A Visit To An Ugly Past
As promised, here are my reflections upon visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN. I was spending four days with the church in Senatobia, MS just a half hour south of Memphis. I had a great time with that wonderful church — a church that is ready to move into great and wonderful works for the kingdom. During the day, I had time to indulge some interests of mine so I walked Beale Street, saw the Gibson guitar factory, the Rock and Soul Museum, and Sun Studios. I also haunted a few guitar shops and had a blast but didn’t buy anything. After trying to get to see the Civil Rights Museum on Tuesday (it was closed), I returned on Wednesday morning.
Whatever it was I expected to happen, what really happened was overwhelming.
The shock hit me when I pulled into the parking lot. I looked up and saw the sign “Lorraine Motel” and wondered if my GPS had misled me (it’s happened before). Then I saw the wreath on the second floor balcony… and it all came back at me in a rush. It was somewhat like the experience the guy in the NBC show “Chuck” has when he “flashes” on something. Hundreds of images and emotions came right at me. I had no idea the museum was in the hotel where Dr. King was staying the afternoon he was shot down.
I was eleven years old when it happened. As was often the case in my childhood, dad had moved us into Appalachia to work with the poor. We lived in the foothills of the Appalachians, southern Ohio, at the time. Our TV watching was limited by whatever the aerial could pick up out of Portsmouth, Ohio or Huntington, WV. The schools were all white and, in fact, I didn’t know any black people except for a few preachers my father had introduced me to at this or that lectureship when we traveled. Dad really, really liked several of them and made sure I got to hear them preach. When it came to Dr. King, though, my father was not a fan. He was convinced he was a communist sympathizer, a “black agitator.” Dad sincerely believed in equality but he had no plan to achieve it. That’s probably true of most of us to this day.
A very pretty young African American woman welcomed me to the museum. I chose not to take the audio. I preferred to read and move at my own pace. The experience began with a short film outlining the situation of American blacks after the Second World War. Many of those who fought so bravely and sacrificed so much for their country were treated as less important than dogs by that same country when they returned home. I knew that. I’d read about it. But seeing the films of white men laughing with unalloyed joy at humiliating black men in uniform or well dressed black businessmen made the blood drain out of my face. I was well aware that I was among a small group of three white people in a crowd of sixty or so watching the film. I was a minority. And I was a representative of the bad guys.
On the streets of Memphis I had been encouraged by how polite and kind people were of both races. I had spent time earlier that week with some homeless people I found around Beale Street and, later, near the STAX Museum of American Soul Music. During my time in the museum, most African Americans wouldn’t meet my eyes when they stepped past me. There were no casual, sweet exchanges of hello’s and excuse me’s. I understood why: this was a place where emotions were made raw once again.
Some of you might think that is a bad thing but I couldn’t disagree more. As I watched the films of white people talking to the news cameras, proud of the way they beat this or that man because he had the effrontery to want to sit at a lunch counter… or as I listened to the mother of a white man whose son was killed because he joined the Freedom Riders and went to help the blacks in Mississippi who he considered his brothers… or as I saw film after film of white police officers laughing at the sight of lynched and burned black men — some so young as to be mere boys at the time of their torturous deaths — I experienced a profound shame. These events weren’t about slavery — they were the world I grew up in. These things happened no more than 40 or 50 years ago. That is just yesterday.
To see people marching peacefully (and Dr. King was always, always about peaceful, non-violent protest) wearing signs saying “I Am A Man” only to be set upon by dogs and water hoses held by jackbooted white cops… men who never had to face a penalty for their actions… it was too much to bear. I walked onto the bus where Rosa Parks had had enough and refused to move to make way for a white man (three people had already moved. You see, it was against the law for a black person to sit in a row where a white person sat, so four people had to move when a white man wanted that row. Mrs. Parks didn’t move and was arrested for it). I stood and looked into the room where Dr. King had been mere moments before walking outside to go to dinner and catching a bullet from a petty criminal who laid in wait seventy yards away.
