Today on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the host Brian Stelter interviewed Farai Chideya (Bmore born) about the upheavals in journalism. She commented that we are in a time of Reckoning, Release and Reform. I like her alliteration, and I added a fourth word, Redemption. This I did as a Christian who believes in the redemptive Power of God. I know that God can redeem things that appear beyond redemption. The agitation stirred by the unrest is releasing boatloads of memories that many brushed off just to keep going. I have them, you have them, we all have them. This moment is exposing experiences; unmasking offenders and redeeming the offended.
One of my earliest experiences of race involved my beloved grandmother, in Selma, when she gave me one of the worst whippings of my life. I was probably seven or eight and my brother and I were staying with her, granddad and Aunt Dot. One day she took us to a store fabric store. She told us to stay in the car. My brother and I started fighting, I got out of the car and went inside the store to tell her what happened. When we got home, she got a switch from the backyard and whipped me for coming into the store.
Years later I learned that my grandmother had scissors in her pocketbook for protection. I did not know about segregated Selma and the maneuvers black people had to make to get in and out of the stores. I did not know what the white policemen, standing in the store watching the colored customers, signaled. I did not know that the sight of me, a little black girl, wandering around the store made my grandmother’s heart stop.
I know now that I frightened her and in the accepted manner of correction of that time, she made sure that what I did that day I would never do again.
I hope you are sharing your experiences. I am a witness that mine are part of my testimony. Jesus Has Fixed It. Still Fixing It. Will Keep Fixing It as only Jesus Can.