Near Misses

I've been thinking a lot lately about the many times our family could see History over the back fence.

Medgar Evers was gunned down on his front porch in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. At that time, our family lived in Whitfield, 15 miles away.

That September, our family moved to Birmingham, where, as I've said, Dad was welcomed as minister of his new church on September 15, the same morning the Sixteenth St. Baptist Church was bombed, just 4 miles away. By that time, Dr. King had already written his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," chastising the white ministers of Birmingham for being so unready for real change. Dad moved to Birmingham determined to be different than the rest and to integrate his church. He was different alright, but he couldn't pull it off. The city was polarized, the church was polarized, and so was he.

From there our family moved to Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia. I told a story (Sticks & Stones) about our time there, too, when the Sumter County Sherriff wouldn't let his daughter be friends with my sister Janet because we lived at Koinonia. Yesterday I learned that Martin Luther King had his own opportunity to get to know Sherriff Chappell. In An Easy Burden, Andrew Young described King's 1961 stay in the Americus jail:

Conditions in the Americus jail were so bad several demonstrators had to be bailed out because they simply could not withstand the discomfort and constant abuse. The marchers had not been prepared to go to jail and the morning of the march it had been fairly warm, so many of them had been arrested in light jackets, even shirtsleeves. Then a cold wave hit. When Martin asked Sheriff Chappell for blankets for the marchers, the heat was turned off, the few available blankets were removed, the windows were opened, and even the fans were turned on.

MLK described Sheriff Chappell as "the meanest man I have ever met." Probably just as well Janet never spent the night with the sheriff's daughter, her best friend.

From Koinonia our family moved to Atlanta, where Mom hung up on Coretta Scott King. And that, my friends, is a story for a different day.