Podcasts about greensboro four

All 80 people on board the Delta plane that crashed in Toronto made it off safely. A father of eight on the plane said everything was normal on the flight — until the landing. In those moments, he sent a text message to his family before escaping from the wreckage. Delta CEO Ed Bastian joins "CBS Mornings" exclusively to discuss the Delta plane crash that happened in Toronto Monday.  A CBS News investigation is looking into President Trump's sweeping Jan. 6 pardons, including for violent offenders. One woman said she's worried about her own safety and the safety of others after a Jan. 6 defendant who she previously dated and had prior convictions was released under President Trump's orders. In an interview about his new book, Sen. Tom Cotton says the U.S. needs stronger protections against unauthorized drone flights over military sites, calling the lack of authority to take them down "ludicrous."  Joseph McNeil and the Greensboro Four staged a sit-in at a Whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter in 1960, a protest that lasted more than five months and became a turning point in the fight against segregation. On its 65th anniversary, McNeil reflects on the moment. The inaugural season of Unrivaled basketball is underway in Florida, featuring WNBA stars in a fast-paced three-on-three format. With every game sold out and major investors backing the league, its founders hope to reshape women's sports. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you discouraged by the racial division that plagues our country today? If so, don't miss this episode of Godly Goosebumps, in which Pastor Dudley shares the story of David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr., and Joseph McNeil, also known as the Greensboro Four. In February of 1960, these four courageous young Black men walked into the F.W. Woolworth Company store and sat down at an all-white lunch counter, challenging the segregation policies that characterized the social and moral landscape of their time. Little did they know, their actions would be a catalyst for a wave of nonviolent protests that played a critical role in the broader civil rights movement. This episode offers a powerful lesson on the ability we all possess to reshape our communities, overcoming hate and cultivating Christ-centered unity.

On Legal Docket, the Supreme Court considers religious liberty and parental rights; on Moneybeat, David Bahnsen explores the Wild West of AI; and on History Book, a 1960's lunch counter sit-in. Plus, the Monday morning newsSupport The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate.Additional support comes from Dordt University, offering thoughtful reflections on engaging with the modern world through a Christian lens. dordt.edu/inallthingsFrom Pensacola Christian College. Academic excellence, biblical worldview, affordable cost. go.pcci.edu/worldAnd from Ridge Haven Camp and Retreat Centers in Brevard, North Carolina, and Cono, Iowa. Camp and year-round retreat registrations at ridgehaven.org

Support the from A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship Ever wondered how one's educational journey can profoundly shape their career and life? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Jabbar R. Bennett, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Michigan State University, as we celebrate a milestone close to my heart—my 40th birthday—and aim to gain 40 new donors for the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship. Dr. Bennett shares his remarkable path from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, through historically Black colleges and universities, culminating in his influential role at Michigan State. Learn about his family's legacy, including his mother's connection to the historic Greensboro Four sit-ins and  in fostering leaders and community.Additionally, Dr. Bennett opens up about his journey from being the only African-American scientist in a lab of 25 to becoming the inaugural vice president and chief diversity officer at Michigan State University. We discuss the importance of early research opportunities, the nurturing environment at North Carolina A&T State University, and the critical role of education in creating positive change. We also touch upon leadership insights from John C. Maxwell's influential books. This episode is a heartfelt call to support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship, celebrating the transformative journey from A&T to doctoral success.Support the Show.

On this week's episode, I highlight and honor the Greensboro Four: Jibreel Khazan, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain and David Richmond. Sixty-four years ago these four African American college freshman sat down at a place where African Americans were not allowed to sit. Their act of non-violent protest and the publicity they received ignited a national sit-in movement, that initiated desegregation actions and laws. I wanted to learn the names of the Greensboro Four and learn how their lives had unfolded since their 1960 college days. Thank you Jibreel, Joseph, Franklin and David. I am glad to know you by name. I am sorry for the hatred and discrimination you experienced, leading up to your protest  and in the years that followed. I honor you, respect you and express my sincere gratitude for your courageous, inspiring legacy. Enjoy the podcast! Links: IG: Bakari Sellers

Thank you for listening to Will Wright Catholic. This post is public so feel free to share it.IntroductionWith Martin Luther King day approaching, it struck me that a great number of Americans have no idea who Martin Luther King Jr. was or what he did. They are barely familiar with his most famous speech: “I Have a Dream.” And each third Monday of January, most of us take the day off work for the federal holiday, but we do not take time to appreciate the contributions of this great man. So, in a small way, I would like to respond to that vacancy of attention. This short article will look at the life of Dr. King and his role in the Civil Rights Movement. There are many things that I have had to leave out for time's sake. But may this serve as a primer for further study. I believe that we still have more to learn from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Who was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, GA. He was an American Baptist minister and one of the foremost leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and the 1960s. As an African American, Dr. King fought for the rights of people of color through nonviolence and civil disobedience. In this regard, he had been inspired both by our Lord Jesus Christ and the example of Mahatma Gandhi. As a Baptist minister, King was steeped in the written word of God. As a young man, he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951 from Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania. He then went on to pursue doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. degree on June 5, 1955. His dissertation was entitled: A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. Before completing his studies, he married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953 and they became the parents of four children. King was made pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama at the age of 25 in 1954. In December 1959, he moved back to his home city of Atlanta and served as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church alongside his father, until his death. Sadly, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while staying at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. The Civil Rights MovementThe Civil Rights Movement began in large measure with the Supreme Court Case Brown v Board of Education in 1954. This ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This overturned the horrendous Plessy v Ferguson (1896) case which allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for whites and blacks. Beginning with schools, desegregation quickly spread to other public facilities as well. On December 1, 1955, African American Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. She was arrested and a sustained bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama began. The protest began on December 5 with the young local preacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. leading - the boycott continued for more than a year. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that segregated seating was unconstitutional.In 1957 the Little Rock Nine attempted to attend the central high school whose population had been entirely white. It took an escort of U.S. soldiers to allow these young men to attend school. The Greensboro Four, in 1960, took part in a sit-in at the all-white lunch counter at a F.W. Woolworth department store. The sit-in grew and replacements were brought in to replace those taken off to jail. On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary school in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. Many parents marched in to remove their children from the school to protest desegregation. She continued going to school, being escorted, and endured threats. Her teacher, Barbara Henry, continued to teach her (alone in the classroom).Beginning on May 4, 1961, a group of seven African American and six whites boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Along the way, the riders tested the Supreme Court ruling of Boynton v Virginia (1960) which extended an earlier ruling banning segregated interstate bus travel to include bus terminals and restrooms. In South Carolina, the bus had a tire slashed, it was firebombed, and the Freedom Riders were beaten. A second group of 10 replaced them until they were arrested or beaten, then another group would take their place. On May 29, U.S. Attorney general Robert F. Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce bans on segregation more strictly. This took effect in September 1961.The Birmingham DemonstrationsThe Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a campaign in Birmingham, AL to undermine the city's system of racial segregation. The campaign included sit-ins, economic boycotts, mass protests, and marches on City Hall. The demonstrations faced challenges: indifferent African Americans, adversarial white and black leaders, and a hostile commissioner of public safety - Eugene “Bull” Connor. Dr. King was arrested on April 12 for violating an anti-protest injunction and he was placed in solitary confinement. The demonstrations continued for a month, then the Children's Crusade was launched. On May 2, 1963, school-aged volunteers skipped school and began to march - the local jails were quickly filled. Bull Connor ordered the police and fire department to set high-pressure water hoses and attack dogs on the youth.The violent tactics on peaceful demonstrators caused outrage locally and gained national media attention.President John F. Kennedy proposed a civil rights bill on June 11. The Birmingham campaign was eventually negotiated to an agreement locally but tensions were high. A bomb on September 15 at 16th Street Baptist Church killed four African American girls and injured others. The country was in the midst of the war in Vietnam while determining at home what sort of nation we might be.The 1963 March on WashingtonOn August 28, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place to protest civil rights abuses and employment discrimination. A crowd of 250,000 people peacefully gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to listen to speeches, most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. This is where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.”The Civil Rights Act of 1964On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law - a stronger version of legislation that President Kennedy proposed before his assassination. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.1965: Assassination of Malcolm XOn February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated while lecturing at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, NY. He was a brilliant speaker and demanded that the civil rights movement move beyond civil rights to human rights. He thought that the solution to racial problems was in orthodox Islam. His ideas contributed to the development of the black nationalist ideology and the Black Power movement. 1965: Selma-Montgomery MarchOn March 7, 1965, Dr. King organized a march from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL, to call for a federal voting rights law that provided legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. State troopers sent marchers back with violence and tear gas; television cameras recorded the incident. On March 9, King tried again - more than 2,000 marchers encountered a barricade of state troopers at Pettus Bridge. King had his followers kneel in prayer and then they unexpectedly turned back. President Johnson introduced voting rights legislation on March 15, then on March 21, King once again set out from Selma. This time, Alabama National Guardsmen, federal marshals, and FBI agents assisted and King arrived in Montgomery on March 25. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6. This law suspended literacy tests, provided for federal approval of proposed changes to voting laws or procedures, and directed the attorney general of the U.S. to challenge the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.1965: Watts RiotsSeries of violent confrontations between the city police and residence of Watts and other black neighborhoods in L.A. - beginning on August 11, 1965. A white police officer arrested an African American man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving while intoxicated - he likely resisted arrest and the police possibly used excessive force. Violence, fires, and looting broke out over the next six days. The result was 34 deaths, 1,000 injuries, and $40 million in property damage. The McCone Commission later investigated the cause of the riots and concluded that they were the result of economic challenges including poor housing, schools, and job prospects.1966: Black Panther Party FoundedAfter Malcom X was assassinated, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA to protect black neighborhoods from what they saw as police brutality. The group launched community programs providing tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, and free shoes. They believed that civil rights reforms did not do enough. The Black Panther Party was socialist and, therefore, the target of the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence program - they were accused of being a communist organization and an enemy of the U.S. government. In December 1969, police tried to annihilate the group at their Southern California headquarters and in Illinois. The Party's operations continued, less actively, into the 1970s.1967: Loving v VirginiaOn June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Virginia statutes prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional. Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, who was mixed black and Native American, left Virginia to be married and then return to the state (this was against the law). Their one year prison sentence was suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return for at least 25 years. They filed their suit in 1963 and it took four years to get to the Supreme Court - their conviction was reversed. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous court that freedom to marry was a basic civil right. This ruling invalidated laws against interracial marriage in Virginia and 15 other states. 1967: Detroit RiotSeries of violent confrontations between African American neighborhoods and police beginning on July 23, 1967 after a raid at an illegal drinking club - 82 African Americans, and others, were arrested. Nearby residents protested and began to vandalize property, loot businesses, and start fires for five days. Police set up blockades but the violence spread - result was 43 deaths, hundreds of injuries, more than 7,000 arrests, and 1,000 burned buildings. President Johnson appointed the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders - they concluded that racism, discrimination, and poverty were some of the causes of the violence.1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.While standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by a sniper - April 4, 1968. He was staying at the hotel after leading a nonviolent demonstration in support of striking sanitation workers. His murder set off riots in hundreds of cities across the country. Congress passed the Fair Housing act in King's honor on April 11. The Fair Housing Act made it unlawful for sellers, landlords, and financial institutions to refuse to rent, sell, or provide financing based on factors other than an individual's finances. The Civil Rights Movement, after King's death, seemed to be shifting away from the nonviolent tactics and interracial cooperation that had brought about a number of policy changes. Nonetheless, his legacy remains.What is Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy?The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. focuses on his ideas on nonviolence, civil disobedience, and peaceful noncooperation. Dr. King had his faults: plagiarism and adultery were accusations levied against him with considerable evidence. But all of us fall short of the glory of God. What I am concerned about is his impact on the country. What was the legacy of his ideas and actions?Two lines, in particular, of Dr. King's fantastic “I Have a Dream Speech” in Washington, D.C. are more than noteworthy. In a portion of the speech, which seemed to be ad-libbed rather than scripted, Dr. King said, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” This, I think, reveals the heart of the man. Dr. King marched hand in hand with those of any race and religion. Here he is invoking the long past of American slavery which still haunted the nation under the guise of Jim Crow. Where some, like Malcolm X, were threatening or perpetrating violence, Dr. King was speaking of brotherhood and sharing a common meal. Nothing could be more Christian than this. Second, he said the beautiful words that ought to echo down the halls of humanity until we come to our final reward. He says, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Racism is a scourge from the depths of hell. To judge another based on their skin color is reprehensible. I would be remiss to say that this extends also to those progressives today who insist on advancing identity and race politics. Dr. King would certainly be opposed to such racist nonsense. In his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, written during his incarceration, he begins by outlining the four steps to nonviolent campaign: “1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification [note: how often is this forgotten!]; and 4) direct action.” He saw the heinous reality of the treatment of blacks, especially in the South. And he answered with measured, reasonable action. Much of the rest of the letter then builds off of these four steps. However, Dr. King challenges us, even decades later, in his letter. He speaks of those who are a stumbling block to justice. He mentions, of course, the Ku Klux Klan but then lambasts the “white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order' than to justice.” He goes on to say, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” The words of Dr. King would have certainly ruffled feathers back then, but I am certain that many conservatives today would bristle at hearing this challenge. Yet, what Dr. King is saying what Jesus says to us: “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spew you from My mouth.” We have to choose a side. There can be no moderation when it comes to toleration of the sin of true racism. This brings us back to his legacy. We must act when there is injustice. But how should we act? Should we act out with rioting and violence? Certainly, Dr. King would bellow a resounding “no!” Instead, we are to gather the facts, negotiate, allow God to purify our own hearts, and then act directly. May we have the strength, in God's grace, to do so whenever we are convicted by justice to do so.Thanks for reading Will Wright Catholic! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willwrightcatholic.substack.com

