"The Great Debaters"

It's a stirring movie based on a true story.

By day Melvin Tolson was an English professor and coach of the debate team at Wiley College, a small Black school in Marshall, Texas, during the mid-1930s. By night he was an activist for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. He lived in two worlds, and both were important.

As a debate coach he was demanding. As an activist he was purposeful and deliberate. The worlds were kept separate until the local sheriff's department sniffed him out as a threat to the local separate but unequal worlds of the times.

His students are edgy, smart, articulate, precocious, and vulnerable. The tenant farmers are defeated and afraid, yet they are determined to step out from beneath the heal of the boot of the plantation system known as tenant farming where the advantages were to the owners.

The story of his students will move you as they begin to grasp a vision for what they can do in the days of Jim Crow as they defeat one Black school after another to eventually face Harvard, the best of the best among prestigious White schools. You will see their internal strivings and relationships, and you will see them horrified (and you will be horrified yourself) at the sight of a lynching as they try to find their way to a campus for another debate. "What did he do wrong?" is a question that is asked. Eventually, the answer, "He did nothing wrong." They barely escape, and whatever naivete they lived with was now shattered.

You'll admire the work of Tolson's secret life and his public life. You'll be amazed at the great things his students go on to do with their lives.

You'll cry.

You'll feel like you're in that great hall in Cambridge the night of the great debate.

You'll want to stand up and applaud.

It's a great story of people, education, community, and facing the odds of the Jim Crow South.

It's a must see movie. Check this link out for more historical background to the movie.

The Greatest Christmas Carol

What is your favorite Christmas carol? Is it "Silent Night," or maybe "O Holy Night?" Here's perhaps the greatest of all time, in her own words, Mary, the mother of Jesus:

My soul praises the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me--
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.
Luke 1:46-55.

Try this link for an amazing version of the song from John Michael Talbot.

You'll find Larry James' post from Tuesday the 25th both interesting and challenging.

Jaime Goff's post from December 18 is a must read for what Christmas is all about

May your Christmas Day be blessed.

"Thou Hast Supplied My Every Need"

"O God, to Thee I come today,
And with true repentance kneeling.
The while I bend my knee to pray,
The tears from mine eyes are stealing.
But for they grace lost would I be,
Or ship-wrecked on life's hidden shoals,
Or left to drift upon the sea
Where dwelleth all earth's derelict souls.
But Thou didst free me from all alarms
And shield me from the tempter's power;
Thou broke the shackles from my arms
And thou didst cheer my darkest hour.
Thou has supplied my every need,
And made me free, and free indeed."

A prayer by Theodore Henry Shackelford (1916-1918) as qouted in Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers of African Americans by James Melvin Washington, Ph.D.

Farm Bill and Justice for Black Farmers

The Pigford v. Glickman case has been a topic of much debate for some time. Some have hailed it as the greatest effort in the Civil Rights Movement, period. Others have railed on it as one more gross miscarriage of justice.

More on this later on these pages, but in short, if a Black farmer farmed and was discriminated against between the years 1981 to 1996, there was a virtual lock on receiving some measure of justice via Track A and its $50,000 remuneration plus debt and tax relief, or Track B and its $75,000 remuneration plus debt and tax relief. Track A was supposed to be relatively simple, but track B demanded more information. See this link for the latest figures and here for an ongoing evaluation of the effort.

Numerous problems have evolved including some receiving payments when they had not farmed during that window of time, and I've even heard stories of white farmers receiving payments. What is that about?

One of the most serious problems amidst the large number of problems with the class action effort was that of informing, or rather failing to inform, Black farmers of their right to enter the case. Many farmers did not receive word of it. In fact, one day soon, I'll write a piece about an entire county in Alabama in which Black farmers were not informed and about the woman who is devoting her life to righting these wrongs. Hard to believe? I have copies of various documents supporting that fact. So, in short, there were close to 74,000 who were not admitted to the class because of late claimant status.

So, in the Senate version of the 2007 Farm Bill which is apparently now in committee to resolve differences, the case will apparently be reopened.

Here are some links that provide more information on this crucial topic. John Boyd's comment is especially interesting: ''We're looking at far more than $100 million, absolutely,'' he said. ''But half a loaf is better than none," as quoted in the New York Times. Check out another piece in
the Ag Observatory.

Social Justice Team III will be meeting here on campus this morning. This will likely take up some of our time. We all need to be informed about these matters.

