Sacred Ground

Happy February, friends! It’s Black History Month here in the US, and I have some mixed feelings about that. Not that I don’t think we don’t need to learn about Black history – far from it. I learned virtually nothing about it during all my time in school, and certainly never saw any images of people of color in my classroom or textbooks. No, my discomfort is that I don’t think it should be something talked about or taught in school for just one month a year, but interwoven into our curriculum and consciousness ALL year.

I recently completed a 30-week, 10-part anti-racism course developed by the Episcopal Church of America called Sacred Ground. Eleven others from my church joined in the journey as well via the magic of Zoom. We ranged in age from our 30s to our 80s, some as singles and some couples doing it together.

To say it was transformational for me would be an understatement. I wish I had a dollar for every time I, as well as my cohorts, said “well, they never taught us THAT in school”! The experience has changed how I see race and class in our society forever, at a deeply visceral level.

The course materials consisted of films and readings, many but not all of which are publicly available – including wonderful documentaries produced by PBS and independent film makers- which we’d view and read ahead of time, then discuss as a group. Members of our group often found other historical resources that we shared with each other. It’s important that the material was all well-researched and documented, citing original records in archives. This is so important in our age of “fake news”, and the ease with which social media headlines go viral while being totally bogus, or suspect that it came from a “liberal” or “conservative” source. It is very difficult to argue with first-person accounts of people recorded at the time, census records and court documents.

We also read two books in their entirety during the course: Waking Up White by Debbie Irving, which felt like it was written for me personally, and Jesus and the Disinherited by renowned theologian Howard Thurman (a teacher of Martin Luther King Jr.). Although I work at a seminary, most spiritual or theological writing goes straight over my head. Dr. Thurman’s writing was so profound and clear, however, that much of it really touched me. It’s easy to see how his arguments for non-violent resistance convicted Dr. King and other civil rights leaders.

Much of the course did follow the history of Blacks in America, and inspired me to watch the entire PBS series Many Rivers to Cross hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. I think I can speak for the entire group when I say that it totally dispelled the “Gone With the Wind” myth of the “well-treated slave”, that is so prevalent here in Kentucky. One of our group discovered a podcast series called The Reckoning, which led me to interviews done in the 1930s of people born into slavery telling exactly what it was like…

I learned about the 2nd Middle Passage, when after import of slaves became illegal and the demand for slaves on cotton plantations exploded with the invention of the cotton gin, slaves were “bred” in Upper Southern states like Kentucky for export. Yes, that means exactly what you think it does – systematic rape of enslaved women to produce children to be sold “down the river” to New Orleans for auction.

I learned about how Jim Crow laws in the South after Reconstruction made life for Blacks little more than slavery. I learned about race riots like the ones in Wilmington NC and Tulsa OK that killed hundreds of Black people and destroyed the homes and businesses they had worked so hard to build.

The course also examined the history of Hispanics in America, Asians in America, and treatment of Native Americans by European immigrants. I learned how thousands of Native American children, as young as 5 years old, were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Here they were made to cut their hair, wear white clothing, adopt Christianity and speak only English. They grew to be adults who no longer fit in with their tribes, but would never be accepted by whites. Systematic removal of Native American children from their homes into the foster care system remains disproportionally high in many parts of the US to this day.

I learned that Spanish was spoken hundreds of years before English in many parts of what is now the USA. I learned that lynching of Hispanics was as common as lynching of Blacks in some areas. I learned that race was a requirement for citizenship until 1952. I already knew about the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII because one of my sorority sisters in college was Japanese, and her parents, both born in the US, had grown up in the camps. Marian was the only minority in our sorority, and there were no integrated Greek organizations at the time. The few Black sororities did not have their own houses like all the white ones did. And a brief review of the University of Kentucky website last week looks like not much has changed in that regard.

I learned that 1 million Black GIs returned from WWII, but less than 2% of VA home loans went to Blacks. While white veterans used the GI bill to get college degrees, Black veterans were denied entrance to colleges and universities. I learned that 90% of the inner city housing demolished in the “urban renewal” of the 1960’s was never rebuilt.

I realized what a luxury it is to be able to research my geneology – to actually have legal and census records with my ancestors ‘last names before 1865. I now often ask myself the question: “how would my current situation be different if I were Black”? I realized on a camping trip with my girlfriends earlier in the year that we would NOT be going camping if we were 3 Black women. There was not one person of color in the entire state park campground where we stayed, and the closest town to the park is a notorious “sundown town” – where all of the Black citizens were forcibly put on trains and literally run out of town in 1919. It takes a great deal of bravery for people of color to be in the outdoors. It has not been safe space for them for most of our history.

Sacred Ground must be offered by a local Episcopal church, but you do not have to be an Episcopalian to participate. If you are looking for more than an education on race in America, but an experience of the heart and soul, contact your local Episcopal church to see if Sacred Ground is being offered. Our class was so successful via Zoom that we plan to continue this format, even after the pandemic, and thus may be able to include people outside our geographic area. Another member of our original group and I will be co-facilitating another course as soon as we can enough people together, and we hope to begin in mid-February. If you are interested in joining the February class through my church, let me know. There is no cost aside from the two books, and I receive no monetary benefit from your participation.

This is not a certificate for me to hang on the wall and say I’m “woke”. This is the beginning of a journey I will be on the rest of my life. There is a difference between knowing that people of color have been oppressed, and actually knowing the particulars of that oppression. It is important to help understand why certain things cause offense or the baggage that certain issues carry. If I gained all this knowledge and do nothing with it to dismantle systemic racism, it was a waste of time. I will be looking for where I can be a force for positive change within my circle of influence. I would love to hear from you what experiences you have had recently in the areas of racial justice and equality where you live.