The Living Legacy Pilgrimage is an eye-opening bus tour to 13 locations in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama that were pivotal in America’s Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I went on this journey in November 2016. The blogs that I wrote from this journey are about the ongoing parallels between then and now.
2019-02-21 Living Legacy Pilgrimage
“Fifty years ago, if you shook my hand, I would have been hanged,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.’s barber, still gripping my hand, which I had extended to him.
“Fifty years ago, if you had sat down beside me, I would have been shot,” said an elderly African American woman, looking straight into my eyes as I settled into the bus seat beside her.
This was the gripping reality for other human beings in my lifetime. What I learned from them was only the beginning lessons of the pilgrimage.
2019-03-04 Racist beatings: Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper wife and mother in Mississippi, was expelled from her home, shot at, and beaten for registering to vote in 1962. But this valiant woman of 44 refused to let racism and bigotry extinguish her zeal and determination as she rose to become an inspirational bright light in the Civil Rights Movement. This blog relates Ms. Hamer’s heart-wrenching story in her own words.
2019-03-14 Racist reality: Hollis Watkins and James Means
Throughout this series of blogs on the Civil Rights Movement, I have drawn parallels between racial violence of the 1900s and current times. This message is strongly evident in the stories of social activist Hollis Watkins from decades ago and the death of James Means in 2016. The common thread is white privilege, carried to the extreme, that dictates “all others step aside … or else.”
2019-03-25 Anger rising: Selma’s Bloody Sunday
In 1965, Selma, Alabama, was a hotbed for violence. It started with the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama State Trooper. It advanced with an attempted protest march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery that turned ugly at the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday, March 7. Turn Around Tuesday came two days later. Then, finally, a successful march to the capitol on March 21.
2019-04-04 Justice Delayed: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
What do you do with a man nicknamed “Dynamite Bob” who is accused of blasting a church and killing four young girls? If you’re an all-white judge and jury in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, you convict him of illegal possession of dynamite, fine him $100, and sentence him to 60 days in jail. Fortunately, justice was finally fulfilled with a murder conviction in 1977, but, of course, that doesn’t bring the dead back to life.
2019-04-15 Remembering those who were lynched: National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Between 1877 and 1950, over 4,400 African Americans were lynched by racists in almost every state in the Union. These violent acts of racial terror helped to subjugate an entire race of people. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, is a powerful testimony to this horror. Put it on your list of places to visit.
2019-04-25 Segregation stories: Dr. Von Washington, Sr., and Jacob Johnson
Racism was not limited to the South. In this blog, Von Washington, Sr., describes an incident of racial violence in Montana, and Jacob Johnson relates a story of economic discrimination in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Both stories occurred in 1963. Fortunately, the African Americans involved rose above their situations and devoted their lives to raising awareness of accomplishments by African Americans throughout the years.
2019-05-06 Civil rights terminology and references
Overcoming racism involves becoming aware of what we are currently unaware. In this blog, read about colorism (a derogatory term from the 1400s) and racism, about whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, allostatic load, and cultural competence. Also find a list of relevant books and documentaries for your personal reference and research.
One main message from the Living Legacy Pilgrimage is to make a difference in the world. For me, in 2017 and ’18, that meant get involved with politics. In this first blog, I relate how I did just that in Michigan in 2017 and ’18. The issue: anti-gerrymandering. And, yes, our resolution to end gerrymandering passed by a landslide.
2019-02-25 March for justice continues
The people of the Civil Rights Movement accomplished much. But there is more to be done.
Today’s human rights violations in the United States are a continuation of civil rights violations that extend throughout American history: from colonization, through the “eminent domain” land grab that forced Native Americans westward, through slavery and Jim Crowism, through profiteering from the labor of neo-enslaved prison inmates by government and big business today.
2019-03-07 Racist brutality: Emmett Till
The murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy in Glendora, Mississippi, brought Americans face to face with racist brutality. This boy was ignominiously beaten and slaughtered for supposedly flirting with a young white beauty queen. The perpetrators were the woman’s husband and his half-brother, who were acquitted by an all-white jury. This tragic series of events in 1955 is recognized as the true beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
2019-03-18 Vigilante victims: Mississippi burning
The Jim Crow era and Civil Rights Movement were rife with stories of beatings and bravery. This blog about the people of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the murder of three civil rights activists in 1964 is a prime example. But there is difference: the murders brought national attention and resulted in the first-ever convictions of Ku Klux Klansmen by an all-white jury in Mississippi.
2019-03-28 “Stars for Freedom” rally: City of St. Jude
Music played a big part in the Civil Rights Movement, primarily with protest songs of hope such as “We Shall Overcome.” On March 24, 1965, the spotlight shown on some of America’s premier musicians – blacks and whites – who showed up at the City of St. Jude, just outside Montgomery, Alabama, for a spontaneous “Stars for Freedom” rally. Be ready to be amazed at the performers who were there.
