After the election, I was reading the news, lamenting on Twitter, and trying to listen to the voices that I felt were most marginalized by the comments our newly elected president had made on his campaign trail.

Listen and lament.

Listen and lament.

But after about a week, I was drowning in a sea of despair. I was starting to think I was going to have to shut the internet down, but I also felt like it would be an unacceptable exercising of privilege to close my ears and eyes to the emboldened racism and rampant hate-related instances unfolding all around the country.

So at some point, I was moved (probably by the Holy Sprit) to type into my Google search bar something to the effect of: Black Christian Perspective On Election Results.

Somehow my search led me to an article you wrote about feeling betrayed by white evangelicals in the wake of the election. You explained that for your white brothers and sisters to ignore the racist rhetoric was to dangerously underestimate the power of words and the impact they have on the groups which the rhetoric is intended to marginalize.

And then you ended with these words.

Because of Christ, I am willing to be part of a body that constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism. Because of Jesus, I am willing to associate with believers who outright deny systemic and institutional forms of inequality based on race. Because of our unity in the Spirit, I am willing to fellowship with believers who rebuke me for my honesty, and accuse me of sowing division because I speak of difficult subjects. I am still here. Bear with me if I sometimes long to worship with people who share not only my theology, but my pain as well.

As a member of a church that is trying to bridge racial divides, I do not take lightly the willingness of anyone from the minority culture to worship with me.

I have grown to understand how much people of color have given up in order to participate in racial reconciliation, in order to walk back into to churches from which their parents and grandparents were actively excluded.

So I was humbled by your willingness to remain part of a body that “constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.” And it reminded me again that the black people in my church have to face the same struggle, worshipping alongside a group of believers who have (in some numbers) voted for and continue to support a president who is stripping away any small steps of progress towards equality.

As a result of landing on that one article and reading several others, I began to faithfully listen to the podcast Pass the Mic, where I began to hear you and Tyler Burns discuss issues and culture from a distinctly black Christian perspective.

Which is a perspective this white girl needs to hear.

The longer I listen, the more voices I hear. And the more I learn.

Through your podcast, I also grew to know and love the Truth’s Table podcast.

You also introduced me to the writings at the blog (Black Perspectives) of the African American Intellectual History Society, where I have read countless stories and been introduced to new books that have grown my world exponentially.

I could go on and on, but mainly I just wanted to write and say thank you.

Thank you for your willingness to keep engaging with a community that consistently   underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.

Thank you for creating spaces where I can learn. I know that those spaces are not for me, but I am grateful to be invited along to listen and open my heart.

I hope you will keep writing, speaking, reading, tweeting and holding truth for us all to see.

With gratitude and grace,

Alison

A note to my readers:

If you want to check out the podcast, Pass The Mic, here are a couple of my favorite episodes:

This interview with Andy Crouch is a particularly great listen for white folks. Note: the podcast’s target audience is black listeners, so if you’re white, you might be asking yourself why you would join a conversation that is not for you? One good answer is that when I am in a place where my own experience excludes me from understanding what the speakers’ have encountered, I am being let in on something special. I get to listen and learn.

Bryan Stevenson (interviewed here) is a national treasure. Seriously, I think in 100 years we’ll be talking about this guy like we do Ghandi.

And if you are involved in any kind of racial reconciliation in churches, the 4-part series that Truth’s Table did on this topic is required listening. This one with Laura Pritchard is my favorite.

The post An Open Letter to Jemar Tisby appeared first on Alison Chino.

Dear White People (including myself),

As Black History Month wraps up, I want to make a plea that we all choose not be done with Black History for the year.

Current events are daily revealing how necessary it is that all Americans learn Black History all year long.

For how long?

For as long as it takes for us to unwrite the rules we wrote when our brothers and sisters were enslaved and we did not count them as people.

For as long as it takes to unmake a system that has its roots planted deeply in white supremacy.

For as long as it takes for us to consider Black History as an integral part of American History, embedded in our lives and national stories, just like The Mayflower, The Pilgrims and Independence Day.

