DebThink: John Lewis, Nina Totenberg, Members of Congress, and Me...In Alabama

Books

William Zinsser: On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
This book is a writing-coach-in-a-box. William Zinsser has a calming effect and offers some very useful suggestions to enhance one's writing practice. He demystifies the life of a working writer in encouraging ways, while at the same time revealing with warm humor why the path is so challenging. I wanted to hug this book and thank William Zinsser personally. I'll probably have to get in line with the one million people who bought this book in the last 30 years. Zinsser will write a corny line like the one that precedes this sentence if it conveys his mood and meaning. He models comfort in his own voice and that's a gift.
Monique Truong: The Book of Salt: A Novel
Written from the perspective of Binh, the saucy Vietnamese cook of Gertrude Stein and Alice B, this delightful novel allows the reader to indulge in the sensual pleasures of 1930s Paris. As someone who could care less about the cooking of food and its related movements--slow, fast, meandering, etc. what I found most enjoyable were Binh's subversive yet loving digs at the royal couple. I started this book on a plane and devoured it in a hammock.
Colm Toibin: Brooklyn: A Novel
Eilis Lacey grows up in 1950s Ireland in the shadow of her gregarious older sister Rose. Family circumstances dictate that the more reserved Eilis will accept Father Flood's offer to help her get a job and re-locate to his Brooklyn parish. Expertly paced, the story of Eilis' adjustment to her new environment unfolds with calm, beautiful, simple language. Torn between the old world and the new, Eilis must make a choice between two men she has grown to love. Colm Toibin portrays the inner life and social world of Irish women with great mastery, insight and affectionate respect.
Louis Maistros: The Sound of Building Coffins
Wandering around the Fauborg Marigny, I came upon the gay bookstore and went in search of a book I had read about. I couldn't remember the name, but the review had said, "No novel since 'A Confederacy of Dunces' has done such justice to New Orleans." That is how I described it to the skeletal man behind the counter, standing indifferently amid claustrophobic piles of books. He immediately pointed down to this one and I grabbed it. I didn't start reading it until weeks later, eagerly anticipating wry, knowing chuckles a la "Confederacy." No chuckles ensued. The book opens with a boy rebirthing fetuses in the moonlit Mississippi River. The boy's name is Typhus Morningstar, brother of Malaria, Cholera, Diptheria and Dropsy. Louis Maistros, a former forklift operater, has woven a very dark and complex tale that is really unlike anything else I have read. He captures that very thin vibration between vice and beauty that is the essence of New Orleans. The story is set in 1891 and ends with a flood. Bodies rise; time is circular; curses are lifted at great expense; and the water trumps all--inexorably.
Lisa Mullins: Diane Nash: The Fire of the Civil Rights Movement
This slim and humble volume underscores the glaring lack of recognition for Diane Nash as a key leader in the early civil rights movement. Without her courageous confrontation of Nashville mayor Ben West over segregation and her even more pivotal insistence on continuing the Freedom Rides despite massive repression, we might not be patting ourselves on the back for having Barack Obama as president today. SO, it is very clear that while we have made enormous strides in confronting racism, we have a long way to go toward challenging the insidiousness and intimacy of sexism. If anyone's story could inspire the nation to do so, it is Diane Nash. While Lisa Mullins has laid down the basics of a biography, I would love to do a full-scale biography of Diane Nash, using the insights of women's history and intersectional analyses.
Peter Carey: His Illegal Self (Vintage International)
Wow, this book took me in a completely unanticipated direction. I thought it would be a romantic romp with seventies radicals, but it was actually a wild, heart-breaking tale told from the point of view of the seven year old son of one of those radicals. Che Selkirk, yes, that's his name, goes on a physically challenging journey that is also a quest for self, roots, and mother-love. This narrative picks you up and runs with you, haunting even after the last page is turned.
John Lewis: Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
