You’re Invited to a Meetin’ at the Building
It’s the morning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018 and I find myself in a puddle of tears. Not tears of sadness or despair — no — these are the tears of resilience triggered by a deep remembering of the past while I consider how we will face the challenges of the present, especially rising hatred and xenophobia at home and abroad.
I’m hopeful because I’m remembering a meetin’ at the building I had the privilege to attend years ago. I invite you to press play on the video below and listen along as I explain what this is all about.
If you pressed play, then you’re hearing the transcendent, powerful voice of a gospel singer and my former professor, Mary Williams.
Welcome to “The South in Black and White: Politics, History, and Culture Along the Color Line in the 20th Century South,” perhaps the most important course I experienced as an undergrad at Duke back in 2012. As I reflect on the significance of this particular MLK Day, I’m transported back to that classroom and the lessons learned, which I humbly offer to you now.
Schooled in Song
It’s a chilly, dark evening in mid-January. There are about forty of us in the room — a stuffy basement in a quintessential southern-style home at the edge of Duke’s East Campus.
We’re a hodgepodge of diverse students from different universities in the area as well as local community members past their university days. The nervous chatter typical at the beginning of a new class surrenders to the booming voice of Professor Williams:
Well, there’s gonna be a meetin’.
There’s gonna be a meetin’.
Oh, there’s gonna be a meetin’.
Professor Williams makes her way down the aisle, intentionally approaching and locking eyes with us one-by-one as she sings.
The meetin’ at the building will soon be over, soon be over.
The meetin’ at the building will soon be over, all over this land.
Her gaze meets mine. I recognize a gentle fire in her eyes, a kind of warm knowingness that suggests we’ve met before. Her voice reverberates in the deepest recesses of my soul, awakening my capacity to feel far beyond myself.
In my mind’s eye, I recall the only other time in my life that I’ve felt this kind of empathetic self-awareness and resolve, when my grandpa shared his story of surviving the Holocaust while we stood before the gates of his “hell of hell” — the Mauthausen concentration camp.
This first time we heard the old gospel song, “Meetin’ at the Building,” we were silent spectators, but sure enough, by the second class and every class onward, Professor Williams got us out of our chairs, singing and clapping along, arm in arm with our peers.
You could say that she took us to church. And it was in that church of consciousness that we experienced history in a way that was relevant in our present and no doubt changed the course of our future. It definitely changed mine.
As the course syllabus notes:
“The South in Black and White” […] is a class on public and civic life in the past, conducted as an expression of public and civic life in the present, and ultimately exploring the future of our past. The unusual breadth of the course makes a quilt the most sensible metaphor for our approach to the subject matter; something useful and beautiful, patched together from many fabrics by a working community-in-progress. This course provides a kind of front porch on Southern history[…]. There will be music, poetry, history, documents, stories, films and opportunities for discussion. We will entertain guests — activists, musicians, scholars, writers. We will explore a history as rich and complicated, painful and delightful as the South itself.
Lessons Learned
We learned how black men and women in bondage sowed some of the earliest seeds of resilience and resistance through spirituals like “Meetin’ at a Building.” And it’s at this building — physical and/or metaphorical — that the Black Church, a key community-based institution that provided much of the infrastructure, leadership, and spiritual resolve of the Civil Rights Movement, took root.
We learned how failure in the early days of the movement inspired success further down the line. Did you know that the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955–1956 was preceded by a series of street-car boycotts across the South in the early 1900s when Jim Crow laws were first passed? I sure didn’t. Check out the Richmond Street Car Boycott of 1904.
In addition to seeing “failed” resistance efforts in a new light — as critical steps towards eventual breakthroughs — we learned that the Abolition and Civil Rights Movements were enabled and propelled forward by multitudes of lesser known community activists and leaders than we come away from our high school classes remembering — people like Abraham Galloway, A. Phillip Randolph, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and all the Freedom Riders.
These are but a few of the giants whose shoulders we stand on as we bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Dr. King didn’t find his voice and wield the power of nonviolent civil disobedience in a vacuum. There were those who laid a foundation before him. There were those who walked alongside him. And there are those who have continued the work so that we might realize the dream of all dreams.
Here’s the Point
I keep hearing from friends, family, and acquaintances that they are either overwhelmed or numbed by the constant deluge of shocking developments, namely Hatred’s steady march through our society. While it may feel better to jump ship or stick our heads in the sand for the time being, we absolutely must roll up our sleeves and get to work.
It’s time to show up to the meetin’ at the building if you have yet to do so.
Even if it feels like we are losing ground in the short term, we must show up, because that’s how we set the stage for the big wins down the road, even if they are beyond our horizon, as was the case for the organizers of street-car boycotts over a century ago.
As Ella Baker once said:
The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence.
Find or Spark Your Meetin’ at the Building
Imagine what we could achieve if each of us were to organize or attend a meetin’ at the building in our own communities. Throughout April, which marks Genocide Awareness & Prevention Month, as well as fifty years since Dr. King’s assassination, that’s exactly what we’re going to do and we’d love for you to join us.
Our organization, Together We Remember, is mobilizing thousands in grade schools, universities, houses of worship, museums, and other community spaces to organize interactive vigils that commemorate the victims of violent hatred throughout history and celebrate the heroes who’ve confronted it.
Our vigils will unite people of different identities in solidarity, give voice to the voiceless both past and present, and inspire collective action for memory, justice, and peace.
Using the #TogetherWeRemember hashtag, participants will share their experiences live on social media, crowdsourcing the world’s only virtual memorial demonstrating progress towards a world of “never again.”
From the grassroots to the grasstops, we are igniting an inclusive, dynamic movement of movements that will endure over multiple generations until our rhetoric matches our reality.
Elie Wiesel once said:
“Memory can be a graveyard, but it also can be the true kingdom of man.”
Join us on the right side of history as we declare as one:
#TogetherWeRemember humanity at its worst to inspire humanity to be its best.”
Don’t Let the Meetin’ Pass You By
In the words of Dr. King from his timeless “I Have a Dream speech:
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of god’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning.
2018 is not an end, but a beginning as well.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Nonviolent, creative protest is still the way forward. Militant protest tactics only undermine our cause.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
When we say “Never Again,” we mean it for ALL humanity.
And as we walk, we must always make the pledge that we will march ahead.
As long as we continue to add names to the list of victims- from Charlottesville to Aleppo, from Baltimore to Mogadishu, we know we have work to do.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018…
#TogetherWeRemember Dr. King.
#TogetherWeRemember the meetin’ at the building.
Visit TogetherWeRemember.org to learn more and join us.