Faces on the Farm

A gentleman who is hip deep in activism on behalf of the Black farmer mentioned recently that he thought that one of the problems with the Black farmer movement is that there has never been a visible "face" of a farmer with which the cause could be identified. He's probably right. Did not the broken, beaten, and almost unrecognizable face of Emmett Till help to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement? Did not photos of Rosa Parks inspire us to action? Did not the face of Martin Luther King as he rivetingly spoke to us through the television screen move us?

What "face" should be the face of the righteous cause of the African American farmer? They are many. What "face," etched with life experiences will become the "face" with which we identify?

Should it be the face of the gentleman, now deceased, standing beside his mule in Tillery, North Carolina?

Should it be the face of the man in Owensboro, Kentucky who has had his land taken from him because he hasn't paid back a loan he never received?

Should it be the face of the elderly gentleman or his wife or his angry son in central North Carolina, all of whom agonize in different ways over the loss of land and livelihood?

Should it be the face of the elderly woman is south Georgia as she describes her life, husband, family, and the crops she'll work on that day?

Should it be the face of the man in Pavo, Georgia who lives in his single-wide under the oak tree along the sandy road named in honor of his deceased wife?

Should it be the men, father and son, in central Oklahoma who are still grieving the injustices wrought upon them and their family?

Should it be the resilient gentleman in central Kansas who is a activist like no other who believes in his right to his choice of livelihood, the man who refuses to give up?

Should it be the farmer out in west Texas who has faced numerous odds but still owns his land?

Should it be any one of countless thousands of named and unnamed African American farmers, male or female, whose faces will never be seen outside of their feed store, or local church, or street in smalltown USA? The ones whose stories will never be told?

Which "face" will it take to capture the hearts of people with passion and the minds and decision-making abilities of people in power to right these wrongs. Who is taking note of their faces? Who is telling their stories?

Just wondering.

Senate Passes Farm Bill

Watching a Senate debate requires having something else to do at the same time. The viewer is never quite sure if everything is happening on the screen, but likely not. We all understand that there are many contexts in which back channel negotiations or off the record conversations are taking place, and how the back scratching thing works. Surely senators often feel divided between what's good for my state versus what's good for my country. The added piece for me is what's good for "my people," and my people are more than just those who share my skin color, economic status, vocational choice, and region of the country.

So, it's good to know that the Senate passed its version of the farm bill last week. It's good to know that the farming industry, with all of its complexities and challenges, will continue to feed our people of this country and many around the world. It's good to know that there's a linkage between the land and the city, and that people in the city who cannot afford quality food to eat will be able to do so via provisions of this $288 billion or so bill.

I'm also glad that an amendment was passed that reopened the class action suit that has marginalized so many African American farmers. Those numbers are compelling and those people must be taken note of. We owe it to them. We belong to them and they belong to us.

Here's a link that provides a better summary, but perhaps we'll visit again about the farm bill on these pages when the committee work has been done and the president has signed off on it.

Thanksgiving at Home

Shena is a first year student in the MFT program here at ACU. I've asked her to share her story of what happened with her family at Thanksgiving. Read her words and hear her heart.

"This past Thanksgiving, my family and I went for long periods of time without water. For long days, we were unable to wash dishes, bathe, and even flush the toilet. My father became so exasperated, he filled an empty trash can to the brim with water just in case it went off again. The sad thing is that we had it good. We learned another apartment complex, Inwood Oaks, was being foreclosed because our management company had cheated them also. These poor people had their water off for weeks. There was sewage backing up in their bathtubs and numerous health code violations. This company has been doing this all over Texas for years. When Katrina first occurred, the owner filled nice apartments with hurricane victims carrying Section 8 vouchers and stopped paying to bills. He has cheated residents and management alike, promising them deposits and reimbursements that never come. One past resident nicknamed him the "Slumlord of the South" in a forum. He has become a master at taking advantage of people who are either ignorant of their rights or do not have the resources to fight for them.

Such is an example of institutional racism. However, I think institutional racism is only a symptom of the underlying discrimination in this country. I cannot express how much it hurts me to know that no one is going to reach out to help these Black and Latino families in Inwood Oaks. I'm always amazed to see how quickly people respond with large monetary gifts and donations to a white, middle class family who just had quintuplets but will watch people of color go homeless. No one will admit it, but to many, the people in Inwood Oaks deserve the trouble they have received. They must be lazy. They must be poor. They're niggers. They're wetbacks. And if they're not illegal, they may as well be. They must be on welfare and therefore useless takers. It seems like a brown face on the screen may as well be muted.

