1968 and 2020

A Letter to my grandchildren Nora (17), Miranda (13), Henry (20) and Ben (14)

My grand-daughter Nora and her mother were recently on a walk, talking about the protests and riots happening right now in the USA and around the world. They stopped to call me and encouraged me to write about my experiences in the late 1960s when I lived in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago. “Is there a difference between then and now?” they asked. Implicit in this question was, “Dare we to hope that this time change will happen?”

I had just heard Chris Cuomo on CNN talking about his mother, Matilda, and how she felt when she saw the George Floyd video. “Will it ever change?” she wearily asked her son. I hear this sentiment a lot. Nora, you are right to ask me and I must respond.

Dear Nora, Miranda, Henry and Ben,

In 1967, your grandfather began theological studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), one of the most radical places to study theology at that time. The seminary was in the middle of the University of Chicago campus and we moved into university housing. We were a poor student family with a three-year-old son, supported by grants, his parents’ financial assistance and part-time jobs. I had just graduated in theology and also became a graduate student at CTS. We were Canadians exposed to the sixties in the USA. The country was in the middle of giant protests against the Vietnam war. Our classes were filled with draft resisters who by attending theology school were spared military service. They were smart, confidant, loud and challenging. They were intent on changing the world. It was nothing like the sedate nature of my previous studies in St Andrews, Scotland. Respect for professors there was automatic. Now I saw professors having to earn every moment of attention. Classes were not to be missed.

We were molded into activists. We marched with our toddler son, your Uncle Dave/father, high on our shoulders. We got involved in Jesse Jackson’s movement, Operation Breadbasket. Your granddad became a white presence in the apartments of the Black people, modifying brutality when the police attacked their homes on the pretence of finding drugs. We learned to use the word “Black ” instead of “Negro” and shouted right along with “I am Black and I am beautiful.” Sometimes our parents were afraid and asked us to come home.

In the “Red summer of 1919,” Chicago saw many riots and deaths over race relations. Dogs and water hoses had been used to flush the streets where we now lived. Our elders told us about those terrible times. At that time our apartment block had been outfitted with bars on all the accessible windows. Our son’s bedroom was on the lane by the fire escape. The steel bars were sturdy. Late at night, patrol cars would park under that window and “protect us.” It was odd for a Canadian girl, where we still rarely locked the doors, to fall asleep to patrol car dispatches.

My dear Grandkids, there are so many stories to share but at this time I recall one story which has many parallels to our present moment of protest. Thank you, Nora, for asking me to tell you.

On April 4, 1968 at 6 p.m. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Our local leader and fellow student, Jesse Jackson, was with him. We were at our community supper at the CTS cafeteria. I was eight months pregnant and it was a precarious pregnancy. I had just spent two months on bed rest for a tear in my placenta. I had only recently returned to the active life of a grad student.

As the news was announced, we felt our community change and react. Deep down we knew we were outsiders. We had not grown up in Black America and we were not Black. There were tears and hugs and fears. We were instructed to go home swiftly, not to loiter and to inform others that we had made it safely. We knew there was a sense of imminent danger. The summer of 1968 was just ahead.

As well as being part of CTS, we, as a family, became part of The University Church of the Disciples of Christ, which was a block or two from our apartment. When we first attended the church, the community left there was a remnant of its former glory. The church was vastly endowed and could have existed forever, I suppose. Instead, the few families who remained went for broke and we went along with them. They hired Charles Bayer, who served as pastor there from 1967 to 1973. This church became and remains one of the most sociologically experimentative churches in the USA. I was hired to be the Director of the Church School beginning in September 1968 just after my daughter Mary, your mother and aunt, was born. I had no idea of the magnitude of the experiment in church life that was unfolding and in which I was to play a part. At my doctoral defense years later the sociology professor on the examining committee was in awe that I had been on staff there.

On the morning of April 5, I went to class as usual. The day was like no other. The fear and grief was palpable. In 1960s style we were asked to make art out of what we were experiencing. Songs were written. Students remembered that Joan Baez had come into class not so long before to get students singing their protest to the Vietnam war. (Yes, Grandma is name dropping a bit.) I remember writing a poem that I wish I had kept. Preparation for riots and how we would respond was on everyone’s mind. I had no idea how to prepare. I went home and got ready for my evening work at the Disciples of Christ.

I have to digress and tell you that one of the things we did to inject new life into this church was to start a coffee house, not a very original thought for the 1960s. It was called the Blue Gargoyle in celebration of the actual gargoyle atop the church.

There was no one left in the congregation to seriously dispute such an outrageous idea. As group of Divinity students, we opened this café right in the sanctuary in January 1968, just before King’s death. We thought we were creating a place for students and professors to come for discussion. I envisioned it like the cafes of Yorkville from my student days at the University of Toronto. Initially this happened, but very soon neighbourhood kids piled in, and it became a place for positive opportunities for mainly Black youth and families. It only closed in 2009 due to financial strains and the withdrawal of state funds. Reading about the contribution it made to literacy is humbling. https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2009/4/17/as-blue-gargoyle-closes-staff-works-unpaid-to-relocate-clients-of-all-ages-to-new-programs/

It is amazing to know that in 2017 it found a way to continue, transformed as an open mic forum which continues to this day.

That evening, I was in my office at the church after a counselling session when I received a message over the intercom: “Ann, do not come downstairs. The Blackstone Rangers have arrived and they are armed to the teeth. Stay where you are!” The telephone went dead.

The Black Stone Rangers had begun as a gang to support Black youth but gradually changed into a more and more radical group supported by criminal activity. They grew to be 100,000 strong. In 1966 they had peacefully marched with Martin Luther King in civil rights marches.

