On Salvation

In honor of the great poet Langston Hughes and Black History Month, I offer his short (true) tale, “Salvation.”

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I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed’s church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, “to bring the young lambs to the fold.”

My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners’ bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus.

My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me.

The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: “Won’t you come? Won’t you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won’t you come?” And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners’ bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there.

A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song.

Still I kept waiting to see Jesus.

Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder’s son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: “God damn! I’m tired o’ sitting here. Let’s get up and be saved.” So he got up and was saved.

Then I was left all alone on the mourners’ bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting – but he didn’t come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened.

I heard the songs and the minister saying: “Why don’t you come? My dear child, why don’t you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don’t you come? Sister Reed, what is this child’s name?”

“Langston,” my aunt sobbed.

“Langston, why don’t you come? Why don’t you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don’t you come?”

Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn’t seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.

So I got up.

Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform.
When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic “Amens,” all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room.

That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old – I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.

On a Racist

Racism is dumb.

Let’s get that out there from the start. Why would anyone hate or dislike someone simply because the skin on that person has or doesn’t have a certain amount of melanin? And why would we say that everyone who shares that skin type behaves or acts or thinks or feels a certain way because of the melanin in the skin?

Racism is stupid.

This story is about one such stupid person. He was born in Alabama in the early 1960s. His family, while not rich, employed a Black woman as a maid and helper around the house since the mother had mobility issues. The man’s dad, a building contractor, had a Black man to run errands for the mother and drive her to places during the day that she or the children might need to go. So, he was born into a culture where people of darker skin were the servants, the ones who did the work for the people of lighter skin. Now, you might argue that this isn’t enough to make someone think themselves better or superior to someone else, but it certainly creates a feeling that there is an order to things, a certain hierarchy in the way things work.

Racism is part of America’s culture.

The culture around this man echoed this pecking order. He says he remembers vividly a time in the mid-1960s, when he must have been 4 or 5 years old, and he accidently entered the “wrong” restroom in a train station. At the time, there were usually three public facilities in train and bus stations–labeled Women, Men, and Colored. He tells the story that an older Black man gently led him out of the Colored restroom, saying, “You’re in the wrong place, little man.” Things like that tend to stick with one and form the attitudes we have towards other people. If society decides to segregate, then who am I to question, the man later reasoned.

Racism tells lies.

Now, this man would defend his racist mentality by arguing that he wasn’t racist; he was merely prejudiced. Racist people sometimes do this to salve their consciences. “No,” they will say, “I don’t hate anyone, but I can’t help but feel that they all…” and then a list of racist stereotypes usually follow that broadly apply to whoever “they” are. This is racism, no matter how we try to convince ourselves that it is not.

Racism can be insidious.

This man and his friends will insist, when asked, that minority groups in the United States are racist. This “what aboutism” is also another attempt to soothe the racist psyche. This argument deflects from them having to confront their own hatred and, at the same time, makes them feel more justified in keeping that hatred in their hearts. Most of their so-called evidence for this racism is anecdotal at best: “My buddy got fired because they had to hire a minority.” Ok, if that’s true, why do you think they had to do that? Do you think the company/boss simply pointed to your buddy and told him to take a hike because he was white? The same laws that protect minorities from discrimination also protect people in the majority from it as well. But that doesn’t feed into the racist narrative, does it?

Racism is a bully.

Another thing this racist man wonders is, “Why is there a Black History Month? Why isn’t there a White History Month?” Really? Do we have to explain that the contributions to our society and nation by minorities, especially Black Americans, have been marginalized, appropriated, and minimized for the past 400 years? And how is your life affected by simply recognizing the fact that minorities have been instrumental in creating the life that you enjoy? How is that recognition detrimental to your well-being and life situation?

Racism is alive and well, sadly.

The comedian Louis C.K. (who has his issues on other topics, for sure) reminds us quite correctly that racism is part of our past and therefore part of our present as well. It cannot be, should not be, must not be ignored. We must insure that are not voting for someone who is an obvious or even possible racist because to do so is to invest our power in the hands of someone who hates another person. We must speak about racism and work against racism and, if needed, march and petition and vote and fight like hell to recognize, call out, and, one blessed day, end racism.

And, what about our racist man in this story?

Well, the racism that is within me is dying–but not as quickly as I’d like it to.

On a Nice Woman

Louise was nice. Everyone said so. In 1957, facing increasing difficulty finding work in Alabama, Louise accepted an invitation from her brother’s family to move to Detroit, Michigan, and find work there. Jobs were plentiful, her brother said, and someone of her disposition and abilities (she had decent schooling) would have no trouble finding work. So, that’s what Louise did.

Now, you should know that Louise was African-American. Detroit, she thought, would also offer a less divided, less segregated society than the Alabama of the 1950s was. Sadly, Louise found out that Detroit was almost equally as racist and segregated as Alabama had been. For example, Louise experienced discrimination when it came to searching for adequate housing in metropolitan Detroit. On the other hand, her brother had been correct; Louise found work as a secretary and receptionist in the Detroit office of United States Congressman John Conyers, one of the first black officeholders from Michigan. It would be a position Louise held until she retired in 1988.

Even during her initial interaction with her boss, Conyers noticed one thing right off the bat about Louise, and it’s something we have already pointed out. She was simply so nice. “You treated her with respect,” the congressman said once, “because she was so calm, so serene, so special.” Louise was often the first point of contact for people reaching out to their congressional delegate, and she took every issue, every question, every appeal personally and seriously. You know that if Louise had her attention on your issue, that she would see to it that it would reach a conclusion that satisfied you.

It was her quiet way, her nicety, that made people open up to her and, well, want to help her any way they could. You knew your issue would be resolved when you brought it to Louise. In her role as Conyers’s spokesperson in the community, Louise visited schools, hospitals, nursing homes, low-income housing communities, jails, and churches, working in her own quiet way to affect change in the way people in that congressional district (and beyond) were treated.

All the while she worked long hours on other people’s behalf, Louise managed to nurse a husband with cancer and a mother with cancer and dementia until both passed away. She herself suffered health issues that she kept quiet and private, working through pain because, as she insisted, people were counting on her voice in carrying issues and situations before Congressman Conyers. She was also attacked by a robber in her own home in retirement, but in court she advocated for leniency for the robber. Who does that?

Someone who was nice.

When Louise passed away in 2005, her funeral was well attended despite the fact that it wasn’t held in Detroit nor even in her old home of Alabama. Louise’s funeral was held in Washington, D.C., and she remains only non-officeholder to have her body lie in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda. But this unique honor wasn’t because Louise was nice.

It’s because you know her better by her first name, Rosa.

Rosa Parks.