Rethinking Community
I have what may seem kind of a cosmic question: Are we experiencing the contraction of a sense of community, in the broadest meaning of the term, that had been expanding for the last 50 years or more?
Read MoreAmerican Apartheid on Dexter Avenue
Not every resident of Montgomery was thrilled about last week’s opening of the lynching memorial and Legacy Museum. “It’s going to cause an uproar and open old wounds,” one told The Guardian. “It keeps putting the emphasis on discrimination and cruelty,” said another.
Read More“Southern Trees Bear Strange Fruit”*
In Montgomery we confronted our history – or more accurately, our history confronted us with a rawness from which we have shielded ourselves for centuries.
Read MoreConfronting the Past and Building the Future in Montgomery, Alabama
My daughter, Annie, and I just spent two days in Montgomery at the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which covers a small hilltop above Alabama’s capital city. It is an extraordinarily uplifting name for what is, in fact, a heartrending tribute to the more than 4,000 African American victims of lynching in America.
Read MoreLooking for America, from Tombstone to the Lincoln Memorial (a series)
Most Americans know about the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, when 250,000 people marched for “Jobs and Freedom.” The march ended at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the speech that would define his legacy, with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson standing behind him saying, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!” – and he did.
Read MoreAn Atheist in Church
I’m a nonbeliever who loves to visit churches – all kinds of churches: massive Gothic cathedrals, plain Quaker meetinghouses, Buddhist pagodas. I go, not just to see the architecture but to experience the spirit of a place, as I went on Sunday to Riverside Church, which rises above the Hudson River on Harlem’s Morningside Heights.
Read More