Chris McDonnell, UK
 chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk

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August 23, 2017  
A significant lapse of memory

In 1963 the fire hoses in the city of Birmingham Alabama were turned on those protesting for civil  rights. The flames they hoped to put out were unquenchable. Yet the anger expressed by the city authorities then is still latent today in the America of the current occupant of the White House.

I make no apology for returning to a topic that has been addressed one way or another in this column over recent months. Since the clashes in Charlottesville in Virginia and the pathetic Presidential response, we are being forced to address those same issues again, not only by citizens of the US but by many in other parts of the world. David Brooks, writing recently in the New York Times suggests that "He [the President] took a nation beset by uncertainty and he gave it a series of "explanations" that were simple, crude, affirming and wrong."

One fundamental fact was evident from the newscasts, that in spite of so much progress, including eight years of Obama, the first black President, there is still a small but very real opposition to the principles of Civil Rights. That caucus is now being given a voice from the President in utterances that have been rejected across the political spectrum.

Writing in his biography 'Long walk to freedom' Nelson Mandela reminds us that "No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." For alongside the examination in the US of societal values, South Africa was suffering the outrages of apartheid with Mandela in jail on Robben Island. A new order was coming to birth on two continents, old values were being challenged.

How are we to deal now with the simplicity of this new fanaticism? We are living in an age of anxiety, where the quick fix, the smart tweet, the spiteful come-back have become the working currency of the public politics. Who would have thought that after dignity of the Obama years, a great nation would be led in such a fashion? Yet still his invitation to visit the UK remains on the table. There is a risk that his visit will by association put us in the same murky water that is his habitat.

To see torches and swastikas on the streets of Charlottesville Virginia is to be reminded of Europe in the 30s. Each of us has a responsibility to raise our voice offering an alternative view, where compassion and justice predominate in our decision making and in our prayer.

We should never forget the black Christian roots of the Civil Rights movement in the South. When Martin Luther King addressed the huge crowd in Washington DC in March 1963, the speech wasn't going that well, his audience hot and tired were becoming inattentive. King turned away from his prepared text, grasped the podium and spoke with greater urgency. One of those behind him, noticing his changed stance to that of a Baptist preacher, turned to the person next to him and said: "Those people don't know it, but they're about to go to church." His words that day from the steps of the Washington memorial still echo with the goodness of his intention and cannot be drowned by present chaotic confusion.

Words have the potential to penetrate to the very heart of an issue. They can challenge the status quo and offer hope in a confused world. The words that follow were written a couple of days after Charlottesville.

That voice in me that weeps for us*

Look about you and quietly weep within

for you cannot fail to see

the deep distress of others passing by.

Their frail voices and tired eyes

gaze across the streets of years,

their angry indignation seeks recompense

as frailty and tiredness give way

to pent-up, explosive rage.

Injustice confronted with bare hands,

distrust born of confused lives

and worn-out dreams. Listen,

listen for peace walking

through narrow passage ways,

meeting those with little left

apart from principle,

pause by brick-broken windows

and burnt-out cars.

And weep within and turn again.

 

The title-line is from a poem called 'Voice' by the Polish Nobel Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, written in 2002.

If you need reminding of the journey, then just Google images of the Civil Rights movement to see the mid-Century street scenes from the American South, to see how brutality was met with courage, often captured by the black and white photography of Charles Moore. Many of his images have been collected in his book "Powerful Days". It helps us all remember just what is at stake in the present time, some sixty years on.

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