(This is a wonderful post from longtime BOR reader, fellow blogger, and terrific friend Harold Cook. Take the five minutes to read it -- chances are, it will be the best thing you read today. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
Crossposted at www.lettersfromtexas.com
I have been truly inspired twice while in church. Both times in Texas, and both times over matters which were fundamentally connected with race, tragedy, reconciliation, and hope.
The first was a church in Jasper, Texas, following the brutal racial murder of James Byrd, Jr., in which a multi-racial coalition of very sincere area ministers was working very hard to help move a community forward from a crime which laid bare a deep racial divide which could no longer be ignored. They were doing the very best they could, and I deeply admired them for it.
The second time was a big church in Waco, with 2000 other people.
Years before, I'd met a Waco woman named Mae Jackson. She was on the State Democratic Executive Committee at the time, and she was a force of nature. She was African-American, she had a Ph.D. in something-or-other, and had the intelligence and the street smarts to match it. She was feisty as hell, and would get down in the trenches and fight like crazy for anything she believed in. She was so honest you could have bought cattle from her over the phone. She was also as tough as nails, and yet did it all with a rare grace.
Mae, already on the City Council for several years, decided to run for Mayor in 2004. Of Waco. Yes, Waco, a key bastion of Southern conservatism. I have no idea how she did it, but she won, and became the first African-American mayor elected by popular vote in the town's history. Some of the White people of Waco were aghast. African-Americans in Waco now had their hero, but that was nothing new - she'd been their city council member prior to her city-wide election. She and Lester Gibson, one of the local County Commissioners, had long had deep respect in the community.
Mae went on to serve about a year as one of the most popular Waco mayors in history. It didn't take long for her to win over even the more skeptical of them. Most everybody ended up loving Mae Jackson.
Then one day she suddenly died. I think it was a heart attack. No warning whatsoever.
There wasn't an African-American church in town big enough to hold the funeral. So, in a historic moment (noted during the service by the White and Black ministers alike), the tall-steeple big fancy downtown Baptist church graciously agreed to host the services. I was there, and I was inspired.
Mae had brought that town together, Black and White. It was a moment in time where people of different backgrounds and races could sit down together as one community, and everybody was proud of themselves and of everybody else. It was a celebration that everybody there was sorry Mae had to miss. She had brought these people to this moment, and because she had lived, she had led, and she had inspired, she made a tremendous impact. Everybody there sensed the city's change of heart, and the historic importance of the moment. That day in February 2005 in Waco, Texas, there was no divide.
Yesterday morning, I took my car to a San Marcos dealership for routine maintenance. I didn't want to sit in the waiting room all day, so the service manager called the rental car place to pick me up and give me a loaner. A few minutes later, a woman named Jessica with the rental company showed up. We were chatting on the short drive to her office, and I learned that Jessica, a young African-American woman and a recent graduate of Texas State University, grew up in Waco.
Having just been through Waco a few days prior, and thus having just thought about my longtime friendship with Mae, I asked her if she knew who Dr. Mae Jackson was. Jessica's head whipped around as she looked at me with widening eyes, and with great reverence replied, "ohhhhh yes...everybody knows who Miz Jackson was." I replied that I'd known her well, and had been a big fan.
She didn't say much more about it until after we arrived at the rental car office. Then the floodgates opened.
Jessica told me that Mae had been among the inspirations of her life, years before, when Jessica was a young teenager. Doing the math later, Jessica must have been talking about 1999 or 2000, as Mae was running for City Council. Jessica explained that Mae had come to give a talk at church one Sunday, and Mae said that no matter what else happens, to never stop learning. She said that Mae told them to start with reading the Bible every day - because back in the days of slavery, the Bible and their faith were all they had. And now that more opportunity was possible for African-Americans, and now that there were a million and one books they'd let anybody read, to learn something new or to expand a horizon, folks should not lose track of where they came from, so they should still read the Bible, every day.
Early in the telling of her story, Jessica started to cry. Her tears reflected the depth of inspiration Mae Jackson offered her and other African-Americans living in a Waco which was then very divided. It was clear that Jessica believes she would not be the woman she is today, but for the example set by Dr. Mae Jackson.
But, funny thing about Waco. There aren't nearly enough African-American voters in Waco to elect a Mayor without the support of White voters. When Mae was first elected, you might not have been able to find many White voters in Waco who would have admitted to voting for her. And yet, in the privacy of the voting booth, they did just that. The election math says they must have.
By contrast, by the time Mae died, you would have been hard-pressed to find anybody in Waco who would admit to not voting for her. By the time we said goodbye to Mae in that tall-steeple church, you didn't have to be a young African-American woman to cry the same tears of inspiration Jessica cried yesterday. Because everybody in the church that day knew that if it's about hope, and if it's about inspiration, it can't just be about race. Or social class. Or experience. Or ideology. Or political party. Or business. As. Usual.
Dr. Mae Jackson proved that with the right inspiration, there can be hope anywhere, and in all things. Her example proves that hope can mean something very important, and that every once in a while, it reaches to our core, and it overwhelms our preconceived notions of who we thought we were as individuals, and as communities, and what we're each willing to do about it.
The point was not lost on Jessica in 1999. The point was not lost on Waco in 2005. And the point will not be lost on America now.
Can I hear an "amen?"
|