Extensive reading is my preferred (and maybe too easy) method of becoming awake to how the decks are stacked against our black and brown brothers and sisters in this country. But I am committing this year not to just reading about racism, but also to talking about it, to writing about it regularly and to calling it out in myself.

Let me say that again.

I am committed to calling out racism in myself.

Lamenting it.

Confessing it.

Repenting of it.

I like to say that I am about 67% woke. (That’s probably generous.)

Woke refers to a state of being aware of racial injustice in the world.

So if I am 67% woke, that still leaves like 33% of me that is asleep, that is ruled by racism.

I was raised in a country that was founded on white supremacy, so I am going to have a natural bent towards participating in racism that is both underlying and overt.

I am repenting of being complicit in a system that has sold itself out in a grab for power. I am so sad that I am a part of tradition that was meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world and instead seems to be the second coming of the Pharisees. I cannot make it right by saying I am not a part of the group, or I am not one of those kind of Christians. Somehow I stood by while we were seduced by the empire and so I participated.

For years and years, I was content to sit in a church on Sunday morning filled with people who looked like me, to fill the seats at my table with people who looked like me. I was content to read only books about people who looked like me, and I studied history that was missing the pieces that explain why life is so different for people who did not look like me.

I am lamenting that I did not notice how wrong this was. I am lamenting that my unwillingness to cross racial lines has contributed to walls that exist today, and to the rhetoric that is adding more bricks every day to those very walls, causing them to be thicker and harder to break down.

I confess that I have contributed to an atmosphere where we need to say out loud that Black Lives Matter, because the blood on the streets shows that these words are not a given. We must say that Black Lives Matter so that maybe one day we will live in a country where that is true to everyone. In fact, I believe that if we had made it true that Black Lives Matter then we would also have solved the problem of welcoming refugees, because if we raise up and value the lives of those who are different from us, then we will continue to do it with refugees, with Muslims, and with anyone we have designated as “other.”

And so I repent that I personally have not always shown with my actions in the world that Black Lives Matter.

I repent that I have acted as though I am owed the privilege that I was born with. I pass through borders and drive by police cars without fear. I walk into stores and restaurants and never doubt that I will be treated with respect. I expect to have the very best possible schools for my children, without regard for the effect my school choices have on the districts and towns in which we have lived.

If I live to be 100 I cannot undo what I have done to uphold the standard of white supremacy in the US, and this fact overwhelms me. It overwhelms me so much that I considered not writing this letter. But even if I cannot undo all the things or do all that must be done, I can try.

I can do the little that I know how to do today. And tomorrow I can try to learn about another thing. I can work towards another half percent of being woke.

And I would be so honored if you would join me.

That’s why I am making this page into a Resource List, a page that I can add to whenever I come across something that contributes to my awareness of racial injustice. You can come back to it and read again and again because this journey towards racial reconciliation is long.

But I think the long journeys are the ones worth taking.

And I think that God is with us on the long journeys.

And when I think about Martin Luther King Jr, and I listen to his speeches, I remember how bravely he stood in the face of a long uphill climb that he knew would probably end in death.

And so how dare I grow tired?

If I ever say I am tired of hearing about racism, I will call myself out and repent.

Because, friends, think of how weary our black and brown brothers and sisters are of this battle.

So very weary. I hear it in their words. Laments for hard won changes that are given only to be revoked again or never enforced.

Let us not grow weary in doing good. Let us each find the part we have to do and do it. Let us lament. Let us confess. Let us repent.

Then maybe we can rise together.

In solidarity,

Alison

Reading Resource List

This is just a start on this list. I will continue to add to it. If you know of something I should add, feel free to send me an email (alison AT alisonchino DOT com) or tell me on Twitter.

