The Justice Journey Pilgrimage

 

Day One—The Bus

Yep, it's 6 a.m.  We'll disembark this baby at 10:45 p.m.

I’m currently with a group of Pilgrims and Shepherds—13 early adolescents, 14 adults—from St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in West Des Moines, on our way to Birmingham, Alabama to begin a week long pilgrimage into the heart of civil rights memorial sites.  The 16th Street Baptist Church.  Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Rosa Parks Museum.  The Lorraine Motel/National Civil Rights Museum, among others in Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, Memphis.

If you grew up in the sixties, those places might strike a chord or resonate with you, perhaps even viscerally.  I think about the angry, bitter, loud arguments I had at the kitchen table with my parents about civil rights, in particular about how it was morally wrong for whites to oppress Negroes simply based on the color of their skin.  The violence of the civil rights movement happened hundreds of miles and multiple states away, until photographs and the evening news brought it to my Chicago doorstep.  No longer could we look away.  Never should we have.  How, as Christians, could we walk through the church doors on Sunday if we didn’t stand up for our fellow man?

Two threads have been popping up as I prepared for this journey, and I find them reverberating on this extended coach bus ride today.

First, an aside.  What, one might wonder, is it like on a bus half filled with early adolescents?

Amazingly quiet, and undoubtedly guess why.  Every so often, one of the kids will remove one, perhaps two, of their ear buds, interact with another person, replace the ear bud, back to the device.  A few of the kids played card games.  Many slept—the bus is large enough for everyone to have their own seat, so stretching out is encouraged.  The air conditioning works extremely well on the bus, solidifying my choice to wear long sleeves, long pants, bring a sweat shirt.  And even with that, purchases of blankets and throws at the rest stops have been a popular choice.

The adults read, talk amongst themselves.  Those with hand projects have worked on them and unraveling yarn engaged a bunch for awhile. 

We watched two movies with relevance to our journey—Four Little Girls by Spike Lee, a documentary about the children killed in the bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church.  Remember the Titans, a story about an integrated football team in the sixties, coached by a Black head coach and white assistant coach.  Yes, it does star Denzel Washington and the young Ryan Gosling.  Great soundtrack.  Introducing the younglings to the Temptations.

Back to what I’ve been thinking about.

The first thread relates to my age, I think: what it’s like to visit places with historical significance that are part of my life history.  I try to lasso the emotions these visits evoke and find they continue to tingle through my system, occasionally coalescing into an eruption of emotion where I end up ranting about the injustice or wrong du jour.  What has gone wrong in this country?  The visuals from the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War when Walter Cronkite brought it into the living rooms of Americans watching the CBS evening news, were enough to move politicians to make change.  Today, ten years after Sandy Hook, the number one cause of death for children in America is being shot by a gun.  And our politicians can’t get even close to agree that maybe there should be background checks or red flag laws.  Are you kidding me?  In the sixties, I not just had hope things would change.  I KNEW things would change.  Ah, the power of youth.  Today, I no longer have that hope.  I have frustration and outrage.

The second thread relates to seeing the justice sites with the kids.  They watch the movies and youtube videos and wonder how life could have been like that.  Blacks not allowed to sit at lunch counters or attend schools with white children or having German Shepherds turned loose on them.  Being lynched, in some cases just for the color of their skin.  Yet what does their world look like?  Will they/are they numb to schools being shot up?  Shopping malls, churches?  What kinds of connections will they draw between the Deep South of the 1960s and their version of these United States?

I'm anxious to hear.

Good night.  More tomorrow.

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