A Story from Church

I just came back from church today and the man I gave a ride to told me of crossing one of the dividing line streets in Chicago (Halsted going west on the S. Side) to go see a movie at a white theater and getting jumped by a gang of about 11 kids on bikes with chains. (Their group was 4 black kids). A white bus driver saw them and felt some sympathy and so opened the door, but made them each stand in line and pay the fare before he closed the door so that the child in the back was being beat with a chain while the others found their change.

God bless all who have put up with the business end of white fear. It really is trying to kill what it cannot understand. I almost said imagine how that bus driver felt—because I know first hand how fucked up and conflicted he was—but quickly realized that that had little bearing on the situation as it happened.

A great reminder that the decisions we make every day are real and though we may think, feel, or say we had to do something, that it’s not always the truth.

The man was grateful that he had not been born in the 50s because he didn’t think he would have lived long. He told me about Emmett Till’s uncle—himself a priest—who had been pressured into silence about what happened to Emmett. He told me he would have died. Because he would have spoken.