This is one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read and I read it feverishly. "The boy from Troy" (Alabama), as Martin Luther King called him when they first met, is an exquisitely sensitive and honest moral being. John Lewis gives me hope in humankind--not because he is a living saint, as Time magazine once dubbed him--but because he shows his feelings and flaws in a way that only heightens the courage of the many correct stands he took at pivotal moments in movement history. How did John Lewis become who he is? His job on the farm was to tend to the chickens, and after he took care of them physically, he tended to their spiritual needs by preaching to them. His earnestness is leavened by a dry wit that hasn't left him yet. We get many nuanced portraits of people we think we know. His account of the fight over his speech during the March on Washington is priceless--several of the big guns arguing behind Lincoln's back (literally) to get him to make his speech less radical. MLK is also demystified, which in no way diminishes Lewis' reverence for him, even when SNCC radicals castigate him for that stance. The memoir recounts many poignant instances when John Lewis paid a price for sticking to his beliefs. The most painful to read was what he calls his "de-election" as SNCC chairman. His close friendship with Julian Bond is also compromised in the rough play of Georgia politics. A combination of vision, tenacity, hard work, commitment, willingness to suffer, stubbornness and faith made him who he is--and our country has benefited enormously from every time he was willing to go back into the fray after being beaten, jailed, and disrespected. While the memoir is exceptionally moving from a personal perspective, it is also one of the best histories of the movement I have ever read. So run out and grab this 500 page tome--you will be glad you did.
Margaret De Wys: Black Smoke: A Woman's Journey of Healing, Wild Love, and Transformation in the Amazon
De Wys has written a refreshingly clear-headed description of her journey into the Amazon jungle with an indigenous shaman named Carlos. Restlessness with her middle class life as a college music professor and a diagnosis of breast cancer propel her on this quest. Cancer-free and wildly alive, she becomes an apprentice to Carlos. The very graphic descriptions of what it takes to experience shamanic healing demystify the process, facilitating the reader's suspension of disbelief toward some of the more out-there visions and challenges de Wys encounters. The author is also refreshingly candid about some of the contradictions she cannot fully reconcile herself with: the treatment of girls; the clash of cultures; and her erotic relationship with her mentor. The politics of such relationships is engaged in a subtle and honest way.
Toni Morrison: A Mercy
This highly concentrated short novel provides another riff on the pivotal theme in Beloved--an enslaved mother casting off her daughter to in order to save her. Morrison excels at viscerally evoking an even earlier era of American history. Her unique contribution is in bringing to life the subjectivities of "characters" who have been heretofore invisible and inaudible in history and literature, except as categories, such as "Native woman," "female slave," and even "Dutch trader." The latter is as ambivalent and complex a character as the women. The women--Florens, Lina, Sorrow, and Rebekkah--have complicated motives, relationships, desires, vulnerabilities and strengths. It is one of Morrison's unique contributions that the narrative pivots around the emotional relationships among two African slave women, a Native American woman, and a white woman whose only option in fleeing religious persecution is to marry a stranger and move across the ocean. Particularly provocative is Florens' erotic desire for a free black man, which ultimately destroys her. Despite its historical specificity, Morrison enables us to identify with this universal human drama of love.
Ishmael Beah: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
What does it mean for people sitting comfortably in their living rooms to read this book? No doubt it is very important, as Beah has written what may be the first memoir by a child soldier about a recent conflict. But Sierra Leone has in no way neatly resolved its recent past. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is operating; the recommendations of Sierra Leone's Truth Commission are just starting to be implemented. The "international community," a relatively small group of specialists, is at work on "fixing" small African countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia, but not far away, hundreds join the millions who have already died in the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What bothered me about Beah's book, and it is really no criticism of him, is that the average reader will come away with no greater understanding of the global and historical CAUSES of conflicts such as the one in Sierra Leone. That is not necessarily the responsibility of a memoir, but true understanding and action are the responsibility of every adult horrified by the idea of a child being forced to watch his or her family die; learning how to kill; being raped and forced into sexual slavery; and wandering their country as if removed out of time. Everyone should read this beautifully written memoir and then everyone should read the reports of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict.
John Nichols: On the Mesa
