BY HARRY COVERSTON, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough”. – Meister Eckhart.
As I grow older I increasingly recognize the importance of gratitude. And I have much for which to be grateful. A life-long learner, I have been fortunate to be able to study what captured my imagination, to travel to places around the world to gain new perspectives, and to learn from a wide range of experiences and people.
This Thanksgiving I find myself in a new place in life with new gifts for which I am thankful. My work with the local Alliance for Truth and Justice, an affiliate of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, has opened my life to a whole new world. The work we do researching racial terror in Jim Crow Central Florida has always been about justice. But, for this life-long learner, it has become the next chapter of my education.
As a sixth generation Floridian, I continually find myself astounded when I discover how much of our collective history I simply never knew. That wasn’t for my lack of interest or avoidance of discomfort. The reality is, no one ever taught any of us in our public schools the rest of our story. It was as if it never existed. We never learned the chapters of terror created by some of our own ancestors. But we also didn’t learn of the many accomplishments of our Black fellow citizens which actually made America great. This was an enormous loss to all of us.
I have always been grateful to all my teachers from the professors who shaped me in graduate education to my severely emotionally disturbed middle schoolers whom I came to love in Gifford. Today I have a whole new cohort of teachers, an African-American community which has graciously permitted me access to their lives, their stories, their suffering and their joys. For that immensely valuable gift, on this Thanksgiving, I express my deepest gratitude.
This new chapter of learning comes at a particularly critical moment in our nation’s history. I am only now coming up for air from the deep depression I experienced in the wake of the recent election. I had been so hopeful going into the election that America was finally ready to grow, to evolve, to begin living into the things we said we believed. Not only were those hopes not realized, I find myself a stranger in a strange land, wondering how we will survive this descent into darkness. The America revealed by a minority of American voters (noting that the winner of the Electoral College did not secure a majority of the popular vote) is troubling, on a good day.
Here is where the wisdom of the African-American experience proves most valuable. I observe a people who have been devalued, taken for granted, whose dreams have been thwarted historically through the abuse of the law and the use of terror. Yet, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, “Still (they) rise.” This example of resilience, of determination rooted in family and community, of a spiritual force that has never stopped demanding that, in the words of Pauli Murray, “America (should) be what she says she is,” is sorely needed in a time when angry demagogues have been given power by frightened voters.
For this wisdom and the willingness of my no doubt weary teachers to continue to share it, I am grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.
