God Healing Racism

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States caused John McCain to say in his warmly gracious concession speech, “A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on earth. Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country.”

At the age of six, I saw a “Whites Only” sign on the water fountain at the Sears and Roebuck store in Greenville, South Carolina. During the summers of my college years, I worked in a textile mill in my hometown and saw the first African-Americans being hired for jobs other than cleaning restrooms and sweeping floors. Until my junior year in college, I never went to school with a black person. Furman University admitted its first African-American undergraduate student in 1965. Joseph Vaughn, a freshman, was in my biology class in the fall of 65.

During my two years at Furman, I lived at home and drove to school each day. On that 15-mile trip each morning, I listened to Bob Jones University radio, which carried extremist commentators Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis. They argued that Martin Luther King, Jr. was part of a communist conspiracy to destroy America by forcing integration. That stirred my interest in the Civil Rights Movement, and Dr. King became my hero.
When Dr. King was assassinated, I wept. I was sick at heart that people I knew and loved in the South were saying, “They ought to reward the man that shot him.” Ignorance and hatred were still in control of many minds just 40 years ago.

I thank God for working in American history to heal us of our racism. A good friend told me this morning that his grandchildren can’t see why electing a black man president is such a big deal. They don’t see race. Look how far we’ve come! My dad was sad just eighteen years ago when his small South Georgia church refused to allow a young black student to sing in a worship service. I wish I could talk to him about the election of an African-American President. I’m sure that he is looking down from heaven and celebrating that America is “a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry” he saw in his lifetime.