This book is as spare, eccentric, and alive as the mesa itself--Hondo Mesa, north of Taos, New Mexico. With acute observational skills, passion for the land, and a sharp tongue, Nichols captures in language and images a place that is still unique and volatile. The mesa is ever-changing, and yet conveys a profoundly serene sense of eternity.
Richard Price: Lush Life: A Novel
Diabolically good dialogue wraps together this multi-layered story of the Lower East Side. Price captures the very contemporary moment of gentrification and the entitled presence of aspiring, creative youth. Just as immigrant groups, impoverished minorities, and hipsters vie for space in the neighborhood, layers of history and multiple story lines compete for our attention. Price is brilliant at portraying the moments where one history is about to elide another. At the site of a newly-collapsed old synagogue, an orthodox man on a cellphone presides over the two African American boys he is paying to scavenge valuable objects. Under his condescending and watchful eye, the boys stuff candelabra into a bag for "preservation." The plot pivots around a crime in the neighborhood, which unravels some relationships and psyches, while repairing others.
Louise Erdrich: The Plague of Doves: A Novel
Certain sentences made me gasp with their beauty. As well as their power and wisdom. Louise Erdrich has taken history--personal and collective, Indian and white--and woven a complex story that is ultimately about a different kind of justice, one that twists and turns but resolves itself ultimately in balance. This balance may seem temporary, just as life is temporary, just as relationships can be temporary, but it carries within itself a sense of peace in the order of things. And that peace suggests that behind all the terrible destruction, betrayal, and bad behavior of humans toward each other, there remains a beautiful quality within the human spirit. I have said nothing about the many vibrant characters in this novel--the age-shifting grandfather Mooshum who has a naughty twinkle in his eye; the intelligent growing girl Evelina; her wild aunt Geraldine; the passionate judge Antone Bazil Coutts. They are all spectacularly rendered--but the real protagonists are history and time. I was fortunate to start this novel in New York, sink my teeth into its center in Taos, and complete it in Santa Fe, where I could lie down on a comfy bed quiet and exhausted with awe.
William Zinsser: Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir
This is a somewhat homely anthology with a diverse set of contributors talking about the experience of writing a memoir. Tones range from the humble and humorous (Frank McCourt) to the arch (Annie Dillard). Skip Gates writes with surprising and delicate honesty about sexuality. Jill Ker Conway seeks to disseminate a practical feminism by telling her story. Russell Baker, who used to annoy me when I tried to read him in the Times, writes very touchingly about his mother. Mothers figure prominently, both in the narrative and hovering above it: everyone worries about her reading it. All of the memoirists have made a certain peace with themselves and have enough detachment to tell the story. Witnessing that self-acceptance is a gift to the reader of this odd little book.
Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
What stands out in neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor's story of recovering from her own stroke is her humility.
Geraldine Brooks: March
Taking off from Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," this engrossing novel follows the imagined story of their missing father, Mr. March, as he goes south to minister to Union soldiers during the Civil War. Geraldine Brooks based the character on Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's vegan father. I particularly liked the rich historical detail and the complex moral challenges the characters are driven to face by the narrative. What choices do high-minded people make when faced with war and suffering? How can two partners in a marriage interpret the same phenomena from diametrically opposed perspectives? What does reconciliation really mean on the individual and social level? How to proceed when there is no absolute "right?" These types of questions resonate with the current historical moment, which seems pregnant with both possibilities and disaster.
David Sedaris: When You Are Engulfed in Flames
He cannot possibly get funnier and then he does. It is fascinating that the sick and silly and acute observations of a neurotic 50-year old Greek-American gay man born in North Carolina and living in France capture the zeitgeist so well that his book shoots up to number one on the New York Times best seller list instantly, even though most of us have already read most of these pieces in the New Yorker. Nevertheless, for the title alone, and the essay "What I Learned" (at Princeton), I would have gladly spent my $25.99. I haunted the bookstore waiting for the book's release and gleefully snatched it up, reading in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. Speaking of his undergraduate days at Princeton (his acceptance having redeemed his parents' entire