Episode 02: Rev. Lawrence - Power and Love
Rev. Richard A. Lawrence, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. James Orange - 1966, Chicago - Permission to use given by Rev. Lawrence
Our Thoughts about Power and Love
Richard and I talked for more than 20 years about power and love. We wove a conversational tapestry of social justice action and personal, private experiences. With this 14-minute episode, the hope is we have shared the thread that tells a useful story.
Richard worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on fair housing issues in Chicago during 1965. The prior year, Richard drove students from Chicago to Selma for the 3rd march to Montgomery after Bloody Sunday. I encourage you to read Richard’s memoir “Light, Bright, Damn Near White: Stories and Reflections of a Multi-Racial Black Man’s Battles with Racism in America” to learn more.
In one portion of this podcast there is background organ music. It is “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. A video of the Black National Anthem sung by Kierra Sheard is placed after the transcript.
In our conversation, I referenced my own childhood suffering. In 2014, I made an art video about it for my own self-healing efforts. The video follows “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I feel that social justice art and personal healing art intersect.
I am an amateur in audio editing. Please be prepared and forgiving as you hear uneven quality.
Transcript
[Music]
Introduction
Hello, this is Dr. Vic Bloomberg and welcome to the podcast.
Psychotherapists tell it like it is.
In today's episode, Reverend Lawrence talks about power and love.
Victor This picture is so important. There you are with Dr. King, with James Orange, and there you are holding up a bank book. What was going on there?
Richard One of the battles that really made a major impact in my life happened while I was pastor of a church on the south side of Chicago and we formed a committee called the Englewood Action Committee because the bank was the central power in a move to buy up housing in our community, tear it down, and create a system of highways and interchanges so that Whites who had previously lived in the community and were major supporters of the businesses in that community and hadn't fled as Black homeowners became a larger and larger number could come into the community again, not know, not contact Black neighbors, buy what they wanted to buy, get back on the road and get out and not feel threatened. We had conducted a boycott of 63rd and Halsted Street with black Santa Clauses passing out balloon saying, "Do not shop at 63rd and Halsted Street” with flyers that explained what I just explained to you. And had planned a withdrawal of funds from that bank as a demonstration and trying to get highlighting somehow the issue. And heard that Dr. King, who at that time had moved to Chicago to work on housing issues, was going to be coming and joining us in this demonstration where ministers were taking their savings out of the local bank, the only bank actually in the community, which absolutely was a stunningly happy occurrence. It he did come and we went down to the bank, we took our money out. At the end, James Orange, who's the guy with the special little hat, suggested “You and Dr. King burn those bank books.” So we had a couple of bank books and we set them on fire. That photo was taken by a reporter for the Chicago Defender, the Black Newspaper in Chicago, which I was fortunate enough to recover, thanks to inspiration from my son, B.J. The photographer sent me the original. It's just a demonstration of the impact that Dr. King has on ordinary people, which millions of those ordinary people got up on their feet, maybe for the first time in their lives, to say, "I am somebody, I count, I matter, I can make a difference." That spirit was the most vital piece of the Civil Rights Movement. That spirit just flooded the country for a decade or more. While we didn't win the battle, we were really deeply spirited, deeply encouraged to just keep just up the fight, not give up. Don't move. Don't move away. Stay, stay with it. Keep going. And we did through a bitterly cold winter. That photo for me just captures the real gift that Dr. King brought with him wherever he went. People were just excited to be with him, to be beside him. I was, I was out of my mind. I didn't know, I didn’t know what was going on. And I just did, somebody said, “Do something,” I did something. It's a great memory and it's a great contribution. What that meant to those of us who were struggling with a fight, we were losing. We did not think any less of ourselves. We did not back down. We did not give up. We kept on fighting. It is a major revelation. You know, somehow that spirit needs to be captured, needs to be supported. We need to capture the fact that we are doing something that nobody thought we could do, that we would do, that we would continue doing. In that action, there is a movement toward a power that in my judgment can't be beaten.
Victor What it counts for this motivation to be an active participant in creating justice rather than spreading the pain. People are making very personal decisions about whether to activate, engage and participate or be spectators.
Richard They're not sure that there is a real consciousness about the decision that's involved in that. Well, I'm pretty sure there is not. So in a way, that sounds sort of simple-minded that my mother raised me to be a living example of the fully humanness of Americans of African descent.
Victor You're walking down the hall in jail and another inmate doesn't see you as a human being, sees you as almost white trash. Isn't that the same objectification? Or is it different?
