Monthly Archives: July 2020

Community, Memorials

To Honor John Lewis, Let’s preserve and build on his legacy

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All photos in this post are views of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, represented by John Lewis for over three decades. Here, downtown Atlanta, with the gold Capitol dome, seen from the MARTA train.

This week our nation honors Congressman John Lewis, who died on July 17 at the age of eighty.  I’m fortunate to have grown up hearing Lewis’s distinctive voice.  I remember him as an Atlanta City Councilman.  My childhood home is in Georgia’s 5th district, which he represented in Congress for over thirty years.   His eventful life, by accounts, was truly purpose-driven.  Born to former sharecroppers who saved enough to buy their own small farm in Troy, Alabama, he was the third of ten children.  A serious, thoughtful boy who thrived on learning, he began his public speaking career in early childhood, preaching to the chickens.  He loved books, when he could get them.  The county public library was off limits to people of color.  He attended local segregated schools.  Higher education seemed hopelessly out of reach until he learned about American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.  The Seminary offered free tuition, in exchange for campus work, to black students planning to become ministers.  After graduating from the Seminary, Lewis enrolled in Fisk College to pursue a degree in religion and philosophy.  Although ordained as a Baptist minister, he had begun to feel a powerful call toward a path of activism in civil rights.  Throughout his life, he preached his strong faith with actions as well as words.  The chickens’ loss was a gain for Americans and people all over the globe.  

Lewis was among the young black men, neatly dressed in suits and ties, who dared to enter all-white Nashville diners and sit at lunch counters politely requesting to be served.  Freedom Rides on buses throughout the South followed.  As the Chairman of the Nonviolent Student Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he became a leader of the student civil rights movement.  Before long, Lewis was working closely with nationally known Black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr.   At twenty-three, he was the youngest speaker at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his “I have a dream” speech. 

Lewis’ s unswerving commitment to nonviolent activism got him repeatedly arrested and often beaten, a few times nearly killed.  Ironic, isn’t it,  that peaceful protest, which requires vast stores of self-discipline, tends to ignite such frenzied brutality in those challenged by it?   On March 7, 1965, Lewis and Hosea Williams led a group of six hundred, in what was intended to be a fifty-mile march from Selma, Alabama to the capitol in Montgomery in a demand for voting reform.  The Civil  Rights Act, which President Johnson had signed into law in 1964, addressed some forms of discrimination but did not touch on unfair voting practices.  Throughout much of the Deep South, poll taxes and spurious “literacy tests” were used to suppress the black vote. The efforts of Lewis and the SNCC to register blacks to vote in Alabama was sparking increasing hostility from law enforcement and white segregationists.   At the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, on what came to be known as Bloody Sunday, Lewis and Williams saw a fearsome human barricade of state troopers and police awaiting them.  It’s notable that the name of the bridge, so prominently displayed, honors a Confederate General and former Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.  The marchers continued to approach, quietly and orderly in a long narrow column, until they were about fifty feet away.  Law enforcement warned them to turn back and disperse.  The group, with Lewis and Williams still at the front, stood their ground.  Williams asked to “have a word,” but the police were finished talking.  After a few minutes, the officers put on their gas masks and advanced toward the protestors, pushing them back.  The group resisted the urge to defend themselves.  Many were knocked to the ground, beaten with clubs and sprayed with tear gas.  Lewis’s skull was cracked by a policeman’s billy club. 

Nonviolent protest served its purpose that day.  Most Americans  reacted with shock and anger when the images of police attacking unarmed marchers quickly appeared on televisions and in newspapers.  Public demand for serious voting reform gained ground.  The Voting Rights Act was signed into law just a few months later.

Today, at our nation’s capitol, the public is paying final respects to John Lewis.  On Saturday, July 25, his flag-draped coffin, born by a horse-drawn caisson, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time.  For many years, there has been talk of renaming the bridge for Lewis, a son of Alabama whose determination to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America” yielded fruit on Bloody Sunday and throughout the span of his eight decades on earth.

