Martin, Malcolm & Me

By Cheryl L. Thompson

When I was asked by Marlene to speak to you, my first reaction was, how do I get out of this, I don't even sit on the pulpit side of the church. But I remembered that Jesus often asks us to step out of our comfort zone for some reason. I don't know the reason for this, but I guess I have a story to tell. I have always been a believer. I have many conversations with God and am always grateful for the way things turn out and believe that he or she has a hand in that outcome. I don't really believe in coincidence, and sometimes, small things happen that are evidence to me of God's presence in my life. My big blessings, are my husband, although not always, and my son, again, not always, but I feel that my life could have taken so many turns, that would not have left me in the place that I am now. Another blessing is this Church. I feel like I have a home. I didn't feel that way for many years.

I was raised as an AME or Baptist depending on whether or not my mother was going to send me to church or attend church herself. My father briefly attended church and then stopped, but I believe he was typical of a preacher's kid. My parents met and married in New York, so that I am a native New Yorker. Most people believe New York is an integrated city or at least people get along peacefully. I'll get back to that later. When my father stopped attending church, he found a group called the African American Cultural Society; this was a group of mostly black men with thick glasses who sat in my father's room and discussed books they had read about African history. I was seven years old and I served the role of typical hostess, which I learned from my mother. I would serve them tea and cupcakes which I had made on my little stove and I would listen to some of what they said. Other times, my father would have me read to him from these books, so that I have forgotten more African history than most people ever learned.

By the time I was eight, my father became interested in traditional African religion, which meant Voodoo here, but Yoruba in the outside world. My father traveled to Cuba to become initiated in the religion. He changed his name to an African name, taking on the name of one of the Nubian Pharaohs. He changed his clothing to African attire, which I had to make for him, because there was no store or on line ordering for such clothing. He found that he could escape some of the rules about black limitations in this attire. Because people assumed he was not American. He enjoyed this greatly. When it was time for the second phase of this initiation, he could not return to Cuba because a revolution had happened. He then traveled to the village of Ife in Nigeria to complete his training. After several years, he became a Yoruba priest. He explained to me that the gods had two sides, a good and bad, that some of the gods were tricksters. He had altars for several gods in our house and a bloody cross on the inside door of our apartment. The cross represented the belief in the connection between the ancestors and the living with the horizontal representing life on this plane. Thus, the cross had a symbolic connection with the African slaves in their religious experience. In addition, he always had food for the dead on the floor in a New York City apartment, I don't believe that food was consumed by the dead, but it was eaten. I was terrified. There were blood sacrifices of birds, chickens, goats, and lamb, in my house. I told other people and they didn't believe me. They would say to me your father is just ahead of his time, or that my imagination was overly active. At one point, he was involved in a ceremony that involved cutting spots in his head and mixing his blood with the blood of others. I was convinced that this would kill him. It didn't, but it sent me running to the Roman church. I learned there that it was a sin to conjure up the evil spirits and I believed that my only protection was the power of God and the saints of the Catholic Church. I attended CCD alone. I spent hours in the church lighting candles and praying, I mostly prayed for safety. I was baptized when I was 15 years old, alone. Only my godmother and the priest were there. When my father finally found out what I had done he was totally outraged. He wanted to know how I could become a part of the oppressor: didn't I know that Catholics was purveyors of the slave trade. He believed that I had lost my mind. I believed that I was saving my soul.

While these events were occurring in my house, the outside world was also affecting me. When I graduated from 6th grade, I was notified that I would be attending a junior high school in upper Manhattan because of my grades and IQ score. This was in 1957. I was 12 and I was once again terrified. I had seen what was happening to the children in Little Rock and had no reason to believe it would be different for me in New York. There were streets in New York that you could be hurt on just because of your race.

I was so afraid, I asked my mother to come with me to school on the first day. She was afraid too, but would not admit it, because she believed she had to be there for me. My entrance into the school was uneventful, but I was never included in any social interactions. I was once told that I might have been invited to a party, but no one wanted me there. I learned to be with myself and to do my work. But I also learned to be quiet. I did my work and never shared unless called upon because my classmates were not happy with my ability. I even had a teacher who accused me of cheating on the Iowa Exams, when I had the highest score in the class. I simply asked her whom could I have cheater from. We never got along after that and my grades in English were always lower than my grades in Spanish, a language I have not mastered to this day.

Needless to say my faith has been shaken and stirred, so James Bond, I am not. Shaken came first, John Kennedy was assignated, it was the first Sunday that I did not go to Mass since my conversion. My father and I sat together glued to the television. When God did not reach his or her hand out of heaven and destroy me, I realized that I would not die if I didn't go to church.

