Eracism Minute 2/11

 Eracism  Moment  Feb  11, 2018

 Rev. Barbara Davenport

 I’m Barbara Davenport and have been a member of this Fellowship since l993 arrived here from the East coast. Barbara Cheatham and I both came here as newly minted UU ministers. Barbara  to serve this congregation and  I became the minister in Mt. Vernon. 

    Growing up in  rural Vermont on a 140 acre  subsistence  farm-- Vermont,  notoriously the  nation’s  whitest state--  for the first 16 years of my life, I never saw  a black person. 

My  knowledge  of black people came originally from children’s  picture books like Little Black Sambo.  Impressed with Little Black Sambo’s bravery and courage in confronting the tigers, when we got our  black   lab   puppy, when I was 6,  I named him Sambo. 

    In    l954   when I was 16, I flew  alone   to Jacksonville,  Fl to meet up with my best friend, Dot, and her family who had driven down   from Vermont, for spring break.

. When I got off the plane I headed for the nearest  women’s bathroom.  To my utter  befuddlement    it was filled with  “Colored” women who gave me  quizzical looks and  whispered to each other. Florida, 1954 was when I first  encountered “whites only” signs  everywhere--laundromats, drinking fountains, and restaurants.

 The visible signs are gone but the invisible ones still exist. 

My black friend Joe Lloyd, my age,  who lived in my York neighborhood- for many years,  but moved back to his  birth place, Birmingham,  when he retired.

Some of you may have known him as Joe the Tailor.

To this day Joe will not go into inhospitable restaurants where white folks congregate.

          After college, in l964  my husband and I moved to Raleigh NC and were actively involved with our lay led  Unitarian Fellowship’s anti racism work. We lived in Raleigh  until l970—during the height of the civil rights movement.

The  passage of the l964 civil rights act, outlawing segregation in schools and public   places  set off an avalanche of race riots

and  made for troubling times.

      One time, myself and other members of our lay led  Raleigh Unitarian Fellowship brought black children to the public swimming pool. Officials promptly closed the pool.

When we’d   stage sit ins at lunch counters and restaurants with African Americans,   we’d be offered a different menu , one with far higher prices than the usual “white” menu. 

    Although the  Civil rights  act  of 1964 outlawed segregation,  centuries of  inequality and racism are not erased with the stroke of a pen.   Discrimination  is erased  only by the hard work of those who suffer under inequality and those who benefit from it and from white allies and advocates.

   Last summer  my aunt turned 100.  We had a  birthday party for her in Montpelier Vt. Asher,  my 10 year old  biracial adopted grandson  was  the only black person among the  130 of us.  Noticing this,  someone at our table asked him:   “ How does it feel to be the only

Black person in this room.

Asher, with a cheerful grin, promptly replied, “Oh racism is so yesterday”

Would that his words were true.

I worry a lot about  my precious  grandson.   How do I  both   encourage his  exuberant optimistic spirit,  while  at the same time warn him of the dangers of being a black man in American.   When and how do I  help him understand his own roots-- of slavery and systemic discrimination?  

  I’m haunted by this quote  I saw in the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico city .

 “Without memory there  is no recognition, without recognition there can be no justice.”