January 12, 2006

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

-- Monday, Jan. 16

Here are events, materials and resources to use as you celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day this coming Monday, Jan. 16

Edited by Daniel R. Gangler, director of communication, Indiana Area UMC

Paid for through your annual conference apportionments.

The Indiana Area Office will be closed Jan. 16 in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Commentaries by Gipson and White

OUT OF ASHES OF HATE, JUSTICE, HEALING ARISE

By Charles R. Gipson

On a cloudy day in January, 1972, my son, Paul, and daughter, Linda, and I made a visit to Mancy Slaughter, a long-time family friend in the black community near my hometown of Philadelphia, Miss. Mancy suggested that we take a short ride down Sandtown Road to see the burned remains of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church.

"Burned again?" I asked. Mancy nodded, sadly.

The story of the first burning of Mt. Zion church on June 16, 1964 and the events that followed are well documented in the history of the American civil rights movement. A meeting was held there to consider using the building for a "Freedom School" taught by civil rights workers to teach people how to register to vote. Some members attending had been ambushed and beaten on their way home by the Ku Klux Klan. Some were hospitalized. Then the church building was burned to the ground. Three civil rights workers had driven from Meridian, Miss., where I was a pastor at the time, to see what had happened to Mt. Zion Church. They never returned.

The eyes of the nation fell upon Philadelphia, Miss. during the search for these young men. Leaders of the civil rights movement, the F.B.I., military personnel, the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. President became involved. Investigators were met by a stone wall of silence among the fear-bound population of both races. The pattern of terrorist activity fit the modus operandi of hate crimes by the Ku Klux Klan: first, warnings in the form of cross burnings on yards; second, beatings; third, violent death. But there was no proof, no witness who would testify, and no bodies found. Long lines of uniformed military personnel trampling through broom straw covered fields and piney woods yielded no results for several months. The Klan promulgated the rumor that it was all a hoax, and that the Mt. Zion congregation had burned their own church. Finally an informer inside the Klan led searchers to the dam of a freshly dug pond where the bodies were discovered as their families and the nation mourned.

The Ku Klux Klan

The ideology of the Ku Klux Klan is a legacy Indiana shares with other states. The Klan fits the description of a religious extremist terrorist group with their own twisted version of Christianity. The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi at that time saw themselves as bravely doing what had to be done to preserve an all-Protestant, white-only Christian/American church, and to preserve an institutionalized, enforced "white privilege" in society. Their periodic irrational violence had been, in effect, not only tolerated but permitted for decades by the silent complicity of the white majority.

In 1964 through the impetus of the civil rights movement, the collective conscience of the nation finally challenged this ideology. Soon afterward the Ku Klux Klan appeared on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities' "List of Subversive Organizations" -- a moment of truth for Klan recruits. Even so the ideology is still espoused by racist extremists today.

There were arrests and convictions in the case, but not for murder or manslaughter. Some Klansmen were charged and convicted for the "violation of the civil rights" of the three young men. Other Klansmen to whom evidence pointed were never charged, including the person responsible for planning the murders. Therefore even with all the efforts on the national level there remained a sense that justice was not done and that injustice prevailed. Justice has an important role in reconciliation and healing.

Mt. Zion rebuilt

The Mt. Zion Methodist Church's facility was rebuilt after the 1964 burning with combined funds from the congregation, the state "Committee of Concern," individual donations and a loan from the National Board of Missions of The Methodist Church. The congregation refused offers of financial assistance from civil rights organizations, preferring that those funds be used for the cause in other ways. It was rebuilt stronger than before as a partial brick structure. In late-1971 the rebuilt building, then a United Methodist church, burned again. Arson was not proved by local investigators, but the congregation strongly suspected a repeated arson that had been threatened since the first burning.

As we walked around the burned building, the brick wall facing Sandtown Road still stood like a monument silhouetted against the winter sky. On the outside of the chancel wall visible to passers-by were three wooden crosses hung untouched by the fire.

"Do you know what those crosses stand for?" Mancy asked. "The three crosses on the hill where Jesus was crucified?" I asked in reply. "That's what we want most white folks to think," Mancy said. "(They represent) the three young men who came here and got killed so we could get to vote. Now we all vote every year."

There is an untold story in the documented history of those times. The untold story is the bravery, faith and courage of congregations like Mt. Zion United Methodist Church. Can you imagine yourself in the meeting trying to decide whether to open the church building to voter-registration education meetings at the time? Only African-American churches would even have considered this. Everyone knew the danger was real.