existence), Sedaris recalls (self-consciously noting that he was dating himself) that at that time they followed a pass/fail system. "If you passed, you got to live, and if you failed you were burned alive on a pyre that's now the Transgender Studies building." That sentence does so many things with such economy. It's hysterically funny. It captures the angst of mid-life crisis, when the gulf between then and now feels so enormous as to encompass centuries. He captures changes in U.S. higher education, gay life, post-modernism, queer theory, and the trajectories of the thinking/writing classes. His near-pathological anti-pretentiousness is endearing, though when he crosses the line into juvenile grossness, it's hard to follow him willingly (but you do anyway). Sedaris uses language, character, and setting so effectively that he drags the reader just to the edge of the abyss and then pulls us back laughing and shaking our heads. And while we're shaking our heads, we begin to contemplate some pretty tough material. Yet the symmetry of his essays, in addition to their humor, makes looking at life bearable.
Valerie Steiker: Brooklyn Was Mine
I loved my borough long before it was the hippest place to be and I felt possessive when I picked up this anthology in an ultra-pretentious new artspace in DUMBO last weekend, slogging my way through Europeans gleefully exploiting the exchange rate. Yet the Brooklyn-love of strangers actually heightened my appreciation, seeing others revel in the small joys I have guarded jealously throughout my life. Darcy Steinke's ode to Prospect Park as a haven of meaning and survival after a difficult divorce is best captured in her lovely image of an "egret stepping expertly around a used condom." In the introduction, Philip Lopate warns us to brace ourselves for Jonathan Lethem, but I adored his crazy riff. This lovely little anthology reminds me to see my neighborhood more clearly, to embrace the yearning for community that pulses underneath the daggered wheels of the baby carriages lethally trolling Seventh Avenue. Today, we just stumbled upon the 5th Avenue street fair. A band of chunky, aging hipsters funked us a good version of "Like A Rolling Stone," sending out a happy birthday to that boy from Minnesota. A bald older man hung above the band, over his second floor windowsill, in a building that appeared to be abandoned with shuttered windows and doors on the ground floor. What stories lay hidden? What did he have to do to survive and to cling to this neighborhood through all the gentrification? Brooklyn is full of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of stories; ones that I want to hear.
Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book: A Novel
A gripping tale that hops across centuries and continents portraying diverse people who live and work intimately with books. Not for the fainthearted are scenes from the Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain, the Venice Ghetto, Sarajevo during and after the recent wars, and Yad Vashem after dark. Hidden Jews emerge from every corner. The main protagonist, Hanna, shares a noble profession with my friend Jan--she is a conservator. It's refreshing to see a woman portrayed with highly specific skills and equally refreshing to have an ending that redeems her knowledge after a period of betrayal and self-doubt. The physical descriptions of the extraordinary Sarajevo Haggadah glow off Brooks' pages; she weaves a multicultural tapestry that portrays the world as our hearts would like it to be.
Russell Banks: The Darling: A Novel
This is the life story of Hannah Musgrave, born into New England privilege, who first joins a distant offshoot of the Weather Underground and later follows a colleague to Africa. During Liberian President Samuel K. Doe's regime, she marries one of his Ministers; bears three sons; and befriends the soon to be infamous Charles Taylor. Banks goes to great lengths to show that the bisexual Hannah is an "unnatural" woman. She demonstrates more love in trying to save Liberian chimpanzees than she is able to show for her own sons. The novel starts in the present, where the aging Hannah is living on and running a farm in upstate New York with an intergenerational bunch of women, several of them lesbians. The story of her life as a radical and a wife and mother in Africa unfolds through flashbacks. Banks masterfully intertwines the narrative with historical events in the U.S. and Liberia. It is hard to decide which dimension Banks portrays more brutally--the actual bloody recent history of Liberia or the emotional realities of a post-idealistic, aging baby boomer. Banks conveys with devastating accuracy the unfolding of Hannah's recognition that she has spent her life operating in several realms of self-delusion. One can admire the narrative and descriptive skill Banks deployed in creating this joyless novel, but I'm not sure I should encourage any one to do what I did--reading it compulsively in the middle of the night even though I did not want to face its horror. Proceed with caution and admiration.