On February, 1, 1960, Four Black college students that sat at a "whites only" Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina and sparked a movement that would spread to towns throughout the South and forced Woolworth's and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.Audio Onemichistory.comPlease support our Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/user?u=25697914Buy me a Coffeehttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/Countryboi2mCivilities and civil rights : Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedomby Chafe, William Henryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-inshttps://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-inhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/lessons-worth-learning-moment-greensboro-four-sat-down-lunch-counter-180974087/

Stories from Greensboro's beloved community gave us the opportunity to talk with Lewis Brandon, Grassroots History Coordinator at the Beloved Community Center who sat down with us to share his story of being a part of history joining four fellow North Carolina A & T sit in of the lunch counter in Greensboro.Rebecca Cerese, Director of the documentary February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four discusses the film and share the story of one of history's most important moments. and, one of my favorite stories fromClaude Barnes who is a Researcher at the Jubilee Institute in Greensboro, North Carolina. He joined us to talk about his being elected to student body president as a write-in candidate and how that event turned into a riot where he and his classmates being tear gassed and some classmates even got arrested.If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me Rick@thericksmithshow.comRemember to subscribe to our podcast so you never miss a minute.Want to help keep the show viable and on the air? Become a Patreon memberSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tonight BZ and co-host LONNIE POINDEXTER (in the studio with BZ!) discussed CLARENCE HENDERSON of the GREENSBORO FOUR in 1960, the Chicago Death Toll, interspersed with a fart joke, racist emojis, Biden's abysmal poll numbers, and SHR's own Melanie Collette talking about Joe Rogan's canceling. BZ also gave details on how to get into the SHR chat room, and how to call the NEW phone number to the show, at (575) 208-4792!

Tonight BZ and co-host LONNIE POINDEXTER (in the studio with BZ!) discussed CLARENCE HENDERSON of the GREENSBORO FOUR in 1960, the Chicago Death Toll, interspersed with a fart joke, racist emojis, Biden's abysmal poll numbers, and SHR's own Melanie Collette talking about Joe Rogan's canceling. BZ also gave details on how to get into the SHR chat room, and how to call the NEW phone number to the show, at (575) 208-4792!

Tonight BZ and co-host LONNIE POINDEXTER (in the studio with BZ!) discussed CLARENCE HENDERSON of the GREENSBORO FOUR in 1960, the Chicago Death Toll, interspersed with a fart joke, racist emojis, Biden's abysmal poll numbers, and SHR's own Melanie Collette talking about Joe Rogan's canceling. BZ also gave details on how to get into the SHR chat room, and how to call the NEW phone number to the show, at (575) 208-4792!

For MLK Day, scholar host Benny Klein '24 interviews Wendell McCain '92, the son of activist Franklin McCain of the Greensboro Four. Wendell shares about what it was like to grow up around one of the leaders of the civil rights movement and the lessons he learned from his father about pursuing justice. He also talks about his journey through the financial world and how he's found ways to support and uplift those around him. Wendell is the chair and CEO of Onset Capital Partners, a global asset management firm based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The alumnus received his bachelor's degree in economics from UNC–Chapel Hill, followed by an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. This is the first episode hosted by Benny Klein '24 and produced by Lia Salvatierra '24 of the Morehead-Cain Scholar Media Team. In his new series, Benny speaks with Morehead-Cain Alumni about how they've been able to balance their career aspirations while creating a positive impact on the world. Music creditsThis episode features songs by Nicholas Byrne '19 of Arts + Crafts and Scott Hallyburton '22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul. How to listenOn your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

Serien om afroamerikaners kamp för medborgerliga rättigheter fortsätter. Det kommer att handla om Greensboro Four, sit-ins på lunchbarer, pray-ins i kyrkor, bildandet av SNCC, Freedom rides, utbrända bussar, John Lewis, Kennedybröderna och Ella Baker. Glöm inte att prenumerera på podcasten! Ge den gärna betyg på iTunes! Följ podden på Facebook (facebook.com/stjarnbaneret), twitter (@stjarnbaneret) eller Instagram (@stjarnbaneret) Kontakt: stjarnbaneret@gmail.com

Very few small college and HBCU players declare for the National Football League Draft early. But former North Carolina A&T cornerback Mac McCain is not your average person. McCain declared for this year’s draft in January. He talked with BOXTOROW host Donal Ware about his decision to enter the draft early, his time at A&T,Continue Reading →

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我有個商品要賣『林威老師親編終極片語+影片講解200個字根』，售價$6,000！快到我的店鋪看看吧！https://shopee.tw/product/18811006/6072162816?smtt=0.18812342-1609723528.4 #蝦皮購物 ..... From https://www.britannica.com/ 大英百科學英文 protest against segregation A Nonviolent Protest Against Segregation. On the afternoon of February 1, 1960, four African American university students—Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond—purchased some items from Woolworth's general store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sat at the “whites only” lunch counter in the store's dining area. The Greensboro Four, as the men came to be called, remained seated while their orders were refused by the waitstaff. They returned the next day, accompanied by some 20 other Black university students, beginning a widespread sit-in movement.

In this politically-charged episode of Travels Through Time, Professor Simon Hall takes us on a fascinating tour of the United States in 1960. We watch on as 'the Greensboro Four’ ignite a nation-wide series of sit-ins. We take a visit to see Fidel Castro and his swashbuckling entourage at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem. And we watch as Nixon and Kennedy go head to head in the most famous presidential debate of them all. The subject matter, the scenes and characters that feature in this episode come from Simon Hall's new book, Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s. To be in with a chance of winning a hardback copy of this book and a superb colourised image of Fidel Castro, visit: tttpodcast.com Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds. Show notes Scene One: 1 February 1960; the lunch counter at the F. W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Scene Two: Evening of Thursday 22 September; the Skyline Lounge, Hotel Theresa, Harlem. Scene Three: 26 September, CBS’s McClurg Court studios, Chicago. Memento: One of Fidel Castro’s cigars People/Social Presenter: Peter Moore Guest: Simon Hall Producers: Maria Nolan Titles: Jon O Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_ Podcast Partner: ColorGraph So much more at: tttpodcast.com

Episode 9 (recorded 4 July 2020). Following President Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore on 3 July 2020, Bishop Jack Lumanog responds to the President's tone deaf rhetoric and his odd commitment to preserving "our" heroes, "our" values, "our" most sacred memorials. The Bishop discusses the history of Stone Mountain (outside of Atlanta) and proposes taking down every Confederate statue and monument and offers his suggestions for their replacements: General and 18th President Ulysses S. Grant, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, The Greensboro Four, The Little Rock 9 (especially depicting 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford), Rosa Parks, The Freedom Riders (especially Congressman John Lewis). Happy Independence Day, from Pod Bless Us with Bishop Jack Lumanog! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bishoplumanog/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bishoplumanog/support

Let's remember that a movement was fostered thanks to what happened in the hospitality industry.   Back in 1960, four young black men, who became known as "The Greensboro Four" had the courage to sit at a "Whites Only" lunch counter at a Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina. Woolworths refused to serve them so by the third day, hundreds showed up. Then it turned into thousands. Then it turned into a movement. A catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement which swept the United States.   Sound familiar?   While realization came that segregation was wrong, as soon as it hurt the economics of a business, things changed. Because it always starts in restaurants and retail since that's the common denominator among races and classes. It doesn't matter where you live or what you wear, but essentially everyone can afford a double macchiato at Starbucks.   On this episode of "Tip Not Included", Host Eric Levine is back to address the social unrest taking place today and questions "Where's The Beef"? while asking "What's Your Beef"?    Well, the beef has been growing for years, with windows, souls and backs being broken in the process. The beef is being shouted loud and clear across the country on racial inequality and racial injustice. Especially in the restaurant industry where its workers (along with convicts) make 30% below minimum wage.    Hey, it's not called "slave wages" for nothing.   So in this time where our society is being unmasked while we're being asked to don one, it's worthwhile asking how stunned you are -- without a stun gun -- that people are taking to the streets to voice their beef. Blacks, Whites, Asian, Latinos. Even vegans.   Contact Eric at: erictipnotincluded@gmail.com

Sunday, June 7, 2020 - We begin with a news update from Dave Thompson. ~~~ Joseph McNeil Jr. of Bismarck reflects on the current racial unrest. McNeil is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the son of Joseph McNeil, Sr., one of the Greensboro Four; a group of African American college students who sat down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter to challenge the store's policy of denying service to non-white customers. ~~~ From NPR's Code Switch podcast, an episode titled “ A Decade of Watching Black People Die.”

Clarence Henderson, Civil Rights Leader and School Choice Advocate discussed the current racial unrest, peaceful protest, and how school choice and charter schools, and educators in general can contribute to a better society.

Monday, June 1, 2020 - Joining us today to reflect on the current racial unrest is Joseph McNeil, Jr. of Bismarck, a Standing Rock Sioux tribal member and the son of Joseph McNeil, Sr., one of the Greensboro Four; a group of African American college students who sat down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter to challenge the store's policy of denying service to non-white customers. ~~~ Commentary on our history of racial unrest from Mark Trahant. ~~~ ND Farmers Markets and Growers Association has been developing “best practices” recommendations as the season for selling is about to get underway in the midst of the pandemic. Joining us is Holly Rose Mawby, the association’s executive director. She’s also the director of the Entrepreneurial Center for Horticulture at Dakota College at Bottineau, and she does some growing herself.

 Leadership Greensboro Director Niketa Greene hosts this episode about our city's history of African American trailblazers in honor of Black History Month. Her guests are Franklin McCain Jr., the son of one of the Greensboro Four, and James Shields, the director of the Bonner Center for Community Service and Learning at Guilford College. Thanks for joining us! This episode is sponsored by Truliant Federal Credit Union Visit Truliant here ----- 00:58 - Niketa kicks off the show along with James Shields and Franklin McCain Jr., who will be joining the discussion on Greensboro's Freedom Fighters and Trailblazers. James and Franklin give their background.   05:00 - Niketa points out the history of Franklin's family name. Franklin explains that his father was one of the Greensboro Four and how his father was one of the catalysts that launched the Civil Rights Movement.   07:59 - Niketa quotes Levi Coffin and discusses the similarities between him and Franklin's father. She discusses the connection between Greensboro, Guilford College, and the Quakers. James expands on the Quakers and their history in Greensboro and Guilford County.   10:42 - Niketa mentions a quote by Franklin's father that displays overwhelming courage and bravery. She asks how he continues to display these characteristics throughout his life.   15:44 - Franklin's explains how his father struggled among prejudiced and racist eyes, despite being an educated man. Niketa explains that more times than not, it takes someone who is among those of racist and prejudiced mindsets to engage and use their privilege to lend a helping hand. James is asked to share how people in these positions have contributed to change in the Greensboro community.   19:37 - Niketa asks about Franklin and James about their personal connections to these trailblazing moments in history. Franklin explains that even though his father was an internationally significant figure to him that's dad. Franklin is asked to explain how he carries on his father's legacy.   24:05 - Niketa asks James more about Guilford College and how knowing his ancestors had come to that same place is significant to him, and how does that connection impacts the work he does today.   27:13 - Niketa discusses the race riots, peaceful city movements and underground railroads that Greensboro is known for. She asks both guests if it is fair to say that Greensboro is a revolutionary city.   33:02 - Niketa closes by saying she hopes Greensboro continues to be a revolutionary city.  ----- Thanks for joining us! Remember to subscribe for new episode notifications each week. Make sure to follow impact. The Boro on social media!  Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @gsochamber Recorded and Edited by Press Play Studios Visit the Chamber website at greensboro.org.

