Robert Graetz, the white Lutheran pastor who supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott, has died at 92. His role in the Black-led freedom struggle that catalyzed the civil rights movement is an important reminder that white folks can always choose to be anti-racist...
Rev Graetz joined the NAACP in college & learned that it had been started in 1909 by Black & white folks together. When he came to pastor the church around the corner from Rosa Parks’ apartment, she was already hosting NAACP Youth Council meetings there.
Graetz never convinced any other white clergy to join the boycott (they didn’t even support him when his home was bombed). But he wasn’t the only white person in the struggle. Clifford & Virginia Durr had been agitating in Montgomery for years.
In fact, they’d encouraged Rosa Parks to attend a workshop on desegregation at the Highlander Folk School, a popular education center run by their friend, Myles Horton. Parks said it was 1st time in her life she woken up to the smell of bacon & it was white folks cooking it.
Highlander was connected to other experiments in resisting Jim Crow. Horton’s friends Clarence & Florence Jordan had started an integrated farming co-op, Koinonia Farm, in rural GA in the 40s. When the state shut down their integrated summer camp, Highlander hosted it.
Meanwhile back in Montgomery, when the leadership of Parks & King & the Black community built a movement, a white college student, Bob Zellner, got in trouble for just showing up to write a sociology paper about it.
This circle of white folks who’d spent their lives learning to be anti-racist took Bob under their wing, and he went on to intern at Highlander & become the 1st white field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
All of this in Montgomery, the cradle of the Confederacy, under Jim Crow. These white folks weren’t perfect & they weren’t the leaders of the movement they joined. But they’ve taught me that white folks have a role to play & that anti-racism is always about our freedom too.
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I like @AsteadWesley’s reporting, so I listened to his interview w/ @albertmohler this week. Mohler says his main job is to prepare students to preach, but Christians can’t vote for Democrats b/c no moral issue is more important than preventing codification of gay marriage…
If Mohler believes that, he’s free to vote for Rand Paul in KY. But his position should lead any Christian to question whether he’s qualified to do his main job. The Bible is a big book w/ lots to say, but it’s pretty clear God cares about how governments treat vulnerable ppl.
The children of Israel weren’t liberated from Egypt b/c Pharaoh didn’t agree w/ their definition of marriage. God heard their cries b/c they were hard-pressed to feed their babies & survive, like millions of poor & low-income folks today.
The most important public religion story in the US right now may be the realignment of white Christians around values of justice, love of neighbor & the common good. A short thread on the #RevolutionOfValues that often doesn’t make headlines…
Folks who’ve been driven to extremism by the propaganda of the religious right get a lot of attention. Patriot churches. Capitol rioters w/ Jesus flags. White #ChristianNationalism is dangerous & deserves attention, but its extremism is the desperation of a shrinking minority.
As @robertpjones has noted, @PRRIpoll’s latest data shows that white evangelicals as a percentage of US population have shrunk from roughly a quarter of Americans to less than a 7th. Why?
It’s the 60th anniversary of 1961’s Freedom Ride this spring & today is Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday. Which reminds me of a story I learned from a SNCC friend...
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed after the sit-ins of 1960 to organize a new wave of direct challenges to Jim Crow segregation. The Freedom Ride—Black & White ppl together, riding interstate buses thru the South—was their first big action.
Thereafter, folks on the ground called people who worked for SNCC the “Freedom Riders” (well, the ones who didn’t call them “damn communists” or “outside agitators.”)
It’s outrageous that GA’s voter suppression bill makes it illegal to give food & water to voters waiting in line. But read on, b/c it gets much worse...
Folks in Atlanta will bring their own water bottles & vote en masse in response to this assault on democracy. But if this law stands, a state board can override their county board & throw out their ballots if they don’t like the results.
This is the state-level control of local elections that ALEC began lobbying for last spring, long before false claims of “widespread fraud” & a “stolen election” in Nov. See @anelsona’s reporting on this: billmoyers.com/story/the-shad…
John Eastman, who’s emerged to petition SCOTUS w/ Trump’s lies, is a fellow at the Christian nationalist Claremont Institute, which pays him $130k a year to work 15hrs/wk. Trump’s other lawyer, Jenna Ellis, is a fellow at Falkirk Center for “faith & liberty.”
Trumpism was defeated at the ballot box, but it’s myths are sustained by a well funded Christian nationalist network of Institutes, radio & TV shows, & orgs that send emails to millions of Americans every day.
This Lost Cause religion isn’t new. It feeds on decades of resentment that have been cultivated, esp in white faith communities. Biden will be President in 2021, but this movement & the money behind it will not go away.
Local law enforcement in Alamance County, NC pepper-sprayed a permitted Souls to the Polls rally on the last day of Early Voting today. The particular site where this happened has a long history... newsobserver.com/news/local/art…
During Reconstruction, local white supremacists were incensed that Gov Holden appointed Wyatt Outlaw as head of local law enforcement. A mob formed & lynched Outlaw in 1870.
The ensuing Kirk-Holden War, in which Holden sent in troops to put down the rebellion, was an early battle in the white supremacist movement’s attempt to overthrow the results of the Civil War.