BLOG 7/15/15. OF COURSE ATTICUS FINCH WAS A RACIST–MOST OF US WERE

BLOG 7/15/15. OF COURSE ATTICUS FINCH WAS A RACIST—MOST OF US WERE.

I don’t know whether to be amused or dismayed at all of the ‘flap’ over the revelation in Harper Lee’s new book that lawyer Atticus Finch was a racist. Those surprised need to review their history a bit. Let me walk you through a bit. The whole South as racist, as were considerable pockets elsewhere. Slavery had not been confined to the South. Many of this nation’s founding fathers were slave-owners, and the Emancipation Proclamation was a milestone but did not eliminate racist tensions.

The two watershed events that ushered in the modern Civil Rights era did not take place until the 1950s: the Brown-vs. -the Board of Education deliverance of the SCOTUS in 1954, and the emergence of the prophetic voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. in that same period. Before that there had been large voices as far back as Frederick Douglass in the mid-19th century, and a myriad of voices scattered over the years. But the South in which I grew up in the 1930s and 1940s was racist, and that was the accepted norm. I did not live in the more violent sections of the South, such as Alabama and Mississippi where there were so many lynchings and the KKK ran unimpeded. But all Southern states had their tragic episodes.

In my young adult years there were a few racially progressive voices but they were held in contempt by most, or considered Communist. The communal expressions, such as Koinonia Farms in Georgia, or the Highlander Community in North Carolina were on the fringe of things and influential only with a small minority of folk who thought in terms of racial justice.

I grew up in something of a ‘separate but equal’ part of the South. We had our community, and then there was ‘Colored Town’ where ‘they’ had their community. I went to an all-white high school, we had on our coastal town a beach for the white folks and a beach for colored folks, and that was the way it was. I went to an all-white liberal arts college, to an all-white theological school, and was ordained to be Presbyterian campus minister to (at that time) an all-white North Carolina State College. All that said, racial justice was never raised as an issue in the circles in which I operated. My parents taught me to be polite to ‘them’ but not to mingle socially. That’s the way it was.

It was in that period (post WW II), and in Alabama, that To Kill a Mockingbird, and now Go Set a Watchman took place. Atticus Finch would have been considered quite normal to have been a good lawyer in the Mockingbird story, and still a racist. It would have been strange if he had not been. To read the reviews and the shock that he was a racist exhibits a cultural and historical blindness on the part of the reviewers that should send them back to their research.

For the record, I was ordained in the summer just after Brown-vs.-the Board of Education. I had never had any significant engagement or conversation with an adult black person in my life that I recall. But our North Carolina Westminster Fellowship conducted an annual weekend retreat, and that included several black colleges and universities. I was first of all surprised at how hard it was to find a retreat location that allowed for integrated meetings. And it was a one of the only places we could find (sort of a run-down, lacking in maintenance place) that I bunked in a large dormitory room with rusty bunk beds with a gang of black Presbyterian college and university students—an incredible experience for me. I would have been about 26 years old. It was the opening of my eyes for the first time to the issue of racial justice. As a Christian guy it all made sense, and I never found it difficult to take my stance after that. At the same time the context of our Southern culture was pure racist. Martin Luther King, Jr. was just emerging on the scene voicing his clarion message, especially to the white church.

All this to say: Of course the Alabamian Atticus Finch was a racist in his day. Most of us were in that period. That’s accurate history. No one should be surprised. We’ve come a long way, and have a long way to go.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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