Racial reconciliation is about people. And home schooling is about people–what a perfect match! People with hopes and dreams and visions.
Thomas Murphy’s tears troubled me when he returned from the counselor’s office–he had been told that black boys do not go to white colleges. I remembered Mammy’s words then–and again as I watched Dwight Washington drop his head in shame when an elder blocked his path and told him niggers were not welcome at our church. The words of my oldest childhood friend still haunt me as I remember his threat to castrate a five-year old youngster if he dared to sit in our segregated theater. Mammy, how can I forget Jimmi Sue Daniels? She stood with clenched fists as Ricky Smith and Roger Russell blocked her path to our segregated pool.
I weep for us all as we pathetically stood, with Roger and Ricky. And that is the place we white Christians in 1998 need to begin–by weeping. By weeping for Thomas Murphy. By weeping for our nation. By weeping for ourselves. By repenting.
As I looked at my new daughter, I remember Lee. I again felt the pain and lost opportunity of growing up in the South in the 1960’s and 70’s. I stood that day, in 1980, silently weeping again. And Rachel wept when she saw me cry.
Every southerner has a Civil War story of some relative embellished beyond any reasonable truth. But my story–truth or not–was the framework from which I worked. It was rumored that two Stobaugh brothers had fought in the Civil War in the Confederate army. They were members of General Braggs army and had enlisted in a company from Martin, Tennessee. If they were like most Southerners, they never owned very many slaves–only one or two. And the slaves probably lived in the same house as their owners. But slavery was a mindset, a way of life worth fighting for, even dying for if necessary. They fought fiercely to protect their way of life. But they lost their war. As I starred at Rachel, I wondered, “Would I lose mine?â€
My wife turned, smiled, and handed me my new daughter Rachel. “Now the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land I will show thee.” Abram was called to a new land,a new time, a new family, and to a new name. The risks were very great–all the time in fact. At any time the promise could be lost and the rewards were singularly obscure. But he trusted God more than he feared the wilderness.
Rachel was my promised land. She was my new time, my new land, my new chance. She was more than my daughter: she was God’s invitation to me to experience wholeness and new life.