Pilgrimage I, Day 5 – Heading Home

Pilgrimage I, Day 5 – Heading Home

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

 

End of Pilgrimage

It had been a very powerful and often painful week. We had stood in places where the music we loved was born. We had stood in places where the people we admired had been slain. We had visited the site of some of America’s most powerful turning points from the Mason Temple, where Martin Luther King, Jr.’s extemporaneous Mountaintop Sermon was preached just hours before his death, to the front steps of Little Rock Central High where nine courageous high school students broke the back of Jim Crow segregation amidst threats, jeers and spittle from their classmates. And we had stood at the shrines of a 14 year old saint, Emmet Till, who was tortured and slaughtered simply for doing what teenager boys do.

This last day, we would end our pilgrimage in a place of serenity. The Memphis Botanic Garden, just down the road from Memphis University, was where we had chosen to hold our last reflections as a community. It could hardly have been a better choice.

The vegetation amidst a springtime flush was so full of life and new growth. The sculpture and fountains scattered throughout the park were inspiring. A travelling exhibit entitled “Save the Humans,” created by a California artist, Thomas Dambo, featured larger than life sculptures made from recycled materials. Wind activated mobile sculptures provided motion as a host of mockingbirds serenaded us with their repartees overhead.

I would slip away to offer my morning prayers here. I wasn’t able to remove my shoes but as I stood on the paving stones in the Scent Garden, I was able to connect to the Earth in this very complex place, offering my gratitude for all I had experienced, for the community that I had shared and for the lessons I return with.

And then it was time to return to circle for our final reflections, to say our final goodbyes. As is often the case in such circumstances, the Navajo Blessing Way I learned 30 years ago in my parish in San Jose came back to me: 

With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.

With beauty behind me may I walk.

With beauty below me may I walk.

With beauty above me may I walk.

With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

For this experience and the wonderful fellow pilgrims with whom I shared it I am deeply grateful.

  

With Gratitude to Memphis

I had not been to Memphis in 50 years. And then it was only driving through enroute to visit family in Arkansas, the state just across the Mississippi River. I wasn’t sure what to expect. And I had to remind myself that no person and no place is reducible to their worst moments, even that of an assassination.

I cannot say Memphis is one of the more beautiful places I’ve been. It has its moments. But, in many ways, it’s simply a large city with an industrial persona, well represented by the gleaming glass pyramid that in theory honors Memphis’ heritage in Egyptian culture, beginning its life as an arena that was the home of the NBA Grizzlies and today is a megastore for the Bass Pro Shop.

But this city has an amazing history, a hospitable people who greet you warmly on the street regardless of race. That, in itself, is a remarkable development in this city with its history of slave markets which gave rise to some of America’s most beloved music and became the site of the martyrdom of its most beloved prophet.

I had never really thought much about Marc Cohn’s 1991 popular song, Walking in Memphis, prior to this time. But when I got home, I pulled up the video for his original performance and realized it truly spoke to the experience I had just had in Memphis and the Mississippi Delta environs.

I was surprised to find myself weeping. Memphis had clearly touched my soul. So I offer the lyrics here and Cohn’s original performance at the link below.

Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn (RHINO Music, 1991)

Put on my blue suede shoes

And I boarded the plane

Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues

In the middle of the pouring rain….

Then I'm walking in Memphis

Was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale

Walking in Memphis

But do I really feel the way I feel?....

 

They've got catfish on the table

They've got gospel in the air

And Reverend Green be glad to see you

When you haven't got a prayer

But, boy, you've got a prayer in Memphis

Now Muriel plays piano

Every Friday at the Hollywood

And they brought me down to see her

And they asked me if I would

Do a little number

And I sang with all my might

She said "Tell me are you a Christian child?"

And I said "Ma'am, I am tonight"

Walking in Memphis

 

So, thank you, Memphis, for a memorable visit. You are a place with a history worth knowing. And you have left a mark on my soul. Somehow, that seems appropriate.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgRafRp-P-o  

[Image: art at Westy's Barbeque Restaurant, Memphis]

 

 

Pilgrimage’s End: The Embrace of the Jungle

There is no small amount of cognitive dissonance in suddenly finding yourself in familiar surroundings - a place where you know you belong and where your safety is not in question – only hours after visiting sites of deep depravity and atrocity. But as I slipped into my Jungle barefoot this morning, to offer my morning prayers and to consciously and intentionally speak my gratitude for a very rich, albeit painful, first round of pilgrimage completed, I exhaled a great sigh of relief and gratitude.

