Nick Saban, Lowell Barron, Jeb Stuart and Tom Corts

The Eye Sees More than the Heart Can Know

I've been thinking about that phrase some lately. Friday I saw the Movie Blood Done Sign My Name from the book by Tim Tyson.
I have an autographed copy; saw Tim at Furman in fall of 2005 I think it was which woulda been about 7 months before May 28, 2006, a memorable day for me.
Jeb Stuart, a Prez minister's son from Gastonia, NC directs the movie.
In the movie and the book, Tyson wakes up one night in 1970 when he was 8 years old and sees the downtown of Oxford, NC burning to the Ground.
His Daddy was the UMC mininster there. My Daddy was a Baptist preacher in Gaffney, SC at the time. Tim told me at Furman he had written about an incident in Gaffney in 1956 and his essay is in Jumpn Jim Crow.
I've read it since. It is pretty strong.

In May of that year, a couple months earlier Nick Saban was at Kent State and witnessed the chaos there in the shootings and deaths of four students.
To paraphrase a line from No Country for Old Men, the Tommy Lee Jones sheriff tells his deputy that Anton Chigurh had just seen the things that they had seen and he imagines he'd be a little spooked too.
You don't see what Tim Tyson saw and Nick Saban saw without it staying with you.

About the time Alabama was to win the national championship this year Bham native Howell Raines got his 1983 piece on the Death of Bear Bryant and Bryant's opportunity to move George Wallace to better place for the sake of Alabma; got a revised link in the New Republic.
Here is that link.

The Conscience of the STate of Alabama, Wayne Flynt, and his Pastor, Jim Evans are offering Nick SAban to make a difference where Bear Bryant might have failed.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said,and I imagine the Heisman Trophy winner has heard: "Now is the Time".

Samuel Proctor, a noted Black Minister, friend of MartinKing is part of Tim Tyson's book and movie. Proctor preaches before all Hell breaks loose in Oxford and he talks about football.
I'm not threatening All Hell Breaking Loose; I'm just trying to prick Saban and Lowell Barron's conscience, cause the movie says it is wicked if you are silent when you know to do a good thing.
This blog is my good thing; maybe it will help my case when I stand before Sweet Jesus with the multitude of sins in my backpack.
Lowell Barron has told me he has had conversations with the late Tom Corts on several occasions about Constitutional Reform. If Barron has a better argument that Corts, Flynt and Evans, we need to hear it transparent and strong.
We also need to hear a word from Nick Saban about it. I'm sure Stephen Black is available to give him all the information he needs.
Here are several links for Barron and Saban.
It's another Kent State, Oxford NC moment.

Jim Evans Parable about Alabama and the Old House

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=15662

The witness of Evans parishioner, Wayne Flynt

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=15649

Howell Raines on Bear Bryant and George Wallace; as text for Nick Saban and his conscience.

Does Saban owe his Heisman trophy winner any more than the opportunity he has given him?

http://www.tnr.com/article/goodbye-the-bear?page=0,0

Baylor's New President and Newark, New Jersey

Last night I heard a fellow raised in Newark who finished High School a year after I did; me 71 and him 72. He said the riots that started in his high school would start a chain throughout all the districts.
Coincides with a NY Times story about Tim Tyson's Blood DoneSign my Name, the Movie, to be intheatres this weekend.

Will have links for trailer and the piece here shortly.

Click on title here:

Blood Done Sign My Name Opens Friday


Ken Starr of the Clinton Presidency fame is the new President of Baylor. Starr is something of a mentor to the Christian Legal Society with whom Collinsville native Casey Mattox is a staffer in Washington DC.
It is an interesting selection, has me stunnfed, bewildered and flummoxxed if I could learn to spell it.
See my comment on the blog here; comment I made at an opinion piece site this morning at http://www.abpnews.com/

On another matter FBC Ft. Payne is having year long celebration in conjunction with it's 125th anniversary. Jon Appleton will be preaching there in May, Appleton with Collinsville connections as well.
Check the church website for events.

