I don’t feel like looking it up … was it Chicken Little, Henny Penny or the Little Red Hen, who finally said , “...then, I’ll do it myself,” when none of the other farm animals agreed to step up to plant and harvest the seeds necessary to produce the food they all needed?
Something like that just took place two weeks ago in Columbia, SC, when three major black religious denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal (AME), the AME Zion and the Christian Methodist Episcopal, joined to convene “The Great Gathering.” The event was designed to address the disparities that exist between African Americans and “Mainstream America” and to focus specifically on the problems that impact young black men.
The churches, collectively, claim five million members, and more than 5,000 people attended the event – far less than the average NFL game attendance, but way more, perhaps, than the average 76ers game.
It was the first time that these large black denominations had come together for a single purpose since 1964, when they decided that rampant segregation and discrimination had gone on for far too long in this country and decided to join in the effort to defeat them.
In recent years, quite frankly, the black church has seemed to be largely removed from what has been going on outside of their congregations and from the plight of the national black community. While some have clearly done good things, on the whole, they’ve given the impression that they are now more focused on building "mega-churches" and looking within themselves, and have become largely invisible on critical national issues, unless they happen to be invited to meetings by politicians who create funding sources, or who seek their endorsements.
To complicate all of this, in recent years, conditions have worsened to the point wherein the term “black community” automatically brings to mind, for most Americans, an image of joblessness, poor education, drug addiction, incarceration and abject failure. We do, of course, have a segment of our community that has risen, as a result of access provided during the Civil Rights era, to hold corporate positions, public office, impressive academic degrees and to own fine homes, but they are in the distinct minority.
It’s not as if the black folks who have been catching all of the “bad breaks” have been unaware of what has been going on around them. Indeed, they have seen, first-hand, the doors of economic opportunity being closed to them.
They have also wondered why, since "Brown vs. Board of Education," children in private schools and suburban schools are able to receive high-quality educations from high- caliber teachers, while schools in their own communities are perennially under-resourced and left to operate without the very best teachers available.
They see their young people being incarcerated at a rate that is 8-to-10 times greater than the rate for whites, who commit the same non-violent crimes.
They wonder why a country which has one of the very highest, global murder rates and, certainly, one of the highest rates of death by hand guns, still permits arms manufacturers to pump their guns into their neighborhoods, contributing significantly to all of the mayhem.
They know that their neighborhoods weren’t always like this, and that, prior to the onset of drugs, guns, and excessively high incarceration rates, beginning in the late 60’s and early 70’s, black communities were neighborly. They know that most black folks, going all the way back to slavery, had jobs and, they know that we, too, left our doors open, back then, so that friends and neighbors could come and go as they wanted.
But when we began to see our “black world” spin out of control, we began to seek outside assistance and support.
We joined the national civil rights organizations, we registered to vote, we joined churches, we elected mayors, councilpeople, congressional representatives, state office holders – many of whom were now black... We even voted, almost unanimously, for a new, "black president." And, then, we waited, naively, for the “insanity" to be reversed.
Somehow, none of that has worked for us.
Perhaps most disturbingly, in recent weeks, we’ve seen that our “national black leaders” have developed a curious, new inability to say the word “black,” or to represent our specific concerns.
With all of that as background, it was reassuring to see the Great Gathering take place. It was a sign that there still is a large, powerful institution, somewhere in this country, that is committed to helping us to address the problems, on the ground, in our neighborhoods.
At the conclusion of the Great Gathering, the organizers produced a 28-page document, which they called the Male Investment Plan. They also agreed to raise $10 million and to recruit one million volunteers to address, the special plight of black males between the ages of 5 and 25. In addition, they agreed to establish a series of Saturday Academies at AME, CME and AMEZ congregations nationwide, to develop working partnerships with HBCU’s and to create effective mentorships for the young men.
It sounded very good. I have confidence that now that we understand that these other, political interests are largely uncommitted to addressing our issues, we’re finally on the right track, like the Little Red Hen, in "doing it ourselves."
Interestingly, even though some early slaveholders believed that Christianity was a way to exercise social control over their slaves and to remind them that the “meek shall inherent the earth,” some of the most forceful black leaders back then were also very religious people. In fact, Nat Turner, who led the famous slave revolt in Virginia, in 1831, was widely known, among blacks and whites, as a deeply religious and spiritual person. Denmark Vesey, whose own slave revolt included a plan to seize the city of Charleston, SC, also established a branch of the AME church in his state, in 1816. In addition, the great Harriett Tubman, abolitionist, Union spy during the Civil War, and Underground Railroad leader, was actually a member of the Thompson Memorial AME Church of Zion in Auburn, NY, in her later years.
Unless we forget, Martin Luther King, Leon Sullivan and Malcolm X were also religious leaders. In the same vein, I am extraordinarily excited to see what these, new 21st century religious leaders have now decided to do.
At the same time, I trust that they understand, as they set out on this expanded new mission, that just talking to our young men, alone, will not be enough. Unless they also have meaningful dialogue with elected officials about bringing jobs back from overseas, unless they fight to stop the importation of heroin from Afghanistan, and unless they take meaningful and productive steps to stop the sale of hand guns in our cities and to bring racial fairness to the judicial process, even this new effort will be unsuccessful.
Despite the fact that the “first black president” couldn’t fit this historically significant gathering on his agenda (he sent a video), I trust that Mr. Obama will find a way to provide direct, unabashed, assistance to their important mission at some point in the not-too-distant future.
I’d also point out that this is an effort that is so critically important that it should not be limited to the AME, CME and AMEZ within the national black church community. I sincerely hope that all black denominations, by the way, find a way to play a meaningful role in this top-priority issue.
It is, certainly, the right thing for them to do.
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