The Unfinished Work of the Civil Rights Movement

 Richard G. Malloy, S.J., Ph.D.

Jan 18, 2021

Director of Mission and Ministry, Cristo Rey Jesuit Baltimore

In the wake of the insanity and destruction on the part of right wing terrorists at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, we must reflect and realize what the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was all about, what it achieved, and how far we still have to go.

Early in his public life, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., just 27 years old, in the midst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956, clearly articulated what the movement being born was all about: “The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”[i]

The Civil Rights movement was one of the most startling and transformative social revolutions in history.  I was born in 1955, a few weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.  There’s no connection between the two events except in my own mind.  But the point is that I was born into a United States where segregation was legal, lethal and largely unquestioned.  And if you did question the status quo of race relations, racists would too often kill you.  The Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama honors 38 martyrs who gave their lives for the cause. [ii]

The peaceful, non-violent methods of the movement forced white Americans to realize their own morally objectionable beliefs, attitudes and discrimination.  The dignity and courage of the non-violent protesters, many of them young adults of college age, called the white majority to conversion and recognition of the justice of the African American community’s call for equality.

The Civil Rights Act was signed in July of 1964.  I was eight years old.  In less than a decade, the USA went from a segregated land to a community where we moved much closer to “liberty and justice for all.”

Prime beneficiaries of the movement were not just American blacks.  White opponents to the Civil Rights act added “sex” to Title VII of the Bill’s protections, thinking that would increase votes against it.  Along with “race, color, religion and national origin,” discrimination on the basis of sex would now be illegal.  The racists’ plan backfired, and the bill passed, changing the lives of all Americans for the better.

Ruth Ginsberg and the bio-pic, “On the Basis of Sex,” would never have happened without the Civil Rights Act.  Athletic programs for women in colleges across America would not exist.  Laws prohibiting marital rape would not be on the books.  Women would have no recourse if they did not receive equal pay for equal work.  And Kamala Harris would never have been elected Vice President.

Still, today women make only $0.82 cents for every $1.00 men make.[iii]  And racial disparities between different racial groups stubbornly persist.  Median Family Income USA 2019 was $68,703 with Asians/PI: $98,174; Whites: $76,057; Latinos: $56,113 and Blacks: $45,438. [iv] 

African Americans and Latinos/as are dying from Covid at a much higher rate than whites.  Saddest of all is the reality that black women and their babies die at twice the rate of white women and their babies.[v]  “Good!” I can hear some troglodyte racist mutter as he or she reads that sad fact.  Such overt and ugly racism is having a renaissance in the USA these days.  I hope those days are numbered.  But Jan 6^th revealed hordes of dangerously misinformed people who will willingly believe lies and the liars who tell them.  They stoke the fires of hate.

True Americans, the majority of the 320 million citizens of the USA, celebrate racial and cultural diversity.  Anyone who strives to know and serve the true and living God welcomes the progress this country has made in the past sixty years.

African American Jesuit George Murry, Bishop of Youngstown Ohio, described the world our loving God desires for all.  It is a world where we not just get along, but form the beloved community envisioned by the Prophet from Atlanta.

“Imagine pulling people in from every neighborhood, from every walk of life, compelling them to sit down and share a meal together. You would have black and white and brown all together, rich and poor, gay and straight, progressive and conservative. Everyone’s mind would be blown when a vegan found a way to share a meal with a carnivore rancher, when a Black Lives Matter activist chuckled at the joke told by a Confederate flag-wearing Harley rider, and when a Trump enthusiast asked an undocumented immigrant to pass the tortillas.  Somewhere in all of the mixing and relating, the Holy Spirit moves! God’s blessed community looks like a smorgasbord of humanity, in heaven and on earth. That’s not to say that it is OK to hold onto our biases, even our moral failings, but we grow past them together.”[vi]

Like the good bishop, Abraham Lincoln, in his first Inaugural address called us to be friends, and not allow our differences to devolve into enmity.  “We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”[vii]

Let’s honor Rev. King who gave his life for justice and truth.  Let’s follow the better angels of our nature and grow past our prejudices.  Let’s reconcile, redeem one another, and bring into being the beloved community.

 

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Endnotes

 

[i]   https://www.cityyear.org/about-us/culture-values/founding-stories/beloved-community

 

[ii]  Civil Rights Memorial  https://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs

 

[iii]  AAUW. The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap. The Simple Truth about the Pay Gap (aauw.org)

 

[iv]  Census Bureau.  Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019. September 15, 2020 https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-270.html and https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html

 

[v]   Linda Villarosa, “The Hidden Toll: Why are Black Mothers and Babies in the United States Dying…”  The New York Times Magazine.  April 15, 2018.  Pp.30-39.   Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

[vi]  University of Scranton Graduation.  May 2018.   http://news.scranton.edu/articles/2018/05/news-grad_U2018_BishopMurry_Speech.shtml 

 

[vii]  Abraham Lincoln  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31631-we-are-not-enemies-but-friends-we-must-not-be

 

 

 

Why are People Poor?  No Living Wage. 

