I joined the pilgrimage and hoped to provide spiritual guidance and support for the pilgrims. At the onset, each person selected a seashell, which is a universal symbol for those on a spiritual journey, and was told to keep it with them all along the way. Prayers were led by every clergy person attending at each departure. Clearly this was not a "tour" but walking sacred pathways.
Each stop of the pilgrimage lent wisdom that remains. At Pitts Chapel United Methodist Church, which is the oldest African-American congregation in Springfield, MO and founded by a freedman in 1865, Rev. Tracey Woolf shared how she researched Green Book locations in Springfield, Lebanon, Cape Girardeau and other mid-size Missouri cities. Few to no traces of the safe harbors can be found; even some street names are no more. In many cases, it wasn't mobs but Urban Renewal that destroyed neighborhoods.
In Tulsa, Rev. Dr. Ron Richard Allen Turner of Vernon AME Church shared how before 9/11 in 2001, before Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first aerial attack on U.S. citizens on American soil happened in Tulsa in 1921. Municipal authorities ordered an oil company plane to drop turpentine incendiary devises or bombs on several buildings including Mt. Zion Baptist Church because “munitions were believed to be stored in the basement” and Vernon Chapel AME, where people were taking shelter. Both were rebuilt purely by donations because insurance companies would not honor policies with the massacre being officially termed a "race riot," which clearly it was not. Insurance policies still use this language today.
Pathways to reconciliation were shared as well. “Reconciliation occurs only when we remember that every person has a family,” Vanessa Adams Harris of the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation responds when people feel led to disparage her multi-ethnic heritage. "Tell me, who in my family am I supposed to hate?" She remembers that mob members had parents and children too.
At Central High School in Little Rock, the NPS Ranger took the pilgrim group to a lower-level restroom. Why here? He said, "Students at Central High School knew the places soldiers were not protecting while desegregation was being enforced - albeit briefly. In this girls’ room, hate was inflicted to young women of the Little Rock 9 causing body trauma that has lasted ever since – and among the do-nothing bystanders too." He shared how 40 years later, a white woman fell to her knees with uncontrollable sobs upon seeing the girls' room while on a similar tour. For decades she had hidden the grief and pain of being in the restroom when torture was occurring - and doing nothing to stop it..." Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands, explains adeptly how body trauma is a potent and perpetuating force leading to racism and injustice to this day – for Black, Brown, White and “Blue” bodies.
Mid-America Regional Minister Rev. Dr. Paul Koch
