Justice for All

Parents who move alot create kids who try to figure out what makes the people tick when they move. My pilgrimage from New York to Alabama was an adjustment to the extreme.

I have this vivid memory of swimming with black folks in Oneonta New York and moving to Troy Alabama with enforced segregation in the public pools in 1962, then moving to Mississippi and seeing dozens of public pools closed to prevent the rising pressure to integrate, and then watching the token integration lead to groups of largely ignored kids trying to come to school. Racism was deeply ingrained into the culture and I saw it in so many ways over the years that I cherished the friendships I had with other races in college.

My father was caught in the lock down in Memphis, working blocks away from the assasination of Martin Luther King. Christians in the south had lived for so long with the segregated way of life that they were bothered by the changes, as if their culture was collapsing, and there were real problems in the schools that took decades to change. I preached on the Samaritan women at the well and know that racial hatred was not in the Lord's heart, and should not be in mine. I honor all those who risked their to change our world.