Since Pete Seeger’s death in January of this year, folks who know that I’m a sometimes song leader have asked me about him and his influence on communities that struggle for peace and justice. Maybe Pete said it best himself: “Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to begin to make our lives once more all of a piece. And when one person taps out a beat while another leads into the melody, or... Read more
Fourty-six years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, TN. In the Christian tradition, martyr’s death days are their feast days, when we remember what they lived for by paying attention to what they died for. Though King’s own organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was scrambling to plan its Poor People’s March on Washington, King went to Memphis to support the struggle for sanitation workers rights that his friend and nonviolent teacher, Jim Lawson, had... Read more
Eleven years ago, as the US was bombing Iraq, some friends of ours hit a piece of shrapnel near a place called Rutba and almost died in the ensuing accident. The doctor who saved them said, “Three days ago your country bombed our hospital, but we will take care of you.” They were saved by the Good Iraqi, and we’ve been trying to learn the hospitality they taught us ever since at Rutba House. Looking back this anniversary, this poem... Read more
A few times a week these days I get a call or email from friends around the country who all ask me the same question: so, what’s happening down there in North Carolina? I’ve taken to telling them that the Civil Rights Movement is getting born again. Most of them have read a news story or seen coverage of protests against the extremist takeover of NC government in the past year. (If you have an hour, Bill Moyer’s “State of... Read more
In school rooms across America, kids like mine are coloring pictures of Martin Luther King and watching slide shows about Ms. Rosa Parks. It’s Black History Month again–“the shortest month of the year,” a friend of mine wryly observes. But it’s amazing how broadly we celebrate those who sat-in, marched, and cried out for justice in America 50 years ago. No one in America today can argue that King doesn’t matter. He’s standing on the National Mall, memorialized in stone.... Read more
Dear Chief Lopez, On October 31, 2012, I met with you to discuss concerns of the citizens of Durham’s Walltown neighborhood about policing in our neighborhood. I came at your request because the Walltown Neighborhood Ministries, which I serve as Chair, had invited you the day before to attend a public forum in our neighborhood on December 5th, 2012, to address these concerns. I was impressed by the speed of your reply. I had great hopes that we could work... Read more
Since publishing Strangers at My Door six weeks ago, I’ve had the chance to tell stories of formerly homeless folks who’ve lived with us at Rutba House–women and men who’ve invited me into their world, become friends, and changed my way of seeing. Whenever I tell these stories, someone asks what hospitality might mean for them. So I tell them about how, in the city where I live, we’ve been trying to change a law that makes it illegal to... Read more
I’m just back from a week of Freedom Riding with some of today’s most inspiring young people and some of the 1960’s most courageous leaders. Back home in tobacco country for a family wedding this weekend, I’ve been thinking about how often Southern white folks have been duped into fighting the blacks or the Mexicans–or even the “white trash”–so that the balance of power remains in the control of elites.Why did so many Southerners fight and die to keep slavery... Read more
27 years ago, when Tameeka answered a knock at her door here in Walltown, she couldn’t have imagined the full weight of the words she heard from the officer who was standing there. Sure, she knew she was in trouble. That’s why she went to the law library at Duke and did research for herself. But her lawyer said she’d never beat the charge—said her best bet was to take the plea deal the DA was offering. That way she... Read more
In the spring of 1961, Kennedy’s White House was focused on Cold War politics. The civil rights struggle in the South felt like a distraction to the President and his staff, the FBI opposed the movement as Communist, and most people in middle America were just getting ready for Mother’s Day weekend. But the day after Mother’s Day, 1961, a burning bus was on the front cover a newspapers across the country. In Aniston and Birmingham, AL, the Klan violently... Read more
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
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