This past week we saw a lot of things, heard a lot of stories, entered into a lot of history, in this incredibly rich and often conflicted cultural matrix that is the Mississippi Delta and its environs. I know we all have a lot to process. That reflection will take some time.

I return home tired, worn after an extended flight home delayed three hours by thunderstorms at MCO, which meant arriving home just before midnight. But for today, I am just happy to be home, to have a 10 day respite before Round Two of the Pilgrimages begin in the western plains of indigenous America. And, as is often the case when I return home from trips like these, the sounds and words of one of my favorite films of all times, The Wiz, come back to me:

“When I think of Home

I think of place

Where there's love overflowing

I wish I was home

I wish I was back there

With the thing I've been knowing…

Maybe there's a chance

For me to go back

Now that I have some direction

It sure would be nice

To be back home

Where there's love and affection…..

And if you're listening God, please, don't make it hard

To know if we should believe the things that we see

Tell us, should we try to stay

Should we run away, or would it be better just to let things be?....

 

I can relate to all of that this beautiful, warm, humid morning, my feet touching the rich soil of my beloved Jungle. I am back in my home, surrounded by my family of choice - my beloved husband, our non-human animal companions,  the beautiful flora that makes up the Jungle and the fauna that finds refuge here.

As I stand here this morning, I am highly aware that I am a very fortunate man. And very grateful for that. And I find myself saying “Thank you, Holy One, for guiding me, looking over me, keeping me safe, bringing me home.”

I’ve attached the finale of the 1978 film version of The Wiz (to which I once took my severely emotionally disturbed middle schoolers in 1979 as a reward for their good behavior) with Dianna Ross. Take the time to listen with my gratitude and may you find your own way to be grateful for the place you call home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRKT_CVeWt0&t=1s

Dianna Ross, The Wiz (1978)

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

 

Pilgrimage I, Day 4 – Despair in the Delta

Pilgrimage I, Day 4 – Despair in the Delta  

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

Preface: This day will prove to be the deepest descent into our the darkness of our collective Shadow. This was the day we headed south to the Mississippi Delta to pay our respects to Emmet Till. It would be a very long, painful and intense day.

 

Impunity: When Power is Added to Evil

I have struggled my entire time on this pilgrimage to understand the role evil plays in the events we are learning about. I have never found Augustinian determinism that posits depravity as our starting place and the defining aspect of our humanity terribly compelling. I see that as lazy thinking that avoids the complexities of human existence. I don’t believe any of us begin evil nor do I believe anyone is irredeemable.

But what happens when one is surrounded by a depraved culture that refuses to recognize the humanity of the other in their midst? Is there never a point at which one awakens, realizes this is wrong? If so, the now conscious human being faces a choice as to whether to refuse to continue buying into that destructive thinking or, conversely, to begin lying, first to themselves, then to others and finally confabulating with others.

I have to think so. And if M. Scott Peck is right, it’s when ordinary wrong doing becomes exacerbated with dishonesty that we begin to talk about evil.

Now add power.

At what point does evil become constitutional, its perpetrators beyond redemption?

These questions lumbered around in my soul as I sat in the courtroom in Sumner, MS Thursday. We heard about a sheriff who had accurately identified the body of 14 year old Emmet Till, murdered by white men with the Black accomplices they coerced into participating in that atrocity, only to testify in court that the body was unidentifiable. He would speculate during his testimony that the NAACP had imported a Black corpse and dropped it into the Tallahatchie River to rile up the local Black population to demand the right to vote. The judge sat silently as the Sheriff perjured himself and interject inflammatory falsehoods into the proceeding. And it would be his testimony that allowed the all white male jury to rationalize their verdict of not guilty.

This was evil on steroids. And it was this corruption of the judicial system that allowed two white men to get away with murder of a Black teenager, as they would later boast to the nation in an interview with Look magazine.

This a special kind of evil. This is impunity, which mocks the law, drawing its very legitimacy into question, even as it uses the levers of power to protect evil doers.

 

A Subtle Form of Evil

The trial of Emmet Till’s killers was driven by a series of subtle factors that allowed an atrocity to go unpunished. While the body of Till washed up on the banks of the Tallahatchie River, the actual murder may well have occurred in nearby Sunflower County. The defendants were not well liked by their neighbors and moved for a change of venue. The motion was denied. Ironically, in the end, the process proved much more malleable in Sumner for a legal system intent on securing a foregone conclusion.

