Learning from bitterness

The Bitter Southerner, the online magazine with the intriguingly acrid name, asked me to write about the back story of "The Class of '65" and how the book has been received. My piece appears in the July 14 issue (linked below). The Bitter Southerner started a couple of years ago as the brainchild of veteran Atlanta journalist Chuck Reece and a few of his friends. The name originally referred to their enthusiasm for Southern spirits and food, but it quickly took on a broader meaning as they redirected the magazine toward in-depth stories about life and culture in the region -- stories like the tale of race, religion and reconciliation found in my book. Photographer Aaron Coury accompanied Greg Wittkamper and me to Americus, Ga., when the book came out last spring and took some evocative pictures of Greg at his high school and at Koinonia, the communal farm where he grew up. As we revisited the old haunts, there were moments that moved us to tears. While our story is not meant to engender bitterness -- quite the opposite -- some of the memories we summoned from the past are bitter indeed.

 

Source: http://bittersoutherner.com/a-reconciliati...

"A heartbreaking book"

The Christian Century ran a favorable review of "The Class of '65" this week, calling it a "heartbreaking book that confirms that we all have far to go and much to forgive." (Could I suggest that it might be a little heart-lifting as well?) The Century is among the oldest publications covering religion in America and is considered one of the most influential voices of mainline Protestantism. It wrote about the violence and boycott aimed at Koinonia during the 1950s, so in a sense, this is revisiting an old story with a new twist. "Local whites, unable to tell Christian communal life from Soviet communism and unwilling to countenance blacks and whites living together, tried to starve members out by refusing to trade with them," writes reviewer Lawrence Wood, a minister in Gulf Shores, Ala. "Several times Koinonia was bombed, its orchard was cut down, gunfire shattered windows. The children weren't sure whether to be angry at the townspeople or at their idealistic parents -- or even if they were permitted to be angry at all." Wood then says of the author: "Much of his story has the power to shock, but his telling is more powerful because he is unshockable." Perhaps it just looks that way. Here's a link to the review below: 

 

 

Source: http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/20...

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.