Watchnight: Talk given on Dr King's Holiday 2013

                              Watchnight 2013 

I want to address the young people who have joined with

us today. I think it important that they in particular recognize

how vital they are… It is important to remember this day…for

some of you this may be the first time you have ever been
  
involved.

Remember this day, for today we have gathered to reflect on

our history, to remember that great  company of witnesses who

walked and marched and sat in so that we could become what

America professes itself to be.

Remember this day for today we honor a movement led by a man

who stood as a testament for the courage to hope, who had the

audacity to do the best of things during the worst of times. Look

around you and remember, do not forget that there are those

who are here who went unheralded as leaders, as heroes and

heroines, they too are a  part of that great company of 

witnesses, whom God raised up to teach us and guide us...to

release us from our bondage to the things that have been, to lead

us towards the liberty of the things that can and ought to be.

Remember this day as I remember the savagery of the struggle,

the battle for hard-won concessions for social justice, and now,

the sense that the moral momentum for that time of

transformation that seemed stalled and mired in a morass of

what could have been, has become a glimmer of great

expectations. A glimpse of hope has dawned, the fragile

whisper of expectant freedom is near, the promised land

we have dreamt of and longed for can be real.

150 years ago, a people huddled together waiting for the long

dark night to pass. Their faces flickered with fear and joy in

the candlelight. Frightened families sat in small dirt-floor

cabins or gathered together in small wooden churches hoping 

for the approaching dawn of freedom…Praying that the bright

morning would somehow look different. …It was a long watch

that night, 150 years ago when President Lincoln’s promise would

become reality.

Dec 31 1862, enslaved Black people all over the south waited for

their freedom to be born. The Emancipation Proclamation would
 
bethe law of the land on January 1 1863. The slaves were told

that it was this paper that was going to make them forever

free. So they vowed to stay up, to keep watch…It was

Watchnight, they wanted to know what it felt like when the

shackles of slavery fell from their weary shoulders.

Watchnight, it was the night before the dawn when freedom

would come writhing out of America’s womb…

And yet that birth has been a difficult one. For that great

proclamation did not end slavery…and 150 years hence a people

continue Watchnight hoping for freedom  in black churches

around this nation of ours…It is a tradition that has not yet

become irrelevant. As a people Black folk continue to struggle

to make a mark in a culture that puts enormous obstacles in

our path to true freedom, true equality. To many these

obstacles are unseen, unacknowledged and unbelieved, …but

to those they obstruct, these unacknowledged obstacles are

as real as the dreaded signs of yesteryear that depicted who

sat here and who sat over there, who drank here and who drank

over there, who lived here and who lived over there….Watchnight

continues as we await freedom.

So it is right, it is proper that we take time on this Birthday of

Dr. King to embrace our stories of courageous people who stood

and faced grave danger…it is proper that we do this so that we

might understand our present and lift up hope for our future. It

is particularly proper that we do this at this time The 150^th

Anniversary of that vital document …for it not only declared that

black folks were free from slavery but white folks were freed

from enslaving some of God’s own children.

Over the last years I have worked with and walked with and

admired men and women who were the leaders of the civil rights

movement… I know those who faced Bull Connor…who sang songs

of freedom while locked up in the Birmingham jail…

Recently I ventured once again into the deep south, with others

from all over the country who fought that long ago fight … young

and old, black and white, men and women… It was important to

revisit and remember… A man I have marched with and gone to

jail with spoke on a visit to the south… His name Dr. Bernard

Lafayette one of the trusted advisers of Dr. King. He told us

the stories, the stories we already knew…the stories of brutality

and anger …the stories of faith and courage…The stories of

unending belief and hope in the greater good.I got to see it all

once again… the bus stations…I walked into the 16^th street

Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama where those four little

girls were killed in 1963 by a bomb planted by the terrorist group,

the Ku Klux Klan . I saw the stained glass window in that church

where the face of Christ was blown out by the bomb…but the body

of Christ in that beautiful window didn’t have a scratch on it… All

the stained glass windows were gone except that one, it remained

unbroken not destroyed, not blown out by a terrorist’s bomb but

intact as Christ body has always been… that place where four little

girls dressed in their Sunday best cried no more in Birmingham,

but the world wept for them.

I walked through the Mississippi home where Medgar died, and

stood on the hallowed ground Where Schwerner, Chaney and

Goodman saw there last day… I saw the spot where the freedom

riders were caught by the Ku Klux Klan and they burned that

Trailways bus in Anniston, Alabama…I heard how they had tried

to burn the people within by holding the door shut. It took more

than courage to confront the disease  of hatred, for the antidote

of hate is love.… As Dr. King said” Hate cannot drive out hate,

only love can do that.”

