Comments
at Operation New Birmingham’s Race Relations Forum
Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church Birmingham,
Alabama
4/20/96 Revised for presentation 6/3/96 at CAC
First let me say that I am deeply grateful
to be here today. I thank God for
Birmingham. The work of the Black
Freedom movement in this city has set me free.
I give thanks to God for each of you.
I celebrate with each of you the accomplishments that we have been
blessed with on the road to freedom together.
I have walked that road only a short time, and my strides have been weak
and sluggish at best and I have fallen often.
But you have helped me walk again.
For this gift I am thankful. We
can only walk together by the light we are willing to share.
The persons who put the race relations
questionnaire together did a major work and are to be complimented for the
labors. I am sure that we all share our
thanks and gratitude. There are some
things I see however that I must share about the current state of race
relations in Birmingham.
During 1988 through 1992 I worked as a
urban congregation development consultant for historically and totally white
urban United Methodist Churches in Birmingham and other cities to develop truly
public churches. These churches were
unable and unwilling to accept black pastoral leadership or elements of Black
culture in their worship. Their attitude
was if we accept black people they will ruin every thing. Their doors remained racially closed. These
churches stood under the judgment of God and many have now died.
For the last three years I have been in the
process of planting a new multicultural/interracial United Methodist Church in
downtown Birmingham. As a
multicultural/interracial congregation we strive to practice radical
hospitality. We have no predetermined
racial/cultural expectations for participation in Church of the Reconciler. All are welcome and invited. Due to the large number of working poor and
homeless persons (both black and white)
in and around the downtown
area it
is not surpassing that we have had many working poor and homeless
persons join our congregation. The
amazing response to this reality has been a new voice of exclusion. The word to Church of the Reconciler from
many middle class white and black persons has been, “you are not welcome here
in downtown if you welcome the homeless.”
The new word of exclusion is, if
you welcome the working poor and homeless they will ruin everything.
Let me explain, on Saturday, April 13, we had a prejudice reduction
workshop at Church of the Reconciler. We
dealt with the work of God reported in the New Testament to destroy our
prejudice and honor the humanity of all people and how the white church has
lied about these things across the years to justify defining African heritage
people as less than human so that the church could support slavery, Jim Crow
Segregation and white superiority and at the same time worship a doctrinally
pure God. Following the workshop we
shared an ethnic heritage meal. At that
time some members of Church of the Reconciler came in, some of which had been nominated to serve on
the church board. A black woman from a
predominately black United Methodist Church got up and told them they had to
leave. She had not ever been at
Reconciler before yet she immediately told my wife Nancy that, “those kinds of people would ruin every
thing.” They were homeless, black and
white and were not welcome in any church according to this woman.
These new expressions of exclusion that now
exist side by side with the old racial exclusions mean that we must talk about
justice and we must talk about civil rights.
We are here today because injustice is still here. We cannot sit idly by in the face of
injustice. To quote Martin King again,
“ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly affects all
indirectly.” So never again can we live in the narrow idea that defines any
human being as undesirable and unwelcome in public church.
We must talk about public stuff. Public is defined as open and accessible to,
or shared by all members of the community.
As in public office, public ministry, public information, public voting,
public education, public transportation, public health care, public housing,
public worship, public parks, public sidewalks, public buildings. Things long and still denied to many people
in Birmingham.
The Metro Area Justice Interfaith Committee
(MAJIC) was formed by concerned religious leaders when Mayor Arrington’s place in public office was challenged by an
extended harassing investigation by federal officials. This kind of attack was almost impossible for
me to believe. Upon investigation
through contacts in the General Church organizations of the UMC and through the
National Council of Churches, I
discovered that this was not only true for Arrington, but for every other
elected black official in the US. I worked hard for the right of public office
and democracy in the specific case of Mayor Arrington.
MAJIC was also formed during the time when
Benny Rambert, a homeless black man was murdered by Skin Heads on the streets
of Birmingham. This was a case of public
streets. Everyone has the right to the
public streets of Birmingham. Things
public have deep significance in issues of freedom and democracy. We in MAJIC worked hard for the gift of public
streets in the Rambert case.
