Remembering Pete Seeger

The following post was written in February of 2014 following the news of Pete Seeger's death. I am re-posting it now during his birthday month (May 3, 1919) to honor a man of vision, integrity, and continuing influence.  ~ CK

Several years ago I wrote a blog essay titled, “How Pete Seeger Taught Me about Forgiveness.” It is one of those blog posts that continues to get hits month after month, then with the news of Pete Seeger’s death at the age of 94, my blog site was inundated with hits. I was glad that so many who were searching the web for information about the folk singer were finding an essay that was so personal and had such meaning to me. That story, which you can read here, related how Seeger’s example helped me as an adult to learn an important life lesson.

A Lifetime of Influence

The fact is that Pete Seeger was influencing my life before I even knew who Pete Seeger was. As a kid, when we were at school or at church and someone decided we all ought to sing a song, someone would usually come out with, “If I had a Hammer.” On the radio, The Byrds were “Turn, Turn, Turn.” At youth camps and retreats we would sing, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” I knew all of these songs without knowing who Pete Seeger was or that he had written those songs. He had an important message to share about what it meant to be alive, what values were important for us to strive for and hold on to. Those values and lessons were being instilled into our minds and into our culture by way of the songs that the folk singer wrote. 

The first time I became aware of Pete Seeger was when I was in the seventh grade and he was a guest on The Smothers Brothers Show. Having been blacklisted from radio and television since the 1950s, that was his first national broadcast TV appearance in my lifetime. I remember him singing "Guantanamera." He also sang a song in protest of the Viet Nam war, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which was censored from the telecast, but Seeger was allowed to come back on a later date to perform it again. His call for peace struck a deep chord with me since I had been living in the shadow of Viet Nam since I was  11 or 12 years of age and would continue to do so until the draft was ended just before my eighteenth birthday. The ideal of peace in our time would remain with me to this day. 

It was my privilege to finally see the folk singer in person back in 1985 when he came to do a benefit concert at Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama. My wife and I attended and it was quite a memorable event. Pete Seeger would have been around 65 and he gave a dynamic performance. I still remember how he turned the entire audience into a choir singing in parts the refrain to "Wimoweh" while he bellowed out those high notes. 

His Social Vision

Many people have been writing this week about the remarkable life that Pete Seeger lived. PBS aired a re-broadcast of “The Power of Song” a beautiful documentary of Seeger’s life.  Arlo Guthrie shared some personal reflections about him with Time Magazine:

Pete had a real vision of what the country was about. He came from a long line of Puritan stock. His family had been in the country a very, very long time, and he had a sense of history. He wasn’t just a scholar of music; he was also a political scholar and a historical scholar. He loved the idealism of a nation founded on the principles he thought were important, and he spread that wherever he went.

I think to be asked about his religion, or about his beliefs, or about his political thoughts, was such an insult to him, because it was insulting to every American. He had a way of taking these personal events in his life and moving them forward so that they included everyone. If it had just affected him, he wouldn’t have said anything; he wouldn’t have written about it; he wouldn’t have made a big deal. But because it affected everyone, he was involved. I think that’s one of the things that motivated him about the environment, the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement. Sometimes he was right; sometimes he was wrong, but he was right most of the time. And he set out to make the country in what he imagined it was meant to be, what it could be. Whatever was going on, he was there because he had a sense of how it impacted everyone. It was not just personal. It was America.

Here is a brief excerpt from a tribute, “Remembering Pete,” by Rich Warren, host of The Midnight Special on WMFT radio in Chicago:

Pete Seeger, singer of folksongs, became the icon of American folk music against his will. He insisted the song was more important than its singer, and the listener was more important than the performer... Pete Seeger: idealist, iconoclast, and inspiration. He welcomed the friendship of anyone who loved music; his humble cabin in Beacon, New York became a gathering place of song. Pete lacked the gorgeous voice of his contemporaries such as Theo Bikel; he may have lacked the banjo and guitar finesse of the many he inspired to take up those instruments; but it was his spirit and his presence; his complete conviction and caring that always carried the day, the movement, and his popularity.

Coincidentally, in the January edition of The Oxford American is an article by Daniel Brook about the Highlander Folk School, a grassroots education center that once existed near Monteagle, Tennessee. It was there that Pete Seeger taught Martin Luther King his version of “We Shall Overcome,” which became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.” 