Me and Dean had a great discussion about the Super Bowl, Coronavirus, and the Greensboro Four and then we were joined by our guest Michael Ringer and Jason Damico....During that discussion, we talked about ending hunger, food desserts, and Jason's career as a Blues musician and actor.....Definitely a great conversation....Originally scheduled was Aduke Aremu, a talented playwright and director......There was some confusion but we have rescheduled Aduke for next week....I have known Aduke for a number of years, having met her many years ago at the National Black Theatre Festival...   I remember working with her on Bum Sonata, a play about homelessness, that she is bringing back several decades after it's first run..   We look forward to hearing her talk about being a woman in the Theatre world as well as about many of the great theatre forces that inspired her career....This should be a delightful conversation with a longtime friend.. She is also working with the Harlem Dyer Center and has worked with many institutions jn places ranging from Atlanta to Charlotte to various places overseas.....

Me and Dean had a great discussion about the Super Bowl, Coronavirus, and the Greensboro Four and then we were joined by our guest Michael Ringer and Jason Damico....During that discussion, we talked about ending hunger, food desserts, and Jason's career as a Blues musician and actor.....Definitely a great conversation....Originally scheduled was Aduke Aremu, a talented playwright and director......There was some confusion but we have rescheduled Aduke for next week....I have known Aduke for a number of years, having met her many years ago at the National Black Theatre Festival...   I remember working with her on Bum Sonata, a play about homelessness, that she is bringing back several decades after it's first run..   We look forward to hearing her talk about being a woman in the Theatre world as well as about many of the great theatre forces that inspired her career....This should be a delightful conversation with a longtime friend.. She is also working with the Harlem Dyer Center and has worked with many institutions jn places ranging from Atlanta to Charlotte to various places overseas.....

Today in history: The Greensboro Four sit in protest begins. Space Shuttle Columbia explodes. The U.S. Supreme Court convenes. William Desmond Taylor murdered. Voice of America broadcasts first program to Europe.      

Sit-ins became a prominent part of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, with the most famous occurring in Greensboro, North Carolina. But as a form of protest, it was first used in 1939 by a lawyer named Samuel Wilbert Tucker. Libraries in Alexandria, Virginia refused to issue library cards to colored citizens and Mr. Tucker used a sit-in to mount a legal challenge to that practice. In early 1960, Franklin McCain was one of the four North Carolina A&T College students who staged a sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Greensboro as a way to do something about the condition of segregation. Their efforts ultimately led to similar events across the south - in nine states and fifty-four cities. This episode features reflections by McCain on what it was like to be a part of The Greensboro Four and pays tribute to a hidden legal figure whose early twentieth-century insight gave a later generation the tool that would produce groundbreaking civil rights legislation. If you enjoy the podcast, you can rate and review by clicking here.To contact us or learn more about The Arc of Justice Institute, visit: https://onthearc.net/

“GREENSBORO FOUR” did a sit- in at a Woolworth counter as 4 freshmen from North Carolina A and T University “ to protest the Woolworth chain lunch counter in Greensboro,NC policy of refusing to serve food to Blacks.” The grandson Franklin “ MAC” McCain of one of the 4 (Franklin McCain the one with eyeglasses on)is a football All-American and 2 time HBCU NATIONAL CHAMPION with N.C.A and T and is a SOPHOMORE will be our guest..

Greensboro Four Mixdown by Bennett College JMS Department

Destiny Collins introduces an interview with David Richmond Jr., son of one of the Greensboro Four.

Kimiko Cowley-Pettis, school teacher at Avalon Park Elementary School in Chicago, IL, commemorates the Greensboro Four's Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in, with a special introduction from CNN anchor Don Lemon

Kimiko Cowley-Pettis, school teacher at Avalon Park Elementary School in Chicago, IL, commemorates the Greensboro Four's Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in, with a special introduction from CNN anchor Don Lemon