March 10, 2009

John Lewis, Nina Totenberg, Members of Congress, and Me...In Alabama

My phone rang about a month ago, and Reverend Clete Kiley of the Faith and Politics Institute invited me to join the Institute's 9th Annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage to Alabama, led by one of my heroes, SNCC chairman John Lewis. The three day journey visits the key civil rights sites in Alabama's early struggle, ending with a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis and several hundred marchers were beaten, teargassed, and attacked by police on horseback on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965.

I was invited to speak to the delegation on this year's theme: the contribution of Jews to the civil rights movement, on a panel to be moderated by Nina Totenberg, much-beloved legal reporter for National Public Radio. But before I get to the panel, I'd like to tell my experience of the journey from the time we left Washington, DC on Friday afternoon to returning Sunday night.

We met at the Rayburn Building near the Capitol on Friday at 1 PM and boarded several buses for a charter flight leaving from Reagan National Airport. I would be lying if I didn't admit how much fun it was to have a police escort with lights blaring, stopping traffic in downtown DC as we drove to the airport. We were surrounded by very disciplined Secret Service men and women on every step of the journey, including this handsome gentleman.

The honorary delegation leaders -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) and Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) welcomed us on the Delta flight. The delegation of 180 people included 30 members of the House of Representatives, their spouses, civil rights luminaries, local politicians and local people, and special guests invited to contribute to the program.

The Journey

BIRMINGHAM

Despite the excitement of traveling with such a distinguished delegation, I found it far more overwhelming to visit the places I have spent years studying. Things happened very fast, so it was hard to fully take in the fact that our first stop was Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, where, on Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded during Sunday services, killing the four girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson (all 14), and Denise McNair (age 11).

Inside the church we met and sang with two women heroes: Dorothy Cotton, former Education Director for Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Betty Mae Fikes, who got involved with SNCC as a teenager in Selma. The daughter of a gospel singer, she joined the Freedom Singers--her deep and powerful voice was a sustaining force. I got to thank her (below).

Kelly Ingram Park, a staging ground for many civil rights demonstrations, is diagonally across from the church. In 1963, in that park, police turned water hoses and dogs on children who left the church to demonstrate. The park has several powerful monuments, including one where you have to walk between two walls with sculptures of snarling dogs jutting out at eye level. It felt like walking throught the cattle car at the Holocaust Museum.

The man taking the photograph in the picture above is Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of Congress and the first African American from Minnesota to serve in Congress. Keith put me to shame (as a historian) by interviewing everyone with his video camera--from his fellow Congress members to his teenage son to me to local police in Selma--about what this journey meant to them.

We then toured the Civil Rights Institute, which was very impressive. I "read" the museum as a historian, and really appreciated its material culture and the way it contextualized the civil rights movement in time, in place, and as part of an ongoing global struggle for human rights. There were little details that suggested the museum was based on current scholarship, like mention of the "Club From Nowhere," which was a group of domestics who raised money for the movement. Odessa Woolfolk, one of the founders of the Institute, surprised me by telling me that she used my book in teaching about women in the CRM. One never knows.....

Among many speakers at dinner that night, the most moving was Spencer Bachus, a Republican serving his ninth term as a member of the House from Alabama. He told a story about his father. "My father was not a hero," he said. But unlike all the other white businessmen around him, his father allowed Black men to bid for subcontracts under his construction business. At the time, that was really going out on a limb in the community. Spencer Bachus was shaking as he talked about the ways the South has and has not changed. He illustrated the tenuousness of the process in a very authentic and personal way. It was very humbling to be in the South and to hear local white politicians admitting that change had come but there was a ways to go, and practically begging people not to give up on Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma.

TWINS--SEPARATED AT BIRTH

I enjoyed meeting Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida). I said I hated being called Debbie and she said the only time she is called Debra is when her mother is mad at her.

