Born to Rebel by Benjamin Mays

I wanted to read this because I heard Mays quoted by Reginald Washington at my sister's graduation from CSU in May 2019. The quote,

“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.”

spoke to my Enneagram 9 heart. I looked up Mays and found out he'd written an autobiography, and now I've finally read it.

It wasn't all that I was expecting. Lots of information about Mays' work to end segregation in the South, which should be expected; maybe some of it started to sound a little redundant, and I didn't connect with the level of detail he was offering (certain events, people, all going about pretty much the same thing). He did share a bit about his upbringing, how he was personally affected, and how his work intersected with his faith. Overall, though, the book was more about his professional life in academia and a lot less about other things than I was hoping for. He referenced his work as a pastor, but so few details were given! I wanted to know more about relationships among different churches, how he saw doctrine intersecting with race relations. He referenced his wives but incredibly little detail was given about his personal life-- he mentioned having to live in a different state than his first wife-- what? Tell me more about that! Honestly, the work was a bit of a slog for me, (reading books from decades ago, about history, focusing on difficult topics isn't easy) but I'm glad I read it. 

One thing that will stick with me for awhile, I think, is the way that Mays described questioning "innate racial inferiority." As much as he knew that racism was wrong, and that every person made in God's image has equal value, the repeated messages from the people and structures around him made him question whether he was inferior, whether he deserved to be treated that way. It sounded very similar to what Kendi described in the introduction to Stamped from the Beginning. I find it so fascinating to think about how society's messages affect us... often in ways of which we aren't even aware.

 "To the extent that men possess freedom, to that extent they have responsibility" (XPi, introduction).

"Guild and innocence are meaningless words: the Negro is always blamed, always punished" (17).

"Vaguely, yet ardently, I longed to know, for I sensed that knowledge could set me free" (41).

"When I was at State College [the one state school where Black people could study], each of the four colleges for whites in South Carolina usually received more appropriation that State although more than 50% of the population of South Carolina were Negroes. The excuse for this blatant inequity and discrimination was usually that white people paid most of the taxes. This argument never took into account the fact that the taxable properties and wealth of the whites were the result of the starvation wages paid Negroes. Moreover, in a democracy the poorest and the richest child are entitled to the same training at public expense. Poor whites, who paid no direct taxes, had access to the public schools without any form of discrimination" (43). He goes on to say that the State College for Blacks only received 2% of the budget's appropriation for Higher Ed. 

"One has to rebel against indignities in some fashion in order to maintain the integrity of the soul" (47).

"If Jim Crowe cars, Negro waiting rooms at railroad stations, segregated Negro schools, and all the other accessories after the fact of segregation had been as good for Negroes as for whites, there would have been no need for separation" (102).

"Although the Negro has helped to make the wealth of the nation, he has not been allowed to help shape the policies of how that wealth is to be distributed. And this is true, too, in the use of government funds. Negroes constitute ten percent of the population of the country. It is my considered judgement that not one foundation, not one government agency, national or state, has ever thought in terms of allocating ten percent of all monies given for education to the support of black institutions or for the education of blacks" (193). 

"The steward [who refused to let him sit in the white section, but also refused to ask the white men to move who were occupying the Negro section] and the writes who came to his rescue were the law, and could refuse to seat me at the only table vacant in the diner. The law was not made for white men to keep but for Negroes to obey" (198).

"For many decades, the South has tried to make the world believe that the Southern way of life (the segregated way) was acceptable to Negroes. They trumpeted loud and long that Negroes were happy and satisfied with apartheid, Southern style, and that whenever a Southern Negro complained it was not really he who was speaking but, instead, he was being 'used' by white Yankees or by Communists. It was always 'outside agitators' who were 'stirring up trouble'; Southern blacks were content with things just as they were...

"But the South was committed to its fantasies. Every Southern Negro who spoke out against the status quo was automatically labeled a Communist or a fellow traveler. Those of us who were staunch supporters of the NAACP, [and others]... were labeled radical... Anyone who attended a meeting where any Communists were present, no matter how few, was promptly accused of having 'Communist leanings'" (209). 

"I believe that throughout my lifetime, the local white church has been society's most conservative and hypocritical institution in the area of White-Negro relations. Nor has the local black church a record of which to be proud. The states, schools, business enterprises, industries, theaters, recreation centers, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, trains, boats, waiting rooms, and filling states have all played their ignominious roles in the tragedy of segregating the black man and discriminating against him; but at least none of these enterprises claims to have a divine mission on earth. The church boasts of its unique origin, maintaining that God, not man, is the source of its existence. The church alone calls itself the House of God, sharing this honor with no other American institution. The church is indeed sui generis.

"The local white churches, the vast majority of them, have not lived up to their professed Christianity, because Christian fellowship across racial barriers is so inherent in the very nature of the church that to deny fellowship in God's house, on the basis of race or color, is a profanation of all that the church stands for" (240). 

