St. Louis: St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church

St. Alphonsus Liguori "the Rock" Catholic Church, St. Louis, Missouri. November 2017.

When I visited Toronto a couple of years ago, it refreshed me to hear a common theme on various public platforms: "We cherish our interculturalism, our varied complexions, our diverse languages."

Is it Kumbaya Land in Toronto? Of course not. But at least there is the public embrace of interculturalism as a national value.

Would that it were so in the United States. Instead, we apply the phrase "political correctness" as a sneer, a smirk. As if being inclusive is a bad thing.  

This thought is my lead-in to a Sunday in July at St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church.

My nonagenarian aunt attended St. Alphonsus Liguori High School way back in the day. Then, the church was predominantly white. In 1945, the Archbishop Cardinal Ritter directed the integration of all Catholic churches in the St. Louis Diocese. Today "the Rock" is predominantly African-American. (A brief history of the church here.)

When I think of African-American Catholics, I think of:

Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Opelousas, Louisiana;

Knights of Peter Claver (established in 1909) - and wonder why I never knew about this organization until I moved to Louisiana, despite my having been raised Catholic; and

This bit of Louisiana history, which James Lee Burke described in his book, Creole Belle (2012): 

We crossed Lafourche and Jefferson Parishes and flew over Barataria Bay and then crossed the long umbilical cord of land extending into the Gulf known as Plaquemines Parish, the old fiefdom of Leander Perez, a racist and dictatorial politician who ordered a Catholic church padlocked when the archbishop installed a black man as pastor.

Note: Unable to find this precise historical datum, but here is a similar situation that involved Mr. Perez and an African-American priest in Placquemines Parish. 

Anyway, on this particular Sunday in July, I attended Mass at St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church, and:

The entrance processional walked to the altar to the accompaniment of the church choir, which sang a version of the Truthettes' Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus:

The entrance processional was a fusion of our Americanness. It included the ceremonial fragrance of smoking frankincense from East and North Africa and the Middle East, held in a round, wooden, tasseled bowl of African influence, carried by an African-American woman, barefoot, dressed in a caftan that bespoke traditional African dress.


The choir covered New Direction's song, When All God's Children (aka What a Time) during the preparation of the gifts:

During communion, the choir sang Dorothy Norwood's and Alvin Darling's Somebody Prayed For Me:

The choir sent us on our way with This Little Light of Mine:

I didn't think overmuch about the song, This Little Light of Mine, outside of its pleasing sound and lyrics ... until this came across my newsfeed from NPR: 'This Little Light of Mine' Shines On, A Timeless Tool of Resistance.

The introduction to this article:

Ask Freedom Singer Rutha Mae Harris, and she'll tell you plainly: You can't just sing "This Little Light of Mine." You gotta shout it: 

"Everywhere I go, Lord, I'm gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"

On a Monday morning, Harris' powerful voice fills the small church right next to the Albany Civil Rights Institute in Georgia. She's showing them how she and her fellow Freedom Singers — a renowned quartet that raised money for student activists during the civil rights movement — belted out songs to get through dangerous protests.

..... a unifying affirmation that gives the crowd a taste of that feeling from the 1960s. She says the song helped steady protestors' nerves as abusive police officers threatened to beat them or worse.

And later in the article: "Last year, Reverend Osagyefo Sekou used 'This Little Light of Mine' to curb passions during a counter-protest, before a crowd of white supremacists and alt-right supporters gathered for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va."

A video of that singing here:

This is yet another example for me of how we are surrounded by history in our everyday lives. A song. A mural. The style of earrings a woman wears; the width and arch of her eyebrows. The waistband on a pair of jeans. How we do our hair. A flag. The name of a street. The route of a road. The cluster of volunteer irises on the side of an empty stretch of road. Why Monday was wash day and red-beans-and-rice day.

Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 3: A Fuller History

Never Been Beat by Artist Joe Don Brave, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

The Arrow Rock State Historic Site's Visitor Center is very, very attractive. It is a space easy to miss, abutting the village, but tucked behind trees and a boardwalk. There's an expansive parking lot accessible from the rural highway that serves both the village and the state park.

Joe Don Brave exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

Given the diminutive size of Arrow Rock and its rural setting, it surprised and pleased me to see the permanent exhibit called Slavery, Racism, Violence: Justice and the Constitution -- the African-American experience in the Boone's Lick from Emancipation (1865) to the beginning of the Civil Rights Era.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

For healing to occur in our society, it is imperative for us to look at our shared history, to gaze on it, to see it and to see the women, men, and children - our ancestors - who lived it.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

The exhibit impressed me with its straightforwardness in presenting facts and the effect of slavery and post-slavery times on residents, both black and white.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

The visitor center featured a beautifully-lit room of art work by Joe Don Brave, an artist of Osage and Cherokee heritage.