MONTGOMERY

We started the day at the Rosa Parks Children's Museum, a high tech, multi-media experience. You are ushered into a "bus" which functions as a time machine. You travel back in time to review key moments in African American history. On screens inside the bus and projected onto the walls surrounding the bus, there are vignettes with actors playing Harriet Tubman, Dred Scott, Homer Plessy, etc. It was a little hokey but probably effective in reaching the internet generation.

The other exhibits do a good job of contextualizing Rosa Parks. They mention that she went to Highlander and also explain the role of Joanne Robinson and the women behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Many times I felt we were on "holy ground." There was a kind of cognitive dissonance between imagining these places that I have studied and seen in documentaries and actually being there. Nowhere did I feel this more keenly than at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor from 1954-1966.

"Mass meetings"--how many times have I read that phrase? But the churches were small! Hundreds and thousands of people crowded into churches that were simply not that big. And yet many of them sheltered the Freedom Riders and other demonstrators with angry mobs outside. Even Dexter Avenue Baptist, which is considered the "upper class" church, seemed so humble to me. It is literally in the shadow of the state capitol building. I have never seen a whiter building in my life--maybe because it was sunny--but it seemed so very white. That is the building where angry citizens wanted to carry Jimmie Lee Jackson's body after he was shot in a demonstration in Selma, trying to shield his mother from being attacked.

For years, I have read about the work of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center. So it was very moving to finally be there and to see Maya Lin's magnificent memorial to 40 martyrs of the civil rights movement. It is a circle with their names listed around it; water runs over the surface and you can run your hands over the names. There is a space at the end of the list, to remind us that the struggle is not over and we are a part of it. This is where the singing of "We Shall Overcome" really got to me.

Water also runs down the wall behind the monument inscribed with MLK's beautiful quote:

We also went to First Baptist Church, Dr. Abernathy's more working class congregation. John Lewis told the story of the Freedom Rides, how he eventually reached this church for sanctuary. It is very important to review the details of the first Freedom Rides in May 1961--they are simply unbelievable. The first bus was bombed in Anniston, Alabama. Bull Connor met the 2nd bus in Birmingham, jailed all the riders (including John Lewis) for two days and then drove them at midnight to the Tennessee border, where he dropped them off in the middle of nowhere, deep in Alabama Klan country. Amazingly, they all decided to go back to Birmingham to continue the ride on a Greyhound bus toward Jackson, Mississippi. After phone calls from the White House, the Freedom Riders were supposed to have police and Alabama Highway Patrol escorts all the way to Montgomery. But as they got to the Montgomery Greyhound Terminal, things became eerily quiet and deserted. As John Lewis and Jim Zwerg and the others got off the bus, a mob appeared and started attacking them, as well as the press waiting for their arrival. John Lewis was hit on the head and rendered unconscious. So was RFK's personal representative, John Siegenthaler.

After being treated, John Lewis and the Freedom Riders slept in local people's homes until the weekend, when they went to Dr. Abernathy's church for a mass meeting at which Dr. King would speak. 1,500 people were in that church, as well as press, when a white mob surrounded it. They started throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. I could not believe I was in this church 48 years later. Bobby Kennedy spent all night on the phone again with a recalcitrant Governor John Patterson, and eventually it took the National Guard to get those 1,500 people out of the building safely in the middle of the night. John Lewis and Bob Zellner described that night below.

Although King and Farmer and the big boys of the CRM hesitated about continuing the Freedom Rides to Jackson, the students of SNCC, particularly Diane Nash and John Lewis (with a big white bandage on his head), insisted that they must go on. And it was at that point, that other young people, including two of the women I wrote about, started to join them, filling the Hinds County Jail and Parchman Prison in Mississippi all summer long.

THE ROLE OF JEWS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Saturday night was the big banquet dinner in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, to be followed by the panel. Our moderator, NPR's Nina Totenberg, gave an excellent overview of Jews in the CRM (I actually listened to each word and admired her discerning editorial choices). Then she called us up to the stage. Five armchairs were arranged in a semi-circle. The panel consisted of me and three Jewish men over seventy (at least). That did not bode well. During our conference call the week before, Nina had made us promise to limit ourselves to telling one story in three minutes so that there would be time for follow-up questions and audience discussion. I prepared my remarks on that basis.

