January 14, 2007, 10:00 AM
Sermon by Consulting Interim Minister Myron Andes
Honoring Martin Luther King

The sermon was preceded by and refers to this reading:

Good Morning! I am here this morning to share with you information about a famous Unitarian Universalist in a part of our service called “The Famous Unitarian Universalist Minute.” I will read information to you about this individual and give you an opportunity to name the famous U.U. before I share the answer with you.

THIS FAMOUS  U.U. WAS BORN: in Wichita, Kansas in 1925 and died in 1965.

THIS PERSON STUDIED AT: St. Olaf College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and at Princeton Theological Seminary.

OUR FAMOUS UU IS KNOWN AS:

• A Presbyterian Chaplain at Philadelphia General Hospital,

• a UU Minister at All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., and

• director of a low-income housing program in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood for the American Friends Service Committee.

LIFE HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE

• Active in the civil rights movement.

• Member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC),

• One of many white UU ministers who responded to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to join him in the Selma to Montgomery march for civil rights in 1965.

While in Selma on the 9th of March, our famous UU was attacked by a white mob with clubs, suffered massive head injuries and died in the hospital two days later.

His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South, and helped hasten passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.

DOES ANYONE KNOW THE NAME OF THIS INDIVIDUAL?

THIS FAMOUS UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST IS James Reeb.   

THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS TIME WITH ME!

The sermon:

It was a fine day in Paducah, Kentucky. A little chilly, but the sun was out, the breeze was light, and what clouds there were were white and fluffy. We had come to visit the National Quilt Museum, but we would not see the fantastic fiber artworks there until the next day. The weather forecast said that rain was coming, so we postponed the indoor treat of the quilt museum and took advantage of the good weather to make a walking tour of Paducah’s Lowertown art district.

The City of Paducah has used financial incentives to attract more than 70 artists to move into its Lowertown neighborhood in the last 3 years. (They might be a good model for Evansville as it seeks to develop its newly designated arts district.) Now there are many galleries and open studios within a few easily walkable blocks. We had a great time, even though about half of them were closed. It was, after all, January! Who takes a vacation in western Kentucky in January?!

On the way back to our lodgings we chose to walk through the downtown. Among the few thriving businesses there were many boarded up buildings, their former occupants presumably having moved to the new mall on the edge of town, or been driven out of business by the “big box” stores.

Walking down Main Street, we came upon an amazing sight. The Columbia Theater was still resplendent with its white tiles, statues of Greek goddesses, and amazing columns. Of course, the windows were papered over now, and there was some damage showing. But it could still take our breath away, as the sun was getting lower and the temperature was falling.

As we walked by, I noticed something that looked odd about the theater’s architecture. Past the grand entrance, seemingly tacked on to the edge of the magnificent theater was a tall brick structure. It had a small door, with a sign above it that said, “Second Balcony.” And when I looked closely, I could indeed envision a simple stairway going from this entrance up two floors along the side of the building to the second balcony. It seemed odd.

About this time it hit me. “I’ll bet there used to be a sign on that entrance that read ‘colored,’” I said. It clicked for both of us. Surely, we were seeing evidence of the racially segregated past. My eyes filled with tears as I imagined good friends who would not have been allowed through the grand entrance to watch a movie. They would have been judged less than worthy because of their race. They would have been shuffled off to the side entrance to climb the stairs for two stories to remain hidden from other theatergoers. My pain was sharp as I tried as best I could to imagine what it would have been like to be in their place, and I became angry.

This image, and these emotions, stayed with me for some time. In fact, they have revisited me often during the week or so since we returned. “But maybe,” I thought, “Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe that’s not what it was.” So I decided to do some research.

I came up with an account from the archives of American Radioworks, by American Public Media. It was titled “Remembering Jim Crow.” Cecil J Barnette wrote:

As a teenager growing up in Paducah, Kentucky (1961) segregation was much the same here as in other towns. Though not as severe as lynchings, it still existed in the manner of where you could go, not go, where you could eat, using the side door for the movies, one restroom for blacks downtown (nasty) and just being separated.

Here I had my answer. It was true. Apartheid in America, in 1961. I was 6 years old. 1961, the year the Unitarian Universalist Association was formed. Four years before the Rev. James Reeb joined the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama for a civil rights march. Four years before James Reeb was murdered for his dedication to freedom and equality.

This was the reality that called these great men, and many other women and men, to risk their lives for justice. Perhaps some of you in this room this morning. Sometimes it almost doesn’t seem real to me. Yet there it was, on Main Street in Paducah, Kentucky, staring me right in the face.

I have learned, through great effort on the part of many teachers, that racism is a systemic evil. We tend to prefer to think of racist people, or attitudes, but really racism is a cultural system, of which we are all a part. That entrance and stairway to the second balcony of the theater were made of bricks and mortar. That’s pretty structural. It was literally a “built in” part of going to the movies, of life in that town in those years. And just as those bricks and mortar persist as a legacy of oppression, the system of white racism persists in our culture, our country, and our consciousness.

Dr. King and his allies had to risk all to try to take a battering ram to the structure, the bricks and mortar of racial segregation and injustice in this country. But just like that “second balcony” entrance on the side of the Columbia Theater in Paducah, Kentucky, we have the structures of racism still with us today. They are not easily removed.

For about the past ten years, the University of Michigan has been fighting in court to be able to continue to use Affirmative Action principles in its admissions policies in order to contribute to making America a more just society and help remove some of the inequality that has been built into our system. Now their efforts have been rendered pointless by the voters of the state when they passed an initiative measure forbidding consideration of race in state government policy.

