Love and hate

I’ve wondered this week what Clarence Jordan would say about the bloodshed in Charleston. As the co-founder of Koinonia, the communal farm where “The Class of ’65” is set, Clarence faced hatred and racist violence for years: bombings, shootings, an assassination attempt. Through it all, the Southern Baptist minister maintained his belief in nonviolence and loving one's enemies. But no one died at Koinonia during the terror years of the 1950s. What would he have to say to his fellow clergyman, Clementa Pinckney, whose killer succeeded where Clarence’s failed, and took eight others as well? This passage gives us a clue; it comes from “Clarence Jordan: The Substance of Faith And Other Cotton Patch Sermons”: 

“Even though people about us choose the path of hate and violence and warfare and greed and prejudice, we who are Christ's body must throw off these poisons and let love permeate and cleanse every tissue and cell. Nor are we to allow ourselves to become easily discouraged when love is not always obviously successful or pleasant. Love never quits, even when an enemy has hit you on the right cheek and you have turned the other, and he's also hit that. Love continues to forgive not only when a brother has sinned against you seven times, but seventy times seven. Love doesn’t quit or give up on a man whether he be a Communist or a Kluxer. Christ showed us how far love would go when he prayed for those who were driving the nails into his hands and said, ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re up to.’” 

I hope the Rev. Jordan was there to welcome the Rev. Pinckney to heaven. I’m sure they have a lot to talk about and pray over.

Darkness before dawn

Fifty years ago this week, Greg Wittkamper graduated from Americus High School in a scene that vividly displayed the intolerance of the times and suggested the promise of a better day to come. That dichotomy is the essence of my book, “The Class of ’65.” At the commencement, held on the first Monday in June, Greg (shown here in his senior portrait) was booed when he rose to collect his diploma. After the ceremony, he and his black friend from Koinonia, Collins McGee, were chased from campus by a pack of men throwing rocks and spewing hate. But something else happened that day: Before the commencement, one of Greg’s classmates. David Morgan, shook his hand and congratulated him in front of the other students. It was the most considerate gesture Greg ever received from one of his white schoolmates. Years later, David was in charge of planning their 40th class reunion and set into motion the reconciliation that forms the centerpiece of the book. As this graduation season winds down, let us remember that a diploma is only the beginning of a true education.

Books and beans

Americus went a long time without a bookstore. I'm happy to report that the town has one again, Bittersweet, a charming shop across from the Windsor Hotel that sells coffee, chocolate and books like "The Class of '65," assuring that the place will have a wonderful scent even if some of the prose has an off smell. When one of the owners, Elena Albamonte, heard that I was speaking at the Albany Civil Rights Institute, she asked me to stop by and do a signing. They even printed a poster with my mug (which everyone must be getting tired of by now) and put it up around town. Two of the people who came out were my former AJC colleagues Susan Stevenson and Larry Perrault (seen here), who moved to Americus to work with Habitat for Humanity. I also saw Lorena Barnum Sabbs, head of the Barnum Funeral Home, whose limousine carried Greg Wittkamper and the first black students at Americus High to classes in the fall of 1964. Lorena graduated from AHS a few years later and suffered all kinds of harassment herself. She said she had bought half a dozen copies of "Class" because people needed to know where we've come from. As we were talking, I looked at that name -- Bittersweet -- and thought: Yes, it is. Thank you, Elena and everyone else for another meaningful evening.

Freedom road

One of the good things about writing a book like "The Class of '65" is that you get invited to speak at places like the Albany Civil Rights Institute. That's me with Frank Wilson, the executive director, in front of a Trailways bus display at the museum. The civil rights movement in southwest Georgia began at a bus station in Albany and spread to surrounding towns like Americus, the setting of my story. It was an honor to speak at a place that documents the Albany Movement, which was known for impassioned oratory and emotional singing at its many church mass meetings. I read from a journal kept by Lora Browne, one of the young people from Koinonia who attended some of those meetings in 1962 and who had never witnessed such scenes. "I was astonished!" she wrote. "I had never been to a service before in which the congregation responded to the minister as he talked!" Of course, the minister she was talking about was known to get a few "amens" and "tell it to them, bothers!" -- it was Martin Luther King Jr.




Welcome to book club

I did my first book club Monday night at the home of Carole and Irv Kay in the Huntcliff subdivision overlooking the Chattahoochee River in Sandy Springs. About 16 members of the Huntcliff Book Club came out, and I was heartened that more than half of them had read "The Class of '65" or listened it on audiobook. They asked good questions about bullying, race relations, historical memory and other issues arising from the story. (Of course they would ask good questions; several of them are writers or teachers, and our host, Carole Kay, is a distinguished journalist and former colleague of mine at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) Book clubs have become very popular in recent years and are sometimes seen as an excuse for people to get together and quaff wine (hence the cocktail napkin you can buy that says, "My book club can drink your book club under the table"). Joking aside, most authors love to meet engaged readers in such an informal setting, I have several more book club appearances lined up and welcome more of them. Thank you for a fun and lively evening, Huntcliff. I feel well-prepared for the conversation and Chardonnay to come.