Nina called the first speaker, Rabbi Sol Bloom, who had gone down to Birmingham in 1963 with a group of rabbis. Describing it as the most meaningful experience of his life, it was pretty much all about him. The second speaker, an adorable gnome-like man, Sol Kimmerling of Birmingham, began to read his 20-page text about how Jews were part of a behind the scenes coalition to get rid of Bull Connor. Nina gently asked him to focus. He didn't. Then she asked him to cut to the chase. He didn't. Eventually she cut him off and introduced me. The final speaker after me was William Taylor, a lawyer describing how he had worked with Thurgood Marshall.

Nina introduced me by saying that I was WAY too young to have been involved, but I wrote "an important book" (yay) about Jewish women who went South. "Why did so many Jewish women go south, Debra?" Funny you should ask, Nina.

I had been nervous all afternoon at the thought of speaking before 30 members of Congress and 150 guests. But I have to confess that when I got to that podium, I felt GOOD. I gave a quick overview of where "my women" had worked in the CRM before Freedom Summer and then told the story of a northern Jewish woman who had repeatedly gone down to Jackson in 1950 to defend Willie McGee, a black man facing the death penalty for raping a white woman (even though it was a consensual sexual relationship). When she returned to try to get a stay of execution for the third time, no one would rent her a motel room. Alone, twenty-five years old, and pregnant, she stayed in a locked bathroom stall in the Jackson bus station all night, hiding from the Klan. Though she argued for six hours the next day, McGee was executed with 700 whites cheering outside. (Dramatic story, isn't it?)

Then I said, "After this tragic experience, the woman lawyer had a miscarriage, but she went on to become the mother of two daughters. She also went on to become the first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives, your Congressional colleague Bella Abzug." A roar went up from the crowd. It was GREAT! I felt so happy to honor Bella.

I spoke of the CRM as "the borning struggle" (Bernice Johnson Reagon) and expressed gratitude "as a feminist of the Joshua generation" to John Lewis, Jim Lawson and the whole movement. I said the F-word on purpose; I want to de-stigmatize it and no one is going to take it away from me.

I concluded by riffing on the theme of Faith and Politics, since that is the name of the Institute. I said "Jews went south because politics WAS their faith, but even the most SECULAR among them believed in a power greater than themselves--the one John Lewis names so beautifully in his memoir--the Spirit of History." I thanked them for allowing me to touch that spirit on this journey and sat down in my armchair to a nice round of applause.

On the bus the next day, Steny Hoyer came over to tell me that I did a good job and my analysis was excellent. That was pretty heady, coming from the House Majority Whip (who has a very nice smile, by the way). Here's Steny and Nina in Selma:

But the best came the following day as we waited to board the plane to go home. A congressman's wife sitting next to me said she had enjoyed my remarks. I thanked her. Then she said, "By the way, I was sitting next to Chris Matthews. He was very annoyed at the panel, but he said "She's the only one who knows how to communicate." I found that extremely funny (and of course a great compliment coming from such a kvetch).

NO TIME TO DWELL--ON TO SELMA

We had to leave our bags outside our hotel rooms at 7 AM for the "sweep." We would see them again in DC that night. On the bus to Selma, we watched the "Eyes on the Prize" episode about the march. Even though I "KNOW" all of this, it was still unbelievable to see that footage.

When we got to the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a photo op, I was shocked at how big it is. In the famous pictures, you only see John Lewis and Hosea Williams on the left sidewalk, leading a line of people walking in twos. In my mind, I had always pictured it like the little bridge upstate in Esopus near Leslie's house. It is actually very wide and steep, with the water far, far below.

So I finally understood how it was that on March 7, 1965, when they marched up the front "slope," they did not initially see the row of troopers on foot and horseback waiting for them at the bottom on the other side. It was unbelievable to imagine how John Lewis and Hosea Williams had to make a split second decision about whether to march into that--and they did.

On the bridge John Lewis greeted people who had been on the march, as well as the lady who sheltered him after he was beaten and teargassed. He is holding her hand in the picture below.

