A Light in Black Bottom

by  Bennett Spong

I grew up in the American South, in the state of South Carolina. In the early 1960’s, the economic and social legacy of slavery was being perpetuated by customs that were designed to discriminate, demean and dehumanize. As a teenager I lived a rather comfortable middle class life not really concerned about much more than socializing and going to parties. My contact with black people was largely through the two black women who worked for my family. Although my family was devoted to them our concern did not extend into the social and economic realties from which they came. That was the way it was in the South at that time.

Encounter

The party on that warm June night was like many I regularly attended. Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer flowed freely and the soulful sounds of Smoky Robinson and the Miracles filled the summer night. It was a fancy dress party and I was wearing an old coat, looking something like a outsider from another area. Around eleven o’clock I decided I needed some cigarettes and went outside to find a store. The party venue sat upon the brow of a hill and looked down onto an area of the city called Black Bottom. That was a slum area where black people lived and I could see down the hill that the light was still on at a small one gas pump store at the bottom.

As the road descended, the pavement turned to dirt, the side walks ended and the streetlights went dark. Segregation in the South meant that if an area did not pay enough taxes then it got poor or no public services. The road was lined on both sides with wooden shacks from which you could hear the quiet chatter of people. No one seemed to pay much attention to me and frankly, I had enough to drink and wasn’t that concerned.

As I walked up to the till to purchase the cigarettes, I got behind an old black man who was in the process of settling some account. I heard the burly white store keeper tell him an amount and the old man gave him the money but when change was given, the old man complained that it wasn’t the right amount. An argument started and the store keeper, whose attitude and manner represented all the evils of a deeply racist way of life, got very aggressive. I told the storekeeper that he had made a mistake and to give the old man his money. At that comment, the storekeeper jumped over the counter and the fight began. Shelves were knocked over, produce was flying everywhere as we pushed, punched, and yelled at each other. Finally I found myself outside under a blinking fluorescent light, waiting for round two to start— wondering who this guy thought I was.

Then I realized that the storekeeper was pointing a hand gun at me. He called me a “damn Yankee agitator” and growled that he was going to blow my brains out. As he cocked the gun, someone moved in between us like a shadow. It was the old black man from the till. I saw this old man kneel down on the gravel forecourt, raise his arms and ask the storekeeper in the name of Jesus not to shoot!

The store keeper slowly and mysteriously lowered the gun and went back into his store. As I watched the old man, I became aware that we were not alone. The night was full of people—black faces had come from the porches of the surrounding houses. They were asking me if I was alright. They patted me on my back, and asked if they could walk me home. They said they were sorry for what had happened, and they kept thanking me over and over again.

At the top of the hill, where the lights came back on, they stopped. They shook my hand and thanked me profusely again before disappearing back into the darkness. I stood there alone trying to take it all in. Who did they think I was? Who did the storekeeper think I was? Who did the old man think I was?

Call

I knew the whole episode had been a case of mistaken identity. I was just a somewhat inebriated teenager looking for some cigarettes. Somehow reality had broken into my self focused life, a life so devoid of any real awareness to be almost death like. Although I did not fully appreciated it at the time God was calling me into a life in which I needed to understand who this person called Jesus was and what he was all about. Jesus, who could move a complete stranger to risk their life to save another. Jesus, who never left the poor and marginalized without hope, even hope seen in a selfish and indifferent white boy.

There would be many more changes in my life. I would be reborn again and again in rolling ripples of resurrection moments. I didn’t become a civil right activist overnight but I did start to listen to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and I learned that you could not be a Christian and live quietly within a political and economic system that was fundamentally unchristian. I learned in the darkness of my indifference that there was a place called Black Bottom where there were cruelly-treated people, whose light that night shone as bright as any that I would ever see. This was a night where the power of God and the light of Christ became apparent to someone who wasn’t even looking for it.

Bennett Spong is a non-stipendiary Anglican priest in the diocese of Southwark in London, England. You can contact him via email: bjspong@hotmail.com.