A blast email Debi and I wrote for Sundays@6, our online adult faith formation group at Peace Lutheran Church, Springfield, for the seventh session of a book study on “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism” by Jemar Tisby. In it I quoted a 1958 editorial by Ralph McGill, an editor of The Atlanta Constitution who was one of my heroes and a role models (I hope!) when I first started newspapering. I like to archive emails and other ephemera on my blogs — call them electronic filing cabinets, if you will — and this one I wanted to keep. I also added some of my thoughts on
This week we’re reading Chapter 7 of “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism” by Jemar Tisby. It’s a reminder that racism existed — and continues to exist — throughout our culture, not just in the South. “Though it would be far simpler to relegate racism to a single region such as the South as the historic site of slavery and the Confederacy, this is simply not possible,” says Tisby. “The truth,” he adds, “is far more complicated.”
We have reminders of that in Springfield, where the 1908 race riot and lynching in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown horrified people nationwide and led to the formation (in New York) of the NAACP. It’s worthy of notice that a wealthy white businessman narrowly escaped lynching himself when he spirited two Black men out of town his motorcar; the car, a rarity in Springfield in 1908, and his restaurant on Fifth Street were destroyed. […] Wikipedia has a detailed account at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_race_riot_of_1908.
Things were complicated, or nuanced, in the South too. When the recently integrated high school in Pete’s county seat was bombed in 1958, during the same weekend as a Jewish temple in Atlanta, editor Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution noted that a group calling itself the Confederate Underground claimed responsibility for the Temple bombing. (If you saw “Driving Miss Daisy,” it was the synagogue that Jessica Tandy’s character attended.) McGill wrote:
The Confederacy and the men who led it are revered by millions. Its leaders returned to the Union and urged that the future be committed to building a stronger America. This was particularly true of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Time after time he urged his students at Washington University to forget the War Between the States and to help build a greater and stronger union.
But for too many years now we have seen the Confederate flag and the emotions of that great war become the property of men not fit to tie the shoes of those who fought for it. Some of these have been merely childish and immature. Others have perverted and commercialized the flag by making the Stars and Bars, and the Confederacy itself, a symbol of hate and bombings. (https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/denunciation-1958-terrorist-act-still-relevant-today/vNcpDVZ5E0KT7Mkm4YDiQK/).
The truth, as Jemar Tisby says, can be complicated. McGill could believe in the Southern “Lost Cause,” as he obviously did, and still stand up against racism. People can harbor conflicting emotions, and we’re all saints and sinners at the same time.
Links, Citations and Further Reading
Ralph McGill, “A Church, a School …” (Oct. 12, 1958), reprinted in “Denunciation of 1958 Atlanta Temple bombing still relevant today,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct 29, 2018 https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/denunciation-1958-terrorist-act-still-relevant-today/vNcpDVZ5E0KT7Mkm4YDiQK/.
“Ralph McGill: American Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist and Publisher,” biographical introduction to his lecture “The emerging South: Politics and issues,” May 17, 1967, Landon Lecture Series, Kansas State University, Manhattan https://www.k-state.edu/landon/speakers/ralph-mcgill/.
“Ralph McGill of The Atlanta (GA) Constitution,” The 1959 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Editorial Writing, Pulitzer Prizes https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ralph-mcgill.
Leonard Teel, “Ralph McGill,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Apr 14, 2021. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/ralph-mcgill-1898-1969/.
“The Temple Featured in Driving Miss Daisy,” The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St. NE
Atlanta https://www.the-temple.org/driving-miss-daisy.
Wikipedia: A More Perfect Union (speech), Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple bombing, Requiem for a Nun, Springfield Race Riot of 1908, Worldview
[Uplinked April 1, 2024]
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