The white jurors would take just over an hour to find Till’s murderers not guilty. They would later tell a doctoral student researching the trial that each one of them had been awakened in the middle of the night by knocks on the door from local white residents who subtly reminded them that a wrong verdict could result in the same fate as Emmett Till.

This is the moment when wrongdoing already exacerbated by dishonesty has become evil. Now add power, beginning with the overt manipulation of the legal system and coupled with the thinly disguised use of fear applied to individual actors. What results is impunity, evil on steroids.

[Images by author – tour guide provided by Emmet Till Historic Interpretive Center]

 

 

Tortured Memories

In the tiny town of Glendora, MS, Mayor Johnny Thomas operates a museum in an old metal cotton mill. Inside, the story of Emmet Till unfolds.

This history is painfully familiar to Thomas. He relates an account of his father who was coerced by his white employers into helping dispose of Till’s body. It was his father who related some of the details of Till’s torture, a process which employed tools ranging from axes and knives to hand powered drill, examples of which appear in one of the museum’s exhibits.

The final exhibit featured a reconstruction of Till’s mangled and bloated body, fished out of the Tallahatchie River three days after the 75 pound fan blade retrieved from this former cotton gin to weight down the boy’s body tossed into a local bayou proved unable to keep it in its resting place. This was the image Mamie Till insisted that the world must see when her only child’s body was returned to Chicago. The views from his open casket, published by a courageous Jet Magazine staff, would shock the world. Mayor Thomas repeatedly said, “This is where the civil rights movement began.”

Bear in mind Emmet Till was only 14 years old, about the same age as the boys who would discover his body.

There is no other word for that but evil.

 

Paradox: Pain, Prayer, Peace

Graball Landing on the Tallahatchie River is an amazingly peaceful spot with an unbearably painful history. Here the Black Bayou flows into the river. This beautiful Spring afternoon maple trees are flush with green new growth, cumulus clouds build on the horizon, recently planted fields are golden, lit by an afternoon sun. Overhead mockingbirds demonstrate their extensive repartee.

Below our feet the muddy river swirls past. It was at this place in 1955 that two young boys were checking their trawl lines in the river. As they began to pull their lines in to check for fish, they noticed what appeared to be a human body. Summoning the local police, the body of 14 year old Emmet Till was pulled from those muddy waters, a boy about the same age as those who discovered him.

A bullet proof sign, the latest replacement for several predecessor markers destroyed by vandals, stands at the entrance to this site, just off the muddy River Road running alongside fields with recently sprouted corn and cotton plants that is the only means of access here. On the raised timber base around the sign, pilgrims have placed stones to pay their respects to this young visitor from Chicago whose life was over before it had fully begun. I pray silently the Trisagion from our prayer book, striking my breast at each plea for divine mercy: “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy upon us.” And then I leave my own stone on the wooden frame.

Our group gathers in a circle, observes a moment of silence. Then one by one we go around our circle of 15 to offer our own respects. When it is my turn, I speak directly to Emmet:

Emmet, we are hear to say we are sorry. You did not deserve what happened to you. No one deserves that. And we are here to show our resolve that we may learn from this and devote our lives to insuring this never happens again.

I close my comments with a piece of a gospel hymn, inviting my fellow pilgrims to join me: “Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God’s gonna trouble the water..”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_euSS86dvE

With our respects paid, it was time to depart. But I have little doubt that any of us will ever forget that moment beneath the trees along that muddy river with the spirit of Emmett Till. I suspect it is indelibly burned into our memories for the remainder of our lives.

A Crumbling Milepost

The store where Emmet Till made the fatal mistake of whistling at the white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant looks nothing like its appearance in 1955 when the chain of events would end in the brutal murder of the 14 year old from Chicago. The store long since closed, the structure has succumbed to age and neglect, its roof collapsed inward, its walls covered with vines, its interior full of weeds.

After the trial, local Black customers stopped patronizing Bryant’s store and within a month the store was sold. Two different owners would buy the property before one of the jurors in the trial of Till’s murderers bought the property. His family would focus on renovating the next door gas station gaining funds with a promise to restore the store structure as a civil rights memorial site but no restoration ever occurred. The station also has since closed. But the owner, knowing the desires of those seeking to commemorate Emmet Till at this pivotal site in his lynching, are now demanding $4M for the site, still hoping to profit from the depravity that began here or alternatively to prevent any commemoration here.  