"An Inconvenient Artist"

Pete Seeger was blacklisted in the wake of the Communist scare during the McCarthy days of congressional hearings back in the 1950s and early 60s. Unable to appear on television or the radio, the folk singer began a career of touring college campuses. Ironically, he had a greater influence there than he might have had if he had remained in the broadcast media. He was highly instrumental in the folk revival that swept the college scene and gave cohesion to the student protests for peace during the 1960s. He was a strong and constant advocate for important social causes that included civil rights, peace, and environmental responsibility. The man who had been feared as a communist sympathizer when he was younger was honored with the National  Medal of the Arts at the age of 75. Upon granting the award, President Bill Clinton called him "an inconvenient artist, who dared to sing things as he saw them." Pete Seeger was a truly remarkable man. May his inspiration and influence continue in the years to come.   

From the film documentary, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song:

“Once upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life? As much as talking, physical exercise and religion, our distant ancestors wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat while another person leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.”

                   ~Pete Seeger

For further reading:

• The Telegraph, always an excellent source of information, has an obituary that includes video clips from some of Pete Seeger’s performances at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10601366/Pete-Seeger-obituary.html
• To see a 2008 interview with the folk singer on the radio program, Thistle & Shamrock, go to   http://www.thistleradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=682:pete-seeger&catid=41:archived-interview-transcripts&Itemid=69
• See Pete Seeger along with his grandson Taos Rodriquez and Arlo Guthrie performing "Wimoweh" at The Wolf Trap at http://notdarkyet-commentary.blogspot.com/2012/10/monday-music-pete-seeger-wimoweh.html
• "Pete Seeger: How can I keep from singing?" By Sarah van Gelder  Folk legend Pete Seeger talks about his life in music and social activism – and the power of making millions of small changes. At http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2014/0131/Pete-Seeger-How-can-I-keep-from-singing
• Pete Seeger In His Own Words, by Pete Seeger (2012) Paradigm Publishers.  “Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn.”

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Film Screening Tonight

Bending the Arc Film Screening

Check it the free event at Eventbrite.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2020

6:30 PM CST

From Bending the Arc website:

Join us for a free virtual film screening of Bending the Arc: The Vote via YouTube. The film is a call to action for all people to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming election.

Bending the Arc: The Vote is a film about the hard-fought battle to expand voting rights to all people in Alabama in the 1960s. Sacrifices made, lives lost, obstacles overcome, and the need to continue the fight. The film is a call to action for all people to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming election.

 

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Growing Up Under Southern Apartheid -- Bending the Arc

Bending the Arc

I am in the midst of writing my memories of growing up in the segregated South. For an index of what I have written so far in Southern Apartheid, go here. I will be taking a brief hiatus in these postings, but I will return in the near future with more recollections.

The reason I began my Southern Apartheid series is that while my upbringing in the South was full of idyllic moments, I had a very limited understanding at the time of the world that Black people lived in. They cooked and cleaned for white people –even raised white folk's children, but they were kept under control by tactics of terror. There were enough beatings and lynchings that were ignored by the legal system, and enough incidents of black people being "accidentally hit" by cars as they walked down the road to act as a warning to anyone who dared to challenge the system.

As fate would have it, I just learned that two of my friends from the Birmingham Unitarian Universalist Church in Birmingham have a film project addressing the dystopian environment of terror and suppression that existed here in the South for Black people at the same time that I was spending my carefree childhood years. Pam Powell and David Brower have produced a film, Bending the Arc: The Vote “about the hard-fought battle to expand voting rights to all people in Alabama in the 1960s. Sacrifices made, lives lost, obstacles overcome, and the need to continue the fight.” 

To learn more about the Bending the Arc Project and upcoming films in the mini-series, please visit the Bending the Arc website bendingthearctojustice.com

Check out the trailer below:

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Growing Up under Southern Apartheid, Part 10

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The Last Work Song

My family moved to Jackson’s Gap, Alabama around the time I turned six. It was a small rural community, known as “The Gap” to folks living around there. Small farms were scattered throughout the county where textile mills had become the major source of employment. For my family, it was a move from town to country and my world changed from small-town sidewalks to creek banks and woods. 

Our small house at the Gap was flanked by a pasture on one side and woodlands on another. In front of our house, just across the road lived a black couple who were our nearest neighbors. If you walked down that road just a little piece, you would pass Mr. Wilson’s fish pond just before you got to the site of the old train depot. The train no longer stopped there but the old folks remembered when you could catch the train and go down to Opelika or you could go in the other direction to Alexander City. There remained only a cement platform where the small train station had once been. 

Watching Trains

The one activity that still occurred at the old depot site was mail pickup and delivery. The postmaster would go down every morning before the nine o’clock passenger train came through. He would hoist a canvas bag of outgoing mail on a chain that ran up a pole beside the tracks. When the train came by, someone on the train would swing out a hook to grab the bag of mail. Simultaneously, a canvas bag containing incoming mail would be tossed from the train onto the ground. The postmaster would then pick up the bag of mail and take it to the post office to be sorted and delivered. 