A man I adored was killed, my heart was broken, I was angry with God. At a time of such hope, there was national despair. I could not believe that weekend. Two years later, I man I had quiet respect for was the next assignation: Malcolm X. He was a soft-spoken man who adored his wife and four daughters. His intelligence and charisma brought him to a place he never expected to be. He was a child of limited resources and hope. He visited our home on several occasions because my father was involved in the Black Nationalist movement so that they developed a relationship based on shared beliefs. His fiery public rhetoric stood in stark distinction to his private life. His ability to see that his situation was a result of circumstances was his strength. He was able to express the dark side of Martin Luther King's hopefulness. Martin was a man who came from circumstances that were hope filled. Martin was entrenched in the black middle class. Malcolm was entrenched in the black underclass. These men saw the world differently and while both were deeply religious, their needs and sense of society were diametrically opposed. I never met Martin. I simply loved him as I did JFK. There was such principle, hope and conviction that life could be better

Malcolm did not share a belief that life in America could be improved without a revolution. Malcolm was clearly bright but understood a piece of American life that is often missing among the middle class. Martin understood this, and wrote an essay to social scientists saying that while he understood the morays of the South and that a non-violent movement was the most powerful tool for that area, the cities were different and he did not know what tools would be appropriate. He called upon the social scientists of the time, to teach and to help with the ways in which cities were responding to the civil rights movement. He did not want to see riots but he couldn't find a tool that would be responded to in the cities.

Malcolm believed a revolution was necessary. This is not such an unusual thought; Thomas Jefferson thought there should be a revolution in every generation. Martin appealed to the educated, those people who were ready to move into an integrated society. Malcolm appealed to those people who were not going to be released from the barriers of discrimination. His rhetoric was extreme, but it resonated with black people who felt defeated and hopeless. Martin's rhetoric resonated with blacks who just needed to be unshackled. Around 1964, Malcolm X did what Muslims are supposed to do. He made the Hodge, the visit to the Holy City of Mecca. It is here that he met Muslims from all over the world. People dressed in the same garments, there was no way to determine who was rich or poor, but he saw people of many ethnicities. He came back to the United States feeling a need to express his new understanding that much of the problem in the U.S. is economic discrimination. He became Islamic in a broader sense of the word and was no longer limited to beliefs of the American Nation of Islam, which may or may not be interpreted as a cult. His awareness that some people were held in poverty and that the political system needed to address this. He saw the problem as one that exceeded race. He spoke of all people deprived of the American dream. His ideas became inclusive; he understood that many groups in America were deprived of the chance to achieve. This awareness resulted in his alienation from the Nation of Islam and ultimately resulted in his assignation. He was aware that he was in danger. I knew him as a father who adored his daughters and loved his wife. His ideas changed over time, but I believe that Martin needed Malcolm. The two standing in apparent opposition allowed people to choose a civil rights activist they could trust and follow. Martin had appeal to blacks and whites because he acknowledged the need for the humanity of all people to be recognized. He did this from a deep belief in Christianity, a conviction that most of us could relate to.

His non- violence in the light of the violence we saw on TV raised our commitment to the civil rights movement. He was the right man for the majority. Malcolm was the right man for the minority.

In 1965-66 Martin Luther King began to speak about poor people, he began to speak about the Viet Nam War and to talk about discrimination of black, brown, red and yellow people in this country and in the world. He planned a Washington, D.C. Resurrection City after the Memphis garbage man strike. This would move Martin from a black civil right leader to a leader of oppressed people. Just as Malcolm had come to the awareness that poverty is a major problem for Americans and for all people all over the world; Martin also began articulating the same belief. When he spoke about this with the plan for all people to come to Resurrection City on the great lawn between the Jefferson and Washington Memorials, he was killed. He was killed in 1968. While I know I can be a conspiracy believer, it is striking to me, how these two giants of the civil rights movement were killed at the same point in their thinking. The recognition that there is a deep philosophical and economic basis for the maintenance of the status quo appears to me to have resulted in their deaths, my final shaking of hope and belief was the assignation of Robert Kennedy. I remember listening to the radio through the night, and saying to God, I know this is wrong but if someone had been killed let it be McCarthy, I wasn't really wishing him dead but was so overwhelmed by the loses in the public arena, I didn't think I could accept another one. At this point, I was so angry with God that I stayed away from any formal practice of religion for almost 20 years.

Then my faith was stirred, I had given birth to a boy who needed moral development, I know people believe that this can be done without church, but I still believe that Jesus is present when two or three are gathered in his name, which to me means a community. I was not concerned about his spiritual development because I know or believe that we are hard wired to seek God. I wanted him to have the comfort I had once enjoyed in the Roman church but I wanted him to have none of the craziness. I knew he could not be catholic, but I had been so nurtured by my local priests, the church was always open in those days, you could sit in safety and silence. There was time to be with God. While I am not always happy with his current practice of his religion, I trust his belief because I have seen it since early childhood.

I was at once afraid that I had left the one true church, until I saw the consecration of Bishop Barbara Harris. That experience helped me understand, that God is the base of the Church and humans do whatever they do but it does not change God. This stirring set me free.

Back to Malcolm and Martin, without them with their diametrically opposed approach to civil rights would anything have happened? The Northern States could have felt comfortable in their de facto segregation and the South would continue to feel justified in their de jure segregation. I have lived through both and have seen the value of both perspectives. One could not have existed without the other. The more frightening Malcolm, even though dramatically changed after the Hodge, was killed first. The other, Martin, entrenched in the black middle class, began to talk about economic deprivation in the richest country in the world was killed also. For me hope died and did not find resurrection until 1982. At that point, I was ready to return to an interactive relationship with God. I am not without fear and doubt, but belief helps me get through life's challenges. What I have learned from all of these experiences is that God is always present. And we must learn to listen to what God is trying to say to us. We cannot reject anyone because he or she may be the return of the Messiah. We must see God's presence in each and everyone we encounter, despite the difficulties we sometimes experience.

Amen.

© 2008 Cheryl L. Thompson