I’ve
checked off another book on the list of those I should have read long ago. “Brother to a Dragon Fly” published in 1977, should
have been on my list of the 50 books to read before I die, but I was not aware
of it until Pastor Wayne announced he was leading a discussion of it.
I was
pretty much a bystander during the civil rights movement in the South which
started during the time I was in high school back in the 1950s, though like
most Americans I have learned much about and have great admiration for those
who gave themselves to the movement, especially those courageous “front standers”
who died in the struggle. I suspect many
others have not heard much about the role of this white Baptist preacher from
the South named Will Campbell. After
finishing the book, I wanted to learn more about him, but in searching the name
on the internet several NFL and college football players and other celebrities with
that name popped up first. Even the
internet keeps him a bit obscure, and apparently Will Campbell would have liked
that just fine.
I found a wonderful
piece about Will Campbell written after he died by a friend of his, Ken Sehested,
who wrote, “John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement said on the news
of Will’s passing, ‘He never received the recognition he truly deserved’. Hearing such I can imagine Will pausing his
heavenly choir rehearsal of Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer, long
enough to grouse, ‘Yes, John, that’s just the point. Mr. Jesus didn’t say,
blessed are you who find fame for your trouble!’
This book,
one of sixteen he wrote, is a memoir filled with stories of the role he had as
a trouble shooter and representative of the National Council of Churches,
stationed in Nashville during the civil rights movement. He went wherever there was trouble. For example, he accompanied the nine black
students who walked through angry crowds to integrate Central High School in
Little rock in 1957. He was the only
white minister asked by Martin Luther King, Jr to attend the organizing meeting
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
But the heart
of the book is about his relationship with his brother Joe, growing up in a
small town in Mississippi during the depression in a family that really was ‘dirt
poor’. Will became a Baptist preacher at
a very early age even before any Bible school or seminary. Joe became a pharmacist, and led a life plagued
by demons of addiction and mental illness. Some of the most poignant stories in the book
are about the interactions between Will and Joe, literally through many highs
and low of Joe’s tragic life.
Though Will
was on the forefront of a movement supported by many liberals, especially
clergy in the North, he did not consider himself a liberal, and did not avoid
relating to and trying to understand the Southern red necks of the same culture
from which he came. One story tells of a
kind of re-conversion to Christ brought on by an interaction with a profane and
honest non-believer who challenged him to re-orient his own faith to see that “if
you’re going to love one, you gotta love them all”. He credo was to understand the difference
between belief and faith. “Belief is
passive, faith is active”. So, when he went to “minister” even to Ku Klux Klan
members and also questioned the hypocrisy of the white church, he was lambasted
by both liberals and conservatives. There
were not many of whom it can be said they were a Southern white supporter of
the black civil rights movement who talked to KKK leaders.
Later he settled
on a farm in Tennessee and was a mentor, writer, and advocate for other human
rights causes, and he seems to have left the organized church but never his
faith. He was the kind of guy my
dad would have called, “common as an old shoe”; someone I would have liked to
sit down with for a cold one and just talk.