At some level the demise of this once thriving business is a tribute to the unwillingness of a people to come to terms with their darkest aspects of Shadow. It is a visible reminder that fear and loathing, no matter how culturally baptized they may be, destroy the human soul.

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Pilgrimage I, Day 3 – Sounds of Justice

Pilgrimage I, Day 3 – Sounds of Justice

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

 

A Rich Matrix

Wednesday was the day our pilgrimage took us to the museums in Memphis which told the story of the rise of soul, blues, and rock music. From Isaac Hayes to Elvis Presley to Conway Twitty, the rich matrix of Black Gospel, Blues, Appalachian Hillbilly and country western sounds informed each other, merging, emerging, synergistically creating new forms previously unknown. Blacks and whites crossed racial lines within their ranks and within their audiences, a pattern that eventually spread across a racially divided America. Music led the way.

I found myself smiling, singing along, remembering where I was and what was going on in the world - my own and the larger world around me – when those songs sprang onto the radio waves and television screens. What occurred to me yesterday as I saw the outfits, the photos and heard the sounds of my youth is what a debt America owes to this rich cultural matrix called Memphis.

 

 

The Soil That Justice Grows Out Of

It is not an accident that the civil rights movement arose in African-American churches. The passages from Exodus where YHWH leads the enslaved Israelites to freedom were the very passages white slave masters fought so hard to prevent them from ever hearing, much less reading, focusing instead on Pauline injunctions for slaves to obey their masters because thereby they obeyed God. Like the civil war where the majority of speeches of both abolitionists and preservationists occurred in church pulpits, churches were the epicenter of both support for and opposition to desegregation.

The spiritual roots of soul music were always there, just below the surface. Soul music celebrated the human spirit, the divine image that could be found on every human face beginning with the faces our racist society had taught us were ugly. “Black is beautiful” was a needed corrective to a depraved racism that had taught us to hate our brothers and sisters - the antithesis of what Jesus had taught us.

This musical eruption from Memphis brought people out of their pews, into the streets and into the voting booths. And it posed questions to their white counterparts - where do you stand in the face of this imperative to act, and how do you continue in attitudes and behaviors that are the antithesis of the Gospel. These are questions as relevant in the face of today’s MAGA Christian nationalism as they were in  the death throes of Jim Crow in 1968.

This day I am grateful for the privilege of growing up in an era and a place where music spoke to our souls and fueled lives of Justice seeking. There is a reason we still listen to these sounds today.

  

The Path of the Disciple

It was a supreme privilege we were unexpectedly afforded. There were no tours being conducted at the Mason Memorial Temple. But the security guard we had met Monday had agreed to come to the site a half hour early to let us inside this historic site.

The Temple is massive, seating 5000 at a time. In the midst of the cavernous space was an altar with a beautiful, polished wood pulpit. This was the place to which Martin Luther King, Jr. had been summoned that stormy night amidst the Garbage Workers strike. And it was here, without a script or notes, with no time to prepare, that he gave his famous Mountaintop sermon. Hours later he would lie fatally wounded on the second floor balcony of the Loraine Motel.

During my time in seminary, I had visited El Salvador as an international election observer. On that trip we visited the convent where Oscar Romero had been martyred. As I stood behind the altar where he was shot down in the midst of the Eucharist, a bronze star in the terrazzo floor marking the spot, I looked out the open door to the side where the CIA trained gunman had stood waiting to murder a saint.

I felt a chill run down my spine. In that very sacred space, evil had temporarily had its way but did not have the last word. The spirit of Oscar Romero was still powerfully present there. And so were we.

As I sat in the Mason Temple, a fellow pilgrim played King’s Mountaintop sermon on her cell phone. As I closed my eyes, I could hear the passion in his voice, the prescience of his words foretelling his pending death, much like the Jesus he followed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Martin was present. And so were we, his latter day disciples.

I felt an urge to go stand in that pulpit where he preached his last sermon. A wave of spiritual energy washed over me. And in an instant, I was there, standing in that imposing place, a space infused with the spirit of a martyred saintly man.