I’ll admit. I broke into tears three times. I would have cried more but I was trying hard not to (it’s a guy thing. And a Scottish thing). I can remember not giving Dr. King much thought when I was a boy. I guess my dad’s politics were okay with me. Then, when I was about 17 or 18 I read his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It is not too much to say it transformed my thinking. Here was a letter I could have co-signed (though not written. I hadn’t suffered. But I could agree with his wisdom and reasoning). In many ways, it moved me to being a lifelong libertarian (little “l”, please. I join no parties).
In fact, that is something that has always amazed me. Every single one of the sheriff’s and politicians who attacked blacks on the films and in the posters and leaflets on display were Democrats. When Johnson passed the Civil Rights act, he had to rely on Republican votes in the House and Senate because so many Democrats were angrily against it (led by Al Gore, Sr. the father of former Vice President Gore). Yet, a few decades on, the Democrats can count on 90+% of the African American vote and most African Americans will tell you that it was the Republicans — the party of Abraham Lincoln — that tried to keep them down. That’s a rewriting of history that will go down with the NY Times rewriting of the Stalin years as examples of the worst of the worst.
I went over to the restored apartment where James Earl Ray fired the shot. They have a very well done presentation of the different conspiracy theories concerning Ray. Did he act alone? Was he backed by the government, the Dixie Mafia, or the New Orleans mob? I have never been one to engage in most conspiracy theories but something about the idea of Ray acting alone just has never seemed right. How did he get so many aliases, passports, and the money to move from country to country when he was a redneck, uneducated escaped prisoner from Arkansas?
Regardless, I walked out of the museum in deep thought and I am still processing two days later. I lived in ignorance while evil was all around me and I enjoyed the blessings of being in a privileged race while others suffered… and I felt no guilt. As I became a man, I learned more and changed my way of life. But this visit showed me I, like Robert Frost in his poem, have miles to go before I sleep.
September 18th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Very good Patrick, I’ve had some great discussions with brother’s Wilson & Thomas in our congregation about politics and race relations and have learned a lot. Like you say, this history isn’t that long ago and feelings can still be raw when people have lived through these tragedies.
I was very young (6 years old) when Dr. King was assassinated but I do remember bits & pieces of the 67 Detroit riots and was just frighten about the situation. I really didn’t have a clue about race relations because I was brought up in the lily white suburbs and didn’t experience African American relationships. It wasn’t until we had our first African American student come to my high school did I finally see the impact of prejudice.
I have to say that most of the students welcomed him, but there were some that were very out spoken about their prejudice and made sure he knew about it, and others that just hid their prejudice, this was during the late 70’s which again isn’t that long ago. What’s important to me now as an adult is that I seek out relationships with our African American brothers. I think it’s extremely important to bond and mend relations especially in the Church because we need to reflect God’s kingdom, but even more so because of the wonderful relationships that come from it.
When we make relationships with all our brothers and sisters our color boundaries fade, they don’t disappear, but we begin to form friendships and experience the joys and sadness that comes from those relationships. We find out that there are very little differences between us as we go about our lives trying to make our way in this world.
That’s why it’s important that we come together; when we see things from all perspectives we get a better understanding as to the question why?
September 18th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Thank you for posting your responses to the National Civil Rights Museum. I came away with a profound respect for Dr. King and those who worked alongside him. They faced life with an almost unbelievable amount of courage and dignity.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Excellent. I hope to visit there some day. I think it is a fairly well supported fact that the communists tried to use Dr. King for their causes, but that he was a sympathizer with them is simply not true. But that is what we were taught in the south. He was a man who did try to be Jesus in the face of those who were beating him down.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Taylor Branch’s magisterial 3-volume series, ‘America in the King Years’ just blew me away. I was raised in Birmingham and took Alabama History a LOT, and never knew 90% of what Branch wrote. For example, Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience was a strategic manuever much like how the Dodgers waited until they had the right person in Jackie Robinson before breaching the MLB color barrier. Also, her attorney, Fred Gray, was one of Marshall Keeble’s famous “Preacher Boys.”
The three volumes are titled, Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan’s Edge. Branch is a brilliant and exhaustive historian.
