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July 5 2020
Jesse Breite
Protect, Self-Examine
My daughter, Vivienne Marie, was born on June 2. Emily and I are full of joy, exhausted, and alone in our house as a family of four, as we have only had a few post-quarantined family visitors. Living homebound, attending to and overly cautious with our kids, I still feel like I’m waiting for Easter.
But time is not still. The pandemic has worsened, and racial inequities have become more apparent and provocative than ever. As I watch the news and hear about marches from friends and colleagues, I feel outside of time and history, sidelined to a degree. Yet there is much to do, not to mention a small child and a toddler with whom I spend all my time.
Though I am a white man, I have spent a significant amount of time studying and teaching the Civil Rights history of Atlanta over the past ten years. I believe going to Auburn Avenue and sitting in Old Ebenezer Church is one of the most powerful experiences you can have in Atlanta. It was the church of Daddy King and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his sermons play on repeat as visitors come and go all day long, compliments to the National Park Service.
I have taken educators and students on tours of Oakland Cemetery, the 1906 Race Riot Walk, Piedmont Park, the Georgia State Capitol, and Sweet Auburn. A Black student once asked me why I was interested in Civil Rights, and while I can say my first interest in Atlanta as a place came from the hip-hop group OutKast, I have come to understand the protection of Civil and Human Rights as a Christian’s moral imperative.
Jesus often sought to protect and heal the most vulnerable in society. He asked Jews to think differently about Samaritans, despite their different ethnic and religious practices. But he also told the Pharisees, the teachers of the Hebrew Law, not to point fingers but to self-examine: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7 NIV).
Wherever you might be during this time, I hope you have the chance to reach out to the vulnerable--someone you can help, a business you can support. In Atlanta, there are plenty of opportunities to support the vulnerable with money, time, and prayer. But I also hope we take the opportunity to self-examine. Atlanta’s Civil and Human Rights history has often been invisible as it is happening or as it has been commemorated and memorialized. I have even come to understand my interest in hip-hop as a later iteration of those same Civil Rights interests in another voice. Can we and have we taken the time to look at Atlanta’s racial past and its human rights abuses? If we have not, can we understand how to avoid them in our future?
As a white man, I have learned much, but I know there is much more to learn and to hear. There is much I have not seen and have not heard. My bias is toward what I have studied--past Civil Rights lessons via Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bryan Stevenson, but I can do more to listen now. Our Savior models the posture we can adopt, so we can defend the vulnerable, so we can examine our own lives to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [Him]”. Though you may feel sidelined, outside of history, I pray that we will all be bold, that our children will see what we do.
Events/Places to consider in Atlanta’s Civil Rights History:
Historic Oakland Cemetery
Atlanta University/HBCUs
Piedmont Park/1895 Cotton States Expo
1906 Race Riot
Herndon Home Museum
Ebenezer Baptist Church
First Congregational Church
Big Bethel AME
Wheat Street Baptist Church
Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC)
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