Tabernacle Baptist in Selma 1963

 I thought I knew most of the Civil Rights stories but a new one for me registered yesterday in a travel piece about Alabama on PBS. The Selma march was march of 1965 but in 1963 at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma there was a mass meeting. Sheriff Jim Clark showed up and he had deputized a bunch of white boys some as young as 18 years old to line the walls of the sanctuary. Think about that, think about your church having a meeting and the police show up with eighteen year old boys with pistols. I was ten years old in Gaffney SC when that happened in the fifth grade with Tommy Brittain among others at Central School.

   Tommy became a Trustee at Wofford. The next year we discovered the Actress Andie Macdowell.

    But Down in Selma the police surrounded the sanctuary and then went in the parking lot to take down all the tag numbers. They followed up threatening and taking the jobs of many of the folks who were in attendance.

     No Wonder Fannie Lou Hamer went to the Democrat Convention the next year and asked the pertinent Question: Is This America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

    Question is What is Ralph Norman and his critical race theory charade gonna do if students at Gaffney High School who just won the state championship in Football and gonna send their QB to Duke year after next, is Ralph Norman gonna encourage some trumper on the local school board to bully a classroom like Desantis is doing now in Florida with the aid of Tim Tebow's Eagle Forum Momma?

    Google religion dispatches, Robert Jones for last Monday report. Also see Steve Cothran on CRT in the Newnan Times. Cothran Dad, John Cothran is a trustee emeritus of Furman and the family of considerable influence at FBC Greenville.

    I visited the Old Gaffney Post office Friday to see the Welcoming Center Ive read about a good bit this last year, and to see the Black Preservation Exhibit they are featurying during Black History Month. Proud of All. Was delighted to see the profile and recognition of Popsicle Mayberry in the exhibit and the Explanation of How Tank Branch got its name.

    All this mess about Critical race theory. If Norman is okay about a conversation of Tabernacle Baptist in Selma, exploring the rabbit trails of my recent blog Tribute of MLK and review of the latest bio of him, Watching the PBS Doc on the Blinding of Isaac Woodard and having the State Championship Gaffney High Indians memorize what thirty year Bama Archivist and Furman grad Ed Bridges said in his recent bicentennial history of Nick Saban's Bama about the Daughters of the Confederacy distortion of Civil War and Jim Crow and Civil Rights history for 150 years in Americas Public Schools (have the local school board memorize too cause who needs an ignorant elected administration); if Norman and the SC GOP US Congress Delegation okay with all that, then we Down. We Good, CRT is a ruse a joke on working class voters. If we have a mutual understanding about this elemental truth, then Nikki Haley can go ahead and tell her Clemson trustees what she wants to cause if Gaffney can send their QB to Duke, Sky Foster to BMW  and Johnny Dawkins to LA to write early script for Denzel Washington, And Fletcher Smith to Law school at Carolina and on to be a power broker in the Dem Presidential Primary in SC, then this generation is smart enough to figure the rest out for themselves.

   PS I walked across the Selma Bridge in 2012 with John Lewis and Ethel Kennedy and 20,000 other people from all over the world. Went back in 2015 with 100 thou including Obama and Bush 43 for a booster shot.

Black Queer state senator of Stone Mtn Ga and Cowpens SC kicks off Furman King Weekend

     Kim Jackson of the class of 2006 of Furman University spoke virtually this morning for about 15 minutes. She says she walked into her calling as an Episcopal Priest, activist and politician her Freshman year at Furman at the Invitation of my friend Jim Pitts the Furman Chaplain for forty years and early days with LD Johnson.

     Jackson arrived on campus when Greenville still didnt celebrate ML King day. She participated in the protest marches of the early oughts.

    She now represents Stone Mtn Ga, the birthplace of the Klan, lit up after the Lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. Steve Oney wrote the definitive work on that lynching and it was the subject of the last review in the New York Rev of Books by Marshall Frady, FU 63. Whether Kim knows that or not I dont know, but it wouldnt have hurt to mention that along with her salute to Jim Pitts.