Do you recognize the names of Emmett Till, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, David Richmond or Ruby Bridges?   Perhaps you recognize some but not others. Perhaps none.   That’s okay. They weren’t seeking fame or fortune. They just wanted to get an education, vote or just eat at a cafeteria lunch counter. You might not know their names but they made a difference for all of us. In this podcast show, you’re gonna here EXACTLY what they did.   Hi, I’m Robin Lofton, the Chief In-house Historian and host of this great and groundbreaking show that can inspire YOU and your FAMILY with true stories, real experiences, practical lessons, cultural traditions, and fun celebrations—all inspired by African American history. I find history to BE inspirational, instructional and entertaining. And African American history fits the bill in all of these ways. Personally, I hate boring stuff. So boring stuff is not allowed at rememberinghistory.com or at this Wiki history podcast show.   This was planned as the third and final podcast in our series on civil rights and the civil rights movement. But the rememberinghistory.com team decided that a change was necessary: This show about student activists has been divided into TWO parts. Why? Because this is a FASCINATING topic (you’re gonna here some great stores) and we wanted to make it practical too. So we’ve added a section on ways that young people and students TODAY can also help to make changes and have an impact in their communities, the country and world. So, that’s what we’ll discuss in part II of the series.   In the previous podcast shows, we discussed lessons we can STILL learn from Martin Luther King. If you haven’t heard that show, I really encourage you to do so because there were great lessons—yes, we can still learn from Dr. King and it stirred up a lot of interesting discussion. Spoiler alert: The first lesson was called “be maladjusted.” People really had a lot to say about that and I’m sure that you will too. The other podcast show was about voting rights in America. Yes, there is still a lot of discrimination in voting—in deciding how districts will be formed, in the voter registration process, even directly at the polling stations. And we presented specific and doable ways to fight discrimination in voting. The types of voter discrimination actions were shocking but it was also an empowering show. So be sure to listen so that you are ready to fight for your right to vote. And, of course, we made great animated videos to summarize the issues and entertain you as well. You can find them at rememberinghistory.com and on our YouTube channel. Remember, we don’t “do boring” here so prepare to be entertained AND learn a little something useful.   Today’s show refocuses on the people in history: a very special group of people who participated—and gave special momentum—to the civil rights movement. Young people and students. I planned to focus on college students. Yes, they did a lot. But as I thought about it more, I remembered that high school students and even elementary school students played an important part in the movement. So, we gonna include them in this discussion too. You see, even a CHIEF inhouse historian can change her mind and learn something new.   This is a particularly important show. Often, young people feel they can’t make a difference that they can’t have an impact and that decisions are being made only by the adults. This show will prove that this is simply not true. And I hope that it will convince young people and students that they do have a voice and an important role to play in protecting civil rights or in any cause that they’re passionate about. That’s important to remember. While these shows focus on civil rights, there are many causes that need and deserve attention and action. But protecting civil rights is an urgent focus right now—perhaps now more than in any time since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And this show will suggest some ways in which they can get involved in protecting the civil rights—of people of color, of the economically disadvantaged, of refugees and immigrants and frankly of any group under attack or suffering injustice. Remember those famous words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”   Well, let’s get to the show, “The Youth and Students in the Civil Rights Movement”*           Is it strange of think of young people and students focused, committing and working for civil rights? If you find it hard to imagine that children were brave enough, that high school students were focused enough and that college students were concerned enough to work together for civil rights, then it’s time to grab a chair and get comfortable. Perhaps even grab your kids to listen with you. This is history at its finest! This is the story of young people from elementary school—the youngest was only 7 years old!—through the college who showed commitment and courage under fire. And the “fires” that they faced were real and deadly—beatings, dog attacks, imprisonment, threats, and yes murder as well. Yet these young people stood up for their rights to equality and justice—and they stood up for your rights too. In one youth-led movement in 1963, Martin Luther King told the students who had been jailed (in Birmingham, Alabama) : “What you do this day will impact children who have not yet been born.” Wow. Sooo true. And these kids DID forge a path for us. Stay tuned—remember in Part II, we will present ways that young people can continue to be involved in social activism and have an impact on kids that are not yet born.   *[Applause break here]   Many of the young people involved in the Civil Rights Movement actively joined and participated in the meetings, marches, demonstrations and other nonviolent activities to draw attention to their cause. Others became involuntary victims of the racist and oppressive culture of segregation. However, both groups—whether actively participating or involuntarily drawn in-- made an invaluable contribution to the cause.                         We are gonna begin today’s journey by discussing a name whom I hope is familiar. Very familiar. Sadly familiar. But don’t worry if it’s not because we’re learning here together. The name: Emmett Till.   Personally, I don’t remember the first time that I heard the name of Emmett Till. I must have been too young. But he was a name that was always deeply embedded in me—not the details of his horrific claim to fame. But the feeling his fate stirred up: sadness, anger, disbelief, fear. I’m sure that all of these feelings came from my parents and I picked them up as an impressionable child. But his name is a part of my life story. Why? Because ALL Black children could have been young Emmett. Actually, I know that there were other Emmetts but HIS terrible experience changed everything. I’m jumping ahead of myself. Let’s hear the story.   In the summer of 1955, Emmett was just like any other 14-year old Black kid. Just finished the 7th grade at his Chicago school. High-spirited. Fun-loving. Growing into manhood. Polite. Looking forward to a great summer. Adored by his mother. Emmett was especially excited because he would spend the summer with his cousins in Mississippi. Emmett had never visited the segregated south so his mother counseled him about how to behave around white people.   The rest of the story has become a sad legend. Emmett enjoyed his first few days in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Worked in the cotton fields during the day and played with his cousins in the evening. On his third day there, he went to a grocery store with his cousins and that’s when the trouble started. There is no clear account of what happened but Emmett might have whistled at the wife (who was white) who owned the store. A few nights later, her husband and brother-in-law went to house of Emmett’s uncle in the dead of night mind you, snatched Emmett out of bed and drove off with him into the night. Three days later, Emmett’s horribly mutilated body was discovered in a river. I won’t go into details, but young Emmett had been tortured, beaten and shot in the head. Witnesses recounted hearing a young boy screaming and calling for help from a barn. He was mutilated beyond recognition.         His grieving but brave mother firmly decided on an open casket at his funeral in Chicago. Thousands of mourners filed past the casket. Jet Magazine and several other Black publications printed the graphic photos of Emmett’s body. I have seen the horrific almost gruesome pictures and I will never forget them. Several of older friends actually went to Emmett’s funeral and viewed his body. I can see the pain and sadness still in their eyes—from 1955.   The murderers of Emmett Till were quickly tried and acquitted. I think that it took only an hour. Is that scenario familiar today? One of the killers even gave an interview to LOOK Magazine detailing how they killed Emmett.   Many people say that the murder of Emmett Till sparked the modern Civil Rights Movement. It brought light to the brutality and regularity of lynching in the south, the effects of segregation and the vulnerability of Black lives. Emmett Till could have been any Black man, woman or child in the Jim Crow south. African Americans demanded justice for Emmett. And young Black children and students were especially outraged and fearful because Emmett was only 14 years old so they connected with this movement perhaps feeling that their lives hung in the balance. The Civil Rights Movement was on—and young people were a committed and focused part of it. Emmett was not a voluntary student-activist but his name will be remembered as someone who started a movement.   The first real student-involved movement (that we’ll discuss) took place in 1957, just two years after the lynching of Emmett Till.   It involved 9 brave African Americans kids attempting to attend a white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. These kids became known as the Little Rock Nine. Let’s back up just a bit to 1954.   The United States was in chaos. (More was to come, of course, but most people didn’t know that.) Interesting thing about history—it’s not the story of people living in the present. It’s the story of people living in the present, THEIR present. So, in 1954, many people didn’t know or didn’t accept that change prompted by the civil rights movement was looming in their future. Hmm…gotta think about that one. Anyway, in 1954, the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education had just been decided by the Supreme Court. The decision that desegregated public schools.   Remember that’s where we got the “separate but equal is inherently unequal” quote and that THIS violated the 14th Amendment. So, segregated schools were declared illegal and ordered to integrate “with all deliberate speed.” (another great quote). But many school districts especially in the southern states refused to accept this decision. They fought back. Some just ignored the decision and dared the federal government to try to enforce it. Others closed down schools rather than integrate them. Let’s jump from the immediate aftermath of the Brown case back to the summer of 1957, Little Rock Arkansas.   The NAACP (Arkansas Branch) was determined to integrate the high schools, beginning in Little Rock, the state’s capital. Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas Branch of the NAACP recruited nine high school students whom she believed possessed the strength and determination to face the RESISTANCE to integration. During that summer, the students participated in intensive counseling sessions on what to expect and how to respond to the reaction from the white community--students AND parents.   Just before school opened in September, Arkansas Governor Oval Faubus ordered the National Guard to bar the African American students from entering the state’s schools. He claimed that it was for “their own protection” (quote. Don’t we hear that one a lot today?) The next day, a federal court judge issued a counter-ruling that desegregation would proceed.   As the nine Black students attempted to enter the school, a huge crowd of angry white students and adults as well as the Arkansas National Guard (ordered by the Governor) barred the students’ from entering. White protesters threatened the students, screamed racial slurs and spit on them. They were not able to enter the school that day.   Days later, the students tried to enter the school again with a police escort. However, more than a thousand white protesters appeared and again blocked the students’ from entering the building. President Eisenhower finally sent federal troops to enforce the integration order. Army troops actually had to escort the students to their first day of class.       But that wasn’t the end of the story. Protests against integration continued. The 101st Airborne Division stayed at the school to protect the students for an entire year. The nine kids faced verbal and physical abuse. One student had acid thrown in her face. Another was pushed down the stairs. The threats were constant and real. Both teachers AND students were hostile. But the kids survived and even thrived at their high school. All graduated and held distinguished careers. However, they only stayed at Little Rock Central High School for a year. The school board voted by 3 to 1 to close the school rather than officially integrate (of course, they cited budget cuts as the reason for the school closure.) But the brave high school students had stood up for their rights in a hostile and dangerous situation. Just imagine having to be escorted to school by federal guards. Imagine parents shouting ugly remarks at you. Imagine being spat upon, pushed around or down stairs, ignored by teachers and facing a large hostile crowd in the school cafeteria. This was definitely courage under fire and these kids deserve to be recognized and respected for their great achievement. And I want to say their names because they should become a familiar part of African American history:   Elizabeth Eckford Ernest Green Thelma Mothershed Melba Patillo Minnijean Brown Gloria Ray Terrence Roberts Jefferson Thomas Carlotta Walls   [Break for applause.]   By the way, during this podcast, you have heard and will continue to hear about people, places, events and issues. You will HEAR about them, but I completely understand if you want to actually SEE them, too. We got that covered on the Wiki History Podcast Page on Facebook. You will find pictures, animated videos and a community of history lovers. There is also a place for comments, which I hope that you will leave for us because we really appreciate them AND we do respond. Of course, we welcome all questions too.   Moving on…1960 was a BIG year for student activism. It’s really hard to know where to begin.   But I’ll adopt a “ladies first” position here—especially for this little lady named Ruby Bridges.   Ruby wanted to attend William Frantz Elementary School, which was an all-white school based in New Orleans. (I know what you’re thinking: you can’t have an all-white school because the Brown v. Board of Education case declared them illegal. Well, just like in Little Rock, the school boards were NOT going to give up their segregated lifestyle and institutions willingly. So the fight continued.) And little Ruby Bridges wanted to attend this school in her neighborhood school and for which she had passed a rigorous entry test. (This test had ACTUALLY been designed to screen out Black students and had been successful until Ruby.) So, she was excited to attend the kindergarten. Yes, that’s right little Miss Ruby Bridges was seven years old. She had to be escorted to school every day by 4 U.S. Marshals. She spent her first day in the principal’s office and watched as white parents removed their kids from school. A compromise was reached in which white students would return to school and Ruby would be isolated in a classroom on a floor separated from the other students. Only one teacher (Barbara Henry who was from Boston) agreed to teach her. For the remainder of the year, Mrs. Henry and Ruby would sit side-by-side going over lessons in the classroom. At recess, Ruby would stay in the classroom and play games or do calisthenics. At lunch, Ruby would eat alone in the classroom. Outside the school, the parents continued to protest against Ruby. One woman threatened to poison her every day. Another put a black baby doll in a coffin and left it at the school. Ruby said that scared her more than anything! Her father lost his job. Her mother was banned from shopping at the local grocery store.   This behavior seriously affected Ruby—as it would affect any 7-year old child. She began having nightmares. Stopped eating and started to have crying fits. She received counseling and gradually settled into a normal routine with the help of her teacher, Mrs. Henry. By the second year, Ruby started making friends and attending classes with the other students. Ruby attended integrated schools all the way through high school and went on to business school. (Interestingly, Ruby was reunited with Mrs. Henry on the Oprah Winfrey show.) That must have been an emotional reunion! Teachers really do make a difference. But it was Ruby’s strength and determination that helped her to succeed. Still--no one does it alone.   Remember to look for the pictures of Ruby Bridges and Barbara Henry on the Wiki History Podcast page on Face book. I’m really moved by two pictures of 7-year old Ruby marching into school escorted by 4 US Marshals. One is a real-life picture. The second is what has become an iconic portrait made by Norman Rockwell called “The Problem we all live with.”   We’re still in 1960 and now we have the Greensboro Four and their protest is marked as the beginning of student activism during the civil rights movement.   The group known as the Greensboro four was attending the North Carolina A & T State University. They were dedicated students who were fans of Mahatma Gandhi, believed in nonviolence and spent their evening studying and discussing current events. Like many other young people, they had been and still were deeply affected by the murder of Emmett Till 5 years earlier. They had also been very impressed and moved by the Freedom Rides in the Deep South led by the Congress of Racial Equality (or CORE). They acknowledged some progress but also recognized and refused to be distracted into thinking that this progress was good enough. Most businesses were privately owned and therefore not subject to federal law that banned segregation. They decided to take action.   On February 1, 1960 at 4:30pm, all four students walked into a Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. Wearing their Sunday best, they sat at the whites-only lunch counter and requested service. They were denied. They continued to request service in a polite way but they were continuously denied by store manager. They were told to leave but they refused. Police were called but they didn’t arrest the students because they had not been violent or disorderly. Media arrived. Crowds developed. The students stayed at the lunch counter for the entire day until the store closed. Woolworth issued a statement to the press that it would continue to “abide by local custom”, meaning that it would continue to practice segregation.   