When I Liberate Myself, I'm Liberating Other People

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of serving as liturgist at church. Our reverend went out on a limb, which I always think is a good idea. Instead of providing a traditional service and sermon, in light of the upcoming election she focused the celebration on the American Dream.

We sang tunes and words from the vast repertoire of distinctly American music. And we heard readings from each of the centuries of American history. These readings describe and illustrate the various facets of the illusive American dream.

Some of the readings spoke heartily of the individual, while others spoke to the national collective; some were irrepressibly exuberant, others challenging and disturbing in light of current events.

I particularly liked how Reverend Vader said the following: "Some may wonder why we do this in worship today. We do it because we are citizens. We do it because we are Christians who believe that all are welcome and loved by God. We do this because we have a voice and because our voice needs to be heard."

I read several passages: one from the Iroquois Federation Constitution, I read the preamble to the Constitution. I even read the Gettysburg Address.

But the one that stuck most with me is from Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamer is known as the lady who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," and was born in 1917 in Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of the children.

In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."

When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police. Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote.

Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Hamer spoke in front of the Credentials Committee in a televised proceeding that reached millions of viewers. She told the committee how African-Americans in many states across the country were prevented from voting through illegal tests, taxes and intimidation. As a result of her speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention and the other members were seated as honorable guests.

Here is the reading I was privileged to present.

The special plight and the role of black women is not something that just happened three years ago. We've had a special plight for 350 years. My grandmother had it. My grandmother was a slave. She died in 1960. She was 136 years old. It's been a special plight for the black woman. And right now, sometimes, you know I work for the liberation of all people, because when I liberate myself, I'm liberating other people.

Whether you have a Ph.D., D.D., or no D, we're in this bag together. Not to fight to try to liberate ourselves from the men -- this is another trick to get us fighting among ourselves -- but to work together with the black man, then we will have a better chance to just act as human beings, and to be treated as human beings.

I would like to tell you in closing the story of an old man. This old man was very wise, and he could answer questions that was almost impossible for people to answer.

So some people went to him one day, two young people, and said 'We're going to trick this guy today. We're going to catch a bird and we're going to carry it to this old man. And we're gonna ask him, 'This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?'

'If he says 'Dead,' we're gonna turn it loose and let it fly. And if he says 'Alive' we're gonna crush it.'

So they walked up to this old man and they said, 'This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?'

He looked at the young people and he smiled. And he said, 'It's in your hands.'