The quiet of my childhood home on the hill by the woods was disrupted only by the routine passing of the trains. When we had first moved there, the midnight train would jar me from my sleep as it barreled through blowing its horn, “whining low” as Hank Williams described it in song. In a short time, I grew accustomed to the sound of the trains as they passed through. 

There were freight trains: the Georgia Pacific and the L & N were two of the lines that came through; and there were passenger trains, sleek and black with a red line along the side. The passenger train came through twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. I enjoyed watching them pass by, rumbling down the tracks.

On one memorable day, it was a different sound down by the old depot that got my attention. It must have been around 1963 or 1964. I would have been 9 or 10 years old when I heard the nineteenth-century echoes of rhythm and harmony that lasted into the night. 

What I heard was a loud and robust men’s chorus chanting songs along the railway. It was not the sweet strains of a church choir, which was where I normally heard songs being sung, but it was bracing and compelling. My father took me down to see what was happening. Down by the old train depot, we saw a crew of Black men laying new rail along the tracks. They were singing songs I had never heard before, but the sounds seemed to go directly to my chest and made something stand up on the inside. It was the first and only time I had seen men singing together while they worked. 

My father told me that the singing was a tradition that went back to the old plantation days when slaves would sing in the fields. When doing hard physical labor, that singing helped to keep them going, my dad said. The pounding of a hammer or the chopping of a hoe might become the beat of a song, and the song kept them together with their work. Much later in life, I would learn that musicologists classified the songs we heard as “negro prison work songs.” I would also learn that the railroad employed Black work crews that they could dispatch for such labor-intensive projects. 

Black workers on the B & O Railroad line

A New Day Ahead

That vivid work song memory has remained with me as a briefly opened door to the past. Perhaps I was witnessing one of the last remnants of the Old South. Even though Brown v. the Board of Education had been settled by the Supreme Court in 1954, it had yet to have an impact in our community – or even in our state, for that matter. As I stood on that summer evening listening to the Black men singing songs that could be heard in the distance from our front porch, I had no inkling of the drastic social changes that would soon be headed down the line. 

The bus boycott in Montgomery had been the first wave of unrest. My parents would have known about it, but I, of course, had no knowledge or understanding of the unrest that would soon erupt. Cities like Selma and Birmingham were tinderboxes ready to explode, but it would take a little longer for change to arrive in small rural communities like Jackson’s Gap. 

As I continued to watch the trains go by throughout my childhood years, I noticed with each passing year that the numbers of passengers grew smaller and smaller. I was witnessing the nation’s shift in traveling habits as train use declined. In the end, the passenger lines stopped. They would be replaced by Amtrak, but not on these lines; not in Jackson’s Gap. By the time I finished high school those sleek black trains with the red stripe along the side were no more. 

The railway lines were fading, as were the sounds of those work songs that had pierced the night so many years before. It would soon become a distant memory – as if the turning of a page could instantly place a child’s memory into a past era. While cities across the country would erupt in violence, we would quietly hunker down to greet the new day with varying degrees of resistance and acceptance. 

We were neighbors, after all, Black and white. We knew everybody’s dog and saw each other's backyard clothesline. We would all find ways to navigate the new rules of the day, and somewhere in my being I would retain the strains of those work songs that made something stand up on the inside>  

< Part 9, Learning to Read and Other Important Things              Index >

________________                                                                                                                   

Photos Credits:

Upper: Illinois Central's train 25, the "Southern Express", an all stops local from Chicago to New Orleans is seen passing through Fraser on the north side of Memphis on Oct. 02, 1965.

Bill White Photo. Collection of Phil Gosney. (See Illinois Central Passenger Trains, Memphis, TN)

Middle: "African-American track workers labored long, hard hours. They were known as 'gandy dancers' and used rhythmic songs and chants to maintain motion and unity necessary to move sections of rail, hammer spikes, and perform other back-breaking labor to build our nation’s rails." (Photo and quote from B & O Railroad Museum, found on Pinterest.)

Lower: "Autumn Leave on Railroad Tracks" (Getty Images)

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Growing Up under Southern Apartheid (Part 1)

   The body of Rep. John Lewis crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. via horse-drawn carriage (photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

I grew up in small-town and rural Alabama. In 1978, I left the South to attend seminary in Mill Valley, California. One afternoon, in a casual conversation with a few classmates (we must have been going out to eat somewhere), I mentioned nostalgically that when I was a kid, our maid made the best cornbread – it was better than my mother’s recipe. One of my classmates who hailed from Arizona was astounded by my comment.

“Is your family rich?” he asked.