The Greensboro Four went back the next day. More students joined the sit-in, this time from the Bennett College, which was an all-women’s college in Greensboro. Each day more students joined the protest—and it spread to other southern cities like Richmond and Nashville. By February 5th, hundreds of students joined in the lunch counter sit-ins. It paralyzed all business at the counter. The student protesters were verbally abused and threatened by white customers. THIS sit-in launched a nationwide movement at segregated lunch counters across the country. It also sparked a movement on college campuses that brought ATTENTION to the civil rights situation in the United States. The sit-in protests in Greensboro and other cities received lots of attention from the media and eventually the government. By the end of the year, many restaurants, lunch counters and privately-owned business had desegregated their facilities without any court action or marshals. And, yes, Woolworth in Greensboro also desegregated its lunch counters. Sit-ins were one of the most effective kinds of protests during the Civil Rights Movement. And it started with four intelligent, ambitious and civic-minded African American students and grew to more than 70,000 people protesting throughout the country. The protest ended on March 25th—lasting 5 months, 3 weeks and 3 days.   I absolutely love this story; it is SO inspirational on many different levels. The close friendship among the students. Their motivation, discipline and courage. Their education and reliance on a philosophy of non-violence and civil disobedience. The quick growth of the protests among college students who seemed ripe and ready to show their discontent and ability to fight for their rights. I could go on and on about this but I think that you see the same picture.* And because these students deserve our respect and have earned their place in history, I want to mention their names:   Ezell Blair, Jr. David Richmond Franklin McCain Joseph McNeil   *[Applause track here]       This story shows how a small but determined group can create a big and lasting change. As a follow up, although their protests were successful and many people praised them, both Black and White, all of the Greensboro Four had to leave the city because of harassment and death threats. They had been labeled as troublemakers so the local white population made life difficult and dangerous for the men to continue living there. Today there are several statues and remembrances of the protests initiated by the Greensboro Four. The February One statue of the four student-activists is located on the campus of North Carolina A & T State University. It is really moving. And you can find the original four lunch counter seats at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro. I also have pictures on the Wiki History Podcast Facebook page. I strongly encourage you to see them. I’m sure that you’ll be moved too.   Our last group of student-activists (in Part I) took the fight for civil rights to another level—the international level. They forged a CONNECTION with the civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-colonial movement that was sweeping across the continent of Africa. But I’m jumping ahead of myself; I’m just so excited to talk about this group. The group’s name: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC). Let’s start at the beginning.   Still--in 1960.   In April, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) sponsored a conference on student leadership and nonviolent resistance. This conference was partially initiated by the sit-ins in Greensboro and other cities. 300 students attended that conference. These students (who acted as delegates and observers) witnessed the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC was born!   The members of SNCC joined the Freedom Riders that were sponsored by CORE (remember, Congress of Racial Equality). The Freedom Riders would take people all over the southern states to test the public facilities at the bus stations. However, the Freedom Riders started facing VERY intense attacks and violence. Buses were burned. People were assaulted with baseball bats, bombs and other weapons. Because of these attacks, in 1961, CORE suspended its Freedom Rides. SNCC decided to start running its own Freedom Rides. A SNCC member said, “There was so much at stake, we could NOT allow the segregationists to stop us. We HAD to continue that Freedom Ride EVEN if we were killed in the process.” So SNCC started making its own Freedom rides into the southern states.After numerous members of SNCC were beaten, tortured and imprisoned on false charges during the Freedom Rides, the government was forced to intervene and repeal the segregation laws that regulated interstate public transportation. SNCC had won—but at a great cost.   But the students wanted more. Their next campaign was for voting rights, which they started in 1963. Their slogan “one man, one vote” became the cornerstone of SNCC’s programs. SNCC demanded universal suffrage in the United States, continuing to parallel the efforts in the U.S. with the efforts taking place within the anti-colonial struggle in Africa. These were some serious students!   SNCC continued its sit-in protests and also met with the Oginga Odinga, the president of the newly independent government of Kenya. The racist image of the United States that SNCC’s work showed to the world was a sharp contrast to the picture of democracy painted by the politicians in Washington. And this became a problem.   In 1964, SNCC embarked on its most challenging effort with the Mississippi Summer Project. SNCC joined with other civil rights organizations in the state. (Like the SCLC and church organizations.) The coalition mobilized nearly a thousand volunteers from northern universities to travel to Mississippi to organize an independent Freedom Democratic Party and to register thousands of African Americans to vote. This was the famous Freedom Summer. The white protesters (including Klan members, law enforcement, policians and members of citizen’s councils) responded to SNCC’s civil rights activities with murder, beatings and imprisonment. If you’re wondering, this WAS summer that Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner kidnapped and killed were killed by police and the ku klux klan. More young lives cut short for trying to register Black voters. Unfortunately, the Freedom Democratic Party was never seated at the National Democratic Convention in 1964 and universal suffrage wouldn’t be guaranteed until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, but the work by SNCC brought many more people into the movement for political and economic equality.   Because SNCC had gained a high level of prominence from its consistent work and many successes, the student organization was invited to send a delegation to tour several independent countries in Africa during the fall of 1964. They visited the Republic of Guinea and received a special invitation to meet President Sekou Toure. One of SNCC’s leading members, John Lewis also visited Kenya, Zambia and other African countries. After this important trip, SNCC created an international affairs section, which made a powerful presentation before the United Nations Committee on Decolonization. The role of SNCC during this period illustrated the interconnectedness of the African American struggle for equality and the struggle for independence by the colonized countries on the African continent. Independence, equality, and civil rights were now expanded beyond U.S. borders into an international movement on two continents! Wow. That is huge! Students took the struggle to a new level—as only young people can do!   But SNCC never lost sight of its commitment and work in the cities, small towns and rural areas of the south, working with farmers and young activists on a daily basis to fight for civil rights.   SNCC was a strong and sophisticated organization. It took political activism to a new level while always staying true to its vision. And its members bravely put themselves in harm’s way to demand the right to vote and to demand equality in housing and education. They even faced the issue of police brutality together with its close ally, The Black Panthers. (Did you know that the Black Panthers’ full name was the Black Panthers for Self-Defense?) I just have to give a big shout out to the Black Panthers (who were made up mostly of young people and students) for their efforts in the civil rights movement and for Black empowerment. Everyone had a role. But I want to mention just a few names from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee:   Ella Baker Marion Barry John Lewis Kwame Ture Julian Bond   [Applause here.]*   Julian Bond, who was a former founding member of SNCC and eventually served in the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives, remarked, "a final SNCC legacy is the destruction of the psychological shackles which had kept black southerners in physical and mental servitude; SNCC helped break those chains forever. It demonstrated that ordinary women and men, young and old, could perform extraordinary tasks."   This wise statement applies to all of these student and youth activists. And we’ll definitely see this in the next group of young people. Then in Part II, you will learn ways that YOU can make a positive difference in your own town, country or even the world. And, yes, it IS possible!   We’re gonna go back in time and back down south to Birmingham, Alabama, 1963. There was no Civil Rights Act. No Voting Rights Act. Segregation was still the law in many states in the south and whites fiercely defended this way of life in Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King, the SCLC, SNCC and other civil rights organizations and churches are DETERMINED to release the racist grip that the Ku Klux Klan, law enforcement, white politicians and citizens’ councils hold on the city. In Dr. King’s words, it was a true symbol of “hard-core resistance to integration.” [pause]* May 1963. Birmingham, Alabama is “ground zero” in the fight for civil rights.   Civil rights leaders needed to take a stronger and more radical approach to their nonviolent protests. So, they decided to request the help and participation of students. They approached high school students and college students to volunteer in a march. And the students stepped up the plate. The students were trained in the tactics of non-violent resistance. Thus began the famous, never-to-be forgotten Children’s Crusade.   On May 2, 1963, 800 Black students skipped school and gathered at the 16th street Baptist Church, awaiting for instructions. They marched 10 miles to downtown on a mission to meet with Birmingham Mayor about segregation. As the students approached city hall, singing songs of freedom, they were corralled by police and arrested. Hundreds were put into paddy wagons and taken to jail.   But that wasn’t the end.   The march would eventually include 3,000 children.   The next day, May 3rd, the march resumed. But this time it was NOT met with a peaceful response. Police were waiting for them with clubs, water cannons and police dogs. The Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner—the infamous Bull Connor--ordered the men to immediately attack the students. They released the dogs and sprayed the students with the water cannons. The scene turned from a peaceful and quiet march of students singing along their way to city hall into a violent scene of terror with kids scattering and screaming as they were beaten and attacked by dogs.   The media captured the violent attack against the unarmed youngsters. Videos were shown around the country, actually the world. White-owned businesses and the white residents of Birmingham were criticized and ostracized by people across the country. On May 10, city leaders agreed to desegregate businesses and public facilities. It also captured the attention and sympathy of the President Kennedy who felt then compelled to public support federal Civil Rights legislation, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Oh, yeah, and Martin Luther King negotiated having Bull Connor removed from public office!   The Children’s Crusade was an essential part of the Civil Rights Movement. Not just because it happened in what was called the “most racist city in the South.” But also because the children were so determined and focused. They were prepared to face violence. Many of the adults didn’t want to face arrest and imprisonment so they refused to participate. (Please understand that I’m not making any judgments about them.) But the kids were simply fed up and refused to back down. Many of them were arrested multiple times, had been beaten on numerous occasions and faced expulsion from school. Yet they kept coming back in greater and greater numbers. Why would they do that? Here are the words of one of the high school student activists:         Jessie Shepherd, then 16, was soaking wet (from the fire hoses) when she was loaded up in a paddy wagon. “I was told not to participate,” says Shepherd, now a retired clinical diet technician. “But I was tired of the injustice.”     “I couldn’t understand why there had to be a colored fountain and a white fountain,” says Shepherd. “Why couldn’t I drink out the fountain that other little kids drank out of? As I got older, I understood that’s just the way it was, because my skin was black, and we were treated differently because of that.” So she marched.   And that march changed the nation.   As we end Part I of this podcast show on student-activism in the civil rights movement, I would ask that if you participated as a student-activist in this march or any of the numerous other marches, sit-ins, Freedom Rides or any other protests, please contact rememberinghistory.com and tell your experience. We want to hear YOUR story. Please add your story and experiences on the comment page. Or you can send me a personal email message to robin@rememberinghistory.com. And please tell your story to YOUR children, your nieces, nephews and other children that you. They NEED to know that young people and students CAN make a difference. That they HAVE power and influence. And knowing YOUR experience and knowing African American history (no matter about yours or the child’s cultural background) shows proof of the power that young people hold in their hands.   On that high note, we will turn to present ways that YOU can get involved, ways that YOU can help. I hope you’ve seen that everyone can contribute. And that everyone has reserves of strength and courage that they probably never knew existed…until they are called to show it. That’s exactly what the young people and students did during the Civil Rights movement. And the young people and students TODAY also have the strength and courage to make a positive impact in the lives of their families, communities, the country and even the world. And, as 2017 begins, it IS clear that strength and courage as well as integrity, passion and vision are going to be needed. As Dr. King remarked, what they do now will impact children who have not yet been born. Please join us in Part II to start making an impact. We have reached the end of this podcast show. Are you feeling inspired? I really am! And I hope that you too.   Please remember to look at the Wiki History Podcast page on Facebook so you can actually SEE these brave kids and for really candid scenes of their experiences. I have deliberately decided NOT to put the mutilated picture of Emmett Till on the page but you can find a picture of him as a promising and eager young man who was the apple of this mother’s eye. You will also see other scenes from Money, Mississippi. And definitely don’t miss the picture of Ruby Bridges being escorted into school surrounded by federal marshals. It’s all there on the Wiki History Facebook page.   Also, if you enjoyed this show, please let others know about it. They might like it, find it inspirational too. We are growing a community of historians of all ages, backgrounds and interests. Everyone is welcome. Let’s change the way people think about history—one good friend at a time.   And we have a special announcement and offer to make to all Wiki History podcast listeners in the next show. Especially for Black History month.   So,come back soon to Remembering History where we ARE remembering history and we’re making it. Every day!                                             At the end of the show: Finally, I just want to remind you that 2017, the Wiki History podcast show is dedicated to the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Located in Washington, DC, the National Museum of African American History & Culture opened in 2016. This kind of museum was long overdue but it finally happened and it is a place that everyone should visit and explore. Museums are a great way to bring history to life and to keep it alive for future generations. Wiki History is honored to be a part of this important process. For every person that listens to this podcast show, rememberinghistory.com will donate $1 to the National Museum of African American History & Culture.   And we have a special announcement and offer to make to all Wiki History podcast listeners.   Come back soon to Remembering History where we ARE remembering history and we’re making it. Every day!   Bye for now!           ************************************************************   But what TO do? How can YOU have a positive impact?   Recognize that there are major problems and challenges around the world. Some problems that existed and led to the Civil Rights Movement STILL exist. Problems like discrimination in voting, education, job and housing still exist. Police violence, poverty and cultural and religious intolerance STILL exist. There are more than * refugees around the world. The environment is under threat. I don’t want to even try to list all the problems on a worldwide scale, but I just recognize that the world is a far from perfect place. There’s a lot that you can do to have an impact. But awareness is the first step.   Get your education. Learn history. The rememberinghistory.com team is committed to keeping history alive and spreading the word so that we can avoid the mistakes of the past, learn the lessons of great people from the past. The world needs more people with education and insight. This doesn’t only mean an “academic” education. Learn a trade. Develop a skill. Read a lot. Okay, these were 2 good ways to prepare yourself to save the world. Now, let’s look at some specific things that you can do.   Do you have a cell phone? Well, you can use it to document racist behavior, threatening behavior or anything that is unacceptable. The camera on your phone can save a life. Remember, the world would never have known about the police beating of Rodney King. You can also use your phone to call for assistance from family, friends or the police. Trayvon Martin used his phone to report that he was being followed. Your phone can be a powerful tool.                                                         After the first discussion:   Also, if you enjoy this show, please let others know about it. They might like it, find it inspirational too. Let’s change the way people think about history—one good friend at a time.     At the end of the show: Finally, I just want to remind you that 2017, the Wiki History podcast show is dedicated to the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Located in Washington, DC, the National Museum of African American History & Culture opened in 2016. This kind of museum was long overdue but it finally happened and it is a place that everyone should visit and explore. Museums are a great way to bring history to life and to keep it alive for future generations. Wiki History is honored to be a part of this important process. For every person that listens to this podcast show, rememberinghistory.com will donate $1 to the National Museum of African American History & Culture.   And we have a special announcement and offer to make to all Wiki History podcast listeners.   Come back soon to Remembering History where we ARE remembering history and we’re making it. Every day!   Bye for now!    

