Comments at Operation New Birmingham’s Race Relations Forum 4 20 1996

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