September 19th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Thank you for reflecting and sharing your experience at the NCRM.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Thanks, Patrick, for a gripping description. Sadly, I’d never heard of the museum.
I’ll second Nick’s comment about Taylor Branch. I’ve only read the first book in the trilogy, but it was excellent.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
September 19th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
What a graphic description of an age we want to forget. I was writing a church bulletin when a brother came in my office and told me that King had been shot.
Unfortunately he appeared to be happy!
September 20th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
“In fact, that is something that has always amazed me. Every single one of the sheriff’s and politicians who attacked blacks on the films and in the posters and leaflets on display were Democrats.”
These people might be better described as “Dixiecrats” . but you are right, at that time democrats controlled southern politics, and most elected officials bore the name “democrat”. The fact that President Johnson a Texan, continued with the plans of President Kennedy a northerner dumbfounded most southerners, ah I remember it well, I was 23 at the time of Kennedy’s death living in Texas I heard both sides, and one side was not pretty, but it was the prevailing side here in the south. No the despicable split in the way race is treated in the U.S. is not a Republican, Democrat thing, it is still even today a southern, northern thing. There is no action in history that changed political parties as much as Johnson signing the “equal rights bill” as President Johnson said to his compadres when he signed the bill, “We just lost the south” and he was right.
“he had to rely on Republican votes in the House and Senate because so many Democrats were angrily against it”
Pretty smart on behalf of the republicans, backing a bill they knew would destroy the democrats in the south, it sure wasn’t because they loved Kennedy and Johnson.
Yeah politics ain’t pretty.
I am a proud Democrat, but a modern day Democrat, not a dixiecrat.
The Mason-Dixon line is sinking farther and farther south, when we run it out into the ocean we will be one nation.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for sharing … Memphis is rich in history.
Was a great place to live.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I am about your age, Patrick, and I remember Dr. King and his speeches and marches fondly. I can take little credit for this, though, as I picked up my parents’ attitudes, much as you did.
We lived in Wichita, KS, which at that time was torn by some very nasty race riots, centered at East High School, where my brothers were students. My brother Mike was attacked in one incident and beaten with a chain. Yet in spite of that I was blessed to never hear either of my parents speak disparagingly of Dr. King, or of anyone who was not white (and I, like you, am so white as to be nearly translucent).
It appals and shames me to think of people who condemn and oppress anyone because of race, or income, or whatever they may choose. I am sure I would have tears in my eyes were I to visit the museum as you did. However, I think perhaps you hold yourself too much to account over your attitudes at a young age. If you were inspired by Dr. King’s at 17 or 18, you took your first steps as an adult with a better understanding of what he marched for.
Thanks for sharing this with us. It is very, very humbling to think that it was only 40 years ago that Dr. King was murdered.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I appreciate this very much. The museum is interesting and moving. I would add to “its only been 40 years” a note of how far we have come. Preaching in a city that is predominantly black and for whom the power base is predominantly black has changed my whole perspective on race relations in the U.S. Those who continue to use race to divide us are losing ground in a hurry. We have came a long way since the 1950’s and we all, of both races, have a long way still to journey…but we are making it at amazing speeds. At least that is true in the area of Mississippi where I live.
The youth are often indifferent to racial/cultural differences. And though you still have vestiges of racial strife (in both races)for everyone of them I can show you positive race relations that would not have happened in any other place I have lived.
A while back, coming to Acts 10, I chose to address the race issue. The response was very positive. Later I was humbled. As the brethren from our sister congregation in town came (a culturally black congregation) in for our joint worship service, I began to think of the elderly people coming in and those receiving them. Most had grown up in the worst days of racism, they were pressured by society, even family, to consider the other as the enemy, as “dirt,” evil to their core. And yet, a scant 40 years later, they had risen above all that. They were welcoming their brethren. Some of them still feel uncomfortable crossing racial boundaries. Yet, in comparision to the very little strides I have had to make over the last 40 years, they have crossed continents. I hope, in the areas where my life is still wanting, I can do half as well.
I appreciate the article.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for that upbeat note, Danny.