Giving the voters of Michigan the benefit of the doubt, I assume that their intention was not to discriminate against African Americans, or any other group. I assume this initiative was an attempt to say, “Hey, we want to think of ourselves as all the same, all equal. We don’t want to make any distinctions.” Indeed, scientists tell us that genetically, the concept of race makes no sense. There simply is no such thing as race, genetically speaking.

However, and it is a big however, race does exist as a social concept and cultural reality. To ignore it strikes me as being as though rising floodwaters had been ignored in the great 1937 flood in Evansville, or even this past September. “No, that water’s not supposed to be there, so let’s just ignore it and we are done with that problem.” Good luck. That water is still rising, and pretending it isn’t there won’t save us.

White racism is etched physically in our brains, it lives in our very cells—no matter what race we are perceived to be. It is present in our great literature and our movies. It is there in the Constitution of the United States, where it said black residents were to be counted as three fifths of a person in calculating a state’s population to determine its representation in congress. Racism is a part of our self-concept, whatever our perceived race, it helps tell us who we are, what we can do, what privilege and expectation we are entitled to have, or how we are limited and what hope is realistic for us. These things are as real as rising floodwater. They are as solid as that brick theater entrance.

In Henderson, Kentucky, there is an exhibition that runs through March at the Audubon museum called, “Everyday People,” It is a collection of photographs, newspaper articles and other remembrances contributed by members of the black community in Henderson.

One photograph is of Corydon School. In 1959, four years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in the Supreme Court said separate schools for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, an annex was added on to Corydon School in order to allow black students to come to the formerly white school. And when they built this annex, they left a wall down the middle, so the white students could stay on one side, and black students be kept on the other. Racism in bricks and mortar. Literally a structure of racism.

In 1970 in Henderson, Ollie Sue Johnson and Richard Hancock were elected “Christmas Royalty.” They were chosen by their classmates as King and Queen, the first black couple to be so chosen. The newspaper refused to print their picture. But it printed pictures of all the other nominees in the “royal court.” They were all white. I was in high school in 1970. Where were you?

When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the people living in the areas most susceptible to flooding were mostly impoverished, and mostly African American. They were protected the least by the levees and by their government, suffered the most in injury, damage and losses; they were the most likely to be mistreated in their attempts to escape the rising waters, whether on the highways or in the Superdome. More affluent residents, mostly white, received the most assistance. Insurance companies denied many claims in the area. White residents are many times more likely to have had their appeals heard and granted than black claimants.

In the structure of the levees and in the housing patterns of the city, racism is enshrined. In the workings of the government and financial systems, it is embodied. In where pollution-generating power plants and toxic waste dumps are sited, it is on the map. Systemic racism continues.

In the 2004 election, despite the Voting Rights Act that Dr. King’s activism and Rev. Reeb’s blood helped bring into being, there were systematic problems at the polls, usually in poor and, of course not coincidentally, non-white neighborhoods, that denied people their right to vote, denied citizens their constitutionally guaranteed voice in self-government. Members of congress even opposed extending the Voting Rights Act when it came up for renewal. I wish our system were as colorblind as those Michigan voters want it to be, but it seems frightfully obvious that the structures of racism continue in our government, our culture, and our minds. We can’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. We need to have tools for taking action against them.

2006, Evansville: a Consulting Interim Minister for the local Unitarian Universalist church moves to town. He goes to the grocery store nearest his apartment, and finds that though there are many people around, there is only one other white person in the store. That other person appears to be the manager, at least he is telling everyone else what to do. The new resident feels out of place, and resented in this grocery store. He never goes back. The quality and selection of foods in that store weren’t very good, anyway, and it was overpriced. He finds that there are other grocery stores in other sections of town where he does feel comfortable and welcome. There is a better selection, and the prices are better. In these sections of town he rarely sees a black face. How is it where you shop?

Whatever our intentions, whatever our values, whatever our feelings, the fact is that segregation and white racism are not gone. They are built in to the structures of our towns, and of our lives.

I have been asked to serve on a committee with CAJE: Congregations Acting for Justice and Empowerment. Members of this committee will be working on the organization’s current issue, affordable housing. Interviews have already been conducted with people who have need for affordable housing, in order to understand the problem. I haven’t seen the results of those interviews yet, but I’ll bet I can make a rather accurate guess about the racial breakdown of those in need of affordable housing.

Now those of us on that committee will be interviewing people in government, civil service, businesses and non-profit organizations to attempt to find what sorts of solutions are needed. The plan is to have issues ready for an action in May. Please stay tuned…I hope you can ALL come to that event. All you have to do at an action of this type is to show up. It is the numbers that count. In preparation we will be working to form networks among ourselves in this church to keep everyone informed of what’s going on and what we can do. Please say yes when someone asks you to be a part of that network. It will only require a handful of phone calls a couple of times a year. It requires so little, and past CAJE actions have had so much effect in the 3 short years of its existence.

We are not alone in these efforts. We have each other. This church is a spiritual community that can encourage one another AND act together on our convictions. We have CAJE. There are 13 other congregations in Evansville that join us in this work. Or perhaps, we join them. There are several large organizations that promote this kind of community organizing, including DART (to which CAJE belongs.) There is the Unitarian Universalist Association, which has expertise, resource material, resolutions, and the Washington Advocacy Office to assist us. There is the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. We have examples from the past, like Dr. King and James Reeb. And we have people of good will everywhere, working to change our society and ourselves, all the systems that concretize white racism in this country.

In a section of the Audubon Museum exhibit dealing with Dr. King’s death there is a definition offered of courage. “Courage,” it says, “is the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear and difficulty.” Who knows what difficulties we have to fear as we move forward in this quest for justice and equality? May we find together the strength to venture and persevere. The structures of inequality are strong, and have endured for a long time. We must take our turn, and do our part in our time, to dismantle them. My wish for us all is this: Courage.