“Can I challenge your homily?”

“Sure,” I replied.

She wasn’t disrespectful, but obviously not happy with what I had preached at Mass.  Masks are required, and I had had to ask her to use her American flag kerchief to protect others as she sat in a front pew.  I thought that might be the source of her dissatisfaction, but that wasn’t it.

“First, Teddy Roosevelt had no right to create National Parks and forests.  In the beginning, we were 50 sovereign states.  Read the Constitution.”

I had praised the foresight of Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in setting aside millions of acres for parks and forests.  I noted and praised their willingness to stand up to the robber barons of their day. 

“We are the United States,” I carefully replied.  “We fought a war in the 1860s over these issues.  We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

I had been preaching on the parables of the merchant who finds a treasure in a field and goes and buys it, and of a merchant seeking a pearl of great price.  Since the parables were about business people, I quoted Pope Francis: “Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all” (Joy of the Gospel, #203).

Gospel parables are to be understood on personal and societal levels.  Parables are striking stories with surprise endings that tell us about the Reign of God, how things will be when God and all of us are in right relationship, when “Justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).  The Reign of God is a society of Peace and Prosperity, Joy and Justice, Freedom and Faith, Hope and Healing, Life and Love.

My challenger doesn’t see things that way.  Her vision of rugged individualism and dog-eat-dog crony capitalism is, in her mind, blessed by God and is not to be contradicted by some Jesuit priest.

But her vision is morally suspect.  If minimum wage had kept up with what it was worth when I was working as an orderly in a nursing home in 1975, it would be somewhere around $13.50 to $15.00.  It’s only $7.25 today.  I had also pointed out that we pay minimum wage (or less) to those who care for the most vulnerable among us, our elderly and our children.  Day care workers and those who serve in nursing homes earn so little.  I ask, “Why?”  And I get challenged.

“I run a business in Philadelphia.  I could hire more people if I didn’t have to pay minimum wage.”

I just looked at her.  I could not believe that after hearing me preach on a central idea of Catholic Social Teaching, that a living wage is a wage that can support a family, she is seriously telling me it is moral to pay less than $7.25 an hour.

Some rich Catholics often vociferously pontificate in favor of ending abortion, but have little time for Church teachings on the death penalty or social justice.  And for them a living wage is anathema, ridiculous, “socialist” insanity.  

Some wealthy people are willing to give a small portion of their wealth to help the poor, but when I ask why people are poor, and why wages cannot support a family, I’m a bad priest, a dreaded liberation theologian, and the greatest of all sinners, a “communist.”

But communism is simply a social system in which everyone gives according to their abilities and takes according to their needs.  Every normal American family is a communist society.  We don’t charge two-year-olds for their food, or make teens pay for their cell phones.

Crony capitalism and tax cuts, set up to benefit the top 1 percent, have hurt the vast majority of our fellow citizens.  Since 1980, income for the very rich has more than doubled; the bottom 90 percent’s share has barely risen.  In the 1960’s CEO’s made 20 times a worker; by 2019, they were taking 300 times more than their employees (Reich, 2020, p.15).

As an example, I noted Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, got $31 million in compensation in 2018 (Reich, 2020, p.15).  If Dimon worked 10 hours a day, 300 days that year, he was making $10,333 an hour.  Overall, he’s worth $1.6 billion.

“The market should set wages,” she told me.  (Hmmm… Is there no one who would apply to be CEO at JPMorgan for say $15.5 million a year?)

Jesus would say the market was made by and for human persons.  The market should be made for us.  We are not made for the market.

Even Mr. Dimon knows this.  In his 2018 letter to shareholders he stated, “middle class incomes have been stagnant for years.  Income inequality has gotten worse… More than 28 million Americans don’t have health insurance at all.  And, surprisingly, 25% of those eligible for various types of federal assistance programs don’t get any help. … Simply put the social needs of far too many of our citizens are not being met” (Reich, 2020, pp. 23-24).

The fact that so many share so little in our wealth should challenge us all.

Jesuit Father Richard G. Malloy, S.J., Ph.D., is the director of Mission Integration at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Baltimore, and author of Being on Fire and A Faith That Frees, both from Orbis Books.

References

Reich, Robert (2020) The System: Who Rigged it. How We Fix It (New York, Knopf).