   I hope by now Jackson as her star rises has mastered the information of Patrick Phillips and his book on the Frank contemporary lynchings in Forsyth County Georgia, the stomping grounds of Marjorie Taylor Greene of Q anon fame.

   Pitts on errand from Will D Campbell spoke at Frady's Funeral while Jackson was at Furman, North Augusta SC with Jesse Jackson the main eulogist. And Frady is the author of a beautiful biography of King I quote from in my review of the latest Bio of King by Paul Harvey.

    I hope Kimberly has these books in her personal library as well as Ms Kogens at the Riley Institute.

    In Cowpens SC, Kim Jackson was in the immediate vicinity of the summers of Marian Wright Edelman whose grandfather was pastor of the Thicketty Baptist Church on the Spartanburg County and Cherokee County lines. MWE a mentor and hero of Hillary Clinton whose praises Bobby Kennedy shared with his children on one of his early trips to Mississippi in the sixties where MWE showed him the face of Black poverty.

   I was raised ten miles further east from 62 to 78 in Gaffney.

      I hope Kim Jackson knows all of this as she fights the Trump GOP in Georgia with Ralphael Warnock and I hope the Riley Institute makes her message plain to William Timmons of Christ Church Episcopal in Greenville whose family name is on the Basketball arena.

     One of Jackson's more powerful remarks for more diversity at Furman was a challenge not to judge people of color not only by their ability to play sports, but by all aspects of their character. 

     That goes beyond SC and Georgia all the way to Nick Saban as we must hope his conscience is quickened to make clear to Katie Britt, the hand chosen successor of Richard Shelby, a legend of the University of Alabama, Jesus is not pleased when Ms Britt distorts the legacy of King invoking his name in her perverted weaponization of political race theory for political power.

    So God Bless Ms Jackson and her platform and the many decades she has to honor Jim Pitts, Frady, LD Johnson, Tomiko Brown Nagin, Steve Oney and many others of Furman far and wide and her incarnation of the work of Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ.

Bad Dawg Behavior in Indy

  Friends I pulled for the Ga Bulldogs last night was impressed by Stetson  Bennett the Fourth and the Pickens fingertip catch. Thought it was a good night for tackle football till I got some disturbing reports this afternoon from some smart people whose Mommas raised them with some manners.

     In the stands was some bad white trash crackers and were reports in a nice steak restaurant in Indy boorish cracker dogs were going up to tables to anybody who showed signs of being a Saban Faithful and acting ugly. In the stands about the time when everybody saw one end of the stadium unload with beer bottles and other paraphranelia some vigilantes were harassing an elderly black man in his face no mask shouting we are Proud boys and boogaloos and what you gonna do about it. I guess they thought they were respectful not to call him the N word. They were ushered out of the vicinity and thought to be the arena as they should.

    Looks like Dog Nation could get the word on on Dog Radio to behave at the National championship. There are some rowdies in Alabama where they play turdle doving and hold their women against the wall while yeller hammer beating the hell out of most foes, but these dogs seemed to push the envelope a little further. Of course Vince Dooley could be a little to blame, southern gentleman he is and master gardener and good husband to Barbara all those years, but he endorsed Brine Kemp. I dont know if that is a dog whistle to hairy dogs to hunker down when they leave the state, but somebody's momma or small town football culture or those otherwise good Methodists or First Babdist masquerades who think the Lets Go Brandon cheer is cute.....I don't know.

    I thought it was bad at some high school basketball games I went to where one section of Good ole boys would tolerate loud threats to refs two feet away with such language as you God Damn Motherfucking Pussy, we'll kick your ass in the parking lot if you make another call like that. And all this sometimes in the hearing of the High school principal or Baptist deacons on the county school board. We are talking sixty year old men and god knows the young bucks twenty or just got out of high school mimic such behavior.

