Recently I had a very moving conversation with an older White gentleman (70 years old). As we were talking, I asked him where he was born. He stated that he was born and raised in South Carolina but moved all over the South because he was a minister's kid.
This led to us talking about what it was like to grow up in the segregated South; specifically a segregated Christianity. He likened growing up this way to being a magician's kid: you always see the illusion from behind the veil.
His father, who was a Southern Baptist pastor, was asked the question as to whether Blacks could attend his church. His father, who personally wrestled internally with it responded, "I don't have an issue with Blacks, but if they attend, church would be shut down for the day."
He described his father as not openly racist but upheld the values and convictions of a racist society and much more a racist Christianity. So much so that, ironically, he and his father bumped heads, even as a young man. There was his mother.
Not openly racist, by his account, but more so embody a racist paternalism that didn't use the "n-word" but didn't see Blacks as equals but congratulated itself for not being like those "cross-burners". He remembers very clearly those "cross-burners" as a kid from the window.
As he sat there, seeing the smoke rise from the crosses, serious fear would strike him but also serious perplexity. On the one hand, he wasn't like those "cross-burners" but on the other hand, he never ate with, associated with, or worshiped with Black people.
Like many White Southerners, his parents also were poor. This brought a whole new set of complexities for him at the intersection of race and religion. But sadly, he realized very quickly that when it came to Blacks and his family, "to my parents, somebody had to be poorer."
The poorer were the Blacks. He knew of one such Black: the lady who would keep he and his brother when his mother had to work. She would cook for them, teach them Bible, pray over them, all things much differently he had learned from his church and dinner table.
It was through this Black lady, whom he knew but didn't know, that he learned to see the world differently and people differently. It was through those Black hands that the world felt different and those Black prayers that Jesus looked different. This changed his life.
Yet one thing he couldn't shake: the difference. I asked him, "Looking at where you are now, what would you say to the Black lady who cared for you and your brother?" He responded, with tears in his eyes, "I would tell her I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't know your last name...
...I'm sorry that you were only Willa Mae to us. That taught me that there was a difference. A hierarchy. I'm so sorry I didn't know your last name." That was interesting to me. What's in a last name? In a name is a story; a story of full humanity. In a name is solidarity.
To know Willa Mae's last name is to wrestle deeply with the profound divide of experiences. It is to bring all relating, one as fully human and one a less than, into question. It is to now join in the struggle for freedom. It is to question a Christianity that upholds racism.
To know Willa Mae's last name is to know Willa Mae's history. It is to enter into the trauma of the burning cross, not from the eyes of the "cross-burner", but through eyes of the disenfranchised. It is equally to enter into a Christianity much different from his own.
To know her name is to not put with a racist society but to see himself, his family, his church, as it is, to name it, and to do something to change it. Yet, he does not know her name.
What of him today? Only tears, a broken story, and some sense of hope because he now sees.
What of him today? Only tears, a broken story, and some sense of hope because he now sees.