Children’s Books 

Black History Children’s Books

Sit In by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Let Freedom Sing by Vanessa Newton

The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

The Great Migration with paintings by Jacob Lawrence

God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

March by John Lewis 

Children’s Books for Talking About Race

All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color by Katie Kissinger

The Skin I’m In by Pat Thomas

Shades of People by Sheila M. Kelly

Children’s Books with Black or Brown Protagonists

Chocolate Me by Taye Diggs

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

The Snowy Day  by Ezra Jack Keats

The Barber’s Cutting Edge by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert

Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Concrete Rose (forthcoming) by Angie Thomas

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

Another great resource for children’s books is the website We Need Diverse Books.

Books (nonfiction)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beales

The Long Shadow of Little Rock by Daisy Bates

Walking With The Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by  Ibram X. Kendi

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Just Mercy Brian Stevenson

The New Jim Crow by Michelle WIlliams

Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackman

America’s Original Sin Jim Wallis

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Awake by Daniel Hill

Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation by David P. Leong

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores by Dominique DuBois Gilliard

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

How to be Less Stupid About Race by Dr. Crystal M. Fleming

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris

They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones-Rogers

So You Wanna Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in A World Made For Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David E Swanson

May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry

Books (Fiction)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (anything by Toni Morrison)

Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (anything by James Baldwin)

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom

The Water Dancer Ta-Nehisi Coates

Memoirs by Black Authors

Thick by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

Heavy by Dr. Kiese Laymon

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Becoming Ms Burton by Susan Burton

Rabbit by Patricia Williams

When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Color of Water by James McBride

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. Moore

Movies

Malcolm X

Selma

13th

Twelve Years A Slave

Ruby Bridges

Mississippi Burning

The Color Purple

The Hate U Give

Marshall

If Beale Street Could Talk

Just Mercy

When They See Us (series)

Articles 

Anything on the website Black Perspectives

The Racism of Good Intentions by Carlos Lozada

This is the best explanation I’ve ever seen of White Privilege by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

White Debt by Eula Bliss (first line: “The Word for debt in German also means guilt.”)

White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves. by Ijeoma Oluo

This is what an antiracist America would look like. How do we get there?
Ibram X Kendi

Southern Baptist Seminary Documents History of Racial Injustice

The Cost of the Confederacy by Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler

1619 Series in the NY Times

Punishment by Pandemic

Racism is Terrible. Blackness is not. by Imani Perry

Literary Quilt: A Covering for George Floyd: 15 Black authors give voice to the current unrest and movement for Black lives

Podcasts

On Being consistently has great content regarding race. Here are a few of my favorite episodes:

Love in Action with John Lewis

Let’s Talk about Whiteness with Eula Bliss

The Heart is the Last Frontier with Isabel Wilkerson

Where Does It Hurt? with Ruby Sales

Who We Want To Become: Beyond The New Jim Crow with Michelle Alexander

W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul with Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander and Arnold Rampersad

Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence with Resmaa Menakem

Pass The Mic is another podcast I appreciate for discussions concerning a diverse church. It is the podcast of the website The Witness (a Black Christian Collective), a great resource for Christians who want to explore more diverse perspectives. They also have a great episode on the use of term “woke.” One of my favorite episodes is their interview with Bryan Stevenson.

Truth’s Table. 

How Not To Accidentally Raise A Racist (The Longest Shortest Time)

Shots Fired Part 1 and Part 2 (Radiolab)

Object Anyway (More Perfect)

Poverty Myth Busters (On The Media)

Seeing White (series by Scene on Radio)

Monumental Lies (Reveal)

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done (On The Media)

1619 Podcast

White Lies

Ear Hustle

Brene Brown with Austin Channing Brown

Brene Brown with Ibram X Kendi

 Videos

This video of Adam Thomason explaining racial preference.

A short documentary about this reign of terror by lynching in the US put out by the Equal Justice Initiative.

MTV’s Documentary White People

Ruby Sales on “How we can start to heal the pain of racial division”

Clint Hill Smith on Raising a Black Son in America

The post A Letter to White People (including Myself) + Reading and Resource List appeared first on Alison Chino.

Hello!

