Real Love

You give me love, love, love, crazy love. What is love? Diane Nash, former SNCC organizer and civil rights goddess, gave us the word Agape when she described the soul force that powered the Civil Rights movement. I feel that greater love, that love of God that is also love of neighbor (and self) in the Civil Rights Movement veterans we meet. They are powerful. They overcame fear because of anger at injustice, but also for a greater love, and they invite us, by their example, to do the same. Charles McLaurin, Margaret Kibbee, Margaret Block, David Jordan, L.C. Dorsey, Charles Evers, Hollis Watkins, and Jimmy Travis. Thank you. I especially felt this spiritual power today with Hollis Watkins. He overcame fear at Parchman prison and he works today, so many years later, to carry on the legacy of the civil rights movement to us and to young people throughout the South, teaching them the organizing tools to tackle the issues in their communities, issues like lack of investment in education and environmental racism and classism. William Winter is not a Civil Rights Movement veteran, but his Institute for Racial Reconciliation is part of the work of love too, 'cause we can't move on without truth and reconconciliation, otherwise known as forgiveness. His holding up of his grandchildren's integrated public school classroom in present-day Oxford, Mississippi, with quality public education, participated in by all classes and races, is part of Medgar's dream, of King's dream. Keep the faith, brothers and sisters. There is a greater Love.

-Dr. T