Stock photo | doungtepro via Pixabay 
Rev. C.J. Brinson
President Donald Trump, in only about two months, has recklessly cut thousands of government jobs and is working to undercut education, Social Security, health care and veterans without regard for the consequences. He has gone to extreme lengths to paint so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts as policies that only benefit African Americans, instead of all of us.
To prove his point, the Trump administration has nominated and replaced qualified Black people in positions with the most unqualified individuals you could imagine.
There appears to be a lot to feel hopeless about.
That’s why I recently preached and have been thinking about a sermon I called “The Gospel of Fannie Lou Hamer.”
Fannie Lou Hamer, as she once said, “was sick and tired of being sick and tired.” So are many of us.
Mrs. Hamer was a Black woman born in 1917 in rural Mississippi who had many obstacles that should have deterred her from getting involved in the fight for freedom and civil rights. When one considers the challenges that persisted throughout her life, it would have been easy to understand if she had chosen to remain silent.
She was a sharecropper who could pick 200 to 300 pounds of cotton a week. She lived in a dilapidated shack with no running water and an outhouse for a restroom. She had no inalienable rights that white folks had to respect. She could not vote or even frequent public spaces that her white counterparts frequented. The threat of impending violence engulfed her daily reality, as she knew that nearby rivers — the Tallahatchie, Big Black, Yazoo and the Mississippi — held countless numbers of mutilated black bodies.
Because of hopelessness and violence, some want us to be silent during this critical time in our nation’s history. They are banking on us to be hopeless and defeated. But I am just crazy enough to believe that those of us who know the way of justice, the sound of freedom, who have peeked into our future, know that the universe is calling us to say yes!
Yes — to the call to fight for freedom, justice and liberation for all.
Fannie Lou Hamer said yes. She couldn’t give account to what would be lost, and she still found the courage.
I reflected on all this when, a few weeks ago, I received a response to one of my previous columns. A Black man questioned me on why, at this crucial time, the Black church talks about politics.
What I learned from his question is that some may bear the privilege of Black skin but are not fully aware of the Black experience.
He must not know that the Black church, before it was a building, met in the woods on slave plantations, praying and singing songs to provide hope for those who endured slavery, discussed freedom and sowed the seeds of abolition. He doesn’t know that the Black church has always been a beacon of resistance in America. While white enslavers were using scripture to justify slavery, Black Africans who found Jesus used scripture to liberate their people.
No different than today, with white Christian Nationalists misusing scripture to demonize women, criminalize immigrants and attack our LGBTQ+ kindred; Black faith leaders are being thrust to the forefront of the movement to answer the call and say yes.
I had a mentor, Rev. Nelson Johnson of Greensboro, who is known as one of the great pastors across North Carolina. He survived the 1979 Greensboro Massacre during which workers’ and civil rights’ activists were killed. Rev. Nelson joined the ancestors three weeks ago. Those who attended his funeral were given the charge of picking up the mantle of his work and finishing the fight for freedom.
Fannie Lou Hamer and Nelson Johnson were among those who experienced some of the darkest days in American history. Nevertheless, through the darkness, Black Americans are still here. We’ve come this far by faith and action.
Perhaps this is an opportunity for us as Americans to create communities of light and societies of liberation. This is the time for all of us to answer the call and say yes.
If Rev. Johnson were here, he would say: There is a great camp meeting in the promised land. There is truth on the other side of falsehood. There is light on the other side of darkness.
There is victory on the other side of what the empire says that you cannot win.
Walk together, children, and don’t get weary!
Walk together, children, and don’cha get weary!
Yes — this is the time to create the nation we all deserve.
Rev. C.J. Brinson is the pastor of Umoja Church and is a clergy organizer in Greensboro. Follow him on Instagram. Contact info@beaconmedianc.org with comments or questions. This column is syndicated by Beacon Media and can be republished anywhere online or in print for free under Beacon Media’s guidelines.