After a moment, I returned to my seat, the altar still in view. As I closed my eyes, listening for whatever might come, I suddenly visualized Jesus at the Last Supper. He was fervently trying to prepare his disciples to take up the mantle, to carry forth his movement, his Way of Jesus, to continue seeking a kingdom of God already present, within and all around his disciples, yet not yet fully realized. If his Way of Jesus, his dream of the Beloved Community, was going to survive, it would be up to them.

I suddenly realized that this was what Martin was doing that last night here in this place. He had been to the mountaintop but it would be up to his disciples to carry that vision forward. And just as quickly, I realized that was why we were here, Martin’s modern day disciples, still seeking Justice for all of G-d’s children, still working to create the Beloved Community. And so I asked, “Martin, what are you calling us to do?”

The response came quickly: “You will know.” And then these familiar words: “I am with you.” As I rose to depart this spiritually powerful place, I could not stop myself from asking: “So, who is speaking to me? G-d? Jesus? Francis? Martin?” And I almost detected a bit of amusement as the Voice responded, “Yes.”

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Pilgrimage I, Day 2 – Crucible in Little Rock

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

There’s a reason it was so beautiful…

In 1927 the city of Little Rock gave the local school board $1.5 million to build two high schools, one for white students, the other to build a school for “Negroes.” The school board chose to build an elaborate high school for white students, steadily adding ornamental features whose expenditures would insure there would be no remaining funds to build the Black school. A much smaller, instantly over crowded Dunbar High School would eventually be built only because of assistance from the philanthropist Rosenwald schools project with the majority of funding coming from local residents.

When it opened in 1927, Central High was the most expensive school building in the country and was named "America's Most Beautiful High School" by the National Association of Architects. It also provided a wide range of educational programs which would never be unavailable at Dunbar across town where the 7-9 grades attended in three hour shifts in the morning followed by the 10-12 grades for three hours in the afternoon and ultimately the junior college classes which met at night. Imagine how exhausted their teachers were by the end of a day.

This offers insight into the issues that came to a head in 1957 when nine incredibly courageous high school students insisted on claiming their rightful share of the educational opportunities available only at Central High. If they were going to have a chance to become fully educated, it would have to be at Central. It wasn’t that their dedicated teachers at Dunbar were unwilling to provide it. They simply did not have the personnel, resources or the  time.

Everything worth knowing occurs in a context. The context in which the Little Rock Nine arose is particularly troubling. And it has implications for what is happening in the dismantling of public education today.

  

Hard Choices, Morally Right Decisions

The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock is a museum whose mission is to preserve, interpret and celebrate African American history and culture in Arkansas. One of the displays spoke of the “morally right decision” that lay at the heart of the Little Rock Nine story. Recognizing that there were hard decisions for whites and Black alike and that some made morally right decisions in the face of that difficulty is essential to understanding what happened not only in Little Rock but all over the Jim Crow South.

It could not have been easy for those nine young students or their families. And it could not have been easy for the white administrators who made their passage possible or the few teachers and classmates who offered them desperately desired support. There was enormous pressure from every side to preserve the status quo, as virulently racist as it was. Fear inevitably prevents thoughtful decision making, whether it be for loss of  dominance or a fear that a bad situation could get worse.

But along the line, a few brave souls stepped up and made “morally right decisions.” And the arc of the universe bent just a little closer to Justice at that moment.

Nancy Rooseau is the current principal at Little Rock Central. It’s near 3000 students today include classmates from 41 different countries and its graduates attend the top universities around the world. Rooseau speaks glowingly of her students and warmly relates her ongoing relationship with the surviving Nine members, their children and grandchildren. It was a joy to hear.

These morally right decisions were difficult. But they changed the world. And they offer hope to those of us faced with difficult decisions today. And on days like today, I still believe in redemption.

[Image: left, Mosaics Cultural Center display]

 

Troubling Familiar Patterns

The governor of Arkansas had lost the first round. The Little Rock Nine had completed their first year of high school. Ernest Green had actually graduated, insisting upon attending his commencement exercises, a service which Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would attend.

But Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas who had branded himself as a race moderate, had to run for re-election. Assessing the base he would need to win that race, he chose to appeal to the segregationists, ordering the public schools in Little Rock to be closed the next year. He would make the funding for those schools available to the white flight academies organized to avoid desegregation. This would come to be called “the Lost Year.”

In the museum run by the National Park Service at Central, an image an ad from The Mother’s League during an election to recall segregationist school board members began with a headline reading “DO YOU WANT NEGROES IN OUR SCHOOLS?” Note the presumption that the schools belong to them. Note also the presumption that these women have the privilege of deciding who can attend those schools, Constitution be damned.