So the language of all our questionnaires
in Birmingham should be about things public and about who is excluded, about
civil rights and about justice not just race relations. For race in America is a social construct
that is created to say who has access to and can share in public stuff for the
purpose of making money. Thirty-five
years ago skin color and biological features were the determining focus of the
social construct of race and social exclusion.
In other words blacks did not have access to public rest rooms, water
fountains, restaurants, hotels etc. ( in many circumstances they still don’t
because the homeless and working poor are predominately black.) However new constructions of exclusion and
dehumanization are being created to destroy access to things public based on
economic class as race as was demonstrated by my opening story. So race relations means problems of social acceptance
and exclusion based on skin color as it
did thirty-five years ago but today issues of social acceptance and exclusion
have emerged based on economic class and social position and need to be
addressed in our questionnaires. There
are new class determinants for exclusion and dehumanization now in addition to
the old.
When the public sphere was opened to the
black community because of the Civil Rights movement an effort was begun by
business to eliminate things public in new ways. Now a new definition of
exclusion from public space is emerging .
This is happening through
privatization. One result of the
construction of Shopping Malls for instance was that they could be used to
redefine public space into private space and then exclude the homeless and
working poor - - the new undesirable people.
New definitions of exclusion are also
working through downsizing, out sourcing,
and temporary labor. These
business practices exclude the participation of a whole new community of people
from employee benefits such as stock ownership, retirement plans, health care
and other benefits of wealth. People
whose labor is purchased through a contractor are denied these benefits. Exclusion from the benefits of wealth under
the old social construction of race was accomplished by opposition to
interracial marriage. Under slavery and
Jim Crow segregation the prohibition of interracial marriage was used to keep
black folks from inheriting any property or assets or gaining any benefits of
white wealth. Blocking people from the benefits
of wealth is at work today in
privatization, downsizing, temporary
labor and outsourcing to keep the new excluded from inheriting any benefits or
property or assets. New definition of
exclusion were considered necessary because affirmative action gave blacks and
others a new line of inheritance with out some new way of exclusion. These
new constructs of exclusion are the source of new denials of things public for
a new group of people.
The real question that needs addressing in
our questionnaires is how much public space is there and who defines access for
whom? Those defined out of public space
are the new excluded in Birmingham and
in the US like Blacks were excluded thirty five years ago. These new constructs are the source of
amplified rage in the new excluded, especially if the new excluded are part of
the group excluded under the old constructs of racial exclusion.
45 Black and Interracial churches have been
burned in the Southeastern US over the last three years. I cannot
imagine this! Yet we stand in one
of the classic places of the destruction of the church. The hate that bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church is still alive. Public church is
being attacked as never before in the US.
Public Church is being attacked by fire and by doctrine; by hate and by
rage.
I had the wonderful and sacred privilege of
preaching the funeral for Mary Jones’ father Haywood Adams. The funeral was at Independent Baptist Church
in Maringo County near Sweetwater, Alabama.
In the pastor’s study and in the context of the warm and genuine
hospitality of the pastor of that church I pulled my thoughts together for
celebrating the life of Mr. Adams. Then
I asked the pastor of the church what he thought about the current situation
regarding the burning of the churches in West Alabama. He said, “ you know our church was
vandalized.” I did not know. I asked
him, “what happened?” “The pews, pulpit
and communion table were shattered with an ax.
Many thousand of dollars of damage done.” “They caught the guy who did it. I went to school with him, a black man.” “I visited him in jail and asked him why he
did it? He said I just got a kick out of
it.” Pastor Hives said it was sin that
caused him to do it. There is much more
going on than hate crimes in the destruction of Black churches, there is also rage crime. Could this rage be the loss of public church
under the new constructs of race and class?
