This week’s reflection is by The Rev. Stephen Reedy, a gifted writer, teacher, and Cornelius Corps Board member. In this piece, he lifts up three significant dates in September related to the struggle for racial justice. He also reflects on the fact that much of the hard earned progress related to these events is being reversed by the current administration. He goes on to call us to endure in this struggle based on our faith in the God of justice revealed in Scripture.
Please take time to read and reflect on Rev. Reedy’s writing and watch the accompanying video that features the courage and sacrifice of The Little Rock Nine.
Peace – Jim Melson, Executive Director
Remember These Days in September
“It was a terrific feeling that the President of the United States would send troops to escort us in school. It was like going to war every day.”- Earnest Green of the “Little Rock Nine.”
Green was one of nine African American students who integrated Central High School of Little Rock Arkansas in September of 1957.
The attempt to integrate was an outflow of the seminal Supreme Court decision of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education. That decision held that any policy of segregated schools was unconstitutional. But without enforcement, no change could occur.
On September 4, 1957, Arkansas Gov. Faubus blocked the Little Rock Nine with the Arkansas National Guardsmen. Not until President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent five hundred troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division was the attempt to integrate the school successful.
The courageous cohort of nine teenagers were each accompanied by Federal troops throughout their school days. These pioneers endured a torrent of racial abuse and death threats. But as Green mentioned, it was a “terrific feeling” that the highest power of the land supported the pioneering act of justice.
In Civil Rights history, the month of September- election season- has proved auspicious.
It was in September of 1862 that President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln issued the edict following the first significant Union Army success at the Battle of Antietam. The proclamation crucially shifted the war rationale from economics to a moral foundation -the abolition of slavery.
On September 9th, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The law followed America’s defeat of fascism in World War II and its rise as the leader of the free world in the conflict against global communism. America’s treatment of African Americans was too large a contradiction to ignore.
The law was the first since the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to address the lack of economic, social and political freedoms enjoyed by African Americans. While the law’s enforcement provisions were significantly weakened by the bloc of Segregationists from the Southern States, it re-engaged the Federal government in the quest of realizing the nation’s ideals of freedom and equality for all.
Key aspects of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 include the creation of the bi-partisan Civil Rights Commission, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and the empowerment of the U.S. Attorney with the right to petition Federal courts on matters related to voter suppression.
Today, all three aspects of the Civil Rights Law of 1957 are not only under assault but reversed and inverted. It’s not only the lack of enforcement of the law, but inversion. Federal enforcement or the rights of the historically oppressed have now been inverted towards voter suppression, prosecution of those like the Southern Poverty Law Center for tracking White Supremacist groups, reversal of all things DEI, and much more.
What to do with the awful feeling of seeing Federal power used to enforce injustice? Take heart, God sees. The prophet Isaiah spoke these timeless words in the context of a wicked reign of injustice: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”
So, we do not work alone, but with Divine favor when we continue to contend for the good for all peoples. It’s a terrific feeling to know that the God we serve calls and empowers us to work with each other for the equality and freedom of all.