We’ve had a full month friends. I finished up my German class, went to Strasbourg, did lots of ghost blog/website writing AND my friend Sandra came back to visit!

We went on long walks in and around Tübingen and stayed up into the wee hours talking about everything under the sun. It was just delightful. Ben and Taido went skiing one day while she was here, so she and Simon and I went on an extra long forest walk. Then the next day we all took a train to Ulm. It was super foggy and gray though so we ended up sourcing indoor activities which included a trip to a Museum of Bread. I kid you not.

When we first walked into the Bread Museum, there was an entire wall of jars filled with fermenting urine. There were even small jars that you could take and fill with your own urine to add to the display. Friends, I have no idea what that was about, but I promise you that we had a good laugh about paying to go into a museum that had a display of urine.

After the bread museum, we had some lunch and went and saw the most crooked building in the world. (it’s in the Guinness Book of Records) That was pretty much it for our tour of Ulm.

Ulm also has the highest church tower in the world but the top of it was covered in fog and also it was closed.

Anyways, here are some LINKS I’ve collected for you!

(many are keeping with the theme of Black History Month!)

This is a picture of me trying to show a little solidarity a few weeks ago with some good folks who were protesting the President’s Travel Ban in DC. The We Welcome Refugees Website is Grand Central Station for becoming a person who both welcomes refugees in the US and advocates for them abroad. I highly recommend getting on their mailing list and checking in with them often.

I read this article about snubs towards people of color by the Academy Awards and Grammys in the wake of Beyoncé’s not getting one of the major Grammys for her album. Most shocking to me was that The Color Purple was nominated for 11 awards and did not win even one. How is that possible?

Related, I appreciated this perspective from a British Arab actor who is weary of being asked to play a terrorist on screen. Is it possible that we are re-enforcing the wrong thinking of our current administration by making more and more movies where the only Arabs on screen are terrorists? One of the most striking quotes from the article was about how the UK is also complicit in stoking “white nostalgia:”

The UK industry, in particular, must similarly do away with its obsession with period dramas. Now is not a time to escape into the “bygone days” of a white imperialist Britain, but to look outwards at the contemporary world, portraying minorities in a way that helps to dispel social prejudices and bring communities closer together.

I resonated with this as a writer and an artist. Period dramas are guilty pleasures for me, but I want to contribute to creating work that unites rather than divides. I want to make (and celebrate) art that is for people of every skin color.

My most alarmist share this month is an article that I have not been able to get out of my head about the way our social media activity is now exploited in election marketing. If you’re like me, you don’t watch many commercials (or adverts), but when you do, you talk out loud to the TV about how they are not suckering you into buying whatever they are selling. But you know how cookies follow you all over the internet and you sometimes see something and think, “That’s a bit creepy that someone knows I want that,” but you’re not sure what could actually be done with that creepy knowledge. Well, this article tells you exactly what can be done with it. In general, I think that being transparent online is the way to go, but when I read that an advertiser now can know me better than I even know myself, I get a little wary. I don’t say that because I want you to be afraid. Wary is not the same thing as afraid. Wary is just being aware that the things that pop up in our feeds and on our sidebars are very intentionally there, and we don’t have to be so easily drawn in.

Um, I love Clint Smith’s spoken word pieces and this one was a good reminder that we can’t heap blanket praise on our founding fathers, because there were some glaring problems. (It is almost as if our country were built on the ideology of white supremacy.) Related, I want to read this new book on George Washington chasing down his runaway slave.

I’m enjoying Black Perspectives’ series this week on Malcolm X. (Random story: When the 1992 film on the life of Malcolm X came out, I was a junior in college. I became obsessed with his life and writings, and that movie is still one of my all time favorite Denzel Washington roles. Of course neither he nor the movie or director Spike Lee received Oscars.)

I just read this piece on knitting as resistance. It is older (2015), but I loved it.

My current favorite protest-y shirt.

I’m love love loving this Kirk Franklin song. I pray it as I listen to it.

That’s it for me folks! I hope you have a weekend full of long chats around the dinner table and other lovely things!