     But congrats to Kirby and I'm happy for Will Muschamp to get a ring with at least one of the many programs he has been associated.

    Maybe Paul Finebaum we'll get word to Greg Sankey and Athens can set up some knew guidelines for crowd behavior or looks to me like SEC just doesnt mean more, It dont mean Shit.

Jan 5, 2022 I ate barbecue and rode around

 About every ten years the first day Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC is open I try to make it. A biennial tradition times five, maybe a decennial tradition. Its always a Wednesday cause Bridges on the Bypass isnt open MOnday and Tuesday. In the year 2000 Billy Graham was there on the first Wednesday, but I didnt show up till Saturday. And same in 2013 when the whole family went, or there was there was that one year we didnt go till Monday and went downtown.

    Well whatever I had to go Wednesday with a start west of Dacusville SC so it was an hour before I ever got to Campobello. There I figured I was practically in the back door but was another hour to go as I took a left other side of Cowpens just twelve miles from Gaffney on Alt 221. Hit the Boiling Springs NC connector in Cliffside NC, a mistake. Winding road slow cars, when I coulda stayed on 221 and hit 74 then easy peasey into Shelby. But my shortcut was a disaster as when I got to Hwy 18 I was still nowhere and slow forever seven minutes to Bypass 74.  And Boiling Springs was no piece of cake as GWebbU is spreading out since Artis Gilmore was there and David Thompson showed up in his blue Jean shorts as a 14 year old kid to wow some semi pros in a summer basketball camp.

     But I got there and got the 24 dollar that feeds six, pound of cue, pint of Slaw and all the hushpuppies you could dream. Ate some, got full and had enough to take hom for at least three more meals.  But they have you when you walk in the door, you cant outsmart em.

     First time there was the Spring of 62 when my Dad had become the new pastor of Bethany baptist church in Gaffney. Deacon Floyd Worthy and his wife Pete took us and we went back at least twice a year sometimes four or more till we left in 78. With the exception of a few years , Ive been back at least once a year since then, four times in the last six months.

    A friend showed to talk through lunch. left about 2 30 headed for Gaffney searching for a 18 year State champion football tee Triple X.  Took an adventurous path by Providence Baptist Church where HS Classmate Diane Sarrat Smith is the church pianist to Chic Fil A. Met Anne, homeschooled and young manager of the Gaffney Chic Fil A . She met Dan Cathy himself in Florida for a funeral for an Uncle who was a CFA manager. Says her grandmother lives in Murval Tn, where my Dad was born so she is gonna read Time in the Woods in Oxford American about Cormac McCarthy.

    A fellow in the parking lot picking up his younger brother told me where the shirt place was so I took a right toward Pleasant Grove where my 8th grade teacher once lived and hit the frontage road almost directly across from the Peach around the corner from Buckson Street where my friend Johnny Dawkins and his nine brothers and sisters were raised down the street from George Smith.

    Negotiated a price on my big Tee which ended up being what they asked for to begin with.

  Headed toward town on the Buford Street Extension passed the old Jr High where I couldnt recognize where the old bus pick up used to be. Into town where the Hardees has repositioned itself, but saw where Irene Little Ball Field is still there, where in 1940 a bloated Shoeless Joe Jackson himself hit a home run in a textile league exhibition.

    Took a left on Limestone, Main Street to John Hamricks office the other end of Town and passed Hartzogs Jewelers and Elmores BBShop both ways and the street where Jimmy Bakers Dad had the auto repair, Bernanke's apothecary where I asked Bobby Richardson a question in 76 and Tommy Martin's Chronicle.

    Turned around at Jolly Park to Central School on College Drive up to Skyla Henderson house even though we never went dancin in Spartanburg past the Childers and John Raymond Keller and Miss Jones my eleventh grade English teacher who introduced me to the word Transcendentalism to Sunset Drive.