The warning of the Klan had already been given. Yet many people, like Mancy, had served their country in its military forces and were still legally denied the basic right to vote in the democracy they defended. Faced with this issue, what would Christ call this congregation to do?

They became people of open minds, open hearts, open doors. The civil rights workers came. Meetings were held. Members were beaten. The building was burned. Young Americans just trying to do the right thing were killed. The congregation knew in advance they would have to live with the results of the decision they made. They lived with it. They placed three crosses on the outside wall as a constant reminder. As soon as they could they voted every year. And they placed a plaque just inside the door of the rebuilt church which read:

OUT OF ONE BLOOD GOD HATH MADE ALL MEN
This plaque is dedicated to the memory of
MICHAEL SCHWERNER
JAMES CHANEY
ANDREW GOODMAN
whose concern for others, and more particularly those of this community led to their early martyrdom. Their death quickened men's consciences and more firmly established justice, liberty, and brotherhood in our land.

This plaque is, at the same time, a loving affirmation of three brave young Americans and a courageous defiance of the ideology of Klan. It is a "We shall overcome someday" kind of response. There would be no backing down, no turning back from their earlier decision. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Neshoba County in July, 1964, he made personal visits to members of Mt. Zion Church who had been beaten. The influence of Mt. Zion's decision and that of other congregations like them was far-reaching and ultimately freeing for people of all races. A whole way of life which had been unjust would begin to change.

Racial reconciliation

A work of racial reconciliation began in 2005 at Philadelphia, Miss. Dr. Susan Glisson, Director of the William F. Winters Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, and other facilitators came to Neshoba County to help people find healing for old wounds. This time there emerged a sense of collective responsibility for justice.

The trial that had never happened for the Klan member who planned the murders finally happened. An elderly white Baptist preacher was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to prison for the duration of his life. Following the sentence an attempt by the present-day Klan to hold a rally at the Neshoba County Courthouse "in appreciation" of the convicted felon met with resistance and did not happen! The reconciling coalition is still doing its healing work in the community.

United Methodist churches in Indiana can aid social justice, reconciliation and healing in our time by truly becoming people of open hearts, open minds and open doors. We can live out the vow we make at baptism to "accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves." In so doing we will embrace the beautiful pluralism of humanity with which God has blessed The United Methodist Church, America and the world.

Charles R. Gipson is a retired minister of the South Indiana Conference and director of the Willow Pond Retreat at Oakland City, Ind.

A Pre-Lenten Convocation on "Growing Beyond Prejudice" will be held Feb. 26-27 at Saint Mark's United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Ind. Susan Glisson will be a primary speaker and workshop leader on "Growing Beyond Prejudice in Our Society." See announcement elsewhere in Together or in e-HUM or call toll-free Sandra Blackwell at 1-800-919-8160 for a brochure with registration form.

LETTER TO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

By Bishop Woodie W. White

Each year, United Methodist Bishop Woodie W. White writes a "birthday" letter to the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the progress of racial equality in the United States. The former Indiana Area bishop now retired and serving as bishop-in-residence at United Methodist-related Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, White was the first top staff executive of the denomination's racial equality monitoring agency, the Commission on Religion and Race. King's birthday is Jan. 15, and Americans honor his memory on the third Monday of the month.

Dear Martin:

This year I begin this letter with considerable sadness. Mrs. Rosa Parks' recent death has caused a deep sense of grief. It is surprising to observe how another's death impacts us. You really can never tell how you will respond to death. You simply have to wait.

When I learned Mrs. Parks had died, I was momentarily numbed. Shocked but not surprised. She had been ill for some time, and after all, she was 92, a long and good life. But as the days went on, I found myself falling into a pit of grief that seemed to have no bottom. It was a "silent and alone" mourning. Despite my efforts at self-control, tears came unpredictably. Martin, it was painful.

I was flooded with memories. It is still difficult to believe that it was 50 years ago on Dec. 1, 1955, that Mrs. Parks -- quiet and much admired and respected but unknown beyond her Montgomery, Ala., community -- was catapulted into history. She refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man as custom and law required.

I was attending a small Methodist college in the South at the time and tasting firsthand the oppressive nature of racism and bigotry in the region. Actually, it was not new to me, despite the fact that I was born and reared in New York City. As a boy, I spent my summer months in a border state with my grandparents and family. It was as rigidly segregated as any state in the Deep South. And of course, I would learn the meaning of racism Northern style!

