WE SHALL OVERCOME [M, 1-16-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter. WE SHALL OVERCOME [M, 1-16-23]

 

Tornadoes tore through the South a couple of days ago, leveling homes, killing nine people. One of the towns they hit was Selma, Alabama. It seemed a strange way to call attention to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I saw a David Letterman interview with John Lewis as they walked across the Selma bridge. “There were just a few as we started here in Selma. When we finally marched into Montgomery,” Lewis said, “there were twenty thousand of us.”

Twenty thousand was so many to be there that day. Twenty thousand was so few to be there that day. It seems strange to me now that I was one of those twenty thousand, so many and so few. I wonder how many of us are still alive. After all, if you were in your 20s then, you’re in your 80s now.

John Lewis is dead. So is MLK, Jr. So is Andre’ Hammonds. 

Andre’ was the first black man to get a PhD at the University of Tennessee, and the first black professor at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. He was a wonderful friend to me for almost 50 years. We marched into Montgomery together.

The Alabama Methodist Student Movement called the Indiana Methodist Student Movement, and said, “We want you to march with us. We want each college and university in Indiana to send their campus minister, a student, and a professor.” From Indiana State, the student was Bob Mullins, from Hammond. The professor was Andre’.

I have tried to find Bob, without results, to see if he is still alive. Andre’ died several years ago. I think I am the only one of the campus ministers who is still alive.

My campus ministry years were the 1960s, years of great turmoil on campus and in the country. Civil Rights. Voting Rights. Vietnam. Women’s Rights. Selma was not the only time I had to march.

As I look back now, one of the few left alive to remember what those marches felt like, what I remember is simply that I participated. I did what I could. Is the race problem settled? No. Will the end of the Vietnam war bring back the boys who died in it? No. Was Vietnam the end of stupid wars? No. Do women have full rights over their own bodies? No. Are non-hetero people fully accepted? No.

Then did I make a difference? Yes, along with thousands of other small contributors, my contribution made a difference. We moved society in the right direction. As I look back, the main thing I did for those causes… well, I showed up.

Helen says that when she’s had physical therapy, each day was a drag. It seemed like she was getting nowhere. That muscle still wouldn’t work. That back was still painful. But, then, suddenly, at the end, after all those grinding days of nothing happening, it happened. It worked!

That’s the way it usually is with social progress. A lot of little steps. A long march. Others joining along the way. And suddenly, you’re in Montgomery, twenty thousand strong, listening to MLK Jr. talk about the urgency of now.

John Robert McFarland