“Far from it,” I said. I then tried to explain to him how it was common in the South for even low-income families to hire maids from the Black community to help with housework. At that point, I realized that I was speaking of an era that had passed and I was trying to explain it to a person whose life experience gave him no frame of reference for what I was talking about.

The Long Shadow of Jim Crow

The Jim Crow South, in reaction to the Post-Civil War Reconstruction, set the legal stage for racial segregation and continued oppression of Blacks in a post-slavery society. When I was born in 1954 in Montgomery, Alabama, Jim Crow laws had been firmly established by the state’s 1901 Constitution and by local laws and ordinances throughout the state. Society was every bit as separated as South Africa’s apartheid government*.

My father was a pastor, and my mother a school teacher. Because of my father’s vocation, we moved about every five years, so my childhood was spent in Wedowee, Jackson’s Gap, and Dadeville. Since there were four of us kids and with my mother working as a high school English teacher, my parents often employed a maid to help with the cleaning and cooking. It was the expectation that respectable white women were able to find help as they managed the household. “Help,” of course, was the term used for maid service, always a woman from the Black community. The Black community was referred to in those days  as  “the colored quarters,” or simply, “the quarters.” Looking back, I am sure that term, quarters, harked back to the days of slave quarters on the plantation.

Often the maid would have to be picked up from her house and returned at the end of her workday. My father was usually the one to pick up the maid. Sometimes he would ask if I wanted to ride with him to take the maid home, which I always did if asked. It was the same as, "Do you want to ride with me while I run to the store?" (or to the post office, etc.). Those trips to take the maid home were a part of my social education. I witnessed the difference in living conditions. Some roads were unpaved, houses were unpainted shacks. The poverty was apparent. Children were often barefoot and in torn clothing. Dogs ran loose and were often thin and hungry-looking (I remember feeling sorry for the children and the dogs). 

As children, we would naturally ask why these people lived the way they did. Usually, the answer would be something along the lines of, “They are poor, uneducated, they don’t know how to do any better.” Sometimes there would be the implication that we were helping them out by offering them employment.

Unease about the Future

There is one thing I remember about those trips into the quarters, and I remember it in my gut – it was the uncomfortable feeling that when I grew up, it would be my job to go into the Black community to pick up the maid. As a child, I envisioned that life would go on as is, and I was not sure how I would manage that particular adult role. I tried not to think about it too much and I would return to my childhood activities once we came back home. Growing up would come another day.

As our nation mourns the loss of Congressman John Lewis who did so much to remove those Jim Crow laws that kept Blacks oppressed, I am taking some time on my blog to recall what those days were like in Alabama before this son of sharecroppers from Troy, Alabama helped to bring about a new era.

                                                                                                         Part 2: What's in a Name?>

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* (Apartheid: an Afrikaans term meaning "apartness") South Africa’s apartheid government was established in 1948 and was brought to an end in 1993. For a brief article by Morgan Winsor comparing Apartheid & Jim Crow, go here.

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Songs of Social Consciousness: A Change Is Gonna Come (Sam Cooke)

"It's been a long time comin', but I know a change is gonna come." Sam Cooke's recording was released in 1964. His clear, plaintive cry epitomized the civil rights movement which was coming into full flower.

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Not Dark Yet: 1967 Interview with Martin Luther King

In 1967, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King spoke with NBC News' Sander Vanocur about the "new phase" of the struggle for "genuine equality." King speaks of how it is much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to ensure equitable pay or social equality. "Human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually rationalizing that wrong."

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Friends Writing Good Books: Chervis Isom

Chervis Isom
(Photo from author's website)

I met Chervis Isom one summer a few years back at the Alabama Writers' Conclave. We struck up a friendship and had some nice discussions in between conference sessions. Since that time we have met periodically for lively discussions about writing, living in the South, and life in general. His book, The Newspaper Boy, came out in 2014, and I wrote a review in July of that year. It is a story about “Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights era.”  I found the book to be engaging, informative, and instructive on many levels.

I mentioned in my review that  "I learned important details about how local government was structured, and how speeches by a rabble-rousing Ace Carter of the White Citizens Council revved up the populace in an attempt to preserve segregation." In fact, when Donald Trump was first gaining momentum in the presidential race, I immediately saw some similarities between his campaign and Ace Carter's demagoguery in Birmingham during the 1950s. I contacted Cheris for his input and observations on today's political climate and wrote about that in another blog post earlier this year.

Here is the review I shared in July of 2014:

 

The Newspaper Boy: A Memoir that Looks into the Heart of a City 

 

I just finished reading a very important book. The Newspaper Boy, by Chervis Isom, is a well-written and entertaining memoir, subtitled, “Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights era.” I first met Chervis a few years ago at the Alabama Writers’ Conclave and have always enjoyed my conversations with him. When news of his book came out, I was eager to get a copy.

