Conference on Lived Theology &
Civil Courage
"Civil Rights as Theological Drama"
Bob Moses and Victoria Gray Adams
June 12, 2003
Questions & Answers
Victoria: Concentrating on the problems. Concentrate on what you want your community to look like. And so our vision for our community is to create a shalom, a place of shalom, in co-operation with all the people who live, work, and play in that geographical area. And that is one approach that is working for us in Petersburg, Virginia.
Question: I grew up also in East Harlem. I grew up on Dick Gregory's book Nigger, I grew up on Soul on Ice, Man Child in the Promised Land, Down These Mean Streets, and the whole Civil Rights Movement and movement and it's legacy, and what is your opinion on, I'm trying to get my seventeen year old, now he's my youngest, to read some of these books, to be very frank, he's not very interested. What is the strategy, if there is one, to try to transfer some of this drama and rich history, into our contemporary youth culture, which are more about TuPac and Biggie and Fat Joe and Eminem?
Responder: I think there's not much difference in what TuPac said and what Dick Gregory said. They were speaking at a different time in history, and they both were speaking about what was going on and happening at that time. When Dick Gregory wrote Nigger, that upset a lot of people on both sides ___, in particular black folks. But what he was seeking to say is that we cannot let anyone else define us, and I think as a result of that kind of a thing, we move from Nigger to Afro-American to Black to African-American and something is about to born again, I won't tell you what that is. And so, what I see, though, the main thing is we've got to take TuPac, Eminen, and all these people seriously—seriously, but in a playful sense because I don't think we can become too serious because they do—that is deadly, and so I think what they are saying, though, is speaking about what is happening. This young lady back here raised the question about where's the Civil Rights Movement, and what is happening in history and what about the prisoners, people being incarcerated, and what we are saying about that, and I think that the point is that Civil Rights has taken us as far as Civil Rights can take us. It's like, we was talking about the boat. If you are going into the Pacific Ocean, once you get to the edge of the ocean, you've got to change your means of transportation if you go into the ocean by automobile. And so I think, now, we've got to put down Civil Rights and get to what I think that Mark is talking about here, it has a theological background, but get to community, and that means practicing community, so I think that's where it is today.
Responder: There always seems to be problems all over the place. And people are pointing fingers at each other. This one did it, this one did it, it's the fault of this one, it's the fault of this one. Black and white, together. But I am thinking that all these people who let the government machinally rule a people who go to our churches and until the time that Christianity actually becomes a real type of religion here, where the pulpit will be used educate everybody in the church, no matter black or white, that we are all equal and that a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. Until the pulpit is used almost every Sunday, this thing is not going to change. When a black boy is taken to court, and what they see is the color, but not what he's done, when a traffic police stops a person and just sees color but not the offense, all these people go to our churches. It is up to the pulpit now to be used to foster reconciliation. To educate us that we are all equal. That we are all equal.
I was in a ship in Ivory Coast, my ship was in Ivory Coast, I come from Ghana in West Africa. And I was sailing before I became a minister. My ship was in Ivory Coast and somebody collapsed, a black man in the dock collapsed, and was taken to the hospital, and they had to give him blood, there's supposed to be blood for transfusion. And almost all the black people, they didn't have any match. It was a white guy who was in the hospital whose blood matched the blood of this black guy. From that day, it taught me a lesson. That this is only color. Please, let us continue, and if we don't do it, let us use the pulpit every Sunday to speak about this, to talk about this. This is all what Christ is about. Equality. Thank you.
Moderator: The model of SNCC is participatory conversation, participatory democracy, so the panel would like to encourage all of us to talk to each other, not sort of look to the panel for answers but that the answers are among all of us, so let's try to have a conversation in the last few minutes that we have.
Pete: This will be the only time I do this. I'd like to abuse my position as holder of the mike and ask a question, and this is a question to the panel as my elders and repositories of wisdom. We heard a lot yesterday about the situation that we're in today, and the conversation went on last night with Gene Rivers and some of us about how different the world is now, forty years on, from Freedom Summer. The world is, in this conversation, a much more complex place. The Cold War is over, there isn't the single issue of voter registration, and so, the challenge was new strategies need to arise. I was wondering if the panel could reflect, and then the rest of us could reflect on that. In your experience, do you feel the world is a very different place, or the challenges facing Christian activists today, is the world so much more complex and are the solutions, perhaps, needing to be revised? If you could respond to that, please.