Introduction Paul as he was evaluating his preaching ministry in Corinth, said, these remarkable words, 1 Corinthians 2:3. He said, "I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling." So I feel that today a few weeks ago, I felt led by the Lord I felt pressed on my heart that Ephesians 6:9 would be a jumping off place to talk about an issue that faces our nation and our church, our ministry and this community, and that's the topic of racism. Since that time, I've done a lot of reading. I've done a lot of talking to friends, both black and white. I've talked to leaders in the community, other pastors. And the more I've had those conversations, the more this sense of fear and trembling has increased, not decreased. This is a hot issue for people. It's hard for people, it's hard to hear, it's hard to talk about, it's polarizing, it's divisive, and painful. That's why I somewhat identify with Paul's self-assessment weakness, fear, trembling. But, you know, I also stand before you today with a tremendous confidence in the power of the Word of God to make changes in human hearts, that the Word of God has a supernatural power to change the world. It's been going on for 20 centuries the Gospel of Christ and so Paul continues in 1 Corinthians the next couple of verses saying, "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with the demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power." So I just have a sense of confidence that the Word of God is powerful to demolish satanic strongholds, and I just consider racism to be a satanic stronghold, and I think 2 Corinthians 10 says that we wield weapons that have supernatural power to blow up satanic strongholds. Blow them up. I believe that racism is a subset of the overall darkness satanic darkness that's come on the human race. It's a subset of it, that darkness is the darkness of sin, of rebellion against a holy God. But God has sovereignly shown his light in the darkness. Isaiah 9:2, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." And that light is Christ. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." And God's word is light. Psalm 119:105, "A lamp to our feet and a light to our path." And the Church, God's Church is light, we are the light of the world, Jesus said. “He lights a lamp and puts it up on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house.” And so it says in Isaiah 60, speaking of the heavenly Zion, "Arise and shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. Behold, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you, nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn." So the obstacles are huge, problems are complex, seem to be insoluble but I think where the darkness is the greatest, God's light can shine most gloriously. Where the enemy is seen to be strongest, God's power is displayed most radiantly gloriously and that's what I want to see happen today and through our church. I. Recent Events Search Our Souls Summer of 2016 So we begin by just looking at recent events. Recent events, just search our souls. This summer has been a hot summer. Now I know it's hot, it's hot, every day. I had some hope last week when it got to be 75. I'm just weak and it's not because I'm from Massachusetts, I don't like the cold either. So it's been steaming hot this summer. But the heat I'm talking about here, is the heat of current events. It's the heat of the issues connected with this topic of racism. On July 5th, Alton Sterling a 37-year-old African-American man was shot several times at point-blank range while being pinned down by two white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And the incident and downloading of the videos led to ever escalating protests, resulting in a July 9th, demonstration, in which police officers were injured. And then the next day, July 6, Philando Castile was fatally shot, in St. Anthony Minnesota. Police officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled him over in St. Paul, Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds was with him in the car, and after being asked for his license and registration Castile notified the officer, he had a license to carry weapon and one in the car and office told him not to move, and as he was putting his hands up, the officer, shot him in the arm four times and he bled to death. Diamond Reynolds video live streamed it and it obviously created immense reaction culminating in the shooting of three officers in Baton Rouge July 17th. All of these things coming together. And these events at the beginning of the summer just two more in a series of high profile events, all fitting that description of interactions between people of color and law enforcement. The names have been burned into our minds, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown, places like Ferguson, Missouri, North Charleston, South Carolina have become the focus of intense national scrutiny. A year ago in April 2015, in Baltimore, in the city of Baltimore, there were significant race riots, racial riots involving the injuries stemming from incidents involving injuries of Freddie Gray at the hands again, of law enforcement officials pushed the outrage of African-American community to a boiling point, and demonstrations got violent. Somewhere in the midst of all of those events that we've been discussing, that have been going on in recent years, a controversial group called Black Lives Matter was organized, and has become an increasingly vocal, and visible part of the political election and other parts of the landscape. Borrowing a phrase from Thomas Paine's opening words in his American crisis written around the time of the American Revolution. "These are the times that try men's souls." Or search our souls, should search our souls. My Own Anguish and Journey So, I have searched my soul and I've been thinking about myself. So who am I? Where do I come from? What's my background? Well, I was born in Boston, I was raised in Eastern Massachusetts, I was Irish-Catholic, went to college as an unbelieving, nominal Catholic. Never dreamed when I matriculated as a freshman at MIT, that I would end up the senior pastor of a Southern Baptist Church. I don't think any of those words would have meant anything to me at that point. What in the world is that? On this issue, as I find myself now the senior pastor of a predominantly white Bible Belt Southern Baptist Church, pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention which I learned after I became a Southern Baptist, that it was started in 1845, when slave-holding missionaries wanted to take their slaves with them on the mission field and Northern Baptists refused and so, they broke off and started the denomination of which this church is a member. I was surprised to find that out, but it's just history. 1845. The same year this church was established. The more I've learned details about the struggle for the Civil Rights Movement and the terrible injustices of the Jim Crow era, institutional racism, that segregated South. So I didn't see with my own eyes, I was more in 1962, so the Civil Rights Movement was going but I was really little, I didn't know much about it, but since the Civil War ended, and 13th or 14th amendments, were passed ending slavery. But then the situation just was still horrible, for blacks in America. And then I look at my own heart and I just have always had, honestly revulsion and hatred for those kinds of things. It's always been part of my life but honestly I didn't have any black friends growing up. None. There were just none in the community at all. I know that Boston was a focal point of racial tensions and demonstrations and even riots, violent riots during the busing era. But again, I didn't know much about that. I think in my heart, honestly, I'd always wanted to have African-American friends, but I just didn't have an opportunity. So I was wired that way, but in the end, it didn't really help me because I tended more and more to think that's got nothing to do with me. That's not who I am. It's not what I think, it's not what I've done. So I don't really need to think about this topic. But I believe that I have a position of responsibility in this community, a position to lead this church, to preach the Word, and I'm increasingly aware that most of my sins, and the racial issues have to do with sins of omission, not sins of commission, things that I should have been doing and haven't been doing. And I'm going to have to give the Lord and account some day, for my ministry in this community. And the issue of racial reconciliation is going to be one of the themes we're going to discuss, I believe, and I want to be faithful. TGC and Mika Edmondson Back in May, I attended the stakeholders meeting of the Gospel Coalition. Every other year, we have a conference, a big conference and then the alternate year it's just the Gospel Coalition gets together and we're a group of mostly pastors, but also evangelical leaders from different denominational backgrounds. And we had the privilege of listening to Dr. Mike Edmondson talk about this theme, this title, it was assigned to him, "Is Black Lives Matter", that group, "the New Civil Rights Movement?" Well, that talk just blew me away. I didn't know that much about BLM. I learned a lot from him about it. He did a great job of just tracing out very carefully the differences between BLM and the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others. Significant differences. For example, the Civil Rights Movement was originated in the black church and was steeped with biblical themes and a desire for reconciliation, genuine reconciliation between blacks and whites, a genuine unleashing of biblical truths by Dr. King and others. Many of the leaders were pastors etcetera, they used non-violence that many said got from Gandhi but Gandhi said he got it from Jesus, so let's just give the glory of Jesus of loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, winning people's affections by that kind of behavior. And that was the strategy. BLM is different in many ways. I think perhaps most significantly by their embracing of the Gay Rights Agenda and linking those two together in ways that Evangelical Christians find repugnant, especially black leaders who were active in the Civil Rights Movement, just find utterly repugnant, and don't agree at all that it's the same. Also some embracing of socialism, socialistic themes by BLM and seemed countenancing violence and other things just some significant difference but none of that was what really moved me. What really moved me was at the end he said, "Do you understand why BLM has been raised up? Why? It's because the evangelical church has stayed on the sidelines on this issue. There's been no coherent, well-thought out, vigorous evangelical answer to these social issues. That's why." He said, "We the church can do better than Black Lives Matter. We must do better than that. We must step up and speak the truth about these things, so that that movement becomes by contrast, pathetic and obsolete because these issues are so, in such a healthy, beautiful way being addressed by the Church." So his words burned in my heart, I was moved. I was moved to tears. So, three weeks ago, I was going to a place to study and write my next sermon, which I thought that morning my next sermon was going to be on spiritual warfare. God willing, that will be next week. But instead, I ran into a friend of mine, African-American man named Eddie White, who went through our internship a number of years ago. Eddie was a layman in his church and just felt the leading to become a vocational pastor. He wanted to become a pastor. Found out about our internship, did some research on the website, and downloaded some things. That same day he saw Matthew Hodges driving the van with the First Baptist Church thing on the side, he's like, "Woah! A sign from God." He followed him to Liberty Street, got out and had a conversation, went through our internship, eventually left his job, went to Southeastern Seminary, and is now a pastor. Big fork in his road and we were privileged of being able to walk with him. Saw me right away, recognized me, we hugged. And I stood there in the parking lot and talked to him for 50 minutes on my study day. But I didn't realize that the Lord had different plans for me and that a whole different sermon. So, we got to talking about these themes. He said, "Pastor you need to come with me to the Greensboro Civil Rights Museum." I said, "When do you want to do it?" He said, "How about this week?" So we went that Thursday. It's the kind of thing that changes your life. He took me first on a tour of NC A&T, traditionally black college. There we parked and then I was walking by a statue with four guys on it. Now, we did more walking by that statute, he came back and said, "These were the Greensboro Four." I didn't know anything about the Greensboro Four, many of you do, many of you don't. But there is this big statue of four men standing side by side. The Greensboro Four were students at NC A&T during the Civil Rights era. Back then by law, public institutions were segregated. The lying slogan at the time was, separate but equal. Well, they were separate, the “separate” part was vigorously enforced, but the “equal” not at all. Separate schools, separate motels, separate restrooms, separate water fountains, separate swimming pools, separate places on public transportation. John Piper said in his book Bloodlines, he said, "How could you communicate more clearly the lie that being black was like a disease?" Well, there was a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, for you younger people. Woolworth’s was that generation's version of Walmart. I remember Woolworth’s, I actually walked into a Woolworth’s once. But there was a Woolworths there and they had a lunch counter and the lunch counter had a place where you could sit and eat. But it was open to whites only. Blacks could order food there, but they had to take it out. So these four students thinking of just a way to agitate and to affect change said, "Why don't we go to lunch counter and sit down and order something and not leave till they serve us?" So that's what they did. Four students, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and Joseph McNeil, did that on February 1st, 1960, at 4:30 PM, walked into Woolworths, went right, they couldn't sit side by side, but they found seats, sat down and ordered coffee. They were obviously immediately refused and urged to leave fervently, but they didn't leave. They stayed there until the store closed that night. The next day, more NC A&T students joined in this and it started to grow. 20 more students recruited from other campuses joined in, white customers heckled them while they peacefully studied to keep busy. Just reading books, newspaper reporters, a TV film crew covered the second day, and more and more people got involved. Within one week of the initial protest, Greensboro students throughout North Carolina in different other campuses following black campuses like Central here and all that, here in Durham, started similar protests. It became a whole pattern of protest, and it was incredibly effective. The original Woolworth’s in Greensboro, where those demonstrations were happening, however, was losing money hand over fist to the tune of $1.6 million, during those weeks. So the store manager Clarence Harris quietly asked three black employees to change out of their work clothes and order a meal at the counter and it was done. The segregation of that lunch counter was finished. So we were standing there on the campus. He told me this story, etcetera. I didn't know anything about it. We went from there to the Greensboro Civil Rights Museum, which is at the Woolworths where the Woolworths was, but it's not a museum. And we went in, and it was just extremely moving for me, to walk through that place to see the photos up on the wall to be reminded of what things were like. It's recent history friends, recent history. And it's difficult to look at those pictures, pictures of violence, the Birmingham Police turning a water cannon on peaceful protesters, freedom riding buses being firebombed, lynchings. I saw a Coke machine there that was in the bus terminal, I think, at that time. Again, segregated had a black section, white section, but the Coke machine had been designed to have two faces to places to vend. So with the wall separated, but you had the white side and the black side. The white side was 5 cents a Coke, black side 10 cents. The woman who was giving us a tour said, "I was down in the Coke Museum down in Atlanta, they didn't have one of these machines down there, one of those historical machines. Didn't show it." But it's there in the Civil Rights Museum. Clear evidence of separate but unequal, I mean unequal price. So at one point, I look over at Eddie and there's tears streaming down his face. I was just at a museum, just looking at pictures, thinking about history sober-minded, but he was feeling at a whole different level. His mother had been involved in the counter demonstrations there at NC A&T, she had been a part of it. She told them all these stories. And it bothered me that it meant more to Eddie than it meant to me. It felt like we weren't as one as we could be. I wanted to be more one with my friend. This pattern of non-violent protest continued. There were certain other aspects people would challenge like they had things called pray-ins, where groups of black people would go to predominantly white churches, and come and just kneel and pray, taking whatever abuse came. Some white churches responded by having human chains, blocking people from getting in. Some churches did that. It's possible our church did that, not for sure. Anecdotally we heard that that happened. So, that's history. What is “Racism”? So, what is racism? What are we even talking about? Can I tell you, first of all, I don't really know how to define race? The more I think about it, the harder it gets. I don't even know what it is. I can define ‘human race.’ But I have a hard time defining race. It's very, very difficult, just has to do with physical features or attributes that cluster a group or identify a person. Racism John Piper defines this way, "An explicit or implicit belief or practice that qualitatively values one race above another." So, it's a belief leading to actions that one race is superior to all others or maybe to a specific other race. So superiority of one race, inferiority of the other race or races, and then actions that flow from it. I think it has to do with a bias, a slant, a perspective that always goes in one direction, coupled with denigration and even hostility toward others. That's what I think of when I think of racism. I was at a basketball game my son was playing in a week ago. We're sitting in the stands, and the father of one of Calvin's opponents was sitting behind me. He had a good set of lungs. And I just thought the man was exceptionally biased in all of his comments. They all seemed to go from one slant. Whether the refereeing or the plays that were made or his praise or his condemnation, everything went one direction. But what really got me was when he said, "We should be wiping up the floor with this team." I was like, "Alright I'm about ready to say something." My son's been playing basketball most of his life. He can play a little. So he's not a mop. I kept my tongue. I don't know if it was cowardice, or good manners, or Christian sanctification, but I didn't say anything. I don't want to trivialize at all racism, but it's that bias, where you see every current event, whatever from your angle, and then that denigration of the other people where they're like mops or lower than you. That's what I think of. Why Am I Talking About This Now? Now, why am I talking about this now, why today? Well, I've already told you, one reason, current events. I don't want the church to have its head in the sand like we don't know what's going on, and we're not relevant. That's a lie. The Bible is perfectly relevant to everything that's going on, the Gospel is. But also the text that you heard Ben read for us look at it again, it says, "Masters, treat your slaves in the same way,” the same way that I encourage the slaves to have in mind the invisible Jesus, every moment that they serve, and they do their service as unto him. Masters, I want you to be aware of the invisible Jesus all the time, in how you treat your slaves. Do not threaten them. Talked about that at length last time, not going back into that. Since you know that he who is both their master and yours doesn't have, Now here's the phrase. "And there is no favoritism with him." “No partiality” some translations give us. He's “no respecter of persons.” So I've meditated on, “there is no favoritism.” That's where the sermon title comes from. There is no racism with Christ. So as I thought about, “What does it mean?” I think there's a positive and a negative side of there's no favoritism. First, he equally delights in every person that he has made in terms of their amoral distinctives. He just enjoys how he made you. He just delights in the color of your skin, the color of your hair, the color of your eyes, the shape of your eyes, the shape of your nose, the shape of your chin, your height, all of those amoral diverse tendencies of humans, God delights in all of them, equally. Now that's unbelievably important. Even aside from the topic of racism, I want all of you to be able to look in the mirror and say God made me, and be delighted in what he made. And God does make differences. He does make distinctions. Frankly, where would the Olympic games, be if there weren't differences between people? Everybody would finish in a tie. God makes differences, but Paul says clearly in Corinthians, "Who made you different than anyone else?" Answer, “God did.” And what do you have that you didn't receive? Answer, “Nothing, everything I have, I received.” “And if you did receive it, then why do you boast as though you did not?” That kills racism right there. Every difference, God made, and we should delight in it. God just delights in what he has made. So what I want, is I want us to be able to look at each other's faces and just delight in what God's made fearfully and wonderfully, and just say, "It's beautiful, all of it because my Father made it." So that's positive, there's no favoritism with God, it goes that way. Then negatively, on Judgment Day, every moral decision. So I talked about amoral distinctions. Every moral issue will be evaluated fairly and justly by God. There's no favoritism, no special deals, no skillful lawyers with their special techniques, no sweetheart deals, no bribes, none of that. Romans 2:9-11, "There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, but glory, honor and peace, for everyone who does right, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism." That's what that means. So Judgment Day, level ground. So, we face the challenge of racism and we have weapons of biblical truth in our hands. Now, if you look at your outline, the bulletin, I want to look at five biblical just heat-seeking missiles, that destroy racism. But I want to cluster them together. I want all of them together, that if we really embrace these biblical theological themes, racism should be gone forever, certainly from the Church. II. Biblical Doctrine Destroys Racism Creation: The Whole Race Descended from One Man So, first creation. Biblically, the Bible teaches plainly all of us are created in the image of God. Every single human being is equally in the image of God, and even more fascinatingly, all of us are descended from one man. That's amazing. It says in Acts 17:26, "From one man, he made every nation of man, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and He had determined the time set for them, and the exact places where they should live." Now why, why is that relevant to race? Well, it's because people get separated, like after the flood gets separated from each other and settle in certain valleys, and just are there without interactions from outsiders. And then they have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Some genetic tendencies start to float to the surface and then they all start to have those tendencies. Like, God celebrating in Isaiah 18, the people of Cush, the Cushites, what we call modern Ethiopians, he said, "Go to a people tall and smooth-skinned." It's just delight that God has in that beautiful people. But he describes them physically. How do they get to be that way taller than other people? They're all descendants from Noah, all descended from Adam, but it has do with how God sovereignly orchestrated these things to happen. It's a beautiful thing, and God knew exactly what happened when