The Newspaper Boy is fascinating on several different levels. It is delightful and engaging as a story about a boy growing up in a working class family, going to school, discovering girls, and getting his first job delivering papers. It is also an important first-hand account of an historical time in the city of Birmingham. I have written before on this blog about civil rights and growing up in the Deep South under the apartheid of racial segregation, but in reading Chervis Isom’s memoir, I gained a much clearer picture of what was happening in Birmingham during those days leading up to the civil rights movement. I learned important details about how local government was structured, and how speeches by a rabble-rousing Ace Carter of the White Citizens Council revved up the populace in an attempt to preserve segregation. I also learned about the important work of some open-minded civic leaders such as David Vann and Abraham Berkowitz.

It was inspiring for me to read about how an ordinary young fellow growing up in a society steeped in racism began to question a way of life that had once been accepted without question. It is a story about being able to listen to another point of view and thereby beginning a slow process of change. It is a story about how a liberal arts education can propel a young college student to approach life with a much broader view. It is a story about quietly finding liberation from the shackles of cultural ignorance.

For more information about this important book, you can visit the author’s website for The Newspaper Boy at http://www.thenewspaperboy.net . To read a very fine interview with the author in Weld, go here. For another review of the book, go here. The Newspaper Boy is a thoughtful reflection of a life lived during times of change. It is also a book that is important for our time as we face new hopes and challenges for building a city that works for the benefit of all.

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Sharrif Simmons Offers a Poem for Birmingham

From an article in AL.com :

"Simmons is a musician, spoken-word poet and cultural organizer, and he's used those art forms to influence Birmingham, his adopted hometown. In "A More Perfect Union," the native New Yorker speaks to the city's past and present while encouraging an ever-brighter future."

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Monday Music: A Change is Gonna Come

The plaintive hope of Sam Cooke

From "Sam Cook and the Song that Almost Scared Him" on NPR:

"A Change Is Gonna Come" is now much more than a civil rights anthem. It's become a universal message of hope, one that does not age.

"Generation after generation has heard the promise of it. It continues to be a song of enormous impact," he says. "We all feel in some way or another that a change is gonna come, and he found that lyric. It was the kind of hook that he always looked for: The phrase that was both familiar but was striking enough that it would have its own originality. And that makes it almost endlessly adaptable to whatever goal, whatever movement is of the moment."

The General, The Mayor, and The Dalai Lama

Birmingham Celebrates Human Rights Week

Last weekend, the city of Birmingham was privileged to host His Holiness the Dalai Lama for its celebration of  Human Rights Week.  A few months ago, when my wife and I first heard that the Dalai Lama would be coming to town, we were elated by the news. So much of the news about politics, whether local or national, is filled with negativity and discord, but sometimes things can go very right when leaders come together to make them happen.

Gen. Charles Krulak 

(photo by Tom Coiner)

Some of the credit for the good news in town must go to General Charles Krulak, president of Birmingham-Southern College. In 2011, the retired U.S. Marine Corps general became president of one of the top academic institutions in the state that had recently been rocked by financial mismanagement. The school was located in a city that had been dubbed The Magic City back in it’s heyday, but in recent decades had found itself in the doldrums as a result of white flight and a fading steel industry. The city of Birmingham has made many attempts to get its footing and has seen many ideas fail, such as a professional football team, a horse-racing track, a water theme-park, and recurrent talk of a domed stadium – all attempts at making a good name for the city, but none ever getting off the ground.

As it turned out, the General came to town with hope for the college and a vision for the city. He looked around the town, saw its assets and  offered  a challenge to the people to invest in their city, embrace its human rights history, and make the city a place to celebrate. In a 2012 op ed piece “Birmingham should embrace its human rights history” which appeared in The Birmingham News, Krulak wrote:  

No matter your political persuasion, the simple fact is that without Birmingham, there would not have been an African-American president or an African-American national security adviser. Without Birmingham, there are many other men and women of different races, different religions and different cultures who would not have the opportunities they have today. To fail to embrace our rightful role in the history of human rights is to do ourselves a grave disservice.

General Krulak enumerated the tangible as well as the intangible assets that the city has to offer and expressed the hope that we might “come together as a Birmingham that embraces its past and uses that past as a springboard to a bright future.” He mentioned “The Freedom Trail” that he had seen in Philadelphia and proposed that Birmingham could do something similar to present itself as the birthplace of human rights.

(Photo: Courtesy of Greater Birmingham 

Convention & Visitors Bureau)

True to the General’s challenge, the city of Birmingham developed the Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail in 2013 as part of its celebration of the 50^th anniversary the civil rights struggle in Birmingham. Also following through with Gen. Krulak's advice, we have just witnessed the celebration of Human Rights Week in our city. It is little wonder that The Vulcans recently honored General Krulak with an award as “Birmingham’s most influential newcomer.”

