Seeking Social Justice

At its meeting on September 17, the Sojourners Church Council voted to send the following letter to John O. Wynne, University Rector and chair of the search committee for the new president of the University of Virginia.

This letter grew out of the work of a group then called the University Community Racial Reconciliation Project, now renamed the University Community Action for Racial Equity.  This group had written a letter to Mr. Wynne asking for issues of racial justice to be part of the discussion in the search for a new president.  They welcomed signers from the community at large.  Sojourners, however, decided to write its own letter, which was approved by and sent on behalf of our church council.

Dear Mr. Wynne,

We are aware that the University of Virginia is beginning a search process for the person who will succeed John Casteen as president of the university.  We write not as members of the university community but of the larger community of which the university is a part.  We believe the university and the community live in a relationship of mutuality.  The health of each depends on the other.

We write particularly as the church council of Sojourners United Church of Christ, a faith community that is concerned about matters of racial equity in the Charlottesville region and committed to working for racial justice.  We want to affirm the enormous benefits the University of Virginia brings to the surrounding community.  We further affirm the positive steps the university has taken In acknowledging its role in past injustices as well as the resources it brings to helping improve the lives of Charlottesville residents. 

However, we are also acutely aware of how much remains to be done.  For all its positive contributions to the community, the university has also been deeply involved in a history of discrimination and racism.  Acknowledgment and apology will need to be accompanied by consistent and dedicated efforts to repair the past and build a different future.  This time of transition offers the university an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that it is serious about working toward racial justice both in its own institutional life and in the surrounding community.

We know that the university will be looking for financial and academic leadership.  We urge that it also consider moral leadership in relationship to racial justice to be of utmost importance.  We are aware of the questions put forward by the University Community Racial Reconciliation Project and have taken the liberty of attaching them for easy reference.  We believe they are good questions for discussion with candidates for the presidency of the University.  Indeed the issues raised are important points of discussion for all of us as we move forward.

Yours truly, 

Krissy Lasagna             Rebecca Garrity               Jim Bundy
Co-moderator              Co-moderator                Pastor (more…)

Upcoming symposium sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies - The Problem of Punishment:  Race, Inequality, and Justice on April 16 & 17, 2009.  Keynote address by Angela Y. Davis, all events free and open to the public.

click here for more information http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/woodson/symposium/index.html

Feb. 12, 2009,  Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, the NAACP turned 100 years old — just a few weeks after Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States.  In the Spring of 2000 another milestone was celebrated with the publication of the book, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, edited by Julian Bond, Chairman of the Board of the NAACP and Sondra Kathryn Wilson, the executor of James Weldon Johnson’s literary estate in celebration of the 100^th birthday of the song of the same name.   The book is a collection of over 100 essays by prominent African Americans offering their thoughts about the songs’ impact on them.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing”, adopted by the NAACP as “The Negro National Anthem” in 1919, was originally written as a poem.  It was publicly performed in 1900 by 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, FL where James Weldon Johnson — poet, songwriter, and lawyer — was the Principal.  The school was celebrating Lincoln’s birthday and Johnson wrote the words to introduce their honored guest speaker, Booker T. Washington.  Five years later, the poem was set to music by John Rosamond Johnson, James’ brother, and it became a way for African Americans to demonstrate their courage, patriotism, and hope for the future.

James Weldon Johnson’s face was very familiar  at the NY Headquarters of the NAACP in the 1920’s when he was the Executive Secretary.  He worked alongside other well-known African Americans:  W.E.B. DuBois, the editor of the organizations’ Crisis magazine and Langston Hughes, who wrote the first history of the NAACP.  Julian Bond, as a young student, was also a member of the NAACP and led the activist Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.   He returned to the organization in 1998 as the Chairman of the board.

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Sojourners - February 22, 2009

Questions: What does the election of Barack Obama mean to you personally, and how does it challenge our work in racial justice at Sojourners? Are we too “comfortable” at Sojourners, given the fact that we “love’ everybody?

The election of Barack Obama means this to me personally.

HOPE. One of the best-loved campaign pictures, and my favorite, is the one in black and red on which is written, “HOPE.”

Hope for many things-but especially hope for change for the injustices and inequalities experienced by African-Americans since they were first brought here in chains.

As a little girl in racist Alabama, I wondered why we called our maid, “Susie”, instead of Mrs. Kemp. All polite southern children referred to anyone older than they as Mr., Mrs. or Miss.

I wondered why my dad rebuked me for saying, “Yes, Sir” to an elderly dignified man riding by our country home on a mule. Dad said, “Never call an N—– sir.” 