Perhaps I am just overreacting and this has just been an emotional last couple of weeks. It could be blamed on the movies I have recently seen. During this time, I have watched The Pursuit of Happyness, Hurricane, and Freedom Writers- three wonderful stories of triumph in the face of adversity. However, at the end of them, I did not cry in joy. I cried in pain and turmoil. WHY did this man have to go to jail for decades? WHY are we put in the dumb classes and labeled with learning disorders? WHY are my white colleagues recommending this as a good movie to me? WHY is no one as angry as I am? WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!

I am not satisfied with the Obama's and the Oprah's. One of us "making it" is not enough. It is not fair to ask us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps when institutions are not paying for our books and mandating tests that even parents cannot pass. Nor is it fair to show us a movie and expect us to find a new self worth, shedding the years of society telling us we are too dark to have Barbie in our color and too frivolous to save. I cannot celebrate with the growing middle class when there millions in jail and more teachers dropping out of school system than the students.

I praise God for the Erin Grunell's and the three advocates in Hurricane. Without them, countless lives would be unchanged and probably nonexistent. My hope is that the actions of these people would remind that us the news story is our story. That if we lose our life for our fellow man's sake, we will find it. We are so quick to pray, but slow to move. Where are the advocates? Where are the workers?

Lord, we need more workers.

So, during these movies, I do not applaud at the happy ending. No. I cry. I look these characters and wonder how many more mothers, fathers, uncles, friends, sons, daughters, and orphans die daily but do not get a television special… or even a news segment. I wonder how many more families will become homeless, how many more children will fail, and how many loans will be denied. And I wonder how long it will be before we care.

Most importantly, I wonder if my hands will ever be strong enough for more than just catching tears."

Shena Sandle

Judging Success?

After a pleasant meal consisting of my wife's world-renowned chicken pot pie, and a delicious lemon pie of some sort they'd brought, the conversation shifted when we moved from the table to the living room. We talked of things that matter, though it did seem that the conversations went in a gender-specific direction, at least in terms of who talked to whom about what.

Then, he asked me a penetrating question, one that has perplexed me before, during, and after its asking. "How do you judge the success of a team?" Or something to that effect. Excellent question. One that I'd like for our modest readership to weigh in on. How does one evaluate the efforts of social justice teams, or how does anyone evaluate and critique, or whatever other verbs you want to apply, in an arena where matters are exceedingly complex?

Is success judged by whether or not we were asked to present at some conference? Whether or not we learned more? Spoke out more? Wrote more on a blog or in a class project? Developed a higher level of sensitivity to the issues? Connected people with other people? Traveled? Engaged others in what we're doing?

Is "success" measured qualitatively? Or, is it measured quantitatively? Or, is the question really unimportant?

If you hit the links to the pages of the teams on the lower right of this page, you can see that we've done a few things, and I'd like to think that those folks did those things well. Some things have been done, but we're still sitting on the side lines, waiting to put some of those efforts into play. Some things continue to evolve.

I'm curious these days to know what other COAMFTE-approved MFT programs, like this one here at ACU, are doing in the areas of the curriculum and social justice and then in the area of co-curricular practices related to social justice.

Again, friends, how would you evaluate the success of a team of social justice advocates?

I Was Moved and You Will Be, Too

A view of "We Shall Not Be Moved" is a must. Contact the Concerned Citizens of Tillery office for information on how to purchase a copy of it. It needs to be in our offices, used in our classrooms, and made available to our students and friends. You can find the link to CCT's web page at the lower right of this column.

I was struck once more their commitment to the land, and how despite slavery, post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws, and other damaging influences, African Americans were able to secure land and make a living off the land. Time and time again in my travels through the south and mid-west, adult children of African American farmers insisted that they were able to attend college and get decent jobs as a result of the successes of their parents on the land. The land wasn't given to them. They had to earn it. The resettlement community along the Roanoke River in North Carolina was only one of several around the country. There was one here in Texas, in Sabine County, and I plan to look into that effort and see how it worked.

Also rather striking were the larger issues of the plantation world, first the literal plantation and the owners and the owned, and then came the system of share cropping, simply put, another version of the owners and the owned. Undoubtedly, there were decent and ethical land owners who honestly worked on the halves with their tenants. On the other hand, unless a Black farmer could do math well, and understood the value of 3 cents here and there, the landowner, in cahoots with the owner of the store that sold seed, fertilizer, food, and other important commodities, took advantage of the farmers. At the end of the year when things got all settled, they were at best balanced, and at worst the Black farmer was left in the economic hole and had to work another year for "the man" only to discover that the year turned into years. The only way to escape it was to sneak out in the middle of the night, take the family, and go in hopes of finding a more honest landowner. There were few if any advantages to the Black worker on the man's land.

