I was young then, in 1965, but as a Birminghamian I was not unaware of race injustice and hatred. Lucille W., who worked for our family for more than 30 years, had gone on the March on Washington during her annual vacation; my church's curate, also my youth leader, took me, one brother, and a few others to hear Joan Baez give a concert at Miles College, a black institution, after which we drove into a mass demonstration on the way home; when the church vestry threatened to fire that same curate, the rector said they'd have to fire him, too; at the Sunday 11 o'clock service ending the state Episcopal Youth Conference meeting at my church, parish representatives processed with their flags and on seeing two black teens among them, the parishioners in front of me -- acquaintances of my parents -- left, the man muttering something about the "damn n*****s" in his church.
the text below is from Joan Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (the motel's name has been misspelled; it's the Gaston, not Gadston)
But the summer Jonathan Daniels was murdered, I was blissfully unaware of it, spending two months at a then-all-white camp in North Carolina in my eighth year of my version of heaven.
Since then, of course, I have learned these things: Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian, took the shotgun blast intended for a 16-year-old black teenager, one of three companions with whom he walked to the store (another was seriously wounded); his murderer, who worked for the state, was acquitted by a white jury and remained unrepentant throughout his life, spending it in the same small town; a family friend, the Rev. Francis X. Walter, so close that my mother made his first stole as an ordination gift, officiated at Daniels' funeral because no other Episcopal priest would; my brother, Francis's friend, attended that funeral, as did Stokely Carmichael, whom I heard speak at Vanderbilt just two years later.
It was a time of collision -- when race hatred, a part of this nation's history and present, met commitment and courage among many peoples, including some I knew and loved.
At this year's pilgrimage celebration, another collision occurred: some I know now from Sewanee, some I've known from childhood, and at least one fellow camp counselor (image 4) attended, and all were lucky enough to hear a rousing sermon by Michael Curry, current presiding bishop of the Episcopal church, a sermon delivered in a style Lucille would have recognized as familiar and 1960s white Episcopalians might have found unfamiliar.
No longer a church-goer, I nevertheless admire such men and women who, throughout my life, have modeled commitment to faith through commitment to the other. May we all be victorious.
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