How did those who fought the difficult and dangerous fight

choose to take up that challenge? How could they choose such

a difficult and dangerous path? After all there was little or no

support from family or government… How did we fight for

something that the laws, the culture, tradition, and the suffering

told us, we could not win…Everything we saw, everything we

experienced, that our mama and daddy experienced told us to

stop trying, for we could not overcome this battle, it was

useless. Others had tried before and failed…some were killed.

So How, did we find the courage and love to try?... How? How?

Because the arc of the moral universe is long but bends
towards justice…Because there beyond that dim unknown
standeth
God within the shadows keeping watch above his own…

How ? How? How indeed? Because we walk by faith not by sight. So

it didn’t matter how difficult the road nor how long the path…We

walk by faith not by sight… Yes we do.

That is the path we must all learn to choose… The path of Faith…

even though that path can be difficult, even though that path can

be thorny, even when that path is lonely… even if your path has led

you into the cave of hate and anger…the way out is freely available,

for as we know in the story of raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel

Chapter 11…even a dead man can walk free if he listens to Jesus…

For the path of faith is the only one on which you cannot get lost

… So I still keep watch…. And remember and old civil rights song

…one we sang in moments of despair and fear…

”Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around"

I am reminded of Harriett Tubman who became known as the woman

Moses…for she too wanted to set her people free… She reminds

me of the difficulty it takes for folk to be free… Harriett Tubman

who during the times of enslavement, ventured into the south and

guided enslaved people through the barren slave states up to hoped

for freedom in the North…

There were times when those who were escaping began to despair

because the path…the route…the journey was difficult…it was a

dangerous path to choose…if you were caught you were tortured

and mutilated as an example for others not to try to be free…

Nonetheless despite the threats…the danger, she guided lost

people to their freedom. She told them…”If you hear the dogs

barking, keep going…if you hear the horse’s hoofs bearing down on

ya’ , keep going, if you hear men yelling to stop, keep going, if

everyone around you wants to quit, you keep going, If you find

yourself all alone and scared… keep going… IF YOU WANT TO TASTE

FREEDOM, don’t ever stop, keep going!”

“Ain’t gonna let no body turn me around , turn me around, turn me

around…ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around I’m gonna keep on a

walkin’..keep on atalkin’ marchin up to freedom land… “

Nearly 50 years ago I sat quietly in a jail cell. Frankly I was

frightened. It was the summer of 1963. I was 17 years old … a soon

to be freshman at the University of Illinois… I sat in that jail

questioning the decision I had made to protest the segregated

school system…the segregated housing patterns…all of the injustices

that were a part of being Black in America…And yet as I sat in

that hot sticky cell I knew the truth …and that truth was I could

never lose hope…  I could never lose hope in what I believed black

people could do and be. I was raised believing in hope…Hope that

one day we would overcome… Hope, that in time justice would

triumph over injustice. That one day righteousness would roll in

on the slow pondering wheels of inevitability…And yet it never

dawned on me that my far off dream, the dream for the ages would

happen while I still walked and breathed on this side of my grave…

Because of that man going once again back to that House? You know
what man and what House? Oba man and that white House. But do I
still need to stand watch, hoping for real freedom?

I have pondered that question… deeply…deeply pondered within the

depths of my soul. Do I still need to stand watch ?  After all, I spent

four years serving this country during the Viet Nam war. I would have

died for the people and idea of this country called America. Do I still

need to stand watch?

I always stood alongside others at football games or at school pledging

allegiance or singing about the home of the free…Yes, I always stood,

but proudly? Then, I ask…Should I still stand watch?

My Great-great-great granddad Hiram fought for the union in the war

that Lincoln said freed us. Uncles and cousins…my brother…my son

served this country in the marines for 11 years. Should I still stand

watch?

Maybe it’s all those deep scars, not on my skin but in my heart, in my

bones, in my sinew, in my remembrances, DR. King, James Meredith,

George  Wallace, Bull Connor, Little Rock nine, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks.

Viola Liuzzo, vicious fire hoses held by adult firemen spraying water on

black children. Police men with their dogs grabbing black children with

American flags in their hands snatching the American flags away from

them…”No!… No!... you’re not an American you’re just a n…”  Yes those

children tried to hang on to that flag because they wanted to be

Americans.