XO

Alison

PS I’ve published mostly travel photo essays this month, but I’m getting back to my letters project next week. I’m excited to share more letters with you! I’m even putting together a small book of letters, so jump on my mailing list if you want to know when I release it.

The post In The Pipeline: February (Black History Month Edition!) appeared first on Alison Chino.

Let Freedom Sing is a new book this season about the Civil Rights Movement.  Vanessa Newton is the author and illustrator of this striking picture book.

The story follows the major events of the Movement where individuals let their lights shine, beginning with Rosa Parks and ending with Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing the Civil Rights Act.  At the end the author also includes the milestone moment when the United States elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama.

As Arkansans, these Little Rock Nine are dear to my heart.  I think I have read every book published by or about any of these nine precious souls.  I am reminded of their courage every time I drive by Central High School or the monument at the Arkansas Capital in their honor.

Along with important historical dates, the author illustrates some of the common inequalities of the day with the lyrics of the spiritual, This Little Light Of Mine.

Ruby Bridges let her light shine.

There is so much joy and hope in this illustration of the March on Washington in 1963.  It might be my favorite.

At the end of the story, people of all different races are letting their lights shine together.

With its happy illustrations and sweet song lyrics, this book is a wonderful way to introduce this time period to really young readers.

I was recently reminded on Rage Against the Minivan how important it is to have picture books in our homes that have images of all different races.  Let Freedom Sing would be a beautiful addition to any child’s library.

The post Let Freedom Sing appeared first on Alison Chino.

I mentioned briefly last week that we visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

When you walk up to the museum, almost the first thing you see is this balcony where Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed on April 4, 1968.

Inside the museum we watched a film about Martin Luther King Jr’s last days in Memphis with several excerpts of the final speech he made at a rally the night before his death.  In his speech, he seems to be actually preparing for his death.  He knows it is coming. So many threats have been made and so many people who are fighting for freedom have already had their lives cut short.

He was 39 years old.  The same age as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was when he was killed by the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer’s story was fresh in my mind upon visiting this museum, so I saw many parallels.  Both men loved their people so much, and admired Gandhi and hoped to accomplish great change through non-violent methods.

Both men seemed to know that their lives were being taken from them before their causes were finished, and both men seemed to have a supernatural peace in the face of imminent death.

Maybe it is because I am currently 39 years old that all the words of both of these men, in Bonhoeffer’s book and in King’s Mountain Top speech, struck me so deeply this month.

I cried like a baby during the movie at the museum, so I later sought out this speech when I got home.

You can listen to a recording of the entire speech at this link or watch a small clip of it, but here is the end of it, the part that is quoted as you walk up to the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr was shot.  I think I might start reading this part out loud before I leave the house every day.  So inspiring!

I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Black History Month is wrapping up at the kids’ schools and in our house, but I don’t want that to mean that we stop learning.  I have one or two more new children’s books about Civil Rights that I’m excited to share!

What’s your favorite MLK speech?  (There are so many wonderful ones!)

The post National Civil Rights Museum appeared first on Alison Chino.

It is such a wonderful movie.  Mary Polly first saw it in elementary school and so we checked it out at the library and watched it as a family after she told us about it.  Simon was a baby though, so he had not seen it before.

After we watched it, Ben pulled out our books about Ruby Bridges to show Simon and we’ve been reading them over the last couple of weeks.

Simon was even carrying them to bed with him. Love.

Ruby Bridges‘ story is one of my favorites of the Civil Rights Movement because of the way the faith of her family carried her through the difficult journey.  As with many of the students who were brave enough to be the first to attend all-white schools, Ruby’s family sacrifice a lot to be a part of this historical moment.  They were ostracized on both sides of the cause.  The whole family drew strength from an inner source that enabled them to respond to the world in a way that is counter intuitive.

Ruby was six years old when she became the first black student to attend the formerly all-white William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, Louisiana.  It was the fall of 1960.

The rest of the parents pulled their children out of school.