Meanwhile, Mayor William Bell was at work to highlight Human Rights Week by inviting His Holiness the Dalai Lama to come to Birmingham. In preparation for the event, the Mayor met with the Dalai Lama at a conference in Kyoto, Japan. A news article quoted the mayor who drove home the theme of Human Rights: 

"It was a great honor to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama and discuss our shared legacy of Human Rights," Bell said in a statement released today. "Birmingham continues to establish herself as the cradle of Human Rights for the United States. The peaceful protest model first established here has been used around the world to enact real and significant change."

Office of Tibet Photo

His Holiness mentioned their meeting in Japan when he spoke to the public at Regions Field. “We met in Japan when you asked me to please come to your city.” Earlier, the Dalai Lama, had joked about their titles. Though a man with a serious message, he is also adept at using humor to make a point. He made light of his own title, saying people tend to think, “Oh, he is the Dalai Lama, somebody holy and special, when I am just human being like you. If I think too much that I am Dalai Lama, I create for myself a prison.” He then referred to Mayor Bell as “The Lord Mayor,” and said that if any of us think too much about titles, we create our own prison.

My hat is off to the General and to the Mayor for their vision for the city, and to the Dalai Lama for his vision for the world. It was indeed a remarkable thing for the mayor Bell to bring His Holiness the Dalai Lama to town to bring a message of peace. Such a weekend, attended by thousands and viewed live on the internet by many more thousands, can help us see that it truly is not dark yet. 

There were four main events during the Dalai Lama’s visit. He went to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of the 1963 bombing, on Friday night. On Saturday Morning, he met academics at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where neurological research was discussed in a scientific symposium, “Neuroplasty and Healing.” Then on Sunday morning, His Holiness met with other religious leaders at The Alabama Theater for discussion and dialogue. The event was billed as “Beyond Belief - an Interfaith Discussion.”  The final event “Secular Ethics in Our Time” was held at Birmingham’s Regions Field on Sunday afternoon. My family and I were able to attend event at Regions Field and it was truly one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Tomorrow I will talk about what the Dalai Lama said.

Photo by Joe Songer at AL.com

Three of the events have been archived on video and are available for viewing:

•  Scientific symposium at UAB “Neuroplasty and Healing” at  http://www.uab.edu/dalailama/
• “Beyond Belief - an Interfaith Discussion” at  http://new.livestream.com/dalailamabirmingham/10-26-14/videos/66288549
• “Secular Ethics in our Time” at http://new.livestream.com/dalailamabirmingham/10-26-14/videos/66183719

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The Newspaper Boy: A Memoir that Looks into the Heart of a City

I just finished reading a very important book. The Newspaper Boy, by Chervis Isom, is a well-written and entertaining memoir, subtitled, “Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights era.” I first met Chervis a few years ago at the Alabama Writers’ Conclave and have always enjoyed my conversations with him. When news of his book came out, I was eager to get a copy.

The Newspaper Boy is fascinating on several different levels. It is delightful and engaging as a story about a boy growing up in a working class family, going to school, discovering girls, and getting his first job delivering papers. It is also an important first-hand account of an historical time in the city of Birmingham. I have written before on this blog about civil rights and growing up in the Deep South under the apartheid of racial segregation, but in reading Chervis Isom’s memoir, I gained a much clearer picture of what was happening in Birmingham during those days leading up to the civil rights movement. I learned important details about how local government was structured, and how speeches by a rabble-rousing Ace Carter of the White Citizens Council revved up the populace in an attempt to preserve segregation. I also learned about the important work of some open-minded civic leaders such as David Vann and Abraham Berkowitz.

It was inspiring for me to read about how an ordinary young fellow growing up in a society steeped in racism began to question a way of life that had once been accepted without question. It is a story about being able to listen to another point of view and thereby beginning a slow process of change. It is a story about how a liberal arts education can propel a young college student to approach life with a much broader view. It is a story about quietly finding liberation from the shackles of cultural ignorance.

For more information about this important book, you can visit the author’s website for The Newspaper Boy at http://www.thenewspaperboy.net . To read a very fine interview with the author in Weld, go here. For another review of the book, go here. The Newspaper Boy is a thoughtful reflection of a life lived during times of change. It is also a book that is important for our time as we face new hopes and challenges for building a city that works for the benefit of all.

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Religious Freedom, or Bigotry and Discrimination?