White churches in Birmingham are being
burned not by fire but through decaying buildings, declining membership and closed
buildings because they never were public space, blacks were and are
excluded. I pastored a church in
Birmingham that was “burned real slow” because people were defined out for
hundreds of years by the social constructs of racial exclusion. The church died.. Churches are also “burned” or attacked because they are too
public; that is every body is included, the homeless and working poor are
welcomed. This is the case now for the
church I serve is being attacked or
“burned real slow” because the church is striving to be fully public.
Buses and public transportation are
attacked or “burned” for the same
reasons. Buses were burned when the
Freedom Riders attempted to make them truly public during the Civil Rights
Movement. When buses became truly public as a result of the Civil Rights Movement the buses or public
transportation was limited or “burned” for being too public. Now there are no buses or public
transportation to ride to the places of economic vitality in Birmingham. It is even against the law to run a bus from
downtown Birmingham to the Galleria.
Thirty- five years ago Blacks
used to have to sit on the back of the bus, now there are no buses to for the
new excluded class of homeless and working poor to ride to places where they
can participate in the public economy.
Attempts to create a new private bus system will also exclude the
homeless and working poor. Will these
private buses be the object of rage for not being public?
There is an effort to destroy the public
nature of the center city. The homeless
and working poor are subject to being attack to accomplish this. They have been defined as animals ( a typical
white supremacist tactic of old) treated less than human and undesirable and
attempts to remove them are under way. Some have been given $10 and a one way ticket
to Huntsville. The homeless population
doubled in Huntsville during February because of this effort. The homeless and working poor have been
defined as animals the way blacks were defined as animals by white supremacists
in the old south and the new safari patrol is in place to keep them in their
place. We must be clear that if the
homeless are excluded from this city,
God will judge this city; and
this city will suffer. The clear command
of God in the Torah and the Gospel is to love your neighbor. It pains my heart that the institutions that
are the hope of America, the middle class black church, the Urban League, the
Civil Rights Institute are now tempted to sell their birth right for a bowl of
green pottage like the white church did during slavery and reconstruction and
is continuing to do in their support of the new slavery, segregation
and supremacy, in relation
to the homeless and working poor. The
white supremacists are applauding in the balcony of their suburban privilege.
We must repent! We must work for
an explosion of truly public stuff or our city will suffer. For the death of things public is the death
of freedom, the death of things public is the death of Birmingham and the death
of things public is the death of America.
There is a deep disappointment and
destroyed hope in the lives of the homeless and working poor who are defined as
the new excluded in Birmingham and
America. They are suffering the effects
of an economic injustice that is as bad as it was during the 1920’s. This new disappointment added to the old is
the fertile ground of a destructive rage.
On Easter Sunday James Chaney acted out his rage on the Federal Court
House. We have moved up in America. We
now have escalating hate crimes and new and escalating rage crimes because of
the new social constructions of race and class that have defined people out of things public to serve economic
injustice.
I had a long talk with a homeless friend
after Church on Easter after we had looked at the damage done to the Hugo Black
building. I asked if he thought there
was any connection between this attack on the federal court house and the
attack on the Black churches in the South.
He said, “I used to be a member
of a middle class black church but I don’t go any more. All they care about is Mercedes and Lexius’,” he said. He said,
“God is not there any more. I
talked to the preacher at my former church a long time. I ask him why he didn’t deal with the
injustice he saw.” He said, “I might step on somebody’s toes. I haven’t been back. So the alienation of the poor from the black
church might be the cause of the rage you are talking about,” my friend
commented. I know the refusal of us
white preachers to deal with justice for black folks is the source of hate
crimes. I confess that sin. Now rage
crimes are growing on the scene as a result of the new constructs of race and
class. Our unwillingness as preachers to
deal with these issues of justice for the homeless and working poor will
increase the suffering.
The survey we are discussing today only
deals with the black white issues of thirty-five years ago in relation to
access to things public and does not even cause us think about new constructs
of race and class exclusion. The
devastating destruction of things public in Birmingham as a result of the newly
defined “undesirable people” that are
denied access to things public Birmingham are not even considered.
