Saturday’s “Day of Dialogue” dealt with how racism can be defeated through the love and teachings of Jesus Christ.
The event, organized by Mission Mississippi, drew a large crowd to the Leflore County Civic Center.
Discussions initially took place in small groups. Afterward, a panel of nine pastors and community leaders fielded questions from the audience.
The panel was moderated by the Rev. Peter Gray, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.
The Rev. Richard Owens, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, said he became aware of racism while growing up in western Alabama on a dairy farm.
Owens, who is white, said he didn’t have any white friends to play with so he went looking for some at a nearby black home.
“Their parents wouldn’t let them play with me either,” he said.
“We are products of our raising. The Gospel hadn’t quite sunk in by heart,” Owens said.
The Rev. Calvin Collins, pastor of New Zion Missionary Baptist Church, said although he was aware of a segregation between blacks and whites, it wasn’t until he attended a Holmes County Community College chemistry course, sitting behind a white woman, that it finally hit home.
“I was getting ready to reach and pull her hair, and all of the sudden the beeper went off — that black boys don’t pull white girls’ hair,” he said. “I stopped in mid-reach.”
Dr. John Lucas Jr., a retired physician, said that when he spent childhood summers with his grandparents in Carrollton, he was allowed to play with black children but “they never were allowed to come in the house.”
Lucas said he led a “sheltered” life. However, when he returned to Greenwood to set up his medical practice, James Meredith was seeking to become the first black student at the University of Mississippi. “We’ve made a lot of progress. There’s a lot of work to be done,” Lucas said.
The Rev. Giulianna Gray, rector of St. Stephens Episcopal Church of Indianola, said she “didn’t have any concept of race” growing up in West Virginia, which was almost totally white. It wasn’t until she went to college in Cincinnati that she became aware of racism.
Bishop Milton Glass, pastor of New Green Grove Church of Faith, said he first encountered racism “when I was old enough to know there was a black and a white.”
The gruesome 1955 lynching death of Chicago youth Emmett Till in Mississippi brought racism into sharp focus. Glass said his mother showed him a picture of Till’s mutilated body that was published in Jet magazine.
“She said, ‘Look at this. This is what would happen to you if you looked at a white person or a white woman in the wrong way.’ That’s when the light really came on,” Glass said.
“We have a big problem,” he said.
Pattiner Pitchford, a panelist who lives in Holmes County, said she didn’t experience racism growing up in Peoria, Illinois. Her first encounter with it came about six years ago after she moved to Mississippi, she said.
The Rev. Michael Stewart, who is assistant pastor of Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Sidon, said he was aware of racism early in life.
“Whenever a white person would drive by, they would look the other way — suggesting to me that I didn’t exist or they didn’t find me worthy enough to acknowledge me,” he said.
Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams said she became aware of segregation while in the eighth or ninth grade after inadvertently stepping into the black waiting room at the doctor’s office. She asked her mother, “Why in the world do we have two waiting rooms?” Her mother replied, “‘It’s just the way it is.”
“I’m kind of ashamed I didn’t do something back then,” McAdams said.
Dr. William Bynum, president of Mississipi Valley State University, said he was made aware of racism when public schools in his hometown of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, integrated in 1972. He remembered being told by the principal of the school that it was important for the black students to behave and not create “problems or issues.”
When asked how to stop racism from being passed on to the next generation, Owens said the Bible is “a game changer.”
“Jesus changes everything,” he said. “I think diversity brings God glory. We’re all made in the image of God.”
Glass said although it is important to focus on the family, churches can do more to help turn the tide.
“I believe that a lot of it has to come from the pulpit. The Gospel converts as well as convicts. We’ve got to start giving people what they need to hear,” he said.
Forgiveness, “putting the past in the past,” is also important, Glass said: “As long as we’re still holding the past, we are actually saying we’re free but we’re not free. We’re still in bondage.”
Pitchford said the racial segregation in the schools remains a problem.
Gray said Pitchford had a point.
“It would be so good if our children were going to school together. I’d add to that, we cannot expect our children to do what we are not ourselves willing to do,” Gray said.
McAdams said improving the public schools academically would be one way to bring the races together.
•Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
