My Day: Unrelenting Presence of Racism

I am one of those writers who write constantly.  I have notes everywhere.  Some I can find and some I have to look for.  This article started out as:  Massacres:  America’s Ugly Side.    I left for the Black Marines Reunion in Reno, wrote my speech for the Friday Night Banquet on the plane, and had plans to finish this article at the hotel’s business center.  While in Reno with retired military men and women, who read my columns online, the conversation centered to religiosity and another menu rounds of mayhem, the 2015 church burnings.  About eight black churches have been torched in ten(10)days.

Are burnings a signal of the depth of racial hatred?  Is this a retaliation consequence for the removal of the confederate flag?  Or  for the President singing “Amazing Grace” in a Baptist church?  Most profound,  is the black church a threat to white existence?  Or are they afraid of black folks praying to God and not worshipping them as Gods?   I simply do not understand the rationale  for ‘white people burning black churches’.  Why?  The African American is the most resilient human on this earth.  We have endured all things.  We are the people that eradicated fear.  Make no mistake about it,  we are outraged, but definitely not fearful.   Nothing is new to us as an African American race in America.  We understand well that fire is hate,  but we need to call some things as they naturally are. . . and that is evil.

I grew up in Conroe, Texas, a little town  north of Houston.  Conroe had two black colleges.  Conroe College built in 1903 and Royal College in 1927, both founded by black men.   My grandparents lived on Royal College Hill in Conroe, so I had to pass this college almost every day on my way to the ‘big house’, in the late 50’s and 60’s.  Conroe College was a college for young black ministers and they came from all over  the Deep South.  My Dad hauled wood.  He and my uncles owned the trucks, the land and the barn-to-garage that housed the artillery of tools and guns.  With young black ministers in town, my Dad had a “lot of talent” that was willing to work.  He also had a “lot of trouble”.   I can also remember the ever presence of racism, the trucks being sabotaged, the drivers being jailed because they were black, and the stories of hatred and unreported burnings.

Rev. J. S. Smith, Pastor Emeritus, New Light Baptist Church, in San Antonio is the last President of Conroe College.  He died this week at the age of 90, and will be funeralized Thursday, July 2, 2015.  Before his demise on this earth, he recommended the son-of-a-son, the young Rev. Paul Wilkinson, a famous name of clergy in these parts,  who is the current pastor.  So many will remember these names of legendary  visionaries.

My time is up.  I have to go and somehow end this article.  But, honestly, I have no proper, appropriate

one, except that racism  is alive, well and in living color.