One way
of seeing ONB’ Synergy in light of these new definitions of exclusion is
as the gentrification newspaper that relates to white collar (worn by black and
white) and ignores the new “excluded” collar community of 30,000 homeless and
300,000 persons in poverty in the
Birmingham Metro Area (experienced by black and white alike) that are
diminished, discounted, and discredited.
I have heard that plans are even underway to move a buss stop to get
them out of sight. Some would like to
make plans to ghettoize the homeless in a new “Nigger” town so that they can
remain in only one section of downtown.
The people in the homeless and working poor community have been generalized into a
nonhuman sameness, categorized as evil and discriminated against and denied
things public in this city. Things
public are being denied the homeless in general as they were denied Benny
Rambert individually.
My wife and I recently inherited a piece of
residential property in Hueytown, Alabama and the deed was clearly marked “this
property cannot be sold to colored people.”
Thank God! This is not the case now and I have some black neighbors
there. But if you associate with the new
excluded homeless and working poor in downtown you have a very hard time
leasing or buying any property and are clearly not wanted as our experience at
Church of the Reconciler reveals.
The new slaves in Birmingham are the
working homeless warehoused in the shelters.
Thank God for the shelters! The
shelter providers are not the problem. The homeless working poor work through the
temporary labor services. They carry
much of our garbage throughout the metro area and do much of the dirty work in
our city for a minimum wage that nets them a little over $25 a day after
deducts for transportation, high price food, etc. At this level of income you can’t afford
housing or transportation or any thing and so the money is often spent for
drugs to kill the pain and the money ends up in the coffers of the money
launders. There are a few examples of
the “good homeless” who because of some benefactor have made it out of their
homelessness but in general most are in a compressed steel box of oppression
ripe to explode.
Fighting for things public in this city is
an amazing struggle. The struggle for
public worship, public church, public office, public transportation, public
education, public parks, public sidewalks and on and on is an amazing
struggle. We move through one struggle
only to find new definitions of who is excluded and where the exclusion
applies. Birmingham is still one
of the thoroughly segregated cities in
the United States. We must not continue
to add to the brutality of the old constructs of racial exclusion through new
ones we construct or that are constructed for us based on economic class and
social position. Birmingham must be a
place of community with all things public for all.
Please allow me to express my feelings as a
Christian pastor with a paraphrase of Dr. King from his Letter from a
Birmingham Jail. I have been
disappointed with the church in Birmingham. I do not say that as one of the
negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the Gospel, who
loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom: who has been sustained by its
spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life
lengthens. In deep disappointment, I
have wept over the laxity of the church.
But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where
there is not deep love. Yes, I love the
church; I love Birmingham. Yes I see the
church as the body of Christ. But oh
how we have blemished and scarred that body here in Birmingham through social
neglect and fear of being nonconformists.
The church should not be a thermometer to record the popular opinions of
the status quo, but a thermostat that transforms the values of a society by
saying the hard things. However, the
contemporary church is often a weak ineffectual voice supporting the status quo
and participating in new definitions of race and class that exclude some of
God’s children as well as keeping the old exclusions in place. We must not continue to be dismissed as a
social club of brothers and sisters with no meaning for the twenty - first
century. We must give ourselves for the
building of all things public here in our city.
R. Lawton Higgs, Sr.
Church of the Reconciler
4/19/96
Epilogue:
Following church on Sunday, April 28 a friend and participant in
Church of the Reconciler who was homeless asked me to help him with some
personal business. I had already
promised to carry another member of Church of the Reconciler who was homeless
to the place he stays in West End following the service. I ask the other gentleman to wait there at
the church on the corner of 4th Avenue North and 18th Street until I carried my
other friend home. The van I drive was
packed full of public address and music
equipment that I had to carry to storage after worship. There was not room for both men. The man I asked to wait would not stay there
by the church. I asked him why? He said he would be arrested. I said surly not. He pleaded with me to take him with me and
agreed to do what ever was necessary to squeeze into the van. He would not stay there and wait for me out
of his fear of arrest for standing on a public sidewalk in front of his church.
RLH 4/3