2019-04-08 Bethel Baptist Church: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
“Let no one be deceived: It was neither church prayers nor conciliating committees which brought about the Civil Rights Bill. It was non-violent demonstrations – marching feet, praying hearts, singing lips, and filling the jails which did it.” The speaker of this sentiment was the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Bethel Baptist Church in Bessemer, Alabama, a determined man and lightning rod for segregationist backlash.
2019-04-18 The same ole issues: Ole Miss
In 1962, James Meredith showed extreme courage to break the collegiate color barrier at the University of Mississippi. A statue on campus stands as testimony to his legacy. But students at Ole Miss today have another issue: the fact that their state flag, which contains the old Confederate flag, continued to fly atop campus buildings. Through their efforts, that has changed. Read this blog about Ole Miss over the last century.
2019-04-29 The march continues: from chaos to change
Societal change is not a gradual uphill slope. Rather, change is a sudden leap, but only after a long plateau of status quo followed by chaos. Historically, we see this in: the institution of slavery, followed by the Civil War of the 1860s; by Jim Crow laws, followed by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s; by attitudes of white supremacy, followed by greater citizen involvement in issues of social justice today.
2019-05-09 My connection with the South
In the early 1970s, I lived in Montgomery, Alabama. Nearby was the little town of Wetumpka where one of my coworkers lived. One day, he and I, while walking through a pine woods, found what appeared to be a shack. Outside it, I found a high-quality portrait of a beautiful, young African American woman. This blog is about my experience — and the people I met — when trying to find out more about her.
In this introduction message to the Living Legacy Pilgrimage, I include the wisdom of Macrina Wiederkehr, a writer and contemplative Benedictine sister: “A pilgrimage is a ritual journey with a hallowed purpose. Every step along the way has meaning. … A transformational journey. … New insights. … Deeper understanding.”
2019-02-28 Eerie view, sobering questions
It’s an eerie feeling to look through a window at an assassin’s sightline. But that’s one view at The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, which includes the Lorraine Hotel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, as well as the boardinghouse across the street from which James Earl Ray fired the fatal shot.
This museum is amazingly comprehensive. It is a treasure of information about human injustice … to help us learn and avoid more of the same today.
2019-03-11 Racist murder: Medger Evers
“Those people don’t want to talk to you; they want to kill you. This is the reality we face.” This statement, spoken by leaders of America’s Civil Rights Movement in the South in the 1960s, became a reality of life — and death — for Civil Rights activist Medger Evers on June 12, 1963. On that day, Evers was gunned down and murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His wife, Myrlie, and their children were inside and heard the shots.
2019-03-21 Segregation stories: Moses Walker and Dr. Lewis Walker
Racism and segregation were not confined to the South. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I live, I’ve been told that deeds and titles to houses built in the Victorian Era contain provisions that the property may not be sold, leased, or rented to Negroes. This blog features the stories of two African American men who experienced racism in their lives and yet have contributed much to their Kalamazoo community.
2019-04-01 Despair and courage: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for as courageous as he was also had bouts with fear, depression, and despair, coupled with his innate desire to protect his family from harm. In this blog, learn about the night at his family’s home, in Montgomery, Alabama, when Dr. King received an inspiration from God and heard the voice from within command him to “Stand up for truth, justice, and righteousness.”
2019-04-11 Segregation stories: Dr. Martha Warfield and Dr. Ben Wilson
Dr. Martha Warfield and Dr. Ben Wilson are two outstanding citizens in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, community. Both have retired from Kalamazoo’s Western Michigan University after outstanding careers in the fields of diversity and inclusion and African American studies. But in their youth, both were subjected to racist segregation: Wilson by strangers and Warfield by her high school friends.
2019-04-22 Living Legacy Pilgrimage: A lesson in resiliency
Resiliency! This is the key word that I took away from the stories of people, primarily African Americans, who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Resiliency to overcome beatings and fear of being killed. Resiliency to utilize nonviolent demonstrations to uphold equality in the face of injustice. Resiliency to change the American paradigm regarding race.
2019-05-03 Martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement
The “Star Spangled Banner,” composed by Francis Scott Key in 1814, is an anthem of America’s white society, irrelevant and inapplicable to enslaved or marginalized persons of color of the past and present. Yet, in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” courageous African Americans have stood up against racial injustice and given their lives so that other suppressed people of color might know freedom.
2019-05-13 White Man at the Back of the Bus
Early in this series of blogs, I wrote that growing up in a small, rural, all-white Michigan village had inadvertently made me part of what is known as systemic racism. That is, my family and friends simply didn’t talk about this subject. Then, in 2005, two African Americans opened my eyes to the tyranny they, and many others, experienced in the South during the days of my naive youth.