"The church was so much a part of the system that lynching was accepted as part of the Southern way of life just as casually as was segregation" (243).

"I can sing and praise Atlanta as I sing the National Anthem and 'America,' as I recite the Declaration of Independence, read the Bill of Rights, and rejoice over the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. I know that the Declaration of Independence was not meant for me; that its chief architect, Thomas Jefferson, was a slave owner; that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments have not been fully implemented; and that the 'land of the free' and 'sweet land of liberty' are not equally applicable to black and white. But these are the ideals to which the nation clings and the goals toward which it strives when it is at its best and think nobly. It is not always easy for a black man to swear allegiance to the flag, but the American dream is embodied in that allegiance, and until it is repudiated one can still hope for and work toward the day when it becomes a reality. As long as Atlanta struggles toward the dream, I can sing Atlanta" (275).

"Today, we take Negro policemen and firemen for granted. But it was terrifying to attend the public hearings in 1948 when Atlanta was trying to make up its mind about employing Negro policemen. The then Mayor, William B Hartsfield, Chief of Police Herbert Jenkins, and the aldermen made the decision to employ Atlanta's first Negro policemen in 1948. Yet it is probably not generally known that not until 1961, thirteen years later, could a Negro policeman arrest a white man. Negro police officers were confined to Negro neighborhoods; separate precincts were provided for them; and civil service status was withheld until their worth had been proven: (276).

"Seldom if ever does a weak, powerless group receive its fair share of citizenship rights merely because it should. This fact obtains as surely in Christian and democratic countries as it does in totalitarian states" (284).

"I interpret black power as a good thing. It is a blessing if it convinces black people that their strength lies in solidarity, and that black men can never get political and economic power if they are divided and fighting among themselves...

"But the phrase 'black power,' accompanied by the 'clenched fist,' is nothing more than a futile gesture unless it is filled with meaning and designed to develop a program to achieve for the black man that economic, political, and educational power which will enable him to bargain from a position of strength" (315).

"I believe in black awareness and black consciousness. No man is free unless he accepts himself for what he is and can become. If black awareness means that black people are proud of themselves, proud of their heritage, apologizing to nobody, not even to God, for what they are--black: wholly black; brown-black; yellow-black; or white-black; it is good. If it means that they will not be swept off their feet by the glamour of a partially desegregated society, it is indeed a fine thing for the black world... If it means in the minds of Negroes that is it just as good to be a black American as it is to be a white American, I embrace the concept. On the other hand, if integration means or implies that one must forswear his identity as a Negro, I reject it" (317).

"I believe in black colleges. For twenty-seven years I was president of one where the student body was almost one hundred percent black and where the faculty and board of trustees were racially mixed. But I do not believe in a black college or university if this means that all students, all faculty and staff members, the student body, and all financial support must be black. Even if the idea were a practical one, I could not embrace it, for setting people apart fosters segregation, which Negroes have fought against for a century" (317).

"I have always felt that white people who defend segregation as if it were a very God must be shivering cold in their emotional insecurity" (320).

"I am convinced that any program designed to solve the black-white problem by providing a geographically segregated place for twenty million blacks is destined to failure. Moreover, believing as I do in nonviolent actions of the Gandhi-Martin Luther King, Jr., type are the best way by which to improve Negro-white relations, I am convinced that any offensive, violent programs instigated by Negroes will profit little. Nor do I believe that the black man's salvation lies in the total destruction of the present social, economic, and political systems, and that on the ruins of a new order justice, freedom, and equality for all Americans will spring, full-blown. The same tainted and distorted humanity that built the present systems will build the new. Whatever the future holds for the American people, it must be accepted that the United States belongs to the black man as much as to the white man" (321). 

"But we seldom realize what discrimination does to the person who practices it. It scars not only the soul of the segregated but the soul of the segregator as well. When we guild fences to keep others out, erect barriers to keep others down, deny to them the freedom which we ourselves enjoy and cherish most, we keep ourselves to our own souls. We cannot grow to the mental and moral stature of free men if we view life with prejudiced eyes, for thereby we shut our minds to truth and reality, which are essential to spiritual, mental, and moral growth. The time we should spend in creative activity we waste on small things which dwarf the mind and stultify the soul. It is both economically and psychologically wasteful. So it is not clear who is damaged more--the person who inflicts the discrimination or the person who suffers it, the man who is held down or the man who holds him down, the segregated or the segregator" (354).

"The churches are called upon to recognize the urgency of th e present situation. Even if we laid no claim to a belief in democracy, if the whole world were are peace internationally, if atheistic Communism had never developed, if Fascism had never been born and Nazism were wholly unknown, a nonsegregated church and social and economic justice for all men are urgent because we preach a gospel that demands our deeds reflect our theory" (354). 

"But even when secular bodies initiate the change, local churches, Negro and white, follow slowly or not at all. It will be a sad commentary on our life and time if future historians can write that the last bulwark of segregation based on race and color in the United States and South Africa was God's church" (355).