Then there was the black man in Boston who was struck by a white

teenager …he struck that black man with the American flag… The flag

that I saluted, the flag that I fought for…that my son fought for...

that my brother fought for…that my ancestors fought for. Do I still

need to stand watch?

Those scars put a strange membrane around me and mine… It insulated

me from America. I fought for it…paid taxes for it…sang the songs and

pledged the pledge. I did it all while looking at white folks’ teary eyes

for a beloved country that I saw, that I lived in, but I was invisible to,

unless some black fool did something ignorant…Then oh yes then I was

always visible. Having to answer questions about why do my people…? Or

drove in a town where we didn’t live… Or walked into a restaurant

where we didn’t go…or into a meeting where I was the only one…Those

meetings where all the eyes turned and conversations stopped, Oh yea

I was truly visible then. 

That membrane not only insulated me from America…but it insulated

America from my love… America, do I still need to stand watch?

In many ways America apologized in 2008 on that cool November night

in Chicago. The world cried along with Oprah and me as we saw that

beautiful family…Obamas…I never thought it possible. 

On that cool, sparkling, unbelievable night America apologized without

knowing how much I needed that…America apologized to me without

knowing it.

America apologized for my scars…the scars that I have endured,

the scars that my mother bore, the scars that my father bore…the

scars of all those who suffered, whose yearnings to be free were

denied. America apologized even though many do not believe she

needed to apologize. But that’s ok too because America apologized

anyway.

America , magnificent America, lived up to what it started out to be

and became in one night what it had never been. In one night a people

began to believe. … The face of America changed, it has become wider

and broader and now includes all of me.

Aint gonna let nobody turn me around

And then the gift of memory stops me cold… Did not those enslaved

black folks rejoice when Lincoln signed that proclamation that

emancipated our people?  And didn’t this country go to war so that my

folks’ folks’ folk could be free? When was that January 1,1863…and

watch night started

Wasn’t Emmett Till murdered in 1955? Ninety-two years after Lincoln

put his signature on that proclamation? And watchnight continued as a

people waited for freedom.

1863? One hundred years later, 1963 wasn’t I sitting in jail …? Because

no one had proclaimed that emancipation to the hearts and spirit of too

many of the people in this nation…And watchnight continued

1963 wasn’t that the year King preached about his dream?...and

watchnight continued .

1965 wasn’t that the year the voting rights act was signed and Now

today black folks votes are misused, miscounted and misplaced..?

watchnight continues

Ain’t gonna let no hatred…

And here we are 150 years almost to the day that the Emancipation

Proclamation was made law… And I am left with one question. Is the

hope we have longed for finally arrived ? After all Black people in

America have rarely been optimistic, for we have always known better;

but we have always been hopeful, full of hope. That is why we continue

to sing James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing and respond

particularly to the words:

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

So is the hope we have longed for finally arrived? Is the place our

ancestors sighed over finally come… I accept that we have been much

like the lost people of Israel who wandered in the wilderness seeking

the hoped for promised land… we have grumbled because our freedom

has not come easy …

But despite all that…despite our community’s sometimes destructive

behavior…we must continue to struggle through our difficult moments

…We must face there are those who remain buried in caves of

ignorance and march on… climbing and reaching and  pulling ourselves

forward.

Ain’t Gonna let no police dogs

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reached the mountain top…he told us that

when he looked over he saw the promised land and even though he got

there before us, we believe what he told us when he said that we as a

people will get to the promised land.

It is 2013 and I ask you this. Has the bright promise of hope finally

dawned? What is it our kids say after a long, and difficult journey?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet…Well the truthful answer is not

yet….not yet…Even when President Obama walks back into the White

House we must accept that poverty has not walked out of our

neighborhoods. We are not there yet…not while some of God’s children

remain lost…not while there remains a great disparity between the

haves and the have nots… Not while the educational opportunities for

black and brown children remains wanting…not while our cities crumble

in disrepair…not while too many of our young folk are unaware of their

glorious past…not while too many of our old folk are forgotten…and are

disrespected.

I tell you no… we’re not there yet…And so… we must not falter…now is

the time and we must not be deterred, today in the fierce urgency of

now we must gather together  as one community, one people, one nation

and lift our voices to God… we will stand watch…we will not remain

locked in caves of despair and want… We will overcome…And we cannot

stop… we must keep going…stand up and tell one another… I will stand

watch…I will stand watch until America’s promise of freedom is kept…

"Ain’t gonna let nobody”