Sermon--Truth and Reconciliation in Mississippi

The Rev. Susan Karlson

July 6, 2008

As a child, I remember watching television court dramas like Perry Mason. Witnesses swore to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” As an adult juror, I heard a similar oath taken when people took the witness stand.

I doubt we Americans are so devoted to telling the whole truth. Children are taught glamorous versions of our history. A student of James Loewen’s, the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, even claimed “[Abraham Lincoln] was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands” (p. 184). Think about that for a minute--why can’t our heroes and heroines be ordinary people who do some extra-ordinary things that we hope to emulate?

I confess to some big misconceptions about Mississippi. Last month I rounded out my view of Mississippi history with a trip I made to Natchez that totally blew me away. I saw the Native American Indian Mounds. I felt a sense of awe, climbing the thirty foot Emerald Mounds, piled high by the Natchez people long before white settlers arrived. I saw these incredible historical murals in Vicksburg with children from different races playing together in the fountains downtown in the sweltering Mississippi heat.

But the most transformative time for me was stopping at the Natchez Museum for the Preservation of African American Culture. The interpreter told me stories about the African American heritage in Natchez and the state of Mississippi for over an hour—some parts were radiant, others tragic.

Mississippi elected two African American United States Senators in its history. When you consider that there have been only five African American U.S. senators in all of American history, you see Mississippi anew. He told me about a law prohibiting the importation of anymore slaves from Africa. Creative Northern businessmen found a way around it—ships sailed to Caribbean ports and then transported their human cargo to the South. Plantation owners didn’t live in the South however—they lived in the North and only came down here when it was time to sell the king cotton crop. Racism and slavery is a blight-filled legacy that mars all parts of this country.

African American and Native American museums, heritage tours and itineraries are so popular now that they are overcoming many local citizens’ fears that people will be shocked and scared away by the truth. I believe in
another reality—that we are able to deal with the truth when we hear it, that the human spirit is eager to hear about real people who made all-too human mistakes, just like we do. Telling real life stories about historical people and events can embolden us to work to counter the sting of racism in and around us.

As I left Natchez, I stopped at the Forks of the Road auction block. This is the site of the second largest auction block in the United States, second only to the one in New Orleans. It felt eerie to walk on land where our African sisters and brothers were bought and sold. And though I felt a kind of grief that left me breathless, I wanted to be a fearless witness to that historic agony because it affirms the importance of investing my energy in racial justice work.

Unitarian Universalist history is full of abolitionists, martyrs and those who worked for racial justice. But that’s not the complete story. At antiracism Jubilee World workshops, we often start by creating a Wall of History. We tape newsprint paper on every wall and write the people and events we can remember that sought to eliminate racism and strove for racial justice. But we also dedicate portions of the wall to the names and events that reinforced racism. In this way, we begin our work by telling the whole truth about Unitarian Universalism, not merely some myth about who we are.

In my experience, this work of truth and reconciliation is powerful and transformational. Some years ago, my mother researched our family history and she found that our family owned two slaves. My mother quite confidently felt that she had nothing to do with that, she didn’t condone it and it was way before her time. She was right, of course. None of us need be ashamed of actions taken by family members long before we were born.

But I have another perspective. I figure if your family is dependent on the servitude of others to make ends meet, no matter how poor a farmer you are or how well you treat those you enslave, there is something inbred in your attitudes about relationships with other people. And unless you are aware, you will likely pass those unconscious attitudes on to your children and your children’s children and on beyond that, forever. I realize it is up to me to rectify my attitude and my relationships, knowing that part of my family history.

We all live in a country that justified slavery for centuries and fostered unwritten laws to deny the worth and dignity of all people. That history is embedded in our national DNA. My message this morning is about asking
ourselves what messages we received that are life giving and which ones to discard because they enslave us to fear and constrict our hearts.

If you examine most Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi and the nation, you’ll see we have few people of color. Particularly in Mississippi, our congregations don’t adequately reflect the racial mix of Mississippians in general. It might behoove this congregation to hold a Jubilee workshop or some other such event even if more people of color never come here. It might give you a clearer sense of your history, values and priorities as you imagine the future of this Fellowship.

This congregation is blessed to be part of a rainbow coalition, the Steps Coalition, where Vietnamese Boat people work alongside Latinos and Latinas brought here to do recovery work. People from the Turkey Creek project brought the FEMA trailer they’ve driven across the country to the
Unitarian Universalist General Assembly held last month in Florida to let people know the situation here in Mississippi. This is the beautiful side of Mississippi life — uniting to address common needs.

In this country, people from European American backgrounds have a certain amount of inherent power and privilege because of the perception of being white. It is possible to create a different future if we use that power and privilege to tell the truth about our history and work on reconciliation.

I stopped by a park near the beach in my Gulfport neighborhood. Family members celebrated a young teen’s birthday. I was the only white person in that park. I approached an empty swing and a young man began talking to me, telling me about his relatives and identifying each child’s relationship to him. And later, some girls in the family asked me to give them a push on the swing. One girl asked if this was my park or if I built it.

I like to think that our interactions opened up something inside of each of us—that to them, I became at least one white woman who could be trusted to swing them or a person interested in their family celebrations and how much they mean to one another. That experience reminded me once again how I carry my white skin privilege and power wherever I go and how my whole experience here in Mississippi has transformed and opened my heart. This is not just the amorphous deep South to me now but you have shown me that Mississippi calls diverse people to learn and work together. May each of us listen for the whole truth and swear by it, day by day.