he put all of that in the genetic code of Adam. Boy is he going to be surprised when he has a red-headed kid and one with black hair, and he's like, “Huh? Interesting.” You know, interesting. And just a journey of discovery Adam and Eve finding out just how diverse it can all get. But it's just a beautiful thing. Fall: The Whole Human Race Equally Sinned in Adam Secondly, the fall. Every single human being on earth, is equally fallen in Adam. We all fell in Adam. Romans 5:12 says, "Sin entered the world through one man, and death sin. And in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” We're all sinful in Adam positionally, and then we're sinful in ourselves actually, because we received from Adam a sin nature and though we don't sin, all of us sin exactly the same ways. So no, I don't sin exactly the same way as other people, but all of us are equally in need of Jesus, the Savior, all of us. And so Paul is very clear about this in Romans 3, "What shall we conclude then? Are we any better?" Romans 3:9, "Not at all." So, there he's talking to Gentile. Are we any better? Are they any better? We're all in the same place for he says, "Not at all, we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles are whites and blacks whatever, either or you want to put it, are equally under sin." “As it is written, There is no one righteous, not even one, no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned aside, they together become worthless.” There is no one who does good, not even one, that's all of us. There's a unity in sin here, shameful unity, unity in shame. And you can say, "Well I don't do this." Yeah, but James 2:10 says, "Whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at one point of it, guilty of breaking all of it." And then there's that multigenerational aspect in Matthew 23, Jesus said, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.'" Now, listen, the next thing Jesus says, "And so, you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then the measure of the sins of your forefathers." Now, friends, each person stands or falls on his or her own actions. We're not responsible for the sins of our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. But there's something going on in what Jesus said there. And so for me to disavow guilt, say, "I wouldn’t have done it, that's not who I am." It's not helpful, that's not a helpful way it's true, but not helpful. I didn't commit the same sins as a clansmen, who did a lynching, or as some evil people that bombed little girls in Birmingham, or a governor that blocks Brown v. Board of Education. I didn't commit all those same sins, but I'm human, like that. Each of those people are, we're all human. And I can't say, "Look, I know I would never have done any of those things." In Daniel 9, Daniel prayed in solidarity with his people, the Jewish nation. Daniel being a pure man not sinless, but he just included himself. "We have sinned, we have violated your laws, we have broken your covenant, we have disobeyed, you." And there's that solidarity. So God gives to each person according to what he has done, that's true, but God calls in us with humility to recognize the same sin nature in me, as in anybody else. We all need a Savior. Redemption: Elect from Every Nation Were Equally Redeemed by Christ Thirdly, redemption. Thank God, there is a Savior. Thank God, Jesus came to save us from these sins and in God's plan, he elected, he chose people from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation, to be redeemed by the blood of Jesus. Revelation 5:9, "You were slain, [speaking to Jesus,] you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men, for God from every tribe and language and people, and nation." Revelation 7 pictures them standing around the throne and worshipping God in white robes and saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne." So in that way, Romans 3:22 says, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." God presented him as a propitiation of blood sacrifice, the one who turns away God's wrath through faith in his blood. We're all saved the same way, thank God. Church: The Church All Over the World is One in Christ And then fourthly, that brings me immediately the doctrine of the Church. Having been justified, we are then assimilated, by the Spirit into one Church worldwide. And we have sweet fellowship through the Spirit with people of radically different backgrounds than us. We have become one body in Christ. That's just true, there's not different works God's doing all over the world, one work. And so, Galatians 3:27-28, says, "All of you who are baptized in Christ Jesus have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither junior Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for you're all one in Christ Jesus." And then Colossians 3:11, "Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all." So that unity of the Church, that destroys racism. And then finally, best of all, Heaven. Where are we going? What's it going to be like when we get there? How beautiful is that? We are going to see people from every tribe, and language, people and nation. I already said, Revelation 7:9-10. I believe, maintaining amoral diversity. Purified, all of us from our sins, but different from one another. I can't imagine, some matrix of people all standing the exact same height, face, shape and all that. That's just weird. And I wouldn't know why that was even what happened. In our resurrection bodies we all look exactly alike and that doesn't make any sense to me. But we'll be pure from all sins, pride, racism, it'll be gone. And we're going to be together, and these central topic of Heaven will not be any of us. It'll be Christ and his achievements and we're going to be together worshipping. And so, Isaiah 60, the picture of the heavenly Zion, gates standing open continually to receive wealth from the nations pouring in, diverse displays of worship to almighty God, that's what that is. Isaiah 60:11. So These five biblical themes have the power to destroy racism, creation, fall redemption, church and heaven. III. A Journey of Unity John 17: Trinitarian Unity Now, my go-to verse on multi-ethnic churches has been for years, John 17, Jesus's prayer that all of the world who hears the Gospel through the words of the apostles, “that all of them, Jesus prays may be one, Father, just as you and I are one, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me. And have loved them even as you've loved me.” One of the key things I've said this before, I'll say it again, I believe you should go through John 17, the so-called high priestly prayer of Jesus and say everything Jesus asked for, he gets, everything, 100% because that's just Jesus, he never prays outside of the will of the Father ever. So it's like, "Oh gee, I wish Jesus could have the unity he prayed for." No, he's going to get it, it's going to happen. We are going to be in Heaven as one as the Father and the Son are one. Now, what does that mean? It's a mystery, but in the doctrine of the Trinity, we have ‘separate’ if we can use that language, persons who have a perfectly one relationship with one another and never ever disagree about anything, ever. And not only that, but they passionately hold their views with each other. I really, really love Jesus. Well, I really do too. And that's how Heaven's going to be like. I mean not exactly like that, but better. But that sense of passionate oneness around the truth and the works of redemption and Jesus, but he's thinking about now may they be in the process of becoming more and more one to let the watching world see a work that only God could do. Don't you yearn to see that in this local church? That we would put the Gospel on display by supernatural unity, but the journey ahead of us is going to be hard. It's a journey of hard work, of seeking out areas, pockets of sin and shining the Gospel light. And so, a journey of justice and love stands in front of us. There're just serious social issues to address. The evangelical church has traditionally had a blind spot on social action and social justice. There's a long history of this. The fundamentalists tended to withdraw from science and culture and just pull back and just get in their own plays, and just celebrate Jesus crucified and bodily resurrected the fundamentals, but to not engage the surrounding culture. And this is part of that lack of engagement. Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, wrote a book called Divided By Race: Evangelical Religion and The Problem of Race in America. They said this, "Recall that in the Jim Crow era, most evangelicals even in the North, did not think it their duty to oppose segregation. Instead, they felt it was enough to treat blacks they knew personally with courtesy and fairness." “So my job as a Christian is just be Christian to everyone I know. Just treat them kindly and with respect and that's it. And not challenge the structural institutional sins, not do anything about that.” That's a heritage. IV. A Journey of Justice and Love So what is our goal? This is a slogan I've got. And this is like what's in front of me? A prayer goal on the issue of racism in society and structurally and in institutions. I got this from a quote in Piper's book, Bloodlines, "To render race inconsequential for life opportunities, to render race inconsequential for life opportunities, or irrelevant let's say. It doesn't matter what your race is, here are the opportunities." That's the goal. Now, I will say that's much more true now than it was 50 years ago. I think that clearly, progress has been made, and isn't that encouraging? The Christians through action and non-Christians too but just through common grace whatever, you can become, the society can become less racist and more openly, or overtly, just. So that's encouraging to us to try. But that's what we want to see happen or in Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." That's a different way of saying the same thing. So we have a biblical commitment to act especially in proportion to our positions of responsibility. So the more that God's given you, the more He's going to require from you. So we have a commitment to speak up. Isaiah 1:17, "Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow." Isaiah 1:17. Later Isaiah 58:6, "Is not this the kind of fasting that I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?" Or Proverbs 31:8-9, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves", that's advocacy, "For the rights of all who are destitute, speak up and judge fairly and defend the causes or the rights for the poor and needy." There Remain Serious Social Issues to Address So present hot button issues, what are we going to do? Let's take the law enforcement and people of color issues. Now these are terrible incidents, but it's pretty obvious that I tend to see them differently than my black friends do. And that's a problem for me. I want to see things more together. I want us to be together and see it, and to understand what they see when something like that happens. Some people deny that in those incidents, there's any racism at all. I don't know how you can know that, but there isn't any. What happened is that people are resisting arrest, and then this happens, etcetera. Other people think it's nothing but racism all the time. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. On those that say there's no racism, all there's specific cases though, they've become a little bit difficult to explain when like an African-American gentleman's on his back with his arm, straight up, and just trying to surrender quickly whatever, and still get shot. And then, does the society react properly? The grand juries and all that, do they do the right thing? So there's just issues with that all over. I know that most of the people within a one-mile or three mile radius of this place that we might seek to reach would see things radically differently I think than us, and that should matter as we're trying to reach the community. But there's deeper issues than that. I'll tell you, on that particular one, I saw a panel discussion, a round table discussion after Ferguson. And there was this one African-American sister in Christ, who's married to a black police officer, she said, "I can't tell you how conflicting this whole issue is for me. I see it very much from the angle of racial justice, but I want my husband to come home safely at the end of the night." And those are touchy moments when there's tension. And you got a split second decision. It's hard to know what to do. What kind of training? What kind of response after the fact, investigating the incident? Hard to know. That's what she said, speaking honestly. But I know there are deeper issues. Present Conditions There're heartbreaking issues concerning the African-American community, especially young men in the African-American community. Homicide is the number one cause of death for black men between 15 and 29 years of age and has been for decades. 94% of all black people who are murdered, are murdered by other black people. It's heart-breaking. The more you look at this, it's just shattering. It's like, "Lord, what can we do?" In the past several decades the suicide rate among young black men, has increased more than 100%. In some cities, black males have a high school dropout rate of more than 50%. I was standing in line at Lowe's yesterday with Calvin, hoping you don’t if I tell. Calvin was turning on flashlights and turning them off and he was urging me to buy one of them. Like I'm good. High energy, lots of stuff going on. I just wanted to check out and leave. African-American woman standing next to me, she said, "That's just the way boys are. I have three sons of my own." We got into a conversation. "How old are your sons?" Her name was Lynn. "How old are your sons?" "Well praise Jesus they're 19, 18, and 15." I said, "Well Calvin's 15." We got talking. She says, "A 19-year-old and he's still a virgin.” She said that to me. We're total strangers. A little awkward. It's awkward. It's like, "Oh, good for you. Keep it up." But just the themes of raising young men and the challenges of doing that, and how hard it is, and this is much on her mind as a mother. These themes come together, they're not in a vacuum, they come together in a complex of issues, In 1965, the year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, 24% of black births in America were to single women. Today, the number is 72%. Just the devastation and being raised without a godly father who can give direction to a young man as he grows. Now, as we look at this complex of issues, there tend to be polarized answers. Answer number one, answer number two. Answer number one tends to focus on personal responsibility. Individuals need to take personal responsibility for their education, their morality, their actions. They need to live up to standards of society, and not get into the kind of difficulties that cause all these troubles. Alright? Focus number two is structural or institutional reform. There has to be significant changes made to society and structures in society. Bigger than any individual and it's going to take massive efforts to make. Those are two approaches, two different approaches. Social or political conservatives tend to be in the first camp, Republicans. And then social, what do you say, political liberals, etcetera, Democrats for the most part tend to be in the other. And there you've got that divide. What do you do? And African-American scholars are divided in the same way. Two Seemingly Conflicting Poles Henry Louis Gates Junior of Harvard, said, "The causes of poverty within the black community are both structural and behavioral. It's not one or the other." He said this, "Not to demand that each member of the black community accept individual responsibility for their behavior, whether that behavior assumes the form of gang violence, sexual activity,” you name it, “is another way of selling out a beleaguered community." But Elijah Anderson of Yale said, "Without a massive program of reconstruction, inner-city residents, especially young black men will remain mired in hopeless circumstances that they cannot escape." Now, if you go with the more structural intervention side, things get even more complicated and divisive. Government intervention has made a difference, a big difference, like Brown versus Board of Education and other things with the Civil Rights Act. It does make a difference. But sometimes structural intervention makes things worse, like things like affirmative action programs are criticized, even by black scholars because they establish a preferential treatment for blacks, the kind of writes, impermanently a gap, which is insulting frankly, to African-Americans at that point. But then how do you level the playing field? So what do you do? Shelby Steele, African-American scholar says this, "Blacks can have no real power without taking responsibility for their own educational and economic development. Whites can have no racial innocence without earning it by eradicating discrimination and helping the disadvantagde to develop both sides." I feel harmony with that statement. So for us, we have to look at what God's given us, what positions of influence, what has he given us that we can use to level the playing field in an intelligent way. John Piper: “Seven Feelings Rise In My Heart” Now, as I was reading Bloodlines by Piper, he got to after going back and forth and back and forth for far more pages than I burdened you with this morning. He just stopped in the middle of the book he said, "Can I tell you I have seven feelings right now?" That's John Piper by the way, he just has seven feelings. Most of us have one feeling, he has seven. But they were just so thorough and complete and they lined up and I just thought it was right. What were his seven feelings? “Alright, first I feel regret for my own sin in this area. Sense of regret. Secondly, I feel sorrow over cycles of despair and depression, and hopelessness and brokenness and the ruin of so many human lives. Thirdly, I feel anger at sin on all sides of this equation. No one's escaped. There is no one righteous, there's no one clean on this one. And I feel anger about that sin. Fourth, I feel frustration over untold layers of complexity of trying to actually solve this thing. It's frustrating to me that everything we try to do actually seems to make things worse sometimes. Fifthly, I feel empathy with the truth claims as I perceive them to be true on all sides of this debate. I feel drawn by the truth that I read and it's like, ‘Yeah that's true.’ Sixth, I feel a great longing to see the Gospel unleashed in this issue. And the Gospel preached, and individual saved, and lives transformed. And then finally, seventh, I feel tremendous hope for the future. Not just the eternal future of what's going to happen in Heaven but that even in our society, new things can be thought of, that will greatly improve life for everybody involved.” V. Application The Gospel Alright, so for me, applications. First and foremost, I always seek to preach the Gospel. And I actually see a lot of folks that are here that aren't usually here. Glad that you're here, praise God for that. I don't always know why people come to church, but I know this, none of this issue, this reason is by far the most significant issue of anybody's life. Jesus said, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" So even if the entire world of opportunity were handed right to whether you're black or white, it wouldn't matter if you weren't a Christian, if you weren't born again, it will do you no good on Judgment Day. And beyond that, all of the biblical truth that I've talked about only gets unleashed in the lives of believers. People who believe these themes. So come to Christ and trust in Him. Embrace the Gospel, the Gospel has power to change hearts. Ask God to Search Your Heart Secondly, if you're a Christian, just take Psalm 139:23-24, and just say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart, show me patterns of sin inside me." Now on racism it may be issues of deeper hardness in your heart toward individuals that may be there. And you didn't know it was there. There's some hiddenness that can happen there. Could be some sins of commission, things you've said or done in the past and you should feel ashamed for it, and you feel that and you want forgiveness for it. But it might be like me, mostly sins of omission, that you've shrunk back from getting engaged frankly. Shrunk back from energetic ministries and out of laziness, selfishness, cowardice, whatever reason, "Search me, O God and show me know my heart." Seek New Friendships Thirdly, seek out genuine friendships with different people, people different than yourself. When I say seek out, I mean get out of your usual patterns, and go be involved in ministries or other things that enables you to make new friends that are different from you. And as you have opportunity, if they are, blacks with whites or whites with blacks, talk about these things. And don't shrink back from talking about it, but lean into the topic of racism like we've tried to do today and say, “Help me think better about this.” I want us, I want me and Eddie White, I want us to feel the same about the things that his mother went through. I want to feel the same and be one with my brother. And I want to be good friends. That's going to be one of the most important things you can do, genuine friendships with people who are different and genuine communication. Pray For An End to Racism Fourth, pray for an end to racism, that race would someday be irrelevant inconsequential for life opportunities. Just pray for that. Pray that God would work. And if you say that there's no such thing as bias, there's no such thing as, well very controversially the phrase, “white privilege,” things like that. Look, I understand why you might think that way. I understand certain aspects and some of them amoral and some of them moral. You don't want to feel like the things you learned in your education were just handed to you because you're white and all that. I understand all that. But I liken it to bike riding. I like to ride bikes for exercise, and I've just found that uphills are harder than downhills. Have you guys, maybe some of you right bikes and you know, it's just when it's like this, it's hard. And when I get to the top, I'm exhausted.: But if I get to turn around and come back down, I remember riding out in the Blue Ridge Parkway. I was with a friend of mine, and we rode uphill for two hours and downhill for like 20 minutes. Scariest ride of my life. Over 50 miles an hour on thin tires. I don't think I'll ever do that again. But it was exhilarating. But bias is like that. It's just like every stroke of the pedal is a little bit harder just a little bit harder. Like is it real, is it actually happening? Well, that's where friendships can come in, where you can actually communicate. What we're seeking is often called the level playing field, achieving it may be a lifetime work. I don't know, but that's the goal. That's what we're looking for. And pray for FBC Durham to be a light in a dark place in a city on a hill. Pray for us to do creative ministries. Find ways to reach out. I was talking to Nathan Miles after the Wednesday meeting about the refugee issue. And I didn't even touch how the refugee issue is an issue of racism, too. And I mean, I could go on and on about this. But just that kind of ministry will really help us grow in terms of social justice and getting involved or urban ministry. So many of you guys are involved in that. Pray that God would do a multi-ethnic work, in this church just more and more people of different backgrounds becoming members here. And then finally, don't see color blindness, seek delight in what God's made. Let's just really enjoy each other in what God's made and delight in it, like we will in Heaven, so close with me prayer. Prayer Father, we thank you for the time we've had to look at this topic. I just thank you for this church. I thank you for the hearts of the people here, I thank you for their eagerness to hear from God and from this word, and they're consistent trust in the Word to take this church where it needs to go. God, do a work, a supernatural work of unity and love and justice in our church, and through our church. Help us to be more energetic and active than ever before in issues of social justice, but with the saturation of the word of God and the inherent scriptures in the Gospel of Christ, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Joseph McNeil of the "Greensboro Four" and original Freedom Rider Dion Diamond recount their experiences on the front lines of the civil rights movement 50 years ago.