I kept thinking, "It can't get better than this" and then it did. We then went for a worship service commemorating the 44th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" at Brown AME Chapel, which was the starting point for King's later march from Selma to Montgomery.

We knew we would be hearing from Attorney General Eric Holder, so that was exciting, but much more unfolded. As I settled into my seat, I thought, "Am I hallucinating or is that Jesse Jackson?" It was, along with Al Sharpton. As John Lewis said later, "The first time I marched over that bridge, no one was jockeying for position in the front of the line." But to the credit of the church's pastor, he gave speaking precedence to the real heroes--Hosea Williams' daughter and Sheyann Webb, who marched when she was eight years old. Now fifty-two, she was a very powerful speaker and I remembered reading her book, "Selma, Lord, Selma," written for young people.

It was hard to imagine an 8-year old being tear-gassed, trampled by the crowd and horses. Hosea Williams picked her up as they were all running back across the bridge and she told him to put her down because he wasn't running fast enough!

The program at Brown AME church was very long ("almost as long as the Selma to Montgomery march," noted the adorable John Lewis). It was very exciting when Artur Davis (D-Alabama) introduced Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of George Wallace.

Wallace was first elected governor in 1962, with the largest popular vote in state history. He stood in the door of the University of Alabama to block desegregation efforts and declared: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." The two students trying to get in were James Hood and the late Vivian Malone.

Unbeknownst to many of us, certainly me, is that Eric Holder is married to Vivian Malone's sister. So he came to speak not only as the first African American Attorney General, but as Vivian Malone's brother-in-law. Peggy Kennedy Wallace introduced him in a moving way, compassionately repudiating her father's legacy. She said that she had been apolitical for many years but "woke up" when Barack Obama announced his candidacy. She decided to back him, also as an act of changing the legacy that her children and grandchildren would inherit.

It was a very strong statement about memory, self-empowerment, and change--coming from the diminutive woman below:

Fresh from his triumphant rap-inspired benediction at the inauguration, the Reverend Joseph Lowery blew the roof off the house with a masterfully crafted meditation on the new era. He was so funny that I was literally screaming with laughter—and so was everyone else. Reveling in the fact that he had lived to see a black president, Lowery literally jumped for joy onstage. The two 87-year olds—Joseph Lowry and Jim Lawson—showed me what true mastery is all about.

Posted at 07:44 AM | Permalink

Comments

Thank you for your post. (I have tears of joy, embarrassing my 10-year old). John Lewis is one of my heroes, not only for what he has done for the Civil Rights movement, but for his commitment to American Democracy. Slogging through and trying to make things better for all American, with all the set backs we have endured, takes courage and strength.

Posted by: Joy Marcus | March 13, 2009 at 08:23 AM

Brava,Debra! What a wonderful experience and so well told!

xo
Hettie

Posted by: Hettie Jones | March 14, 2009 at 12:53 PM

Dear Debra,
What a fabulous account of an incredible experience - congratulations to you. WOW! (I can just imagine the dramatic unfolding of the story about Bella and the audience cheers at the punch-line, too!)
Thank you so much! (You should do an article for Ebony about this conference/trip).
Liz

Posted by: Liz Sackler | March 15, 2009 at 05:22 AM

Wonderful! Thank you Debra for bringing this amazing commemoration alive for me. It's a shame the media did not give us move coverage. Congratulations for your inspiring contribution.

Posted by: Julie Shaw | March 23, 2009 at 09:25 AM

Deb -
This is truly amazing. Thank you so much for sharing!!!
xoxo
Em

Posted by: Emilie Neumann | March 30, 2009 at 04:04 PM

"...such a kvetch."

What's a kvetch?
claire

Posted by: claire | April 06, 2009 at 03:19 PM

See this article about the "coming from the diminutive woman"

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/03/wallace.kennedy.obama/index.html

Posted by: claire | April 06, 2009 at 03:28 PM

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DebThink

Reflections of a social change historian

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March 10, 2009

John Lewis, Nina Totenberg, Members of Congress, and Me...In Alabama

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