Collinsville Baptist, Founding Fathers and High School

In addition to hearing a marvelous presentation from the nephew of Lester Maddox this week have come across a couple other fascinating articles I want to memo to myself and maybe provoke some others to work on the pieces of the puzzle.
Maddox, you know, watched Bobby Kennedy, lead the funeral procession of MLKing in front of the Ga State House in 68, not long after he was sworn in as Governor. To hear a nephew work his way out of that family matrix while still maintaining an abiding love for his flesh and blood was an extraordinary event for me.
Especially so as growing up Randy Newman's song about Maddox, Rednecks, made an indelible impression.
I heard Newman at City Stages in Bham few years back and called out Rednecks as a request; a voice in the crowd. Newman heard me and sang every word about half mile from the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Collinsville Baptist in the 90's had a phenomenal group of promising young folks come through the doors. There are still lot of good promising kids there now though the character of the congregation has changed considerably.
Maybe it's not in the cards for them now, but wonder how the several kids of the 90's youth ministry would work their way through this challenge from a Baptist youth Minister just outside Atlanta

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?em

Oops wrong link

Here the challenge for 90's Collinsville Youth Products:

http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/4825/9/

NY Times link above poses a question for a Baptist Deacon blogger now at Collinsville, a persistent detractor of President Obama, at odds with a lot of the products of the 90's.
Would love to have them engage the blogger, but that is doubtful, wistful given the allegiance to the "Harmony of the local church"; which in some burgs trumps all.

And finally my blogger friend in North Georgia has an exquisite take on High School I want to recommend here.
I agree with him overall, but would like to have substantive conversation with many folks there; cause every life has value, deserves to tell its own story.

http://georgiamountainsandbeyond.blogspot.com/2010/02/ten-questions-from-rainlille-at-great.html

Greensboro Lunchcounters, Bama Baptist Jihadist, and JD Salinger

Today is historic day in Civil Rights History, when the Greensboro Four sat down at Woolworth's Lunch Counter and did their chapter that would 10 years later place me on the Bi-Racial Committee at Gaffney Senior High School, paving the way for Sidney Rice.
It made a front page story in NY Times yesterday from which I will link and quote later so come back to this catch all blog.
Excellent documentary last night on same onPBS.org Independent lens for the few of you out there who weren't texting or watching the Lifetime Channel


Also in NY Times story yesterday was link to their rivetting magazine story about a gifted small Town Alabama boy raised and Baptized Southern Baptist; but now one of the most threatening members of Al Qaeda in Somalia.
As David Byrne would ask: "How did he get there?"
Link to follow on that as well.

And JD Salinger died Friday. I had heard about Catcher in the Rye growing up and Miss Chadwick had me read some Kafka and Conrad at Gaffney Senior High School. I grew up thinking there was something little shady about it, it would make me have bad thoughts about girls so as preacher's son tried to keep my eyes on Heaven.
At Furman I got hints of Marshall Frady and learned some other stuff even made a B- in the course on Human Sexuality, but ironically enough Catcher in the Rye didn't register with me till I heard a Baptist Preacher Carlyle Marney talk about what it meant in Gaffney in the Spring of 78, the year Marney died.
I made reference to that meeting and exchange with Marney in my eulogy for my Father in Collinsville in August 1999.

Four page eulogy for Salinger in NY Times, and a great line in there I will share soon here as well.

Salinger Quote:

“Salinger had remarked that he was in this world but not of it,” the statement said. “His body is gone but the family hopes that he is still with those he loves, whether they are religious or historical figures, personal friends or fictional characters.”

Statement from the children of Salinger in the Friday story announcing Salinger's passing.

I read one time he went to a lot of his small adopted hometown HS Basketball games; and later read he was a regular at the Weds evening Pot luck suppers at the local Congregational Church. I think the story was he was particularly fond of the roast beef.