Missouri: Silver Dollar City: Roller Coasters, the Swamp, and the People I Didn't See

Spring flower, Missouri. April 2007.

October 2017


Roller coasters

On my way to Missouri from El Paso via Big Bend National Park via Louisiana via Arkansas, I had some time to kill, and what better way to kill time than to ride roller coasters at Silver Dollar City?

When I say ride roller coasters, I mean just do that and nothing else. I was by myself, so I could choose to ride only the rides I wanted to ride. All day. ALL.DAY.


And a bag of kettle corn for lunch.


Jesus, it was fine.



The swamp


I noticed there were other solo visitors moving from roller coaster to roller coaster and then making the rounds again. So I guess I was part of a thing.

I chatted with one gentleman doing the coasters, and we exchanged the usual introductory questions, the almost-first of which: Where are you from?

He replied, "Washington."

I said, "Oh, the state of or D.C.?

He sniffed in contempt, "The state - not the swamp!"

I asked, "Oh, have you been to D.C.?"

He said, "No!"

I said, "Oh, it's a great place to visit. Once you get your travel and accommodations squared away, the museums and monuments and parks are free! The history, the art, the culture! It's a wonderful place to visit!"

But, of course, that's not what he was talking about.


Which brings me to:

The people I didn't see

This falls into the peculiar blindness category. Well, for those of us who are white folks, anyway.

The time is over in America when we can be blind to what we don't see. When it comes to Silver Dollar City, here's what I didn't see:

• Employees of color. Of course, out of 1700+ full-time and part time employees, there are those of color, but I did not observe any measurable presence. 
• Activities, exhibits, or stations that represent or include African-American participation in history or cultural traditions. Silver Dollar City purports to demonstrate traditional Missouri or Ozarkian - let's say rural Missouri - traditions and values. It needs to step up to share our comprehensive history in Missouri. Some historical stuff Silver Dollar City might look at here and here and here and here. 

I don't have any stats to support my perception of what I didn't see. .... Maybe Silver Dollar City is more inclusive in its hiring and exhibits than what appeared to be the case on the day I went.

All I've got is what I didn't see.

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 4: Casual Contempt

Opelousas, Louisiana. May 2015.

"You never know when it's going to come up and slap you in the face,"  said one of my Louisiana acquaintances, an African-American man. "You've always got to be ready."

The "it" is an act, a gesture, a throw-away comment that shocks - not because of its size or its volume or because of physical harm, but because it is so casual in its delivery, and so careless about its effect. It feels very personal, like someone stepping into your intimate body space to slap you smartly across the face, without warning, stinging your skin, raising a flush of emotions to the surface.

Contempt: The feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.

In this post, I share some experiences told to me by several Louisiana acquaintances of color. I've rolled the stories into a composite of a man I'll call "Lem."

What they have in common is a casual and knowing jab by one human being to another. They are not acts of misunderstanding or naiveté. They are intentional and cavalierly cruel.



The cafe

While working out of town one day, but still in Louisiana, Lem went to a cafe for lunch. And, listen, we're not talking about back in the day here; we're talking contemporary times. So anyway, Lem went into a cafe for lunch and ordered his meal. The server brought it. As Lem ate, his eyes wandered over the room, just looking around as one does when eating alone. And he stopped chewing suddenly because he saw. He saw that everyone in the restaurant ate off dinnerware and metal flatware, and drank from glasses. His meal had been served to him on a styrofoam plate, with plastic utensils and a paper cup. He was the only diner eating off of styrofoam and he was the only diner of color.


Too good

A few years back, Lem had an opportunity to buy some used work vehicles at a very good price. They needed mechanical and cosmetic work, and he fixed them up fine. They looked damn pretty when he finished, and Lem was pleased with his investment. He put them to work in his business.

And then he ran into an old, racist line of thinking that kicks in when a person of color possesses something that is "too good."

In Lem's case, while he performed a task in one office, he overhead a conversation of the organization's staff, all white, in an adjacent office. Which went something like this: "You see that vehicle of Lem's out there? If he's doing so good, he obviously doesn't need any work from us in the future."


The school bus driver

Now, this story does go back a bit to, say, 50 years and longer. At least in one parish, African-American children had to walk to school while their white neighbors took the school bus. Lem told me that his parents instructed him to take care that he didn't get his school clothes dirty while walking, by sticking as far over to the right shoulder of the road as possible. Especially on rainy days.

I heard this same experience from several acquaintances.

In fact, their parents' concern wasn't so much about protecting school clothes as it was to protect their children from white students who liked to throw stones at them from the school bus windows when it drove by.