It’s appropriate that Lewis’s final public appearance was a visit to the newly created Black Lives Matter Plaza near Lafayette Square in Washington DC.  He was weak from a chemo treatment the day before, but he wanted to see the site of peaceful protests that were sowing the seeds of change.  2020, for all its misery and misfortune, could well be a pivotal juncture in race relations in America.  If we take to heart the wise words and courageous actions of the man who came to be known as the “Conscious of the Congress,” perhaps it can indeed be so. 

Midtown Atlanta from Piedmont Park

I’ll end with some of Lewis’s own words. As a young man in his 1963 speech at the March on Washington, he urged our nation toward transformation:

Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people. . .

We must say: Wake up America, wake up!

On the grounds of the High Museum of Art

Throughout his life, Lewis was persistent, and his message consistent. In a commencement speech at Emory University in Atlanta in 2014, the seventy-six year old offered this advice:

We all live in the same house.  It doesn’t matter whether we are black or white, Latino, Asian American, straight or gay.  We are one people, one family.  We all live in the same house.  So be bold, be courageous. Stand up! Speak up! Speak out! And find a way to create the beloved community.  The beloved world.  The world of peace.  The world that recognizes the dignity of all human kind.  Never become bitter.  Never become hostile.  Never hate.  Live in peace.  We are one. One people and one love.

View from the top of the Westin Peachtree Plaza in downtown Atlanta

May we honor John Lewis in the most honorable way possible, by following his example. By working toward the good of all Americans. This means avoiding violence. In Lewis’s words, again: When someone calls you everything but a child of God, you keep your cool. You stand with dignity, or you kneel with dignity. It means truly listening to one another. It may mean rethinking long-held convictions and taking actions that we never expected to take. As Lewis has said, When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to not be quiet.

Remember that we’re not starting from scratch. We’re building on Lewis’s legacy, a strong foundation of love, peace and hope.

A view in Morningside, the intown Atlanta neighborhood where I grew up.

Community, Covid-19, Holiday

With Liberty and Justice for all!

On this 4th of July, bitter divisions are markedly and grievously evident among so-called fellow Americans.  Is the Covid-19 pandemic intensifying in our country?  Or is it actually winding down?  Do some of our methods of governing, policing and even voting exacerbate inequality ?   Or is the playing field, in this land of opportunity, truly and gloriously level for all Americans?

More than ever, answers to such questions depend upon our perspective.  Our perspective, more than ever, influences where we choose to find our information, and what we perceive as fact or fiction.  And where we choose to find our information, in turn, reinforces our perspective. If we associate almost exclusively with those whose opinions echo ours, our perspective is further fortified, and our views increasingly justified.

Have you ever held firmly to a belief, certain without a doubt of the righteousness and correctness of your conviction?  And then, perhaps in response to an unexpected observation, or a comment by a friend, or a passage in a book, be prompted to rethink that conviction?  And in so doing, to watch the sure foundation develop cracks and crumble to dust? 

I’m recently been reconsidering some of my long-held viewpoints. Most of us probably hold fast to some beliefs that need to be reevaluated.  Some of the “truths” we  espouse may be opinions based on flawed premises.  An openness to new ideas implies a willingness to rethink.   Changing one’s mind may not be evidence of weakness of will or intellect, but instead, of humility that leads to wisdom.  We should be wary of those in leadership positions who claim otherwise.  Let’s not be led astray by those who actively seek to magnify rather than diminish the divisions between us. 

On July 4th, we celebrate our nation’s founding principles of liberty and justice for all.  Shouldn’t we ask ourselves this:  Do we really want these ideals to apply to everyone?  Or only to ourselves?  Is it liberty and justice for all?  Or liberty and justice for me?  Let’s reexamine our perspectives.  Let’s be humble as we try to understand those of others.  We can work toward unity while honoring diversity.  Our country has done this before.  We can do it again. 

Oh beautiful, for patriot dream that sees beyond the years

thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!

America!  America!  God mend thine every flaw,

confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law. 

