Reflection
Today is a beautiful day! As I look out the window of my study, I see that the sun has begun to touch the earth and has brought a chorus of birds announcing the promise of spring. Snow has covered much of our yard this past week, but now we are beginning to see the signs of new life as the crocuses raise their heads in beauty. But today is also the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a day that shocked the nation and galvanized a process that transformed America.
I remember where I was fifty years ago. On that Sunday morning I was preparing my sermon for the congregation of Union Methodist Church, Selma, Alabama. Later in the afternoon, I would be sitting in Church Street Methodist Church in downtown Selma for a district lay rally. I was a young pastor, probably the youngest pastor in Selma, at twenty years of age. I was a student pastor completing my formal education for ministry.
The preacher that Sunday was W. Kenneth Goodson, a North Carolinian by birth who had recently come as the Methodist bishop of Alabama. Over our singing and praying we could hear the sounds of sirens, exploding tear gas canisters and the screams of people fleeing the troopers and deputies running back across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The attack included a mounted posse and a vicious assault on peaceful demonstrators of all ages who had walked from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church a few blocks away.
As soon as our service was over, I and a group of other pastors gathered around our bishop to inform him of the news of what we had just heard.
Sheriff Jim Clark and Col. Al Lingo of the State Troopers had waded into a crowd of marchers on the bridge with tear gas and billy-clubs. The injured were being taken to the Catholic hospital, Good Samaritan, the only place black African-Americans could get treatment. One of these was the future congressman, John Lewis. Ace Anderson, the black funeral director, was ferrying marchers in his ambulance-hearse from downtown to the hospital.
Bishop Goodson, his face ashen and set, said that he was going down to the bridge. He then turned and started for the door. I joined the others in following him to the Pettus Bridge a few blocks away.
We strode hard to keep up with our Bishop. He outdistanced us most of the way. At the bridge a lone Selma policeman stopped us, but when informed of who we were and what we wanted he waved us through. There at the foot of the bridge Bishop Goodson led the group in prayer.
No, I was not one of the marchers. I was simply a young pastor trying to lead my people in difficult times. Because my name and address were public information, I had become the recipient of piles of mail from all over the United States. Much of it was angry, blunt, accusatory, and vicious. Some of it bordered on threat and commination.
A few letters expressed solidarity not in any sense justifying the discrimination that was present in Selma or the bigoted attitudes of white leadership but rather of genuine care, concern and prayer for all of us in Selma. One letter which I have kept came from pastor and the Christian social concerns committee of Good Shepherd Methodist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, asking for clarity and information about what was happening in Selma. They declared their deep commitment to justice for all people but also expressed concern for everyone caught in the turmoil of those days. In part their letter said, “We do not presume to know all that you are facing, but we lift you up in prayer in these difficult days.” I have never forgotten that and I felt the power of their prayers.
I would continue living in two worlds, one the academic where I was receiving my formal education, the other my ministry in the church in Selma. In my last year of seminary I was moved to the Verbena Methodist Church in the Selma District. Two weeks before his assassination, I and other seminarians met Martin Luther King and talked with him. He expressed his foreboding of going to Memphis. That was in Atlanta at his church. I was one of those shocked Americans who gathered at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta the night he was murdered to mourn our loss.
I prepared to go back to Alabama to preach that Sunday. On the evening of Palm Sunday, April 7, 1968, four days after King’s death, I was attacked by an angry parishioner following my sermon from Luke 9:51, “He Set his Face toward Jerusalem,” a sermon in which I had drawn parallels between the events of Holy Week and the death of Martin Luther King. One punch sent me rolling down the steps of the Verbena Methodist Church. Fortunately, I was not hurt seriously.
We went to see the movie Selma and I found it to be accurate in most all details. I sat with tears streaming down my face at times as I recalled what I had seen and experienced there.
As I look back some fifty years and think about those days, I can now see the hand of God in the events of that time. And in an example of divine irony the President of the United States is at the bridge for this fiftieth anniversary, an African-American elected by the people of this great country.
I might add that we are in “baby-wait” here. Yesterday was not only the actual anniversary of The Bridge but also the due date of our third grandchild. We are thrilled! And in another example of divine irony this beloved new life entrusted to us will be of mixed race. United by love, undergirded by providential grace, we move into tomorrow with complete confidence that what occurred fifty years ago has made a difference and has made the world a better place. God bless!