Victoria: Well, in the spirit of our conference and particularly the text Theology for the Social Gospel, it seems to me that the world may be a very different place and the challenges may be quite complex, but I think if we take seriously what that social gospel is really all about, that it is sufficient for whatever time and whatever place because it's about committing ourselves to the betterment of the human, and communities beyond the human community, and the primary principles are the same. Love, that you live, and the other facets of that. Personally, I know it sounds very simple, but that's the way I see it, you know, if I can really believe that if I can model what the social gospel teaches, then it will be effective in any time, any place, any age, I believe that.
Aurelius Wilson: I just had a thought—Aurelius Wilson, Howard University—I just, I was so moved by my brother's comment here, and we may be getting a little confessional here, but it's more powerful than sterile intellectual stuff anyway, I think, and I think in response to Pete's question, the journey that he summarized seems to me to be the necessary journey for true transformation. My comment is really an invitation to him, if he can, I don't know on short notice, but if he could mine that a little bit more on what took him from an initial inculturation of denigration of the other, and black people being the extreme other in this society, all the way to when appropriate, the capacity to submit to that other, and to acknowledge brilliance embodied in that other. Legislatively, we can talk about various strategies and political plays, so to speak, and the resources that come to bear in coercively shaping society but with the theological impetus being present in this conference, the more lasting type of change that we still have to aspire toward is the kind of thing that this brother described, and I'm wondering if he can maybe, maybe he can't, but if he could maybe give us a little bit more of what that—what were the things that perhaps brought you from A, B, to C, that led you to submit one perspective and embrace another which, to me, seems far more lasting, far more genuine, than anything we could do with our coercive resources.
Respondant: I don't think the emphasis should be on me. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, people in the East German churches were gathering to sing "We Shall Overcome."
Ed King: Amen to all of that. I'm Ed King, brother and sister to these folks, and this has been beautiful and wonderful. A few things. There were times we in the movement would say "Wow, how can we be here at this moment?" And then we would remember and be thankful that we were, and you've been at one of these moments. We also talked of beloved community, and we never thought we, or maybe our great grand-children if we had them, would live to see that but we absolutely believed it, and we said "Nevertheless, or Hallelujah, tonight, we will hold hands and love each other because we will live in the kingdom now and the eschatological." And we also could say, "How could it be us, at this moment?" and have a sense of awe, and a sense of the absurdity of it all, and that God is somehow able to use all of that, and there was a joy in there, and a lot of laughter, so I want to give you a story of the absurd, at the moment, at the place, and maybe some joy.
Victoria and I were on the National Committee of the Democratic Party from 1964 to '68. We would be invited in, the regular white Mississippians wouldn't attend, and we could participate, but always by invitation. In 1967, or '68, at a big meeting in Washington, Victoria had sickness in her family and had to go home, and right after she left, at personal invitation came to me and Victoria from the White House to come to a reception for Democratic Party leaders, but my good friend Kwame Ture, Stokley, and others, had raised cries of Black Separatism, and "don't fool around with the leftovers of the Democratic party where the MFDP was", and I had to say no to the only invitation I've ever had to the White House because some of my ex-buddies in SNCC in the movement who now were into this separatist thing would have sworn that Lyndon Johnson and Ladybird waited until Victoria left and then invited the white southerner, Ed King. Absurd, enjoy, and hope I haven't trivialized.
Moderator: We can take one more question or comment.
Respondant: I still want to come back to the student's question because I think that's the real important one and that is, at least with Bob Moses gave to me that we now, we don't have the answers, and the problems of urban youth culture, urban, society, is not simply in the United States, it's a global phenomenon. But we can, I think we—meaning middle aged people like myself—begin to create spaces for you with creative ideas and visions to come together and talk. If I learned anything today, and you will come up with how to organize around those issues, and yeah, young people do want a sense of relevancy, they may not right now see, you know, Claude Brown or Dick Gregory but when we can tie it into TuPac, when we can, and others, Mos Def and all those other hip-hop artists, some positive, not-so-positive, but when can understand and listen to their both their goodness and their despair, then I think we start creating space for them. We don't have the answers, but I see this as a sign of, that we're creating space to come together.
Moderator: It's been a wonderful afternoon. Thank you both very much for your life's work.