In "We Shall Not Be Moved," an effort on behalf of the "New Deal" administration is described that was implemented to put farmers on the land that they owned, to remove the onerous burden of the tenant farming, sharecropping system. Sometimes racism crept in such as following the flood of 1940 and later other nefarious means of taking land away, some of which continue to this day. This effort, though, helped African Americans, and whites as well, to get on the land, and to make a living on the land.

They were successful at their chosen vocation. Listen to the stories. See it in their faces. These were a resilient people who faced a variety of struggles, and who came to be successful in living off the land. A community was built that instilled values of faith, hope, family, and togetherness in the lives of people. Families helping families build buildings or slaughter hogs, or harvest the crops. They educated their children and gave hope to the next generation.

On a personal level, it was moving to see familiar faces and to hear familiar stories and to see familiar names on the screen and in the printed materials that accompanied the documentary. I also found it extremely moving to listen to "Wade in the Water," the CD of gospel music that provides the background music for the documentary.

Does this come across as advertising? Perhaps. Hopefully, though, it's simply one person's way of saying, "Hey! Watch this documentary. Listen to this music. You'll be moved by the folks who refused to be moved."

"We Shall Not Be Moved"

The citizens of Tillery care deeply about their history, so much so that they've worked with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University to develop a documentary of their history of the "Tillery New Deal Resettlement." A part of the New Deal of President Roosevelt, it provided opportunities for African Americans to own and to work their own land and to step out of the degradations of share-cropping and "employment" status with the White farmers. From the plantation era to major changes in politics, land ownership, and economics, racism still impacted the landscape when it was discovered that it would be a Black settlement and not a White settlement.

Once the Roanoke River flooded in 1940, the Whites were moved uphill, but the Blacks were left in the flood plain. The original plan was for "350 individual farms: 200 farms located on 10,000 acres at Tillery for Negroes" (June 21, 1938, R 4 FSA). It's still a viable, living, and active community full of activists who care about the people and the quality of life on their land.

In this amazing documentary, and in this fascinating radio program, you'll hear the history, background, and complications of the land, the people, and the dream. Stories of discrimination will be told. You'll be moved by the resilience of these people against insurmountable odds.

Check out the radio program where you'll hear Gary Grant, President of Executive Director of Concerned Citizens of Tillery, the directors of the project, and others discuss the quality of life prior to the disaster years when the USDA began various nefarious ways to retrieve the land from Black ownership.

Go to the web page for the Concerned Citizens of Tillery for more information, and purchase a copy of the documentary, "We Shall Not Be Moved: A History of the Tillery Resettlement," and also a copy of the CD, "Wade in the Water," recorded by The Joyful Sound Gospel Chorus.

It'll stir your heart and move you to action.

Tomorrow and tomorrows

Tomorrow is the last day of class in Family Therapy I for my first year students. They've spent the semester reading and writing about various models and theories of family therapy: structural, strategic, cognitive behavioral, and internal family systems. We'll gather at my house to eat my wife's world renowned breakfast casserole, fruit salad, blueberry muffins, and some brand of gourmet coffee.

Then, after breakfast, we'll gather in the living room and watch some videos that capture the themes that we've worked on this semester. We've done enough serious work, and now I want us to watch a view clips and think out loud with them about these important matters that can impact how we help people move out of their pain into some healthy way of living. It's a time of consolidating and integrating and making sense once more of important ideas for those who want to do family therapy.

Somewhere in the midst of the morning's conversation I'll show a clip from "Soul of the Game," one of my favorite baseball movies. Why baseball? Why a movie about Satchel, Josh, and Jackie? Good questions. A part of the passion that turns my crank about working with students is that we get to apply these curious marriage and family theories to larger systems. By "larger systems" we mean institutions of power and privilege, those that make or break folks, those that need not just reforming but transforming. Major league baseball was one of those powerful institutions.

This particular movie describes life in the Negro Leagues in 1945 when only one, yes, only one, Black baseball player will make the move to the major leagues. Satchel, Josh, and Jackie are three of the most popular of the massive number of gifted athletes stymied by Jim Crow and the will of powerful baseball owners. The movie shows the relationships between these men as each is convinced that he needs to get the call up to the bigs.

The scene I'll show is at the end of the movie. Josh has just gotten out of the hospital, an all-star game is about to be played against white players, and everyone knows that this is the one last chance to impress the scouts. Then the skies open, rain pours down, thunder cracks, and lightening dances across the sky.