Yesterday, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona vetoed a “Religious Freedom” bill that would have allowed businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community on the basis of religious beliefs (Arizona SB 1062, which became known as the anti-gay bill). The governor wisely observed that she saw nothing in the bill that had to do with religious freedom, stating that it “does not address a specific concern relating to religious liberty.” She reminded her constituents that the state had stood for religious values, but also stood in support of non-discrimination. It was a wonderful return to sanity after a long series of politically regressive legislation in various fields across the country. It is unfortunate that we have seen many people use the cloak of religious freedom to justify their own bigotry and hatred.

That Course Was Charted Before

I have witnessed first-hand the subtle, and not-so-subtle, use of religious values to justify hatred and prejudice. I am a product of public education, having entered public school in 1961 at the age of six, and continuing until 1973 when I graduated from high school. All of my public education occurred in “the heart of Dixie” as the state of Alabama proudly proclaims of itself. I saw the struggles for civil rights on television while listening to adults lament the sad state of affairs in which the government would impose racial integration upon the fine citizens of our state. It was no coincidence that a plethora of Christian private schools sprung up across the South in the 1970s when full integration of public schools was finally achieved, almost 20 years after Brown v.  Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court.

I also witnessed the spin that Christian private schools put on their mission statements. Their primary claim was that “God had been taken out of the public schools,” citing the removal of prayer in schools and the teaching of evolution instead of creationism. Being a somewhat observant high school student, I couldn’t help noticing the actual progression of events that motivated the establishment of so many “Christian academies” throughout the South.

First of all, there is the matter of teaching evolution in schools. The landmark court case that established the ability of schools to freely teach accepted science was, of course, the Scopes Trial in 1925. It became clear from that time on that schools could not disallow the teaching of scientific theory on the basis of religious belief. By the time I entered public school, it was well established that science textbooks in public schools included the theory of evolution. Religious conservatives did not like this turn of events, but they were not motivated to create their own school system.

Next, fast forward to 1963 when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not force students to participate in prescribed public prayer. Religious conservatives were upset by the removal of prayer from schools, they railed against the notion, but they were not motivated to create their own school system. Even though many religious leaders were shocked by the Supreme Court decision regarding prayer in schools, and many were upset by the increasing "secularization" of society as evidenced by the ascendancy of science and the teaching of evolution in the classroom, there was little movement toward the establishment of church-based schools at the elementary or high school level.

Within a few more years, however, racial segregation was no longer allowed in public schools. It was a tumultuous time in the South, but it was also difficult across the country. My state became infamous for the image of Governor George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent the admission of black students.  In my hometown, integration was phased in from 1967 to 1971. Suddenly, religious conservatives became motivated to create their own private schools. They would claim a return to God and sacred values to be their raison d'être. The timing, however, was indisputable. It was, in fact, racial integration in public schools that spurred the sudden rise in private schools across the South.   

Can We Learn from the Past?

Today, we are seeing yet again the use of religion to justify bigotry and hatred. It is distressing to see religion joining hands with hate more readily than siding with justice. Religion, after all, is only as good as those who practice it. There is healthy religion which calls us to a higher path of love, compassion and social justice; and there is unhealthy religion which encourages us to stay where we are comfortable and cast stones at anyone who is not part of our particular group.

Thankfully, Arizona has backed away from legalizing bigotry and has not allowed hatred cloaked as religion to hold sway. There are yet other states which are considering similar discriminatory bills. Perhaps the time has come for good people to say no to the voices of hate. 

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Remembering Pete Seeger

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog essay titled, “How Pete Seeger Taught Me about Forgiveness.” It was one of those blog posts that continued to get hits month after month, then with the news of Pete Seeger’s death at the age of 94, my blog site was inundated with hits. I was glad that so many who were searching the web for information about the folk singer were finding an essay that was so personal and had such meaning to me. That story, which you can read here, related how Seeger’s example helped me as an adult to learn an important life lesson.

A Lifetime of Influence

The fact is that Pete Seeger was influencing my life before I even knew who Pete Seeger was. As a kid, when we were at school or at church and someone decided we all ought to sing a song, someone would usually come out with, “If I had a Hammer.” On the radio, The Byrds were “Turn, Turn, Turn.” At youth camps and retreats we would sing, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” I knew all of these songs without knowing who Pete Seeger was or that he had written those songs. He had an important message to share about what it meant to be alive, what values were important for us to strive for and hold on to. Those values and lessons were being instilled into our minds and into our culture by way of the songs that the folk singer wrote. 

The first time I became aware of Pete Seeger was when I was in the seventh grade and he was a guest on The Smothers Brothers Show. Having been blacklisted from radio and television since the 1950s, that was his first national broadcast TV appearance in my lifetime. I remember him singing "Guantanamera." He also sang a song in protest of the Viet Nam war, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which was censored from the telecast, but Seeger was allowed to come back on a later date to perform it again. His call for peace struck a deep chord with me since I had been living in the shadow of Viet Nam since I was  11 or 12 years of age and would continue to do so until the draft was ended just before my eighteenth birthday. The ideal of peace in our time would remain with me to this day. 

