Black History Review

Obviously, if I had no use for the black Church, I could hardly even imagine something called a "white Christian." It was totally impossible for me to imagine that the white Church, the private club of the oppressors, had anything to do with reality and justice. Prejudice, of course, knows no boundaries; it can be found anywhere (p. 63).

I could see something was developing in him that was beautiful, something I knew nothing about. I'd had no real experience before of seeing Christianity at work like that in a person's life--at work in a way that was beautiful...and good (p. 66).

In those workshops I found something I never expected besides the Bible learning. I met white Christians. It's hard to describe how odd, how different that whole experience was for me. Not just white church members, but white Christians--people who said that God had actually changed their lives (p. 73).

Yielding to God's will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace (p. 82).

Still, I decided that if something was right, I would do it as a command from God and not be scared out because some non-Christians also thought it was right (p. 107).

We rode in fear. We registered in fear. And we voted in fear. Those black voting lists were carved out in fear (p. 192).

I wouldn't have expected most good Americans of that day to believe that such things--like what happened to us at Brandon--still happened in this country. I wouldn't expect them to believe how the police and the Highway Patrol had that thing planned (Perkins' ambush and beating nearly to death) and how those people acted. Whites would probably have said, "It's almost too much to believe. Who would be so stupid as to beat someone like that in a jail?"

And most white Christians would not have wanted to believe this either. Instead, they would have closed their eyes to it. Why? Because if a white person minded his own business, he went up the ladder. He didn't get in trouble. So he figured that a black guy who got in trouble just wasn't obeying the law. (Thirty years later, too many still think this way.) (p. 167).

But there were, and always will be, human emotions. Such as sadness at seeing those that I knew as brothers in Christ insist on a Sunday religion that didn't sharpen their sense of justice during those years of turmoil. It wasn't a question of what "team" to join. In terms of social justice, evangelicals just didn't have a team on the field (p. 107).