–America the Beautiful

words by Katharine Lee Bates, 1904

music by Samuel A. Ward, 1888

Community, Covid-19, Family, Nature, Walking the Dog

Raccoon Encounter

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One recent evening, when my husband went to get our dog for his last walk of the day, he found Kiko in his bed by the window, gazing placidly at the fox that typically curls up under the maple tree around dusk.

Kiko and the fox have become accustomed to one another. Lately it’s part of their routine to stare silently at one another as the sun sets. It’s almost as though an invisible thread links each red furry pointy-eared critter to the other, one inside, one outside.

Glancing out another window, my husband spotted a less expected wild visitor. A plump and furry raccoon was intently pawing the ground beneath our bird feeder. Since we moved into our house twenty years ago, this is only our second raccoon spotting. My daughter and I dropped what we were doing and joined my husband to watch with interest as the raccoon staked out the territory around the bird feeder and explored available options. For a while, she* continued to use her little hands to sift the earth for sunflower seeds.

Clearly this method wasn’t yielding enough bounty. She ambled over to the pine tree, climbed up unhurriedly, and perched on the stump of a branch below the feeder. Last year’s dry, brown Christmas wreath, (which I hung on the stump in January when it was still green) almost caused her to lose her footing. After regaining her balance, she took her time to assess the situation. She appeared to consider a leap onto the feeder, but evidently decided against it. Another approach was in order.

Up until this point, the raccoon had appeared to be a slightly clumsy, slow-moving creature, an unlikely athlete. As she grasped the branch from which the feeder hangs, this all changed. Suddenly, she was the picture of fluffy agility, using all four feet to make her way easily, upside down, along the branch.

Once within reach of the feeder, she curled her white hind paws around the branch and suspended herself vertically, in the manner of a trapeze artist at the circus. She grasped the feeder with one front paw and used the other to fish out seed from an opening. She hung on like this for quite some time. The squirrels that routinely attempt to outsmart our supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder are far less successful.

The raccoon then flipped gracefully and dropped lightly to the ground, where she continued feeding on the seed she’d spilled from the feeder.

And soon she began the process again. 

In our focus on the raccoon, we failed to notice that Kiko’s attention had been roused. He’d emerged from his bed and left the room. At first we thought he might have retreated upstairs for the night, as he often does just before it’s time for the last walk. But no. He’d pushed open the kitchen door to the screened porch, plunged through his doggie door and dashed out into the side yard. By the time we arrived, he was at the base of the pine tree, looking up at the raccoon high above him in the branches. See, I can still hunt, he seemed to be saying, as he looked at us, even more condescendingly than usual. And he, like the raccoon, can be surprisingly quick on his feet, should the need arise.

Seven years ago, Kiko had a brief encounter with a raccoon that also ended with the fuzzy masked visitor peering down at him from a tree. (See this post here from November 2013.) I wondered then if that would be the start of more frequent raccoon sightings. It was not. Will it be the case now? We’ve seen the memes promoting the raccoon as the perfect Covid-19 mascot: it’s a mask-wearing hand-washer, and the letters of racoon can be rearranged to spell corona. Our visitor returned the next evening, around the same time, and went through the same feeding process. We haven’t seen her since, but I’ll continue to look for her around dusk.

We could use the distraction. During the past four months, our family has rarely left the house. We’ve had no guests. No friends inside the house. (And therefore we’ve abandoned all but the most minimal efforts toward tidying up. The surrounding clutter encroaches daily. Chaos looms.) It sure would be pleasant to be able to count on visits from such a charming acquaintance. One who abides by the pandemic rules of social distancing, entertains us briefly with acrobatic feats, never expects to come in, and then quietly disappears. Unfortunately, it will be a while before we can expect to enjoy the company of any other kind of visitor.

 

*I’ve recently realized that I tend to refer to most animals I see in nature with male pronouns.  I know our most frequent fox visitor is a male because he lifts his leg to pee.  I have no evidence of gender for this raccoon, but I’ve decided to go against my instinct and refer to it as “she.”