You had just begun your pastorate at Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The black community, outraged at the treatment and arrest of Mrs. Parks, knew something dramatic had to be done. Then E.D. Nixon, activist and courageous NAACP leader, and Ralph Abernathy came to you and asked that you lead a new organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association.

The historic Montgomery boycott, which continued for a year, changed not just Montgomery but the nation. There has not been anything comparable to it to this day.

Rosa Parks, now affectionately called the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" for that simple yet dangerous act, accelerated the movement to end Jim Crow and legal segregation in this nation. She was and is so important to so many of us who remember what it meant to be a black American in 1955.

Martin, I think many younger people, and perhaps those not so young, did not understand our outrage and offense when Rosa Parks' action was made the butt of jokes in a popular movie a couple of years ago. We knew the significance of that act of saying "no" to a white person in the Deep South in 1955! We remember the daily humiliation experienced in many communities because your skin was black and not white.

It was a different America! Clearly we are not where we should be in this nation that prides itself as a model of democracy, but we are no longer where we were in those days of raw, vile prejudice, hatred and segregation. You remember. Not being able to use a public restroom or drink from a water fountain in many communities. Not being able to buy a house or rent an apartment where you had the means to do so. In some instances, not being able to try on clothes in a department store before you purchased them. And in some places, not being able to vote.

Many parents knew the heartbreak of telling a child he or she could not go to the park or romp in the playground, or swim in the community swimming pool. Black Americans experienced so many acts of racism, North and South. Martin, I remember! And it changed because of the courageous actions of those like Rosa Parks, and efforts of white and black people to create a new landscape of American life. Because of you!

In death, Rosa Parks was honored by this nation in a way she was not in life. Her body laid in state in the rotunda of the nation's Capitol, the first woman to be so honored. National leaders, including President Bush, came to pay their respects to this woman of genuine courage and humility. A statue of her likeness will be commissioned and placed in the Hall of Statues in the Capitol.

While these honors bestowed upon Mrs. Rosa Parks are cause for rejoicing, I have this overwhelming sadness. Perhaps it is so, Martin, because in this death I remember others, those who touched my life and indeed made a difference in American life. I remember them today; their faces and voices are vivid and clear: Ella Baker, who mentored me when I was an officer in the New York NAACP Youth Council; Gloster Current, Channing H. Tobias and Anna Hedgeman, who encouraged and supported me when I went off to college; Walter White; Lester Granger; James Farmer; A. Phillip Randolph; Fannie Lou Hammer; Whitney Young; Roy Wilkins; and you.

There are so many others. Gone. It is a heavy grief today, Martin.

This year, Martin, on your birthday, I remember. I simply remember. In sadness. In gratitude. In hope. Yet because I remember, I have not the slightest doubt that

WE SHALL OVERCOME.

Woodie
Atlanta, Georgia
January 2006

MLK Day Events

MLK Day celebration includes music, talk at UINDY

INDIANAPOLIS -- Live jazz music and a presentation from a prominent local African-American leader will highlight this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at the University of Indianapolis.

The public is invited to the event at noon Monday, Jan. 16, in the university's Ransburg Auditorium, 1400 E. Hanna Ave. Second semester classes begin Monday, but a special schedule will allow interested students to attend.

The Rev. Angelique Walker-Smith, executive director of the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis, will deliver the keynote address, "Rosa, Katrina, Maria: Martin Luther King's Legacy -- Past, Present and Future."

During the opening 30 minutes of meditation and reflection, the university's Jazz Combo, led by saxophonist and Director of Jazz Studies Harry Miedema, will play selections from jazz greats including Wes Montgomery, Hank Mobley and Bobby Hutcherson. University co-chaplain Sister Jennifer Horner will offer a prayer. Edward Frantz, assistant professor of history, will welcome the audience and introduce Walker-Smith.

Participants will join in singing the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to close the program at approximately 1:30 p.m.

UE plans celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- A variety of activities are planned at the University of Evansville for Monday, January 16, to celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. No classes will be conducted, so that all students may participate. All of the events are free and open to the public. The day's activities will culminate with the annual Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship, this year featuring actor Felix Justice in a one-man performance, based on the writings and sermons of King.

