[25 March 2018]
I had the opportunity to watch Hope
and Fury: MLK, the Movement, and the Media documentary last night on
NBC. The documentary explored with insight two perspectives – (1) the
significance of news reported via the emerging television medium for energizing
the civil rights movement and (2) the significance of the emerging civil rights
movement for establishing television as a powerful medium for social
change. As I watched last night, I found myself reconstructing my
personal narrative through the years covered by the documentary – I was born in
1951, ‘interviewed’ on reel-to-reel tape by my father in 1954 when the Supreme
Court decided Brown vs. the Board of Education, in kindergarten in 1955
when Emmett Till was murdered, in the first grade during the Montgomery bus
boycott, in the third grade when sit-ins began across the South, in the seventh
grade when King gave his ‘I have a dream’ speech to close the inspiring March
on Washington, in the eighth grade when the SCLC led the pivotal voter
registration march from Selma to Montgomery, a junior in high school when King
was assassinated. Where was I during those years? Who was I during
those years? Hope and Fury refreshed/sharpened my memory of how
thoroughly isolated/insulated from these events I was in my small West Kentucky
town, in the fundamentalist religious community into which I was born, in my
immediate as well as extended family (all of whom lived within thirty miles of
one another). Public facilities – e.g., schools, ballfields, and the
movie theater in my routine activities -- were segregated until my seventh
grade, then rather abruptly desegregated without noticeable incident. I
only learned a few years ago that lynchings occurred in the 1920s and 1930s in
West Kentucky. I had a few African-American friends in high school, but
do not recall ever thinking about inviting them to my home or going to a party
together. I was not overtly/intentionally enculturated in hardened racial
prejudice by my family, my teachers, my coaches, my scout leaders, my religious
instructors. They were all passive, silent, distracted if they were aware
of the events tracked in Hope and Fury. I was somewhat aware but
not deeply disturbed or threatened by these events. My source of
information – listening (without my parents’ knowledge) to the Beatles,
to Blood Sweat and Tears, to Chicago, to folk musicians, et
al. Watching the nightly news – which Hope and Fury noted was only
fifteen minutes each evening as late as the mid-60s – was not a family
tradition. I never saw/read a New York Times or even a Louisville
Courier-Journal. I have no memory of a single family, school, or
church discussion of pursuing social justice, of exposing/confronting social
injustice. My religious community censured critical thinking. My
public school teachers cautiously encouraged critical thinking, apparently
confident that the science, the literature, the history, the meaning of
citizenship (yes, we had a ‘Civics/Government’ course in high school!) to which
they introduced their students would not threaten the taken-for-granted
paradigm. Breaking free from these narrow/ing beginnings with an urgency
to prioritize peace and justice, to align with and advocate for the most
vulnerable, was very difficult due to the unavoidable scarring (even severing)
of intimate relationships with so many family members and friends. The
resolve to maintain intellectual/academic integrity left no other option as I
studied history, philosophy, theology, sociology, and communication first at
the regional state university and then through my graduate studies. The
resolve to be truly present with my wife Jerrice (and the easily overlooked
chronically ill population she represented) left no other option as multiple
sclerosis relentlessly destroyed her humanity (d. 1987). Four individuals
were encouragers in this otherwise very private/lonely search for firm footing
– i.e., (1) a Louisville lawyer a dozen years my senior who tirelessly shared
his enduring passion for civil rights, (2) a doctoral supervisor for whom I was
a graduate assistant who so honorably/gracefully embodied a healthy existential
center as he navigated brutal constituency challenges to his advocating the
‘beatitudes’ common/found in all cultures, (3) a young Ob/Gyn junior faculty
member whose concern for the marginalized, the oppressed, the exploited was as
broad as his participation in efforts to correct health disparities experienced
by women in African countries and as close to home as his pioneering
gynecologic innovations for women with disabilities (his second child Ginny
having Down Syndrome), and (4) a pioneering neonatologist who courageously
persisted in challenging cities such as Memphis to make every change necessary
in order for all critically ill newborns – regardless of social and/or economic
(dis)advantage – to have access to one standard of care. One of the many
reasons I was and remain so drawn to my wife Barbara was my sense/anticipation
that she had strength and insight for living life well, for being most deeply a
giver rather than a taker. So true. The Hope and Fury editors
skillfully wove clips from Ferguson to Charlottesville through the documentary,
forcing the audience to see the deeply disturbing similarities occurring now to
events in the 1950s and 1960s. Bottom line -- we must be among those who
remain vigilant. Perhaps these reflections – spurred by the Hope and
Fury documentary – help explain the impetus for all of the dinner table
conversations with our daughters related to critical thinking, to generosity,
to peacefulness, to fairness in our daily decisions/experiences.