1 Man Against the Machine

On this 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want to tell the story I first heard just a few months ago of one man against the machine. I’m not talking about Martin Luther King, Jr.; I’m talking about a man King inspired. His name is Darrell Brown from the little town of Horatio in southwest Arkansas. Darrell is a black man, and in the fall of 1965 he headed up Highway 71 to Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas. There were only a few black students on campus in those days, and there were zero black students in the university’s athletic programs. (I’m not picking on the University here. You know how I love my alma mater. But what was true of Arkansas at the time was true of the entire Southwest Conference, Southeast Conference, and Atlantic Coast Conference. Blacks were not welcome in those athletic programs. That was the reality of that era of our history.) And Brown, who had heard Martin Luther King encourage black folks in the south to do their part, decided that his part would be to break the racial barrier in the Razorback football program—to be one man against the machine.

Having attended a poor black-only school near Horatio, Brown had never played organized football in school. But he had the body for it: 5’11” and 190 pounds—which was pretty good size for college football players in that era. So when it was time for walk-ons to report, Brown showed up to get his uniform. The equipment manager didn’t know what to do when Brown stood before him, so he told Brown to come back the next day. Brown did and got a uniform. But that’s about all he got. He got no playbook and he got no respect. And other than getting an earful of racial slurs, he was given the silent treatment by the team. A couple of assistant coaches showed minor support, but the head coach never met Brown or said one word to him.

On the first day of practice, the coach sent Brown back to return a kickoff, and it didn’t dawn on Brown until the ball was in the air that he had no blockers. It was less like football and more like the playground game called kill the man with ball. And that’s what the eleven did. “They were good at gang-tackling,” said Brown. This happened over and over. Brown felt like he was essentially a tackling dummy on the team. It was obvious that his coaches and teammates were trying to wear him out and run him off. But Brown followed the encouragement of his hero, Martin Luther King, Jr., and hung in there, taking a beating nearly every day. In those days, freshman were ineligible to play for the varsity, and in spite of having no playbook, Brown did play a few plays in the freshman games—which is pretty amazing in its own right.

He endured the season and though no one told him when the reporting day was for the next season, Brown showed up. Aside from finding a friend or two, Brown was treated the same in season two that he had been in season one. During practice in season two, Brown sustained serious hand and knee injuries for which he was offered no attention from the trainers or medical staff. He had to limp off the field by himself and drag himself to the student infirmary to receive care. That was that for Brown’s football playing days at the University of Arkansas. But it was his injuries, not his guts or a lack of determination, that kept him from returning to the field. Brown’s attempt to be a one-man integration movement for southern college football was over.

Brown didn’t give up on his studies, however. He graduated from the University and also completed law school. He served as a lawyer until his retirement a few years ago. After the treatment Brown received during his days at the University, he held a grudge for a very long time. During football season he couldn’t even root for his home state team and alma mater. But that has mellowed over the years, in part because his daughter received a track scholarship and his son attended law school there. Brown witnessed the changes across the years at the University that created widening opportunities for blacks. And something else factored into his change of heart: “You know where the Bible says, ‘Love your enemy” or ‘Pray for your enemy’?” Brown says. “It took me a long time to understand what that meant. You don’t have to love them. You do have to appreciate God’s creation. And you can pray their ways can change because you impacted them. So my hatred took a back seat to that.” Brown began to forgive and he started reconnecting with the University once again. In fact, this past October, Darrell Brown was honored in the center of Razorback Stadium (the scene of so much previous abuse) during halftime of the Auburn game when he was named the University of Arkansas Football Trailblazer.

In 1970, Jon Richardson from Little Rock was the first black Razorback recruit in the school’s history. I remember that very well, and that’s a distinction that belongs only to Richardson. But Darrell Brown was the first black man to wear the uniform.

And on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want you to hear his story and give thanks for the opportunities created and progress made for blacks and other minorities in our society. And I also want to remind you that those opportunities and progress sadly came at the great cost of heroic pioneers like the famous Martin Luther King, Jr. and a young man you’ve never heard of named Darrell Brown from tiny Horatio, Arkansas, who dared to be one man against the machine.

