The Civil Rights Act of 1875, which forbade racial discrimination in hotels, trains, and other public places, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was so infuriated by the troubling news of that SCOTUS decision that he penned this piercing, incensed response: In moments of distress, we must remember to invoke the spirit of ‘Peace Be Still.’
“The world has never witnessed such barbarous laws entailed upon a free people as have grown out of the decision of the United States Supreme Court, issued October 15, 1883. For that decision alone authorized and now sustains all the unjust discriminations, proscriptions and robberies perpetrated by public carriers upon millions of the nation’s most loyal defenders. It fathers all the ‘Jim-Crow cars’ into which colored people are huddled and compelled to pay as much as the whites, who are given the finest accommodations. It has made the ballot of the Black man a parody, his citizenship a nullity and his freedom a burlesque. It has engendered the bitterest feeling between the whites and blacks, and resulted in the deaths of thousands, who would have been living and enjoying life today.”
The words of Bishop Turner are just as perceptive and pertinent today as they were when he wrote them. The difference between our time and when he wrote his response to that conspicuous display of anti-Black hate is that his generation experienced a more visible, and often more vicious, hostility than what we are experiencing today, even after the scandalous SCOTUS decision in the recent Louisiana v. Callais case that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. There is a clarity that comes from the present paradox of America: the battle against hate and racial dominance will ignore rules and historical precedence to achieve its goal of wealth and power over people. In such times, we must call upon ‘Peace Be Still.’
The sacred, subterranean spiritual source of strength found in looking back to see a way forward is that Bishop Turner’s generation never gave in, gave up, or gave out. They kept believing and fighting for a change that would embrace all people in this nation. While they did not fully achieve their goals, they laid foundations that spared most of us, who now navigate the negatives of racism, militarism, and materialism, from experiencing some of the most bitter and grim aspects of this society’s past.
The troubadours of truth from our past trumpet a testimony to us in the present: if we resist, evil cannot rule. They show us that we have power vouchsafed to us from that revolutionary of righteousness, Jesus of Nazareth, to speak to chaos and disorder and transform it into cosmos and order, as seen in the Gospel of Mark 4:39.
It is there that Jesus, awakened by his disciples as their boat was being rocked by a hurricane force storm, said, “Peace, be still,” and the winds and waves immediately calmed down. However, the original Greek translation of the phrase “he rebuked the winds and sea,” is “phimoō” and it translates as if he was “rebuking a person rather than nature.” The translation sagaciously suggests that Jesus is sending a profound message: as you try to create community and harmony, storms of spiritual toxicity will arise to preclude, prohibit, and prevent you from completing your purpose, but know that you have the power to speak, and the storms will behave.
There are lessons from our ancestors, both human and spiritual, showing that we are never powerless, but rather more powerful than we truly realize.
Be Encouraged, Be Authentic, and Stay Woke! Uhuru Sasa!!!
The Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. Gary, IN. Contact the church at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.
Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.”
- Rev. John E. Jackson
- Rev. John E. Jackson
- Rev. John E. Jackson
- Rev. John E. Jackson
- Rev. John E. Jackson