This night they were hurting. One of their idols, Dr. King, had been senselessly gunned down. Violence was hours, if not minutes, away. At the very least there would be a gang war for territory with their rivals, the East Side Disciples.

In a few short months the Blue Gargoyle had become known. Somehow, the Rangers felt they could claim this place. It was in their hood. That night the Rangers showed up on their Harleys ready to make plans at the Gargoyle before heading out to burn, loot, riot and possibly kill to protect us from the Disciples. The church leadership had been preparing with other community leaders for the summer of 1968 and the mounting racial tensions, but we had not prepared for this.

Pastor Charles set up a spontaneous altar for Martin Luther King Jr. in the sanctuary. The Rangers put down their weapons, lit candles and slowly took seats in pews. They talked in strangely subdued voices. Church will do this to almost anybody. Charles talked and listened. I came downstairs, listened, watched and handed out candles. It was breathtaking. I had never seen so many guns. There was only candlelight, as I remember it. Charles was strong, calming and gaining confidence. There was an eerie silence. Time went by. They stayed for hours and at last went home and the South Side did not burn and was not looted. The Black Stone Rangers grieved instead. Anger expressed eased slowly into sadness.

Late that night, your grandfather got a neighbour to watch your sleeping uncle David/father and came and got me. Twenty-one days later, your mother/aunt was born. And Mary thrived and still does!

Did we make a difference?

I do think the protests following Dr. King’s death did make a difference. While the East Side burned that night the South Side did not that night or any other in the protests and riots that followed. This happened because a forum spontaneously appeared where listening and grieving could happen respectfully. Education for Black people did improve slowly and steadily, though not easily, for at least ten years. Your uncle David’s school was integrated. The Vietnam war ended. The Blue Gargoyle continues to this day. In January 2009, a Black man became President of the USA. Strides were made but they have not been enough.

Will the protests today make more of a difference?

What I learned in the church sanctuary that night was the power of giving voice to anger and grief in a peaceful manner. I learned that grieving people need a space and they need rituals that are calming. The news channels these days and nights have been filled with examples of just this. It is as simple as Samantha Francine, a Black woman taking off her sunglasses and making steady calming eye contact with a man who was angry with her protest.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/girl-black-lives-matter-montana-agitator-trnd/index.html

People lie down in the streets, hands behind their backs for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. People kneel. These are such commanding rituals. We are able to see them now as never before thanks to social media spreading the videos. Grandma laid face down on the stones on her patio and it is powerful.

Obama notes that the protestors are young and multi- racial in a way that were not true in my time. You are all one with them. This hope is being offered by so many thoughtful folks as the one to make a greater difference. I am cautious because I have seen how the establishment waits and then abolishes gains. Keep your eye out for this. Your votes are compeling and your voice, especially on social media, will matter in every country in the world.

In my time, a lot of white people were involved but when the Civil Rights Movement chose to ask us to stand back, we did. In retrospect, maybe this was not as helpful as it might have been. We did not use this time to probe our own racism but rather to supress it. We pretended it was not our problem. We must not expect Black people to help us with our own racism. Unfortunately white people rarely truly listen to Black people. I think we have to dig deep, and I hope all of you will gather the stories of racism in your own families, mine included, over the past generations. I wonder how it leaks through into your unexplored behaviour.

We need compassionate leadership at every level of society. It has never mattered more. It is happening. Mayors and Governors in the USA are making changes. Because of COVID-19 in Canada, the Premiers and our Prime Minister are cooperating as never before. In B.C. our dear Dr. Bonnie Henry was just celebrated in The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html

Protests raise our consciousness. They are high adrenalin events. Then we need policy leading to new laws and then we need to implement the change. This is steady, and sometimes tedious, work. There are many more signs that this time we are moving beyond the protests. Maybe it is symbolic, but Black mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington D.C. changed the name of the square outside the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza! I love it

As I have followed the news, I have been drawn to Detroit. Being a child raised in London, Ontario, Detroit was my American city. You probably have yours. It is where I saw Ted Williams play at Tiger Stadium and it is where I first saw Black people. I also know Detroit went into decline in 1967. I know it has the largest Black population of any city in the USA. It became a city few people want to visit.

I am amazed that Detroit did not burn, did not loot and did not have many arrests. For the most part its people peacefully marched and protested and asked to be allowed to breathe. Arrests made there were 65-75% out-of-towners. Why were they so peaceful, we need to ask? The people had learned from the past. Black people and white people had learned to listen and talk with each other. Mayor Mike Duggan (who is white), Chief of Police James Craig (who is Black) and Chief of Public Health Denise Fox (who is Black), who knocked down COVID-19 in Detroit, are talking with each other and to many community groups regularly and often. They have been building trust over time.

Detroit was the first city to call George Floyd’s death a murder. The Chief of Police, when the protestors asked the police force to kneel with them, explained that tactically this was not possible, but could he kneel with them? They said yes and he did. When he talks about this on the media his tears flow. This creative vulnerability under pressure builds trust. The community wanted to be Proud Detroiters and they are.

Detroit had a ten-mile march and the protestors dispersed at curfew time, as requested. There was no violence, none. They were helped by a sixteen-year-old, Stefan Perez, a red-shirted lad seen jumping around the crowd with a bullhorn. Please listen to this if you want to believe that change will come. It is a well-spent eleven minutes of your life. Detroit gives me hope that change is occurring and will continue to occur. With the Stefans of this world we may even leap beyond the limits of ourselves.

This is all, my dear ones,

Your loving G.A.