevel called us to pray for the white people who hated us. He asked us to pray that the sin, that the sickness of racism might be removed from their souls. At that point he invited people to come forward and offer their own prayers. And they did. Black people with bandages on their heads or arms in casts came forward and prayed for the policeman who had beaten them. They prayed that that policeman might be healed of the sickness of racism, fear, and hatred. I sat there transfixed. I had never seen anything like this in my life. I suddenly realized that these black people who were poor and uneducated, who were not able to envision much of a future, who were denied access to certain jobs, who were not allowed to drink out of certain water fountains, who did not even have the most basic of constitutional rights, stood head and shoulders above those of us who had so much. In that moment I realized that these people had something that I didn t have, or that I had very superficially. What they had was their Christian faith. They were actually able to pray for their enemies. They were able to pray for the policeman who had beaten them with his nightstick because they wanted to walk over a bridge. I had never done anything like that, nor was I convinced that I was capable of doing that. I realized that this was what Jesus taught and how he lived, but I wasn t sure that if push came to shove that I would be able to follow in his footsteps, in the footsteps of Gandhi and King. In that moment I came to two realizations. The first was that I had to spend the rest of my life helping people, not studying and teaching philosophy. The second was that whatever I did, it had to involve religion. I wanted what these poor black people had. And I knew that the way to get it was going deeper into my Christian faith. 6

7 I think it was later that night that I realized what this meant. It meant that I had to become a minister. I had to leave my graduate studies in philosophy and apply to theological school. I had the sense that I had received a call to ministry. I don t remember too much about the march. I know that Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had the primary responsibility for organizing it. President Lyndon Johnson federalized the National Guard and called them in to protect the marchers. On Sunday, March 21, approximately 3200 of us gathered at Brown Chapel. Martin Luther King spoke to us. He and John Lewis from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led the march. We walked through the town in lines of eight to ten. There were a number of Roman Catholic nuns and other clergy who were identifiable by their clerical collars. Along the way the white citizens of Selma swore at us, called us names, and threw rocks at us. It was really strange seeing a white family: a father, mother, and three little children all dressed up in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, who had probably just come from church, stand on a street corner and swear at us, call us all kinds of vile names and throw rocks at us. They were particularly mean to the nuns. The Selma police filmed the march. I was told that when all of us went home, which we eventually would, the police would go through the films to identify local black people who participated in the march. These people would be in serious trouble. I realized that even though I wasn t really safe, I was a lot safer than the local people who were risking much more than I to participate in the march. After we crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we narrowed down to no more than four abreast, walking down the side of Route 80, the highway that led from Selma to Montgomery. We hoped to cover the 54 miles in 5 days. However, at the end of the first day the organizers asked if some of us would consider returning to Selma. Even though the National Guard lined the highway looking for land mines and their helicopters were constantly flying overhead to pick out snipers who might be hiding in the nearby fields, the line was just too long for them to protect. The organizers thanked us for being there. They told us we had helped focus the consciousness of our nation on a tremendous injustice. We had made sacrifices to be 7

8 there, had put our safety, even our lives on the line, and had made a valuable contribution to the movement. They said that if we could possibly consider stopping after the first day and returning to Selma, it would make both safety and the logistics of feeding everyone a lot easier. The four of us got together, talked about it, and decided that we had done what we needed to do. We returned to Selma, picked up our stuff, and began the trip home. The core of marchers continued to Montgomery pretty much without incident. However, Viola Liuzzo, a woman civil rights volunteer from Michigan, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for her work in transporting marchers back to Selma. The nation again was outraged. And once again, the victim was white. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, So the march achieved much of what it hoped to achieve. So I didn t do the whole march; I only did the first day. We could have stayed around and rejoined the march on the final day, but we decided not to do this. On the final day of the march, thanks to the organizational skills of SCLC and SNCC, the march swelled to 25,000 marchers. The four of us stopped in Washington D. C. and talked with Senator Ted Kennedy and one of the Representatives from western Massachusetts about our experience. Then we returned home. The whole experience took less than two weeks. I returned to my classes, but I had changed. I felt like I was in some kind of altered state. I felt both unreal and fully alive. I remember the day I returned to my graduate seminar in metaphysics. We had been reading Alfred North Whitehead, one of my favorite philosophers. When I entered the class, the professor stopped and said, Well, Paul, I hope you re through fooling around down south and are ready to get back to some serious work in metaphysics. Once again, everything seemed upside down. I somehow managed to finish out the semester. Dr. Clarence Shute, who taught Philosophy of Religion and Eastern Philosophies, supported my decision to change course and persuaded me to apply to Andover Newton Theological School rather than Union Seminary in New York, where some of my favorite theologians were teaching. Dr. Shute said that Andover Newton was better known for preparing people for ministry. I was accepted at Andover Newton. When I told the Registrar that I didn t have any money, he sat down with me and went over a list of scholarships. One of them the 8

9 L. Byron Whipple Scholarship caught my attention. Reverend Whipple had been the pastor of my home church, the Maple Street Congregational Church in Danvers. The Registrar said that anyone from that church would definitely receive that scholarship, which totally covered my tuition, room and board the next five years. Later that year when I preached at Maple Street Church and thanked them for creating this scholarship, I learned how it had been established. Every fall our church had a large tent at the Topsfield Fair where we served chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Reverend Whipple persuaded the church to use the proceeds from the fair to set up a scholarship at Andover Newton. All through high school my friends and I went to the Topsfield Fair after school and on weekends to work at our church s booth. So I had helped to create the very scholarship that made it possible for me to study for the ministry. One final thought. In our Tuesday afternoon study group we have been exploring the phenomenon of healing from a Jungian perspective. I entered the ministry with what I believe was a call to heal our nation, to heal America from the sickness of racism. I have never despaired of this goal. However, over the years I have come to believe that the way to heal our society, to heal our nation, and to heal our world is through the healing of individuals. Largely through my Jungian training, I have also come to realize that this process of healing begins with me. So I am less invested in political movements nowadays and more invested in helping individual people become the people that God wants them to be. I think that this is how we change the world. Change comes through individuals. So this was my journey. It wasn t as impressive as Julie s pilgrimage through Spain or my own trekking pilgrimages through India, Nepal and Tibet. It wasn t as demanding or dramatic as my kora around Mt. Kailas or my pilgrimage to Zurich, the Mecca of Jungian training. It was just a long car ride to a little town in Alabama where I did some walking. But it totally changed my life. A sermon preached by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson The First Community Church of Southborough March 15,