Noon: We've Come this Far by Faith

Celebrate the spirit of activists during the civil rights movement, as told through stories, poetry and dance, presented by members of the University of Evansville Black Student Union.

Shanklin Theatre

12:30--1:30 p.m.: Read-In and Story Activities

Tutors from Indiana Reading Corps at UE will read stories and help children with hands-on crafts and activities related to Dr. King and his ideals.

C.K. Newsome Center, 100 E. Walnut Street, Evansville

1 p.m.: Re-enactment of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington

Depart from the west entrance of William L. Ridgway Center.

March to C.K. Newsome Center, 100 E. Walnut Street, Evansville.

Performing at C.K. Newsome Center:

-Joshua Academy

-Carver Community Organization

Bus transportation, sponsored by the UE Student Government Association, will be available to return participants from the C.K. Newsome Center to the UE campus.

7 p.m.: Nazarene Baptist Church Choir

Choir members will perform gospel and spiritual arrangements prior to the Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship in UE's Neu Chapel.

7:30 p.m.: Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship: "Prophecy in America"

This annual lecture this year features actor Felix Justice in a dramatic collage performance "Prophecy in America," based on the writings and sermons of Martin Luther King Jr. Following the lecture a reception, sponsored by the UE Office of Alumni and Parent Relations, will be conducted in Grabill Lounge of Neu Chapel.

Justice has been acting and directing for more than 30 years. One of his most performed pieces is this one-man Martin Luther King Jr. show "Prophecy in America" which premiered in San Francisco in 1981 and has toured widely in the U.S. and Africa. In this performance, Justice virtually transforms into the slain civil rights leader, recreating his power, vision and emotion.

Justice grew up in Florence, South Carolina. Joining the Air Force after he graduated from high school, he spent four years as a cryptographer before turning to acting in 1960.

It was a decision due in part to King himself; in 1960, Justice had the visceral experience of witnessing King speak at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles. For Justice it amounted to a conversion of sorts to the power of the spoken word.

His acting credits include Blues for Mr. Charlie, Henry V, High on Pilet's Bluff and The River Niger. As a director, he has also helped celebrated productions of The Trials of Brother Gero, Companions of the Fire, Luv and The Blood Knot. He also often performs with fellow actor Danny Glover in a production titled "An Evening with Martin and Langston," in which the two actors perform the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his literary hero, Langston Hughes.

For more information about any of these activities, please call the Office of University Relations, at 812-479-2562.

The University of Evansville is a private, United Methodist Church-related, comprehensive university that is a member of the Associated New American Colleges. UE celebrates more than 150 years of civic mission and sacred trust, providing life transforming educational experiences that prepare students to engage the world as informed, ethical and productive citizens.

Filmmaker, Diversity Trainer Lee Mun Wah to Present Martin Luther King Convocation Jan. 16

http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=16828

GREENCASTLE, Ind. -- On Monday, Jan.16, to commemorate the federal holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., DePauw University will welcome nationally-acclaimed filmmaker, lecturer and trainer Lee Mun Wah to the Greencastle campus.

Mun Wah will screen his film, Last Chance for Eden, and lead an interactive workshop. The program, which begins at 1 p.m., will take place in the Lilly Center and is free and open to all. The film contains adult language and viewer discretion is advised. Guests are requested to attend the entire four-hour program.

Lee Mun Wah is a Chinese American community therapist, documentary filmmaker, educator, performing poet, Asian folkteller and author. A former special education teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District, Wah's first film Stolen Ground, released in 1993, won the San Francisco International Film Festival's Certificate of Merit Award for Best Bay Area Documentary. His second film, The Color of Fear, won the National Education Media Network's Best Social Documentary Award for 1995. In 1998, Walking Each Other Home won the Cindy International Film Festival's Silver Medal for Best Social Issues Award.

Last Chance for Eden is a documentary that features nine women and men discussing the effects of racism and sexism in their families.

Lee Mun Wah's programs focus on the individual and the group dynamics of developing a diverse, inclusive and multicultural environment in all organizations and the communities in which we live. "My experience with those who have lost hope is that they felt powerless and alone when the events happened," he says. "The subtext is that they wonder if anyone cared or noticed what had happened to them and why they didn't stand up or speak out to help them. We often witness something happening, but out of our fears or past experiences with conflict, we watch in silence while others suffer the consequences. For the victims, there is this residual sense of being alone, both in the experience and in the recounting."

Resources

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