And to protect their children from a school bus driver who, especially on rainy days, scooched over to the right edge of the road for the pleasure of splashing muddy water onto the walking children with his big school bus tires.



The mules

Lem shared a country saying with me: "Don't mind the mules, just load the wagon."

For a number of years, perhaps in the late 80s, Lem worked for a well-known, multi-national company. He often worked outdoors.

One day, a trench needed to be dug. The supervisor ordered the black employees, including Lem, to start digging same. It was a smothering hot day. The supervisor was a guy who liked to throw his weight around. Even so, this task wouldn't be particularly noteworthy in regard to my post today. Except that a white co-worker rolled up to the edge of the deepening trench in a backhoe.

He said to the supervisor: "It is too hot and too slow to have these men dig this hole by hand. It's also unnecessary. I can dig that trench right quick for you with the backhoe."

The supervisor replied, in effect:  "Don't you worry about the mules."

And while Lem and his co-workers continued to slug dirt in the heavy heat, the backhoe stood idle.


Note: This same company later got caught up in a scandalous racial discrimination lawsuit and subsequently settled out of court, agreeing to pay $172 million to the plaintiffs.



The wait

Lem is a business owner who submits competitive bids for work to companies and government agencies.

To write bids that are competitive, business owners must, of course, know what their supplies and equipment will cost them, so this information can be factored into the bids. In an area with a relatively small population such as South Louisiana, there are only a few suppliers who serve the needs of certain project types.

Lem informed a local supplier of the items he'd need for the project he hoped to win; the supplier would give him an estimate of the supply costs so Lem could complete his proposal and submit his bid by the deadline.

Time passed while Lem waited for the estimate and the bid deadline approached. Days, then weeks. Always there was some reason the supplier didn't have the estimate ready for Lem.

Finally, with the deadline almost nigh, Lem went to the supplier. The supplier's employee gave over the estimate. His honor, engaged at last, compelled the employee to tell Lem that his boss had instructed him to withhold the estimate from Lem until it was too late for Lem to submit a bid. But the employee couldn't bring himself to go quite that far.

Contempt.


In Purple Cane Road, Detective Dave Robicheaux relates a story of casual contempt from the 1960s:

The next morning I read the coroner's report ... It was signed by a retired pathologist named Ezra Cole, a wizened, part-time deacon in a fundamentalist congregation made up mostly of Texas oil people and North Louisiana transplants. He had worked for the parish only a short time eight or nine years ago. But I still remembered the pharmacy he had owned in the Lafayette Medical Center back in the 1960s. He would not allow people of color to even stand in line with whites, requiring them instead to wait in the concourse until no other customers were inside.


Related posts

The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See

Rootless Lit: The Warmth of Other Suns

"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience, divesting of stuff, or portability. 

Rootless lit book review: The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson.

Summary from Publisher's Weekly: "... Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's ... study of the     "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest."

Credit: Amazon

I thought I "knew" what it was like to be black in the American South before institutionalized segregation ended. I "knew" it was bad.

But as I moved through the book, I realized:

• Even though I had never articulated it to myself, I must have held the untested belief that black Americans had somehow acclimated to the reality of Jim Crow repression in the South.   
• As much as I thought I "knew" of atrocities such as lynching, mortal beatings, and being dragged behind vehicles til dead, there were even worse monstrosities.
• I knew nothing about the aggressive actions southern states took to keep black Americans from leaving.

Ms. Wilkerson tells the story of the Great Migration through the voices of three people who migrated north in three separate decades. Reading their stories, it really hit home that one never gets acclimated to daily humiliations, whether petty or grand. There is anger, bitterness, frustration, fear, despair - most of which could not be expressed during the Jim Crow years because the consequences of doing so might mean terrorism, brutalization, or death, for even the slightest infraction of the "rules."

I like how Ms. Wilkerson framed the Great Migration in the context of other migrations, such as the Eastern Europeans to the U.S. She made a good case for identifying the South as the Old Country and the North as the New World, noting differences in speech, customs, food, education, etc.

The author made the matter-of-fact and consistent choice of the word "escape" to describe what motivated, in full or in part, the immigrants' journey from the South. This kept the profundity of the Great Migration in front of me throughout the book.

She also used the phrase "caste system" to describe the realities in the South (and the North, as well). I found this helpful, too, because it made the point that even though the Great Migration was a story about black Americans, it wasn't "just" about race. The Great Migration was a universal story of people who fled from oppression and caste assignment and who sought better lives for themselves and their children.

I liked, too, that Ms. Wilkerson didn't sanctify or otherwise glamorize the three people she chose to tell their stories. They were ordinary, flawed individuals.

The Great Migration ended circa 1970. That is only yesterday, sociologically, and its effects continue to unfold.