There is a Chinese symbol that depicts both crisis and opportunity.  We are living in momentous times. There are practices, policies and laws that have been in place for most of our lives and that we’ve come to take for granted.  Bedrock legislation is now questioned under a conservative plan called Project 2025. Brown Vs. Board of Education, immigration, voting rights, and even the use of contraceptives are just a few of the issues targeted to be eliminated by the Heritage Foundation and the MAGA campaign. 

There is something to be said about “sleeping on it.” Last night I went to bed caught up emotionally in the drama of campus protests that appeared to be spiraling out of control. In my distress I  blamed everybody…students who seemed so entitled that they were failing to recognize and understand the thoughts and feelings of those with whom they share a community…university leaders who in my mind were trying to cover their behinds and were making bad decisions. And we Americans who had failed to resolve our most intractable problem, understanding who we are to one another. That is what I took to bed with the question what can I do?

Viola Fauver Liuzzo  1925-1965

Viola could have stayed home. No one would have criticized her. After all, she was a white housewife with 5 children. The last place her presence would be expected was Selma Alabama at the height of racial tension and violence. But that is where she went…to Selma. She heard the call of Dr. Martin Luther King. And traveled from Detroit Michigan to Selma in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Viola Fauver Gregg was born April 11, 1925, in the small town of California Pennsylvania. During the Depression, work was hard to come by. So Viola and her family lived in poverty… one-room shacks and no running water. The family moved to Tennessee where she had first-hand experience of the segregated nature of the South. This deeply impacted her and would significantly influence her subsequent activism.

Beulah Mae Donald

Some walk quietly among us and yet make significant contributions to their family, community, and their country. They are often not well known. They do not claim great wealth, titles, degrees, or high office. They often live simply and humbly. Until a compelling event asked for something more from them.  And the task is extraordinary and often beyond what one might believe they can accomplish. I name them Inspirators. Because of their commitment, kindness, courage, and moral character their actions inspire us. Mrs. Beulah Mae Donald is an Inspirator.

I recently participated in a tour of Civil Rights sites in Alabama (Birmingham, Selma, Tuskegee, Montgomery), and Atlanta, Georgia. For the last few years, I felt pulled to visit these places. This pull felt like my soul’s call to witness my ancestral history as a white person. Though I wasn’t sure why, I knew that direct experience of the truth of the devastating impact of white supremacy on the enslaved, and facing personal accountability for the benefits of white privilege was important to me. I approached this trip as if it were a pilgrimage.

Given all that is happening around us it could seem like quietness is an elusive dream. There is war in the Middle East, and in Ukraine and there is seemingly unrelenting political chaos. We witness so much heart-wrenching human destruction visited upon helpless innocents that it takes us to our knees. At home, many of our political leaders seem incapable of making sound moral and ethical decisions that might deliver us from the pain and suffering we see.

Minty was born into slavery but she was determined to be free. When she was 13 a blow to the head delivered by her master would cause her to have seizures and blackouts for the rest of her life. But Minty was determined. When she grew up, she changed her name to Harriet and then she escaped to freedom. Harriet Tubman not only freed herself, she returned to free hundreds more. And she eventually became a spy for the Union Army fighting to save the Union. Harriet Tubman loved her people and her country.

Ajike Owens was a 34 y/o single mother of four who loved her children. So when her 10 y/o son reported that a neighbor had thrown a skate at him she wanted to know why. She knocked on the neighbor’s door hoping to have a conversation about the incident. The 58 y/o neighbor fired one shot through her closed door, killing Ms. Owens in the presence of her 10 yr. old son.  16 y/o Ralph Yari was shot after he mistakenly knocked at the wrong house while looking for his siblings.  34 y/o Heather Heyer was run down by a white supremacist who steered his car at high speed through a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville Va., killing Heyer and wounding dozens of others.

In 1619 twenty African slaves were brought to the colony of Jamestown, creating a racial caste system that established white people as the dominant group and Black people as subordinate. Laws were codified, rules made, and customs established. Slave masters had the right to kill and torture their slaves should they defy their authority.  The children of enslaved women kept their mother’s status even if their father was the white master. He could take the children and do with them as he chose, sending them to the fields as slaves or selling them on the auction block for profit. The colonists had internalized the wrong idea that some people are better than others. It again benefited those at the top of the human food chain because it granted power and privilege to those with white skin. Most white people came to believe that Black people were lazy, criminals, and mentally inferior. And that America belonged to white people. And those attitudes and perceptions remain with us into the 21st century.

The previous two wrong ideas force us into “them vs. us” relationships. It is a fear-based idea in which we feel insecure and deprived. I believe there is healthy competition that motivates us to achieve our best. But it seems we are often guided by the wrong idea that one person’s gain means another’s loss. And that kind of competition leads to conflict. There is a tendency to assume the worst in others, pointing out weaknesses and shortcomings. This is particularly true about those who do not look like us. When guided by the idea of scarcity (wrong idea 2), win any way you can, lest you lose your share is the rule. And those who win even when it harms others are elevated. Bullying, aggression, and intimidation are often praised as indicators of success. Cooperation and consensus are viewed as weaknesses. And in a “slash and burn” culture, we resent those whom we believe stand in the way of what we want.