It was my privilege to finally see the folk singer in person back in 1985 when he came to do a benefit concert at Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama. My wife and I attended and it was quite a memorable event. Pete Seeger would have been around 65 and he gave a dynamic performance. I still remember how he turned the entire audience into a choir singing in parts the refrain to "Wimoweh" while he bellowed out those high notes. 

His Social Vision

Many people have been writing this week about the remarkable life that Pete Seeger lived. PBS aired a re-broadcast of “The Power of Song” a beautiful documentary of Seeger’s life.  Arlo Guthrie shared some personal reflections about him with Time Magazine:

Pete had a real vision of what the country was about. He came from a long line of Puritan stock. His family had been in the country a very, very long time, and he had a sense of history. He wasn’t just a scholar of music; he was also a political scholar and a historical scholar. He loved the idealism of a nation founded on the principles he thought were important, and he spread that wherever he went.

I think to be asked about his religion, or about his beliefs, or about his political thoughts, was such an insult to him, because it was insulting to every American. He had a way of taking these personal events in his life and moving them forward so that they included everyone. If it had just affected him, he wouldn’t have said anything; he wouldn’t have written about it; he wouldn’t have made a big deal. But because it affected everyone, he was involved. I think that’s one of the things that motivated him about the environment, the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement. Sometimes he was right; sometimes he was wrong, but he was right most of the time. And he set out to make the country in what he imagined it was meant to be, what it could be. Whatever was going on, he was there because he had a sense of how it impacted everyone. It was not just personal. It was America.

Here is a brief excerpt from a tribute, “Remembering Pete,” by Rich Warren, host of The Midnight Special on WMFT radio in Chicago:

Pete Seeger, singer of folksongs, became the icon of American folk music against his will. He insisted the song was more important than its singer, and the listener was more important than the performer... Pete Seeger: idealist, iconoclast, and inspiration. He welcomed the friendship of anyone who loved music; his humble cabin in Beacon, New York became a gathering place of song. Pete lacked the gorgeous voice of his contemporaries such as Theo Bikel; he may have lacked the banjo and guitar finesse of the many he inspired to take up those instruments; but it was his spirit and his presence; his complete conviction and caring that always carried the day, the movement, and his popularity.

Coincidentally, in the January edition of The Oxford American is an article by Daniel Brook about the Highlander Folk School, a grassroots education center that once existed near Monteagle, Tennessee. It was there that Pete Seeger taught Martin Luther King his version of “We Shall Overcome,” which became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.” 

"An Inconvenient Artist"

Pete Seeger was blacklisted in the wake of the Communist scare during the McCarthy days of congressional hearings back in the 1950s and early 60s. Unable to appear on television or the radio, the folk singer began a career of touring college campuses. Ironically, he had a greater influence there than he might have had if he had remained in the broadcast media. He was highly instrumental in the folk revival that swept the college scene and gave cohesion to the student protests for peace during the 1960s. He was a strong and constant advocate for important social causes that included civil rights, peace, and environmental responsibility. The man who had been feared as a communist sympathizer when he was younger was honored with the National  Medal of the Arts at the age of 75. Upon granting the award, President Bill Clinton called him "an inconvenient artist, who dared to sing things as he saw them." Pete Seeger was a truly remarkable man. May his inspiration and influence continue in the years to come.   

From the film documentary, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song:

“Once upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life? As much as talking, physical exercise and religion, our distant ancestors wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat while another person leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.”

                   ~Pete Seeger

For further reading:

• The Telegraph, always an excellent source of information, has an obituary that includes video clips from some of Pete Seeger’s performances at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10601366/Pete-Seeger-obituary.html
• To see a 2008 interview with the folk singer on the radio program, Thistle & Shamrock, go to   http://www.thistleradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=682:pete-seeger&catid=41:archived-interview-transcripts&Itemid=69
• See Pete Seeger along with his grandson Taos Rodriquez and Arlo Guthrie performing "Wimoweh" at The Wolf Trap at http://notdarkyet-commentary.blogspot.com/2012/10/monday-music-pete-seeger-wimoweh.html
• "Pete Seeger: How can I keep from singing?" By Sarah van Gelder  Folk legend Pete Seeger talks about his life in music and social activism – and the power of making millions of small changes. At http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2014/0131/Pete-Seeger-How-can-I-keep-from-singing
• Pete Seeger In His Own Words, by Pete Seeger (2012) Paradigm Publishers.  “Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn.”

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