Two weeks ago I confessed how talking about justice issues can make feel uncomfortable, partly because I do not feel fully equipped, and partly because it can rock the boat. Yet, at times, doing so is compelling, and God always pulls us out of our comfort zones while promising to be with us for the journey.
My confession this week was that I knew nothing about Juneteenth until I was ordained and serving in a parish in Philadelphia. Juneteenth, the June 19th celebration of the freeing of the last enslaved people in 1865, is a major festival in Philly and elsewhere. However, I grew up in South Carolina. Juneteenth was never mentioned, even in school history classes. While we were never fed any garbage trying to excuse slavery or minimize its impact, we never explored the experience of slavery from the viewpoint of an enslaved person or their descendants.
I remember touring several plantations on school trips and never once entering a slave cabin. This, of course, filled us with a bit of nostalgia for the “country life” with its graces (for the white landowners) rather than expose us to the reality of how that life was sustained.
Times have indeed changed and many of the historic plantations have put much focus on studying and presenting what the lives of the enslaved were like. However, I am a reasonably intelligent 56 year old white male who went to good schools and who loves history. And yet, I have rarely seen history told through the eyes of those whom others oppressed unless I specifically sought it out. To be honest, in my younger days, I was oblivious to what history was missing. History is incomplete unless we know everybody’s story.
My own family owned slaves. Various branches had plantations in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia. We have letters documenting that we were the “good guys” who made sure those we enslaved could read and who helped them get across Union lines once the Civil War began. At family gatherings, we would pat ourselves on the back “that we were not like the others.” We do not have inherited wealth in our family and they all moved West to homestead after the Civil War, but our opportunities in life, even multiple generations down the road, continue to owe some acknowledgement to the wealth and prestige we enjoyed that allowed us to thrive in future generations.
Fast forward to another Confession. In 2010, I still thought slavery of African-Americans ended with the end of the Civil War until a Vestry member of my last congregation, who was also Department Chair of African-American History at The College of New Jersey, gave me the book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon. It is also a PBS special.
Blackmon details the heart wrenching story of how businesses and law enforcement colluded to create laws and then arrest black people that would put them into a prison system that then used them for hard labor in mines and other industries. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil Warn, Americans could still find ways to legally enslave people for corporate purposes. Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crowdetails how the prison-industrial complex is still at work today. Fortunately, there are glimmers that the PreK-to-Prison pipeline is slowing being dismantled, at least around the edges.
Juneteenth is often called the black person’s Independence Day. It is a festival to be celebrated, and I give thanks that it will become a national holiday. As we think about social justice in the context of our faith, we must remember that Jesus came to destroy all powers that lead to death. Jesus contended with evil that was done in this world in our communities and institutions, not just spiritual brokenness in the individual soul. We cannot claim to fully follow Christ if we do not follow him into those same struggles today.
I do not know what the right answers are for a healing path forward. However, I do know this: learning more about the past and how it has shaped our lives in both good and bad ways is part of that healing process. The Gospel shows us time and again that reconciliation does not happen by sweeping the past under the table. It happens by bringing truth to light so that pain can be recognized, stories can be told, people’s lives and experiences can be brought out of the shadow.
I do not have answers beyond faithfully living out the Baptismal Covenant. But, I do have a story that has made me think and reflect. I also have had the grace of hearing the stories of others that have brought me to deeper realizations. That alone has helped me feel more equipped to work for a more just life for all of us as creatures of God.
Do not be afraid to go where the questions lead us. God is with us in this journey, and a brighter future for all of us is to be found when we do!
Blessings Always!
Dirk+