To Rise, To Reach a Little Deeper
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 16, 2020
“It is that time and place to remember those who came through the long night
to witness another sunrise.” (Qiyamah Rahman, in Voices from the Margins, p. 14-16.)
This is the story of a long dark night during the Civil War, in Charleston harbor, in South Carolina. On that night, in May of 1862, an enslaved man named Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate navy vessel, and steered it out to sea to deliver it to the Union Navy blockade waiting miles offshore. He delivered the ship and its guns, and he delivered himself, his young family, and his enslaved crew to safety and freedom.
Robert Smalls was the son of a slave in a wealthy household in Beaufort, South Carolina. He is widely believed to be either the child of the owner, or of the owner’s son. Whatever the circumstances, he was allowed more freedom than most, and eventually was permitted to work along the waterfront in Charleston, eventually hired as a crew member aboard the Confederate supply ship, the Planter. He was essentially the pilot of the vessel.
On the night of May 12, 1862, the white captain and crew members defied orders and went home for the night, leaving the ship in the hands of the black crew members. Apparently, it was simply thought impossible that a black crew would be capable of sailing the vessel. Smalls had been plotting an escape for some time, and had planned with and trained the other crew members, so when this opportunity arose, he decided that this was the night for their escape. He donned the straw hat of the captain, hiding his face in the dark, and the vessel left the dock. Confederate Army sentries waved as it left.
The Planter’s first stop was along a wharf elsewhere in the harbor, to pick up Smalls’ wife and two little children. Family members of the crew also boarded in this daring escape to Union lines and freedom. The ship steamed past two forts, including Fort Sumter, blowing the correct signals on the its whistle so that the sentries would recognize it as a Confederate vessel. Once it was past the last fort, it turned and headed for open water and the Union blockade. Smalls removed the Confederate ‘Stars and Bars’ flag and hung one of his wife’s white sheets to signal that they were surrendering. Luckily by the time they approached the Union Naval blockade it was just light enough to make out the white flag. A Union ship had been preparing to fire.
What motivates someone to take such an enormous risk? Well, there are as many reasons as there are people willing to risk their lives for a new beginning. In this case, Robert Smalls had been allowed to marry, and also allowed to live in an apartment in Charleston with his wife and two babies. But he was always afraid that his family could be sold away from him. He was working along the docks in Charleston, and most of his wages were paid to his owner. He was allowed to keep a dollar a week. He approached his wife’s owner asking to purchase her and their babies. The owner was amenable, but wanted $800. Robert Smalls had $100. He and his wife, Hannah, knew that raising enough money to purchase her freedom was going to take a very long time. They opted for escape.
Robert Smalls was 23 years old. He was hailed as a hero in the North, and enlisted in the Union Navy, sometimes serving as the pilot on the Planter, now part of the Union blockade of Southern harbors. He lobbied the Union to enlist black soldiers, and it is said that he personally recruited some 5,000 blacks to serve in the Union Army.
Robert Smalls was paid enough money for bringing the ship and its big guns to the Union side that he was eventually, after the war, able to purchase the house that had belonged to his owner.
After the war, during Reconstruction, Robert Smalls became involved in local politics, and eventually served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lived to see the rights earned during Reconstruction rolled back, until voting rights for blacks were largely eliminated. He died in 1915, in the house in Beaufort that had belonged to his enslaver. He came through a dark night to a sunrise of freedom, only to see the dark clouds of oppression gather again.
(https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/which-slave-sailed-himself-to-freedom/)
February is Black History Month, which gives us a wonderful opportunity to remember the stories not only of notable people of color, the intellectuals and the leaders of civil rights movements, but also the stories of some of the less well-known people who rose up, over and over, to take their place in American history. For this month, we are also examining the quality of resilience, how it arises, and what it can call forth from us.
Maya Angelou said it this way, in her marvelous poem, “Still I Rise:”
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise…”
Resilience is all about rising – rising up over and over again, one more time than you are knocked down. And this time in our country’s history is a very important time to think about resilience, and to work to strengthen our resilience for the days ahead. We have so many examples of people of color demonstrating this resilience.
So often the stories of women get lost in history. If we are asked to name women of color who resisted, persisted, and rose again, we might name Rosa Parks and get no farther. But now we have heard of Minnie Geddings Cox. And another wise and dedicated woman of color we should honor today is Mary McLeod Bethune.
