The eCrozier

This week we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the murder in Jackson, Mississippi of Medger Evers, the civil rights activist and NAACP leader. Mr. Evers had just returned home from a meeting late on June 12, 1963 when he was shot in the back and murdered as he got out of his car. When his children heard the shot, they did what they were trained to do: they ran and hid in the bathtub. Imagine growing up having that training and knowing the probability that people would try to kill your father?

Racism is, as some have called it, “America’s Original Sin.” It runs right through us all. There is no way to avoid it. My generation has seen segregation (I still remember a separate-but-not-so-equal swimming pool in my hometown that we to our shame called “The Inkwell”), and then desegregation, and then attempts at integration, and now, in many parts of our communities, re-segregation. 50 years after the murder of Mr. Evers we are still trying to get this right, to make this right, and we have not. There are doubtless many explanations for why we have not yet made this right. There are those who would offer political, or economic, or sociological, or psychological analyses as a way of explanation and each one of those might offer some insight or truth.

But as one who sees the world through the Biblical lens, I do not find any one of those explanations particularly compelling or complete. I think sin is the only truth that can adequately explain the persistence of racism after all these years. The truth of racism as a sin exposes such things like certain code language used by politicians. It explains the doggedness of the so-called “birthers” about our President. It reveals why so often we blame the other race for why racism persists. We are all guilty. Not one of us is innocent. Until that truth sinks home, we will never rid ourselves of this awful spiritual disease.

In the weeks after Mr. Evers’ murder in 1963, my parents left me with my paternal grandfather for the day. After lunch, he told me that now I could read so well, he wanted me to read the truth. So, he gave me a Klan pamphlet, told me to sit on the back stoop of his house, and read it. I did. The pictures showed men in white hoods and robes standing near burning crosses. As I was reading, my parents pulled their car into the driveway. My grandfather came to the back door, standing behind me. My father approached and saw what I was reading. Not a word was said by anyone, but much was communicated. My father quickly took the pamphlet out of my hand, threw it to the ground, put me in the car, and we drove off. It would be years before I would see my grandfather again. The topic was never allowed to come up again in my presence.

I now wish it had. For as disgusted as my father was in my Klan-member grandfather’s beliefs, he could not find a way later, when I was older, to discuss it with me. The sin of racism persists because we allow it to remain, unnamed, unexposed, and unspoken about. The power of this sin lies in the silence and shadows around it and our unwillingness to engage in honest conversations with one another. Naming the way it has shaped and molded us and asking God for the grace to amend our lives is the only hope we have that our children will not pass this spiritual malady on to their children.

+Scott