   Sunset Drive home of Dr. Preston Edwards and wife Faye and my classmate since fourth grade, Charles, all the way through Furman class of 75. Took a strong look at John Hamricks burned down mansion, and then down the hill to Ricky Bailey's house which has been renovated around the corner to the Cooleys and up to Bruce Thompson, the basketball coach from Presbyterian College at Gaffney High through 69. End of an era he left same time Coach Prevatte and Wayne Whiteside departed the legendary football program.

  Didnt know till last year, Dr Preston Sister married a Morgan who lived next door on Sunset and their Grand daughter Katie Morgan Lester, Furman nineties grad grew up out near Timken on a farm. She has a series of children's books self illustrated she has authored. I got her latest autographed at Furman Homecoming back in October, Raymond the Rooster. got it for my brothers one year old one and only grand daughter, Little Her.

    Right on Anthony passed 129 where we lived for two years before the new parsonage behind Bethany church. Lived on Anthony the day Kennedy was assassinated and I remember a year earlier on way to church on radio hearing Marilyn Monroe was dead. Caught the news right in front of Raymond Harrill home before we took the left on Frederick for the mile out to Bethany.

     John Hamrick was a powerful man politically and in wealth. Was close friend of Roger Milliken who gave more money to Nixon in 72 than any other man in America. Hamrick himself was president of the American Textile Manufacturers Inst in 74 and had a private audience with President Ford that year.

    He was the "shepherd" designate of FBC Gaffney for the mission that became Bethany. He was there with his gorgeous well maintenanced wife in 64 at the Dedication of Bethany new sanctuary and I remember said when he retired at night, he could look out his upstairs bedroom window on Sunset Drive and see the Bethany Steeple, the same Steeple I was looking at on April 4 1968 out my parent bedroom when Sandra Darwin called to say Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

    So I drove out to Bethany passed Lynn Hamburger Stand, another part of my archaeological Gaffney diggings to Bethany church and thought about things a few minutes.

    From there to Limestone College to kill some time at new Riggins Center and Library but it was closed. So the next 35 minute drive to Wofford Richardson Basketball arena took ninety minutes. And I was facing glaring afternoon sunlight going west on 29 and the tea I drank at Chic Fil a talking to my new cousin Anne from Murvall was kickin in and the prostate was announcing itself every ten minutes or so.

   Cowpens , home of Kimberly Jackson of Furman and Atlanta's Absalom Jones Center; and summers in Thicketty Creek for Bobby Kennedy's great friend, also mentor to Hillary Clinton, Marian Wright Edelman was tolerable ride with periodic breaks where I could actually see where I was going in the shank of the day.

   But west of Cowpens, Spartanburg had changed in the last forty years since I frequented the neighborhood. Stopped for gas just shy of Converse College to let the sun go down and decided to go hang out at Hub City Books on Morgan Square passed Trey Gowdy's First Baptist Church. But hit a dead end. Became disoriented and called Attorney Charles Edwards who by this time since Sunset Drive had become a Spartanburg Atty. He said we just crossed on Church Street and to come back to Papas. We talked a few minutes and the Good Dr.s son said Wofford was a piece of cake. Go down a block get on Church and Woffords front gate was about a mile down the road.

   Thats what I did. Except no students on Campus and I got lost, never saw Richardson Stadium, went out the back gate, around the Football stadium twice some how got dead ended on Arlinton St which was kind of threatening, got turned around there with out hitting a couple already dented vehicles. Got back to the front gate, did the same damn thing again,

    Like Paris Trout said I'd do the same thing again.  About forty minutes after I left Papas I had no more self confidence, self respect and was near breakdown and hadnt touched my chic fil a sandwich from Gaffney yet. Was headed north on Church where I saw sign said Panthers Training camp.

    So why the Hell Not, i took a right and there it was all lit up in marble like a heavenly portal, the R|ichardson dont touch my Butt I won't pinch yours Methodist Arena. My ticket my sister got for me online four dollars processing worked and im inside. 