Now consider the patterns we see today. Public school funding stripped and given to private schools which are free to reject anyone they don’t wish to serve. Discriminatory patterns regarding the operation of schools and libraries pushed by moral entrepreneurs under the cynical rubric of Mothers protecting children.

We must learn from our history. That is why the *entire* history must be taught, not just the whitewashed version of it.

And if you have ever wondered about the damages that cuts to the National Park Service could cause, consider that much of the information that this author relied upon for these reflections came from a very capable NPS tour guide. And many of the images posted here came from the NPS museum at Central High.

These are our truth tellers in a time when power is being used to bury the truth. We must protect them.  

[Images: Display at National Park Service Museum, Central High]

 

She Got On the Bus with a Damp Dress

One of the most famous images from the desegregation of Little Rick Central High School depicts a 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford surrounded by white classmates sneering and threatening her with bodily harm. It’s a powerful image that offers a snapshot of evil incarnate.

But look closer. Notice that she is alone as she walks through that gauntlet of jeering white faces. The eight other students had been organized by Daisy Baits to come as a group. Eckford’s family had not gotten the phone call from that middle of the night planning session. She would endure the taunts alone.

Eckford would later say that all she could think of that day was the recent lynching of 14 year old Emmett Till in neighboring Mississippi. That fear would be heightened when she heard one of the crowd say, "Drag her over to this tree! Let's take care of that nigger!"

Turned away by the Arkansas National Guard and knowing that she would not be attending school that day, Eckford made her way to a nearby park bench to wait for a city bus. She was wearing the beautiful dress she had made for herself for that first day of school. As she sat on the bench awaiting for a bus that no doubt seemed forever in arriving, her assailants continued to scream at her mixing their racist epithets with their spitting on her.

The only reason she was not pulled apart by that maniacal mob was the representatives of the press present there to record such savagery deterred them. When Elizabeth finally got on the bus, her dress was damp with spittle.

This is one of the stories on this pilgrimage that has tormented my soul.

[Top Images from National Park Service Museum, Central High]

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

  +++++++++++++

Pilgrimage I, Day 1: Memphis, Mountaintops, Martyrs

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

Entering Into History

I feel the bottom of my stomach fall out as we pull into the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel. You cannot miss the scene. It is burned into the memory of any American old enough to remember that dark evening in 1968. But seeing it in person is a whole different ballgame.

I remember that night vividly. There was initially the shock as the news spread around the stadium where the track meet I was participating in was occurring. Then the rage as the parking lot where our bus was parked filled with angry young men who would pepper our bus with rocks and bottles as we sped away, the track meet left unfinished. There was much more important business that night to attend to. Then, the next day, there was the grief, my Black female classmate collapsing to the floor sobbing when her sadistic white classmate pointed his fingers at her and said, “Bang, bang, you’re dead.” And then the numbness, the disbelief, the trying to make sense of the senselessness that had taken one of America’s finest minds and deepest souls from us leaving so many of us wondering if the America we loved even deserved such a prophetic voice.

There is a wreath on the balcony where King’s colleagues pointed to the building across the alley from whence had come the fatal shot. I found myself breathless, a knot forming in the pit of my stomach. I knew the story. But here we were to confront the reality.

The sign on the outside of the museum said it all: You are at a sacred place. Indeed. And simultaneously grateful for this encounter and soul sick knowing the truth about America it reveals.

 

The Bottom Line: “I am a Man!”

I believe it is not an accident that Martin Luther King was slain in the midst of the Memphis Garbageman Strike. His words “I am a Man!” reflected a vehement insistence that the humanity of these men must be recognized and respected. King knew this was fundamental, a bottom line in the entire movement he led. Until the humanity of those Jesus called “the least of these” was recognized, nothing else would matter.

Their work was grueling, dehumanizing, dangerous. Their strike was inspired by a malfunctioning garbage truck which had caused two workers who had gotten into the scoop to escape a rainstorm only to be crushed to death. The workers asked for a living wage and safe working conditions. The mayor refused to even talk to the union representatives. And it was this desperation and determination that would draw Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis.

At the Clayborn Temple where much of the organizing for the strike occurred, a stainless steel sculpture gleams in front of this ruined sanctuary recently gutted by a mysterious fire. Reading “I AM A MAN,” the sculpture contains the names of all the striking garbage workers whose courage and tenacity ultimately won the day in Memphis. Its message was then and remains now the bottom line.