There will be no game. As the rain pelts against his agonizing face, Josh Gibson screams a scream from the bottom of his soul, unleashing upon the viewer the agony of being so close to his dream, and knowing that the dream was now gone forever. His dream was ripped from his heart. He would never play baseball in the major leagues.

That brutal moment speaks volumes. It is the rageful, anguished cry of a man who had been put in his place by institutions of power and privilege. He knew how good he was. He also knew how powerless he was in the face of the powerful institution of white major league baseball.

There were no more tomorrows for Josh Gibson. He wouldn't live much longer.

Tomorrow morning I hope my students get it, that they live in a world where people, politics, and institutions of power still hold sway over people's lives. My prayer is that they get it, that there's much to be done, and so little time to do it in, and that one can make a difference in that one, small corner of the universe to which she or he is called.

My prayer is that they'll work to bring about tomorrows that Josh Gibson didn't have.

Provocative Words and Images

Dr. Larry James and I were in graduate school in Memphis at the same time. We were in some classes together, and at times his degree plan took him in other directions on that beautiful campus. I remember with good humor and fondness how in one class, he wrote what students considered at the time to be an "A" paper topic, the amphictyonic league in ancient Israel. I wrote on a topic that was considered to be a "B" paper topic, the historicity of the book of Jonah. As you might guess, students had sized up things well, and our grades reflected the same.

After graduate school, our lives took different paths, Larry to more graduate school, preaching, and now work in the areas of poverty, social, justice, housing, and other important matters. You can read about the work at http://www.larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com/. My life took a different route, youth ministry, more graduate education, and then life here in Abilene as a professor of marriage and family therapy who gets to work with students in the area of social justice, and what you find on these pages, Black farmers in particular.

In many ways and at many times, what he writes about and what I obsess about overlap. We are both involved in various aspects of the same things that matter to us, to the Holy One of Israel, and likely to you, or you wouldn't be reading these pages. Larry's blog has become a daily read, along with Mike's, Jaime's, and Greg's for other reasons, as is obvious by their amazing words and images.

Back to this point though. Several weeks back, a good friend gave me a photocopy of an appendix from a book. It is now on my desk, where it has been since it arrived via campus mail. For some reason, I cannot bear to spend much time with it. On the one hand it is simply a chart of states, years, and a specific action summed up. It is the content of those actions or activities that I find repulsive. Yes, someone needed to chronicle those matters, tally them up, and to let people like you and me know about them.

The focus of the document surely you are asking about at this point of reading these meandering words. The page lists lynchings of African Americans by year and by state. Yes, I find it repulsive to know that such was done to human beings, and that, according to another author, that we found it in those days to be human spectacle, or human theater. There's an author who has interpreted those times and places and horrors. My best guess is that author is under-reporting those atrocities because they were likely unreported during and after those times.

Earlier this week, Larry James provided the text of a lecture delivered by a former professor of his back in graduate school. In 2006 Dr. James Cone delivered the Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard Divinity School. It is a lecture that to me can only be delivered effectively by an African American lecturer. The lecture on "the cross and the lynching tree" is provocative as it engages the reader and the listener to consider the common and dissonant themes of these two images of atrocity.

Both images stir me to the core. I wear a symbol of the cross around my neck. Decorative though it is in silver and turquoise, I have said for years that it reminds me of to whom I belong, just as surely as the ring on my left ring finger reminds me of to whom I belong on this earth. I don't know of anyone who wears a symbol of the lynching tree, but I do know people whose relatives or friends or acquaintances died that way. It's a part of their history, and it is a part of our history as Americans, though a part that we likely would wish to ignore. However, it really can't be ignored.

Cone's words are stirring as he places the cross and the lynching tree side by side: "The cross and the lynching tree need each other: the lynching tree can liberate the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians. The crucifixion was a first-century lynching. The cross can redeem the lynching tree, and thereby bestow upon lynched black bodies an escatological meaning for their ultimate existence. The cross can also redeem white lynchers, and their descendants, too, but not without profound cost, not without the revelation of the wrath and justice of God, which executes divine judgment, with the demand for repentance and reparation, as a presupposition of divine mercy and forgiveness. Most whites want mercy and forgiveness, but not justice and reparations; they want reconciliation without liberation, the resurrection without the cross."

I intend to read the text Larry has lifted more carefully, and I intend to listen more carefully to the presentation of Dr. Cone.

In this day and age, people are still getting lynched by various means, and we all still need the cross and the reconciliation, liberation, and reconciliation that it brings, and we need the atrocities to stop.