    Great Arena, Delighted for former Trustee Chair Tommy Brittain the Meth Preachers son who  with me discovered a First Grade Andie Macdowell the fall of 64 at Gaffney's Central School. All Socon Wofford Center was Brittain and his sister a strong Methodist minister herself in North Carolina.

    Great game against UTC though the Terriers were on the losing end.

     Went out the back gate to 585 passed Milliken Arboretum and the old theatre plaza where I was first introduced to Cinema that matters, through three red light on the tail end before exit 85 south and sweet ride home.

    Going again next year hopefully for Furman game as was plans for the 22nd, but traditions are traditions and Bridges was calling first opportunity of 22. I was able to fulfill my destiny.

Martin for the Ages

  Periodically I have wondered if born in say 1885 in my teens I woulda met anybody who saw Lincoln in the flesh. Now near 70 and 15 years old when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated I cherish the acquaintance of two folks who knew him,  was in a room with him on more than one occasion. Herman Kerley  of Collinsville Alabama who died couple years ago was a member of Dexter Avenue in Montgomery as a student in the 50s at Alabama State. He heard King preach in a congregation that included Rosa Parks. And in the last two years through Jim Pitts who died in January of Covid I got to know Grady Butler, Pitts long time friend in Greenville SC.  Butler as a young man was in jail with King in Atlanta when King got the call from John Kennedy. King told the group, I think our cause has just gotten a new level of significance.

   So here we all are, almost 55 years after he died, about the same time New Testament writings began to talk about the significance of the life of Christ. Of course a lot has already been written about King, but a similar amount of time has passed, to think about King as a Third Testament, the flesh around which a grand historical time transitioned into a new understanding of humanity and an implementation of that new consensus of community.

   I think there is none better than Paul Harvey to mark this moment in time on the life of King on the downside of a half century since he was taken from us. Harvey first came to my attention in Moses, Jesus and the Trickster, his hundred pages of a lecture series at Mercer in 2008. In terse clear language it registered with me the essence of Black Theology and Black studies that have emerged in the last thirty years or so. It is a jewel of a piece, must addition to any library of ministers who are part of what passes for progressive Baptist thought, teaching and preaching.

   And earlier this year a lecture series at Stetson became Southern Religions in the World where he makes a strong case, not to win a debate about the legacy of Billy Graham, but as a matter of conviction, the lesser known thinker, the mentor to King, Howard Thurman will be seen as the evangelical of the 20th Century whose vision for America and insight into the Scripture for the Public square prevails. As Such as many of us are already convinced, Marilynne Robinson, Obama, the Senator Coons of  Delaware have better grasp on the Gospel as it America than Nixon, Karl Rove and Steve Bannon and the Birch Society Franklin Graham has embraced though his father leaned that way.

   And it was Harvey in a work about white activists in the first half of the 20th Century, especially Howard  Kester as a foreshadowing of Will D. Campbell increased my knowledge of folks preparing the way for King.

   Harvey's added relish of the books Ive read about King -- my list is strong but not exhaustive--with reference to letters especially in the fifties offering advice. Furman's Martin England, a man eulogized by Albert Blackwell in 1983 as having an "appetite" for justice, .......And Lillian Smith....

   One disappointment is a lack of reference to Kings contemporary Dorothy Day. They traveled among similar circles but in a biography of this scope wouldve been nice to have recorded any instance of a face to face meeting. The fact is likely there never was one though Dorothy was on the steps of Catholic Church when King spoke at Vietnam War protest to 100,000 marchers in New York City near the United Nations.

    With his focus on King, Harvey however does not dismiss the courage and wisdom of the masses he awakened. My favorite anecdote of the unknown saints of the movement comes from Taylor Branch who said of his thousand page trilogy on the Movement, his favorite story if of the anonymous aging Black man from Lowndes county Alabama who joins the march from Selma second or third day in. A national reporter saddles up to him and asks: Do you think you will win anything when you get to Montgomery, to which comes the reply, We Won When We started Walking.