Mary Jane McLeod grew up picking cotton on land owned by her family’s former enslavers. She was the youngest of 17 children, most of whom were born enslaved. Still, emancipation didn’t mean that much – her family still worked for their enslavers until they could afford to buy some land of their own. Mary Jane’s mother still went to the enslavers’ home to do their laundry, and brought little Mary Jane with her. One time, she was allowed to see the white children’s nursery, and picked up a book. A little white girl ordered her to put the book down, saying “You can’t read!” She said later that she decided that the ability to read must be the difference between white people and black people.
A black missionary woman came to town and started a school, and the family decided, since they could only afford for one child to attend, that it should be Mary. Over the years, other scholarships came her way and she ended up graduating from Moody’s Bible Institute, planning to be a missionary and a teacher. She married Albertus Bethune and had a son, but they later separated. Needing to provide for her son, Mary set out for Florida when she heard that railroad workers were migrating there, and decided to open a school in Daytona Beach. It was successful, and grew, and ultimately merged with the Cookman Institute for Men in 1923, forming Bethune-Cookman College, now University.
Mary McLeod Bethune was an activist, urging people to register to vote, and forming organizations for women of color. In 1935 she became the first president of the National Council of Negro Women, and shortly after that joined the Roosevelt Administration as director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. She was also a leader of FDR’s unofficial “black cabinet.” These roles helped her to become acquainted with Eleanor Roosevelt, and the two women became friends. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eleanor-bethune/)
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune
From picking cotton to lunches at the White House. “Still I rise.” And rise, and rise.
What sets these people apart – Minnie and Wayne Cox, Robert and Hannah Smalls, Mary McLeod Bethune – what they had in common and what sets them apart, was their vision and their passion. A passion for freedom, a passion for education, a passion to find ways to help their communities succeed. And that vision and passion fueled resilience; it gave them the strength and the courage they would need to keep rising up, to keep outlasting the dark nights until daybreak.
There is a reason I chose to tell these stories today. We need to hear stories of resilience to bring us hope and inspiration. We are in an ugly time in our nation’s history these days. Some of our most cherished foundational beliefs are being threatened, particularly the rule of law. It is time for us, as Americans, to remember our own vision, to reach deep inside to discover our passion. We must reach a little deeper these days, to confront our fear, to channel our anger, and begin to defend what we say we care about.
Today we have heard the inspiring stories of people who knew what they cared about, and who let nothing stop them until they achieved their visions. Can we be like them? Can we reach down and find our strength and our passion?
Too often these days I am hearing, “Oh, I’ve stopped listening to the news.” My friends, it is a great privilege to be able to do that. To check out, to stop paying attention. Not everyone can turn their backs and pretend to not know. The more vulnerable among us must be watching very carefully every day of their lives.
Of course, the news is pretty painful, and some days downright frightening. I understand that, and I share your fear and your worry. But what is our response? If we all choose to sit back and change the channel to Netflix, who is going to do the hard and necessary work to resist what is happening to this country? Why do we feel that we aren’t needed?
I get upset when I see children separated from their parents at our southern border, and I want to look away. And sometimes I do. I get upset when I see photos of animals suffering because of the climate crisis, and I want to look away. And sometimes I do. But we must not give up or give in. We must pay attention, and give our vision and our passion to resist the terrible things that are taking place. The ongoing reliance on fossil fuels. The voter suppression. The immigration policies, with SWAT teams moving into our cities to hunt immigrants.
Is your country worth your passion? Do you have a vision for what you want this country to be? I think you do. I know you to be people who care, and who believe in law and justice. But to counter what we are experiencing on many different fronts right now, we need to be resilient. We need to reach a little deeper, to keep watching, keep engaging. We need to remember our passion and what we will take risks to achieve, much as the people in our stories did many years ago.
May we remember our resilience; remember all the times in our lives when we thought we could go no farther, when we thought that we didn’t have the courage we need to carry on, when we thought we could not rise up again. Remember all those times when you rose up, those times that led you to this time and this place.
“It is that time and that place to know that it is our turn, that we must leave a legacy for our children. And all the children.
It is that time and that place.
We are the ones we are waiting for!
For that let us be eternally grateful.” (Rahman, op. cit.)
Blessed Be.
Amen.