If you want to read much more about Brown’s story, you can find it her in a story by Dan Wetzel on Yahoo Sports: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_brown_arkansas_football_trailblazer100711

Grace and Civil Rights

As our nation remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. today, I want to share a story. I read it this summer in Thomas Long’s book, Preaching from Memory and Hope. The story is one of those rare moments in the early days of the civil rights movement when a white person, a southern white person, that is, actually took a public stand in support of giving black people the rights they deserve as human beings, and the rights they deserve as Americans under our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Her name is Grace Thomas, and this is her story.

Grace was the daughter of a Birmingham, Alabama, streetcar conductor and his wife. When she married in the late 1930’s, she moved to Atlanta and took a clerking job in one of the state government offices. Through her work, she developed an interest in law and politics, and she enrolled in a local law school that offered night classes.

After years of part-time study, she finally completed law school, and her family wondered what she would do with her law degree. They were shocked when Grace announced that she had decided to enter the 1954 election race for governor of Georgia. There were nine candidates for governor that year, eight men and Grace, but there was really only one issue. In the famous Brown v. the Board of Education case earlier that year, the Supreme Court had declared racially “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional and thus paved the way for integration of the public schools. Eight of the gubernatorial candidates spoke out angrily against the court’s decision. Only Grace said that she thought the decision was fair and just and ought to be welcomed by the citizenry. Her campaign slogan was “Say Grace at the Polls.” Not many did; she ran dead last, and her family was relieved that she had gotten this out of her system.

But she had not. Eight years later, in 1962, she ran for governor again. By then, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, and her message of racial harmony was hotly controversial. She received death threats, and her family traveled with her as she campaigned, in order to provide protection and moral support. On Election Day she finished dead last again, but her campaign was a testimony to goodwill and racial tolerance.

One day in that campaign, Grace made an appearance in the small town of Louisville, Georgia. In those days, the centerpiece of the town square in Louisville was not a courthouse or a war memorial but an old slave market, a tragic and evil place where human beings had once been bought and sold like cattle or cotton or any other commodity. Grace chose the slave market as the site for her campaign speech, and as she stood on the very spot where slaves had been auctioned, a hostile crowd of storekeepers and farmers gathered to hear what she would say. “The old has passed away,” she began, “and the new has come." Gesturing to the market, she said, “This place represents all about our past over which we must repent. A new day is here, a day when Georgians white and black can join hands to work together.”

This was provocative talk in 1962 Georgia, and the crowd got all riled up. “Are you a communist?” someone shouted at her.

Grace paused in midsentence. “No,” she said softly, “I am not.”

“Well, then,” continued the heckler, “where’d you get those damned ideas?”

Grace thought for a minute, and then she pointed to the steeple of a nearby church. “I got them over there,” she said, “in Sunday school.”

Wow! If every pulpit and Sunday school in the South had taught the things Grace learned in her Sunday school, the road to civil rights would have been much smoother and Martin Luther King, Jr. would have probably lived to die at a ripe old age. What Grace Thomas did was exceptional and unique for her time and her race. Grace supported civil rights before civil rights were cool, before it was hip to do so. She supported civil rights in the heat of the battle, when reputations, elections, and even lives were on the line. But with a name like Grace, could we have really expected anything else? Such courage impresses the heck out of me. I sometimes wonder what I would have done had I been a pastor in Little Rock instead of a one-year-old boy when Central High School was forcefully integrated by the famous Little Rock Nine and the U.S. Airborne in 1957. Would I have embraced civil rights for all in that day, let alone speak out in favor of those rights?

I don’t remember hearing anything about such matters as a grade-school kid in my Sunday school in Little Rock, but I did learn about it at home. I remember when my mother and father insisted that our black housekeeper/babysitter actually sit at the table with us for lunch even when she was very, very hesitant to do so. I remember when my mother took her home after her work and she refused to sit in the front seat with my mother, insisting instead that the back seat was where she belonged and that her husband would have her head if he caught her in the front seat. I think it was at home that I learned that black people, white people, rich people, poor people, all people, are equal in the eyes of God, and that means they should be equal in our eyes too.

But I was just a kid in those days. I don’t know what I would have done had I been an adult. Would I have been supporting the Little Rock Nine or protesting against them and calling them vulgar names like so many others were doing? Or even more, would I have just sat idly by as a spectator, doing nothing, refusing to take sides, choosing instead to "rise above the fray"? It seems to me that most of us have a higher estimation of our courage from a distance than we would probably exercise in the actual moment. So while I don’t know what I would have done in that day, I do know what Grace Thomas did. And on this Martin Luther King Day, 2011, I honor and applaud her for it.