She spent the entire year walking through an angry mob to sit all alone in a classroom for first grade with her teacher Mrs. Henry.

This storybook tells how one day Ruby’s teacher saw her lips moving and thought she had finally decided to speak up to the white mob outside, but later discovered that she was actually praying for them.  Usually she prayed for them before she got to school, but she had forgotten that morning so she stopped and prayed right in the middle of the mob.

Please, God, try to forgive those people.

Because even if they say those bad things,

They don’t know what they’re doing.

So You could forgive them,

Just like You did those folks a long time ago

When they said terrible things about You.

Ruby’s story of fighting through the year with prayer and a heart of forgiveness makes me cry every time.  I just shake my head in wonder at her sweet spirit.

She is still working today to bring about racial reconciliation with schools.

She wrote her own story in another children’s book called Through My Eyes.

She puts her story within the context of the greater landscape of the Civil Rights Era, which makes it a great home or class resource for children.

Ruby Bridges was also the subject for Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting, The Problem We All Live With.

The kids and I are headed to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN this weekend.  I have never been before, so I am excited.

I would love to hear about what others are doing this year during Black History Month, so please share!  If you don’t have plans yet, be sure to add watching sweet Ruby Bridges to your list.

The post Ruby Bridges appeared first on Alison Chino.

This year we are looking at Great Migration books.

This fall, my aunt recommended The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  It is a sweeping history of the many decades that cover the Great Migration told in a beautiful narrative.

Countless personal stories that came from Wilkerson’s personally interviewing over 1200 people make up the shape of the book.  They are held together by three main characters whose journeys make up the bulk of the narrative: Ida Mae Gladney, who moves from Mississippi to Chicago, George Starling, who fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster who left Louisiana and ended up in California.

Less than halfway in, I am already deeply invested in where the individual migrations of these three are taking them.

Between 1915 and 1970, it is estimated that 6 million black citizens left the South in search of a better life.  The author has set out to give us a broader picture of this historical event.

from the introduction:

The actions of the people in this book were both universal and distinctly American.  Their migration was a response to an economic and social structure not of their making.  They did what humans have done for centuries when life became untenable–what the pilgrims did under the tyranny of British rule, what the Scotch-Irish did in Oklahoma when the land turned to dust, what the Irish did when there was nothing to eat, what the European Jews did during the spread of Nazism, what the landless in Russia, Italy, China, and elsewhere did when something better across the ocean called to them.  What binds these stories together was the back-against-the-wall, reluctant yet hopeful search for something better, any place but where they were.  They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done.

They left.

We have also come across two wonderful children’s books on the Great Migration.  The Great Migration is told through the beautiful paintings of Jacob Lawrence.

These paintings were my first introduction to the Great Migration.  I saw them at a special exhibition during the years we lived in Chicago.  I remember being captured by them for hours.

So I was excited to see them put into a book for children.  The story begins in the South in cotton fields and ends in the city in the North, where, though there is more freedom, life is still not easy for the migrants.

I love the paintings of families gathered to discuss what to do, of groups of people traveling with only what they could carry and of railway stations packed with black Americans full of hope.

And the migrants kept coming.

Theirs is a story of African-American strength and courage.  I share it now as my parents told it to me, because their struggles and triumphs ring true today.  People all over the world are still on the move, trying to build better lives for themselves and for their families.

God Bless the Child is a picture book interpretation of Billie Holliday’s famous song by the same name.  Illustrator Jerry Pinkney tells the story through pictures of a family that moves from the rural South to the urban North during the Great Migration.

Jerry Pinkney’s illustrations are so beautiful.

You can feel the family’s camaraderie through these images.

Isabel Wilkerson refers to Richard Wright as the bard of the Great Migration.  She opens her book with this quote from his poem that also gave her the title of her book.  These few lines tell so much about this period in our nation’s history.