I wondered why my black playmate called me Miss Dell but I referred to her without the “Miss”.

When I went to college in Chicago, I often wrote Susie, and I always addressed the envelopes, “Mrs. Susie Kemp.” Perhaps with the hope that someday she would be treated with the respect of her white peers.

 You can imagine my thrill at being able to say “President Barack Obama” to a partly African-American.

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This poem was read by Allison Linney at Sojourners United Church of Christ on Sunday, February 22^nd.  It was written by her brother, the Reverend George E. Linney, III on January 21, 2009, a day after a watershed moment in our history, the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44^th President of the United States of America.

 A plea to 44 and me

Some said your inaugural words were condescending
I say prophetic
Your words were a call to service
A call to take responsibility
Critics said there was no memorable line,
like
Ask not what your country…
or
We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

But you encapsulated both JFK and FDR when you charged me to fight poverty
I heard you charge me to educate the poor 
Who are the poor?

In my world
they are children
they are boys of color
and while everyone around me wonders when will I arrive
When will George take a Church of his own?  Why?

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Rev. Marcus R. Ingram
February 22, 2009
Sojourners United Church of Christ

Does the election of Barack Obama usher in a new era of race relations, and how is it related to our faith?

The headlines around the world have been stunning - “Change Has Come,” “A New Dawn,” “Obama cambio la historia,” “A Dream Fulfilled,” and “Danke, Mr. President.” Without doubt, the candidacy and election of President Barack Obama has elevated American political consciousness in ways that most of us have never seen in our lifetimes. Our President’s international heritage and Kenyan ancestry invites a larger community into conversation unlike any other leader of the United States.

While history will likely tell the story of a little-known community activist who transferred his organizing skill onto a national political stage, the narrative will be incomplete if it does not chronicle the ways in which our racial consciousness has been unmasked, unnerved, and unsettled. From critiques in the African American community that inquire, “Is this Ivy-League educated, multi-racial politician ‘Black enough’?” to the fear-inducing “You know his pastor is a radical, anti-American Liberation Theologian,” President Barack Obama has at least kindled a discourse on race that has enlightened some, enraged others, and, I believe, enthralled us all.

Never once has our new President referred to himself as the “Black candidate,” yet even the most “progressive” of us have seen him as such. In the same breath that many of us want to celebrate the election of the first African American President of the United States of America, we also want to make this historic election an example of how race has been transcended. While I am not resistant to a “both-and” perspective, this seeming contradiction potentially points to a tendency in American (and Western) culture to be both reductionist and revisionist. It is remarkable to imagine what generations after us will think when they scroll through the photos of our country’s presidents and arrive at the early twenty first century. Astute historians will certainly speak about the powerful intersection of technology with grassroots activism that transitioned from being mocked, to a, if not, the defining factor in the victory of President Obama. But, many more will posture about what it meant for America to elect its first non-white president.

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MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY CELEBRATION
Remarks made by Jim Bundy at the celebration of January 18, 2009

I have been part of the Martin Luther King Day Celebration committee since coming to Charlottesville nine years ago.  I’m happy to have contributed in a small way to keeping this event going for the last nine years, grateful to those who have seen to it for 25 years, and glad to be able to contribute a few words on this 25^th annual celebration in Charlottesville.

The committee chose a quotation from Dr. King to go on the poster advertising this year’s celebration, and therefore maybe to be one of the themes for today.  It says, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  And so I want to build my remarks around that thought: “things that matter.”  Things that matter.

One thing that matters is that we are here today. It matters of course because Dr. King is worthy of being remembered and honored, because he touched people’s hearts and changed people’s lives, because of his eloquence and his courage and his importance to our history, because of what he stood for.  It matters that we lift up such a person so that he can continue to offer us inspiration. 

There are lots of other reasons why it matters that we are here today.  Let me speak of one that occurs to me as a white person.  Those of you who are African American are welcome to listen in, but let me speak just for a moment as a white person and direct my words particularly to white people.  There is a phrase that has come into more and more use in recent years, the notion of white privilege.  It’s a concept that hadn’t begun to really sink in for me until about a dozen years ago.  It basically says that there are some privileges that white people enjoy in this society merely because they are white and that they may not be fully conscious of.  It is not just that African Americans have been deprived of many rights.  That’s certainly true and the civil rights movement has been largely about correcting those injustices. 

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If you are interested in following current legislation go to www.vacure.org , then to the links on the left side - 2009 Legislative Agenda and position papers.  Virginia C.U.R.E. is a non-profit corporation whose focus is on the Virginia criminal justice and prison system and the inmates, families, and friends whose lives are impacted by these systems.