By Judith McMillan
It is vital that white churches learn about the economic oppression and systemic dehumanization of the enslaved that began in the early 1600’s so that we can understand, to some degree, how we got here.
And where is here? It is seeing Black people continuing to be killed by police in the streets. It is seeing some of our white citizens create a culture of hatred toward Black, Indigenous, and People of color (BIPOC}. It is seeing voter suppression tactics being used to limit access to government. It is seeing the long effects of racism. It is like a net caught on a rock being pulled into the ocean with a strong tide that desperately needs to be cut free. That net of hate keeps America frozen. Learning about the real past from people who are descendants of and still affected by white supremacist policies can help us fight racism today. It is why we find ourselves marching in the streets and starting intentional anti-racism education, book groups and learning. It is because we are called to be a just church, a church who helps to liberate God’s people, ultimately, liberating ourselves from the same racist oppression. We need to understand the racist net that was carefully crafted to oppress so that we can break free from its trappings.
This is difficult work. It will be emotional work. We are coming to a new reality where we are not the center of the story. Black Lives Matter. And we need to learn from them, and see what life has been like as a collective link to the past.
I am a Presbyterian clergywoman. I have come to love the PCUSA because of their advocacy work with indigenous peoples, with Black lives, with women and children, with the poor. On a trip to my first General Assembly, I recall a bus ride with a woman who was proud of the Witherspoon Society. She told me they were a group within the denomination fighting for social justice. In William Darity’s From Here to Equality, I learned a little more about John Knox Witherspoon. While I knew he was the only college president (Princeton, 1768-1794) and clergy person to sign the Declaration of Independence, I did not know he was creating a family legacy enslaving up to 500 individuals. “When John Knox Witherspoon’s son David died, David’s human property and land were passed on to his children. In his will, the younger Witherspoon also stipulated that three of the captives be leased out and that the income from their labors be used to pay the tuition and fees for his son John to attend Princeton.”1
This is one small portrait of one family who benefited from making Black bodies less than human. They created wealth and furthered the economic gap for those who endured being enslaved. It showcases how one family’s legacy was able to build upon their wealth and grow it and thrive on the backs of Black bodies. What do you suppose are the stories of those 500 enslaved men, women and children? We should want to know.
While hosting a book group in a mostly white congregation with all white participants, the question was brought up twice by the same person within two weeks. Why do we need to study about the 17th and 18th centuries? Can’t we move on and make it better now?
We need to learn about the economic reality that built this nation so that we can make amends. “Some universities managed to establish fiscal stability by engaging in the direct buying and selling of enslaved blacks. In 1838, Georgetown University avoided bankruptcy by selling 272 persons owned by the Jesuit priests who were seeking to secure the institution’s survival.”2 Many universities were built by the enslaved. Those universities would do well to study their documents and study reparations with scholarships for BIPOC.
The Church is called to confess her sins, to name them specifically. Even if we did not profit individually from the enslaved in our direct lineage, we did so collectively. And collectively, we continue to reap the benefits of this country’s past. Since the PCUSA supports academic institutions, we too should reflect on the origin stories of our institutions and provide scholarships and reparations. We can choose to read, quote and follow all white authors or learn from BIPOC. We can choose to isolate ourselves from the news of those being killed. We can even choose to say “stop protesting in my neighborhood,” because we carry the sin of individualism, classism, racism; and, by doing so, we promote a white-washed view of history. This needs to end in the almost-all-white denomination of the PCUSA. We need to admit the sins of the past and understand how racist policies are tangling life for Black people in carefully crafted policies today.
The “end of slavery” didn’t end racism.3 The idea of white supremacy created a tiered system of economic and social oppression that continues today. “Suffice it to say that in the United States, slave ownership was a white affair and enslavement was a black affair, and the benefits and damages were distributed accordingly.”4 Enslaved peoples were enslaved for almost 250 years.
Then there was the initiation of black codes, convict leasing, lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, ghettoization, redlining, mass incarcerations and killings by police. The fight for civil rights took place in the 60’s because of mass incarcerations, policing, poll taxes and literacy tests for people of color. Black men and women were finally granted the protection and right to vote in 1965! Think about why we needed a voting rights act in this country. Racism, poll taxes and literacy tests made it unlikely Blacks would vote. The VRA “gave African Americans the legal means to challenge voting restrictions…and vastly improved voter turnout.”5
So why is it important to study slavery and its effect—something that existed more than half the time America has been a country? Because white supremacy and racism built this country. Until we intentionally sit with, listen and learn from the Black community what life has really been like, we can never understand the pain and suffering that built America. We need to confess this reality daily before we can hope for something better.
I find liberation from God in listening to the real stories and practices of people who survived the harshest of hate. I find hope in understanding and learning what really happened. I don’t want to forget that America is the place of the Trail of Tears and the lynching of Black men simply because they were Black. I don’t want to forget the mob mentality and the hatred that can be taught because that it is happening now. People are dying in the streets because of racism. And until America faces the racism, and understands the white racist pillars this country was built on: economic advancement at the expense of the enslaved, dehumanizing practices to keep people oppressed, limiting access to government and the like, then, no, we cannot move to next steps.
Part of our white heritage is the pain and suffering our ancestors caused others. Part of our learning is to acknowledge and make reparations. To study reparations! To enact legislation to make a way for BIPOC to excel and succeed in this country.
The need to protect the white narrative of our nation is not important. Those are ideas that were taught to us, but we didn’t learn the whole truth. Because of those who wrote the textbooks, we didn’t hear from the descendants of slaves. My first slave narrative was shared in seminary, graduate school. Before then, I didn’t know about Harriet Tubman. And my life was diminished because I did not know. As a pastor, I am called to preach and teach truth in love. And to be in love with God’s creation is to love Black lives and to care to know their truth.
White Church, let’s not be afraid to do our homework. Chapter three summarizes where we are now: “The sale and forced labor of black bodies drove the commerce of the United States from the earliest days of the nation and made possible the world we inhabit today.”6
Let’s have faith in the call to follow the One who fights for and deeply cherishes those who have yet to tell their story. Why do we study the 17th and 18th centuries? Because God calls us to. We study the 1st century Jesus, and we study the Holocaust, and we study human sin. If we do not care to know the truth, we are not free from the net of racism, but are caught in its oppression. Church, let’s listen and seek a better way to be. For Black Lives Matter to God.
—Rev. Dr. Judith McMillan is Presbyterian pastor, artist and avid cyclist living and serving in Michigan.
Footnotes:
1. Darity, William A. From Here to Equality (p. 77). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
2. Darity, William A. From Here to Equality (p. 78). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
3. In the Documentary the 13th, Ava Devurney posits that slavery continued in new forms, leading to what today is mass incarceration in the for-profit prison industrial complex. Thus, “the end of slavery” transformed it.
4. Darity, William A. From Here to Equality (p. 88). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
5. History.com, “Voting Rights Act of 1965,” November 9, 2009.
6. Darity, William A. From Here to Equality (p. 88). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
