The Rev. Al Sharpton quietly came to town this week to be a guest preacher at Simmons College of Kentucky's third annual Church Growth Leadership Conference.
The crowd at St. Stephen Baptist Church, though sizeable, was intimate, and in that setting of a few hundred people, Sharpton seemed anything but the big, bad wolf -- white America's worst nightmare, the notorious publicity hound or the "racial arsonist" that Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson once described him as being. The Al Sharpton at St. Stephen's was a prophetic Baptist preacher, whose Pentecostal roots were evident in his cadence and his whoop.
This Al Sharpton, at 55, came to Louisville imbued, or so it seemed to me and perhaps others, with the calm wisdom that tends to come with age, experience and being a student of history, fully aware of what one owes to those who've come before. Talking to "family," so to speak, this Al Sharpton might be unrecognizable to those who know him only through sound bites.
This Al Sharpton came to preach. His sermon title was "We're Not There Yet," His text came from the Old Testament book of Joshua, and his contemporary reference point was something that then-candidate Barack Obama told a crowd gathered to commemorate the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. "Bloody Sunday" is how that march came to be known. The integrated assembly of nonviolent protesters was attacked by police. Many were beaten bloody, including now-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. At the commemoration, candidate Obama described his as the "Joshua Generation," meaning those who came to their maturity after Brown v. Board of Education, after the sit-ins and major marches such as in Selma, and after the civil rights and voting rights bills had been signed.
Sharpton himself was a child in 1965, and on Monday night he made the point that "Joshua was a continuation of Moses, not Moses' competitor." Moses did not make it into the Promised Land, but without Moses, there wouldn't have been a Joshua, whose task from God was to lead the Jews there. If you were never at the Red Sea, you won't know what to do when you get to the River Jordan, Sharpton says, if you deny your connection to those who came before. Moreover, Sharpton's assessment of this current era is that "many don't understand where we are because we didn't participate in the Exodus that got us here." So, yes, America has elected its first black president, but Sharpton said, "We're not there yet" because of all the "structural inequalities" that remain. "We need to be equal," he said. "You can check into any hotel, but the issue is do you have the money to check out?" And of African Americans, he said, when did we go from the dignity of Rosa Parks to today, when some, instead of wanting to be educated, want to be thugs -- to times like now when African Americans are "dumb enough to kill ourselves."
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Source: Betty Bayé, Courier-Journal
This Al Sharpton, at 55, came to Louisville imbued, or so it seemed to me and perhaps others, with the calm wisdom that tends to come with age, experience and being a student of history, fully aware of what one owes to those who've come before. Talking to "family," so to speak, this Al Sharpton might be unrecognizable to those who know him only through sound bites.
This Al Sharpton came to preach. His sermon title was "We're Not There Yet," His text came from the Old Testament book of Joshua, and his contemporary reference point was something that then-candidate Barack Obama told a crowd gathered to commemorate the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. "Bloody Sunday" is how that march came to be known. The integrated assembly of nonviolent protesters was attacked by police. Many were beaten bloody, including now-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. At the commemoration, candidate Obama described his as the "Joshua Generation," meaning those who came to their maturity after Brown v. Board of Education, after the sit-ins and major marches such as in Selma, and after the civil rights and voting rights bills had been signed.
Sharpton himself was a child in 1965, and on Monday night he made the point that "Joshua was a continuation of Moses, not Moses' competitor." Moses did not make it into the Promised Land, but without Moses, there wouldn't have been a Joshua, whose task from God was to lead the Jews there. If you were never at the Red Sea, you won't know what to do when you get to the River Jordan, Sharpton says, if you deny your connection to those who came before. Moreover, Sharpton's assessment of this current era is that "many don't understand where we are because we didn't participate in the Exodus that got us here." So, yes, America has elected its first black president, but Sharpton said, "We're not there yet" because of all the "structural inequalities" that remain. "We need to be equal," he said. "You can check into any hotel, but the issue is do you have the money to check out?" And of African Americans, he said, when did we go from the dignity of Rosa Parks to today, when some, instead of wanting to be educated, want to be thugs -- to times like now when African Americans are "dumb enough to kill ourselves."
Click Here to Read More...
Source: Betty Bayé, Courier-Journal
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