On 1 February 1960, four young black men began a protest in Greensboro, North Carolina against the racial segregation of shops and restaurants in the US southern states. The men, who became known as the Greensboro Four, asked to be served at a lunch counter in Woolworths. When they were refused service they stayed until closing time. And went back the next day, and the next. Over the following days and months, this non-violent form of protest spread and many more people staged sit-ins at shops and restaurants. Witness hears from one of the four men, Franklin McCain.

On 1 February 1960, four young black men began a protest in Greensboro, North Carolina against the racial segregation of shops and restaurants in the US southern states. The men, who became known as the Greensboro Four, asked to be served at a lunch counter in Woolworths. When they were refused service they stayed until closing time. And went back the next day, and the next. Over the following days and months, this non-violent form of protest spread and many more people staged sit-ins at shops and restaurants. Witness hears from one of the four men, Franklin McCain.

The Liberal Fix team interviews Jay Chen, the Democratic candidate who ran against Ed Royce in California's 39th district.    They discuss not only his race, but also the passage of California's Prop 30, immigration reform and Jay lets us know what he thinks it is going to take for Dems to take back control of Congress. Other topics of interest include: 1) the Friday release of the Jobs numbers  2) Anniversary of the Greensboro Four 3) John Kerry officially the new Secretary of State  4) Deval Patrick appoints Mo Cowan to replace John Kerry 5) Senators Tom Harkin and Saxby Chambliss will not seek re-election. 6) the death of New York Mayor Ed Koch. A recap of the week in Progressive or Liberal Politics. News, Commentary and Analysis. Hosted by Indiana writer Dan Bimrose and co-hosted by Iowa activist Crystal Kayser and sociologist Keith Brekhus from Montana, every week the three of them feature a special guest and tackle those tough issues with a perspective that comes from outside the beltway. If you are interested in being a guest and for any other inquiries or comments concerning the show please contact our producer Naomi De Luna Minogue via email: naomi@liberalfixradio.com. Join the Liberal Fix community, a like-minded group of individuals dedicated to promoting progressive ideals and progressive activists making a difference.

On February 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four walked slowly and silently to the Woolworth's lunch counter. They didn't know what the future would bring but they could no longer live with the past.

Apostle Dr. Jibreel Khazan, of the Greensboro Four, tells of his frustration with segregation and his desire to do something about it.

Franklin McCain, of the Greensboro Four, advises that we cannot wait for the approval of others to do something that we know is right.

Joseph McNeil, of the Greensboro Four, was compelled to stand up for his beliefs, regardless of how the rest of the world might react.