I was leaving the South

To fling myself into the unknown…

I was taking a part of the South

To transplant in alien soul,

To see if it could grow differently,

If it could drink of new and cool rains,

Bend in strange winds,

Respond to the warmth of other suns,

And perhaps, to bloom.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Every year on this day, I honor in my heart those who have fought to make this country better for African Americans and I grieve the shameful history of the South, a place I have long loved.

Yesterday, at church, our pastor preached the Gospel that is for all people, that in Jesus we would all be reconciled to God and to one another.  Every year I hope we get a little closer to that reality.

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For about three weeks, I’ve been reading John Lewis’ book, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.

John Lewis was the youngest of a group of Civil Rights’ leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,  who were at the time of the march on Washington in 1963 considered to be the Big Six of the Civil Rights Movement. His telling of the events of the Civil Rights Movement through his own experiences, from his young awakening to a desire for more freedom to diligently learning how to protest without violence, has had me captive for days.

So much of this time in history has been blurred together for me as I have learned about individual events.  The story of the Little Rock Nine, the bombing in Alabama that killed four little girls, the bravery of Rosa Parks.  I have read these stories or seen them acted out in movies.  They are stirring and tragic and they have taught me of both the bitter hatred and the incredible courage that took place throughout the Civil Rights Era.

But reading John Lewis’ memoir has served to link all of these events chronologically for me.  Seeing how one event would help inform the next one has helped me understand the movement as a whole in a way I did not before.  Each chapter covers a major event and the season leading up to that event.  So many small successes and failures gathered up courage and momentum for the bigger moments in our history as a nation.  I was amazed at the kind of faithful plodding on it required to continue to return to jail over and over again.  (John Lewis went to jail 40 times.)  Or to stand day in and day out in a line, patiently waiting, not speaking but for the statement being made with your presence.

Patience.  Being a part of this movement required a lot of patience.

And a lot of hope.  A lot of faith.  And a lot of love.

This famous picture of the march from Selma to Montgomery that took place on March 7, 1965 is a telling example of the kind of love it required to be a part of these nonviolent protests.  John Lewis is the one kneeling on the ground being clubbed in the head by an Alabama policemen.  He is not fighting back.  He was finally knocked unconscious and later hospitalized for head injuries.  This day was later termed Bloody Sunday.  Just weeks later, this interrupted march took place again, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading.  Over five days and 50 miles, this march would be the event that finally got the Voting Rights Act passed.  Over 50,000 people marched the last leg to Montgomery.  Many of those people came to march from all over the country because they had seen this image and many others like it on March 7.  It was like the nation awoke to this violence and rose up to respond that week.

This beautiful moment in our nation’s history, and so many others like it are told with honesty and grace in Walking with the Wind.  The rising of hope with marches like these and the dashing of those hopes as promises were not kept did not deter John Lewis or many others from keeping up faith.  His faith and the faith of many, many unsung heroes of this era, is so inspiring.

I loved reading his story, and with it the history of a movement like no other.

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I picked up January’s Sparrow by Patricia Polacco from the library yesterday and I cannot think of a better way to start the season that we remember so many who have paved the way for change for the better with their blood.

Patricia Polacco’s books never disappoint, but when I saw this cover I just gasped at it’s beauty.

I cannot imagine that she did not do the illustrations for this story without shedding tears.  Every page, every facial expression, every stroke brought me closer to the precious Crosswhite family.  Their story of hope for a new day for African Americans in this country is real.  Members of their family still live today in the town where they first found freedom.

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Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the introduction to Daisy Bates’ memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, about the Little Rock Nine, which was first published in 1962.  In it, she boldly states,

Every American should read this book.

I could not agree more.  In fact, I think it is true of both of Warriors Don’t Cry as well.

And of Arkansans it is doubly true.

And if you are an Arkansan living in Little Rock, well…maybe reading these stories will bring healing.

Healing that clearly has not truly occurred since 1957 as was made evident in the brutally honest look at what public school in greater Little Rock is like 50 years following this harrowing year of integration.  Still. Very. Segregated.

I find that the only words I am left with after a day of reading (plus sneezing and coughing) are…

Come, Lord Jesus.

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