    In 1977 in a Shoneys in Gaffney SC, James Dunn's mentor, Stewart A Newman the SEBTS professor and great friend of my Dad met with us after a presentation at nearby Limestone College . Just  a decade earlier Newman  had written WA Criswell a personal letter upon Criswell's election to presidency of the SBC reminded Criswell of their fame in Columbia SC in 1956. Criswell at the invitation of Strom Thurmond addressed a joint session of the SC Legislature to repeat a demagogic performance he'd given a day earlier to the SC State SBC Pastor's Conference in which he made such utterances to the hoots and howls of both gatherings: Now You wouldnt call a chigger a chiggerow, now would you; and I wouldnt let my daughter within two city blocks in Dallas Texas of one of those big black bucks.

   Newman followed Criswell to the pulpit in Columbia and grandly proclaimed what I consider a great Baptist proclamation of the twentieth Century: "WA Criswell doesnt speak for me."

    In Gaffney in 77 Newman take on King was he caught the crest of a wave. Newman wasnt the only person of that era with that assessment but Harvey a half century and later makes the strong case King was special, had the gifts that no other had at that moment and evolved into the man worthy of Stone on the National Mall. One Lincoln, One King.

     What Harvey also does is wade through the various versions of King since his assassination and reminds us how despised in many quarters he was in his lifetime. And Harvey is stark about Where King would be now in this Trump Era. Harvey is wise as a serpent knowing the Atwater Nword memo and its evolutions with abortion and guns and the second amendment strategies refined by Karl Rove and with further menace and mendacity in the hands of Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and the leadership of the National Rifle Association. He understands with the likes of Ken Sehested founder of the Baptist Peace Fellowship   Quote

    The NRA is among the most sinister institutions in our national landscape. And the second amendment has been ravaged by blood-soaked hands.

    And a native of Benjamin Mayes hometown of Greenwood SC was on NPR this last summer weighing in on Project `1619 and the penumbra of Critical Race Theory. Tomiko Brown-Nagin of the Harvard History faculty, now Dean of Radcliffe, without naming her took aim at SC Governor Nikki Haley, now a Clemson Trustee, when she said the Likes of Fox News distortions of the 1619 project are comparable to the FBI war on King portraying him as a Communist.

   And it is clear, Harvey would abhor Bama US Senate Candidate Katie Britt recent invocation of a "plastic" King to support her perversion of his legacy for the weaponization of Critical Race theory as a political strategy  which she joins Tim Tebows Mother and the Eagle Forum dancing in the devils playground.

    There are three people in bust in Westminster Abbey, martyrs of the twentieth Century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King Jr. There is a transitional figure from Bonhoeffer to King in Frank Fisher of the shared days of Bonhoeffer and Fisher in Union Seminary in 1931. Fisher's Father was the pastor of the 16th Street BC in Birmingham in the twenties, and was Ralph Abernathy's predecessor in Atlanta. Fisher and King met at least on one occasion in the Movement days in Montgomery.

   Harvey minces no words for his disdain for Jesse Helms and Helms attempt to the bitter end to deny King a national holiday.

    To close it is the Baptist preacher's son and Furman grad Marshall Frady that capsules King. This from him 2002 Penguin Bio series, Quoting:

   Marshall Frady

   But we have not yet learned to accomodate in our understanding of such figures what the ancient seers, Sophocles and the King David chronicler and Shakespeare and Cervantes knew--that while evil can wear the most civil and sensible and respectably rectitudinous demeanor, good can seem blunderour and uncertain, shockingly wayward, woefully flawed, like one of Graham Greene's dissoulute, shabbyk God-haunted saints. And what the full-bodied reality of King should finally tell us, beyond all the awe and celebration of him, is how mysteriously mixed, in what torturoulsly complecated forms, our moral heroes--our prophets--actually come to us.