Richard No, that's the same objectification. And it's the pain and the place I found myself in. If, as a matter of fact, you know we as African Americans are fully human, and yet I receive the same sort of limited acceptance in the Black community as I do in the White community, where do I go? What do I become? Who do I become? I managed to survive in one community or the other, but it was more than survival. I was feeling pretty good about myself and I give enormous credit for that. Folks in both communities who dared to stick their neck out and say I am fully human and I believe in justice and I will work for justice no matter what it might cost. I just feel very inhibited all the time so that as a survival mechanism I learn to repress, preserve my feelings and think through before expressing feelings of any sort. I can't say that I was really conscious felt anyway, that I was in a hostile environment. But somehow I knew that something wasn't right. And it's kind of universal stuff that I hope folks can envision and agree to work toward it. That we are a family.
Victor You mentioned to me many times, growing up you knew you were loved. You connect family with love. That's not universal. I wish it were.
Richard Yeah, so do I.
Victor But this gives you a strength and a resiliency that others struggle to find. For you, family and love are inseparable. I have seen you with family. So we were in a van of like an SUV going from Montgomery to Selma. You were with your four grown children, singing in incredible harmonies and making wisecracks. You were not inhibited in the least because you were secure and free by family love. I saw you in your 80th birthday celebration along with a whole lot of other people. You were safe and trusting and secure in family love and were not in the least bit inhibited. Inhibition can be a form of resistance. It's realistic that if I speak up, I could be attacked and injured, so I'm not gonna.
Richard Yeah, I know when to keep my mouth shut. I assert that I was loved from the day I was born, yet I was not emancipated.
Victor It's a prerequisite, love, but what was missing?
Richard Self-love. So that even though I am loved by others, I still have to somehow figure out how to transform that into loving myself.
Victor If your daily experience communicates, you're unlovable,
Richard Yeah, of course.
Victor and even not human, it becomes a struggle.
Richard Yeah, and it really is a question mark with me, how being loved gets into loving myself to the point where no matter what folks say about me, I still know that I am fully human and lovable. And I continue to use folks like Whitney Houston who were just adored and ended up taking her own life. I say that she's one who had not found that power that said, "The people love the daylights out of me. So of course I am lovable.” No, she didn't. No matter what folks said to me, if I am a miserable failure, I still love myself. That's the part that still in this discussion I really am interested in hearing. What that element is or what that experience is that takes us from being adored. And Dr. King talks about love on its own is anemic. Where does the power come from that transforms that love into a sense that I know who I am.Something happens. You know, I declare that I was a nice guy before I went to Selma, but I came back and it isn't just Selma, you know, the years that followed Selma, to become a powerful guy. There's something that's going on in those years that made a fighter out of me, as opposed to somebody that just wanted to please everybody. Because I know I was loved during those early days, for sure, for sure. And that did not, in my judgment, really result in my emancipation. And I think it is in loving yourself that the power comes that I am now able to carry with me.
Victor The way I grew up did not lead to a conviction or belief of being loved or being lovable. So despite the privileges that flowed to me because of being so light skinned. Until people found out I was Jewish, I got a lot of privileges from them. The privileges didn't resolve to self-hate. And so I wonder about a lot of people when they hear somebody say, "Oh, you're privileged." Well, if somebody says that to me, I go, "Yeah, I know. This is why I want to do good." But other people go, "Who the hell you do you…” Anger response to a statement of fact, It comes from self-hate. How do you get to this power of self-love? I struggle with that. Sometimes stuff happens real and imagine the pain signals coming from this deep mark saying you're a thing not as good as a real person. I have to struggle through that. I've learned to do that privately and then reach out for a little help from my friends to get me over the finish line. So I'm saying that the struggle is for some of us unceasing either because of the real damage from a world that is constantly dehumanizing in some way or from these deep marks that perpetuate the falsehood.
Richard And that's precisely where I end up too, you know, that there is an enormous community of well-to-do kids who hate themselves so much that they will take up a firearm and not only eventually shoot themselves but will kill folks indiscriminately among the members of their community. They're killing the folks who help them identify themselves, part of the community which builds them up and supports them, which it obviously isn't doing. And that's why this is one reason why it's really important to me. How we remedy the violence that lives so painfully among us. You know that if I don't get out there, stand in my own two feet, love myself enough to take risks, to tell whoever I have to tell that “Yes I am a human being and I am going to do what I need to do in order to express my humanity,” then we just don't we just don't ever experience freedom. We don't ever really experience emancipation.
Victor Just a couple comments.
Richard Please.
Victor I'm one of four brothers. We all came out different. I asked myself, how did I get to this really good enough place?
Richard Yeah.
Victor Part of what happened was in my earliest years beyond verbal memory, I was loved, and I think I absorbed that I was lovable, and then I lost it. And that became how do you escape from hell. I can't speak for my brothers. And then throughout the growing up period, in between the horrors were expressions of love. It was sporadic.
Richard Yeah.
Victor But it was there, but it reinforced that earliest before memory certainty. So yes, I persisted. And what accounts for persistence or giving up? That's another question. Any benediction?
Richard We are grateful for the continued creativity which sparks between us and contributes, we trust, to a world where we can all stand tall and feel no inclination whatsoever to chop each other down.
Amen.
