This summer has been quite a summer as I journeyed back down South to Norfolk where I grew up and to the ancestral home of my mother's family in rural North Carolina, before heading to Savannah Georgia (see accompanying photo of the Civil Rights Museum in Savannah that Alan and I finally got to see) and a trip to Charlottesville, Virginia where I spent 20 years of my life.
Alan, my husband and I, began with a road trip to Norfolk, Virginia where we stayed near the harbor downtown. Growing up, my mother worked first for Capital Airlines and then after the merger, for United Airlines. When I finished graduate school at Norfolk State in 1977, I was eager to leave Norfolk. I'd spent 24 years there and I wanted to move anywhere else. Since then, my travels and life journey have taken me to Hawaii, Los Angeles, Yogaville Ashram in Buckingham, Virginia, to Charlottesville, Virginia, Washington, DC for seminary, Annapolis Maryland for my internship as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Wilmington NC for my first called ministry, a consulting ministry in Gulfport Mississippi and now Staten Island, New York. I realized this summer that I wanted to revisit places where I had "grown up" (in more ways than physically). I wanted to see the places I lived, the church I grew up in, the places where my memories haunted me and the environs where I put down roots and where the spirit of love, community and passion dug deep roots in my soul.
We got into Norfolk as the temperatures soared to around 102 degrees. I wanted to just walk downtown and so we set out to walk down by Waterside in downtown Norfolk and then over the bridge to Ghent where I did a field placement, where the Unitarian Church of Norfolk is located (a place where I met the VISTA volunteers who worked on lead paint abatement). Walking down by the water, we came upon this marker about the Underground Railroad in Norfolk. Perhaps, you cannot clearly read the words but it documents the striving of some to help people escaping from slavery while it also clearly tells about a local official who persecuted folks.
Growing up, Norfolk was often considered very southern by those people who lived up north but it was not quite southern to those from the deep south. In this segregated city, I grew up. The schools were not desegregated till around the time I went to high school; in part, because Virginia was one of those special states that closed the schools rather than desegregate as the law stated in Brown vs. Board of Education. On this marker, I realized that now there is some mention of the ugly face of racism. Much of my journey during the summer was to uncover where I had grown and shifted given my white southern roots and where I still need to bring every bit of my conviction, awareness and passion to dismantle the racism that permeates the culture and the institutions I inhabited way back then and inhabit still in a different region of the country.
In October, I'll return down south to join the Unitarian Universalist Living Legacy Pilgrimage tour with others invested in working on antiracism and reconciliation in this 21st century world of ours. This visit down south was a part of preparing myself for this journey but Alan and I have been watching recommended films on Emmet Till, Viola Liuzzo, Spike Lee's "Four Little Girls" and "Eyes on the Prize" and we are reading books on "the Children" about the leaders of SNCC and their courage and absolute commitment and training on nonviolence, and other books on aspects of the Civil Rights movement. I realized as I read a portion of "The Children" today that I have more anger inside of me than I realized. I stub my toe on a coke bottle and let out a curse. Could I possibly find the courage of my convictions, the deepest calling of my God that would sustain me and strengthen me to live out the depth of my commitment to healing the racism that is so viral in our society? I am touched by their story; I find their honesty about what goes on inside of them--their fears, their anger, the welling up of emotions, their reflections on themselves and their faith, stirring, touching, moving beyond words. I know that this trip has already begun in my soul and in my heart. It is a calling from the God that touched my life when I was a young child in the silent quiet of my bedroom when I was lonely and afraid. The stories of these courageous, unstoppable young men and women who have gone on to make an incredible difference in this country, even beyond the Civil Rights Movement move me to reclaim that calling, that courage, that passion and unending love that is so much more powerful than hate and divisiveness.
This is the first segment of this powerful journey for me.
Blessings,
Susan
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