Re: [HoB/D] The Vicious Issue of Housing Prices

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

----- Original Message ----- 
To: <bishopsdeputies@hobd.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: [HoB/D] The Vicious Issue of Housing Prices


> XXX:
>
> Okay, you asked for it.
>
> The only way to effect systemic change is to change people's hearts and 
> minds.  They have to actually be converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
> know that their own sins are forgiven, realize they have to do the same 
> for others.

XXXXXX, that's what many said when George Wallace stood in the school house 
door in Tuscaloosa.  But Robert Kennedy won that round for the United States 
of America and the University of Alabama integrated on the spot, in front of 
Foster Auditorium.  The system of racial exclusion ended without changing 
the hearts of the people first.  Thank God for outside Yankee agitators! 
Thank God for the Episcopalians who risked life and limb on the 
Freedom-Rider bus burned in my hometown while my father and other white 
leadership prayed the agitators would just go away.   Thank God for Jonathan 
Daniels, EDS seminarian, martyred in Hayneville to prevent a racist's bullet 
from killing a young black girl.

If we'd waited until everyone, or even a majority,  in Alabama had a heart 
for integration before we changed the system, I assure you we would still be 
waiting.

People need to do what is right without waiting for a seal of community 
approval.  Jesus is always coming ready or not..

Often hearts change after, rather than before the systems change.  We had to 
break down the unjust system of segregation before Southerners black and 
white could have a chance to know one another as peers.  The system had to 
change first so that we could re-educate our hearts.

I began teaching at the University in 1966, the very next autumn after the 
Kennedy-Wallace showdown.  Several colleagues  in the English Department 
told me privately that the highest grade that a black person could make in 
their classes was a "C."

One black student who flunked my freshman English course showed up to take 
it from me again the next semester.

"Robert, don't you want to try your luck with another professor?" I 
suggested.

"No, sir," he replied; "you won't pass me until I know the material; you 
will work to help me master it; and you WILL pass me when I do know the 
material.  This is where I ought to be."

He earned his "C" the second time round, and then I lost touch with him.

About three years later, I was walking with some friends and heard someone 
calling, "Hey, Mister Crew, Mister Crew...."  I turned to see a huge young 
man whom I did not recognize.

"I'm Robert, Mr. Crew, don't you remember? I'm Robert Freeman"  he had a 
broad smile.

"Robert, your arms and legs are at least twice their thickness when you took 
my freshman course.   How did this happen?!"

He had been scrawny.  Now he looked like he might stop a moving railroad 
train.

"I've been pushing cars," he beamed.

"Pushing cars?" I asked, confused.

"Yes, sir. pushing cars all day long all summer all over Tuscaloosa.  I am 
going to be one of the first black linemen on Bear Bryant's team."

Lutibelle/Louie
L.

Louie Crew, L1 Newark.  Member of Executive Council
377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018.  973-395-1068
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/rel.2.html  Anglican Pages