There is a lesson in this for all of us in these very troubling times.

(My thanks to the National Civil Rights Museum for these images)

 

The Brainchild of the Movement

The Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel provided an excellent historical overview of the movement starting with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that gave the green light to Southern states to erect a pernicious system of Jim Crow.

One of unsung heroes of the movement was Bayard Rustin. He had been raised in a Quaker tradition where he had learned to respect the divine spark within every living being and the duty to speak truth to power. Rustin would spend time in India learning Ghandi’s nonviolent resistance methods which he brought back to America and which then became infused in the movement. The values he helped inculcate there were simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and caring for others.

Rustin was as brilliant strategically as he was deep intellectually and spiritually. A forerunner of Marshall McLuhan, he knew the medium is the message, that music, art and symbols convey messages that words alone cannot. He also recognized that while a passionate speech evoke immediate emotional responses, a well-crafted essay can provoke in-depth analysis and reflection

Rustin was always in the background of the movement. A closeted gay man, his sexuality was seen as a liability to the movement. Stonewall was still years away even as the liberatory impulse the civil rights movement would unleash would eventually come even to the queers (current self designation). America is in the debt of this unsung heroes whose story I came to know better on my visit to the Civil Rights Museum.

(My thanks to the National Civil Rights Museum for these insights and images)

 

 The Mountaintop Almost Missed

The night before Martin Luther King, Jr. was slain, he gave perhaps his most famous sermon known as “The Mountaintop Speech.” Referencing the Hebrew Scripture story of Moses nearing the Promised Land, King said he, too, stood on the mountaintop seeing a new tomorrow for America. Presciently, he would say “I might not get there with you,” much like the Moses YHWH held back as the Israelites, ending their Exodus, poured into a new land. Within hours, King would be dead.

It was perhaps his best speech and it almost did not happen. A crowd had gathered at the Mason Temple that night in the midst of the Garbage Man Strike. They were expecting to hear King but he had had remained at the Loraine Motel to work on some items he felt were pressing.

A terrific storm had arisen that night. But that did not deter the folks of Memphis from coming to hear King. The Mason Temple was full. So King’s associates called him at the Motel and begged King came to the Temple to honor the dedication and devotion of the people who had come to hear him speak.

He had no prepared remarks, speaking extemporaneously, delivering one of America’s most beloved sermons. Today as we stood in front of that Temple, I gave thanks for the brilliance, courage and dedication of America’s prophet.

(My thanks to the National Civil Rights Museum for the photo on the right)

 

When Prophets Become Safe

One of the things that becomes clear as I hear the speeches and sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. is that the constructed icon we have come to worship is a pale imitation of this prophetic figure. King was tapping into the very soul of America with his willingness to speak truth to power: impoverished Black soldiers fighting for their country in Southeast Asia only to return home to fight against that same country unwilling to treat them as first class citizens; a country whose ideals spoke of liberty and Justice for all but whose practices betrayed those ideals with governors standing in school house doors and police chiefs using high pressure fire hoses to blow Black children down the streets of Birmingham.

It’s a lot easier to love saints once we have killed them. We can sanitize them, take the edge off their prophetic words and deeds, reduce them to noble maxims, erect striking sculptures, celebrate designated feast days. We can put them in their place and require them to stay there. At a very fundamental level, we can put them out of our misery.

Out of our guilt, we will idolize them even as our best idolatry can never atone for our sins. But beneath it all, the spirit of the prophet remains, ready to rise in those who take the time to read their impassioned cries for our better angels to make their appearance once again.

At the end our first day on pilgrimage we stood in front of the ruins of the Clayborn Temple, victim of a recent fire of suspicious origins, and heard Valada Flewellyn, our resident poet, read the words of Carl Wendell Hines, Jr. It was a fitting way to end this first day of pilgrimage.

A Dead Man's Dream

Now that he is safely dead,
Let us praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.
Dead men make such convenient heroes.
For they cannot rise to challenge the images That we might fashion from their lives.
It is easier to build monuments Than to build a better world.
So now that he is safely dead, We, with eased consciences will
Teach our children that he was a great man, Knowing that the cause for which he Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died is still a dream.
A dead man's dream.

 

[All images by author except as otherwise noted]

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

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