It has taken far too long for Black lives to matter
Fifty-two years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated with riots and violence emerging in many American cities. There was rage that had built up for several centuries of slavery and then the segregation of Black men and women.
At the time, I was a voluntary service worker with Mennonite Central Committee in Cincinnati and was assigned to work in a clerical training centre where mostly young Black women were prepared to work in offices in the city. I was the only white person on staff and was 23 years old — only a few years older than the students.
In the aftermath of King’s death, our voluntary service unit was between riots, fires and looting in two locations: one less than two kilometres west of our neighbourhood and the other a few kilometres northeast. We, along with all our neighbourhood, were quarantined from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day for over a week.
Having heard the experiences of many Black youth and young adults, we understood the rage. It was now turned outward.
When we went to mainline groceries in our neighbourhood, the quality of the food was poorer, but the prices were the same as up the hill in the university groceries. One of the members of our group had a car we could occasionally use to go to better stores, but mostly we walked for groceries and shopped in the neighbourhood.
In our jobs, we heard how difficult it was to get jobs with good pay. We heard about the humiliation of receiving food stamps and being identified at the grocery. Our apartments were owned by a community centre and church; we still had to clean and paint them as we moved in. But we had been to the tenements in our area where tenants paid too much for decrepit buildings. The second year of the service term, we single men moved to an apartment where we could never get rid of the cockroaches, which we had done in the other apartments.
Daily in our jobs, we, voluntary service workers, heard stories of children, youth, or their parents being discriminated against as they applied for jobs. We heard of police violence. We saw prejudice and discrimination in action. Did Black lives matter?
One of the male youths at the training centre was arrested and asked me to go with him to his trial on a Saturday, which I did. I was called as a witness; he was one of my finest students. I knew police in Cincinnati were white. So was I.
“Do you know this young man in his neighbourhood?” I did not. Therefore, I was dismissed, and he was declared guilty by a Black judge. I was dumbstruck. Did his Black life matter? I felt inadequate, but was upset that he now had a record. Thankfully, he got a job and did well. He made his life matter to himself and others.
Before Cincinnati, I was in Atlanta for two summers with Mennonite Central Committee, working in a community centre where I was the only white person. When the director of the voluntary service unit asked that his white children go to the neighbourhood school which had only Black children, the school board objected. When he insisted and his children went to that school, the school board changed all the textbooks; they had been using old, outdated materials. Black lives didn’t matter.
In addition to the youth and young adults, I heard Black staff in Cincinnati and Atlanta tell of past and present experiences of struggling to survive in a world with few Black politicians, lawyers, bankers or other people of influence outside the ghettos. Police were predominantly white.
Though some Black people had moved to an integrated neighbourhood, they faced the prejudice of their neighbours. These stories were hard to hear; they challenged the myths of the United States being a democratic society for all peoples. Power was white. One social worker reported going to see her family in Mississippi. She walked into the public bathroom, only to be pushed out because she had forgotten that in rural areas, she needed to use the coloured facilities.
I am thankful for my two and a half years in Cincinnati and Atlanta. They transformed me and pushed me to enter to seminary trying to understand what justice was and when it would come for all people. Black lives matter. Justice has been an ideal throughout biblical literature. While God desires justice, it has not come.
I remain an educated, tall, privileged white man, but I continue to be on a quest to establish justice and peace for all. Along with my Black brothers and sisters, I testify that 52 years has been a long time without sufficient progress in the U.S. and Canada.