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Ernie Suggs: Remembering the Rev. Joseph Lowery

Joseph Lowery was an African American minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

The following text is an excerpt from an article remembering the “Civil Rights Icon”.

In every man’s life, there is a day of destiny.

Joseph Echols Lowery’s came on a bright summer day in 1933, when he was only 11.

As he stepped out of his father’s candy store in Huntsville, Alabama, a white police officer walked up.

5 “He hit me in the belly and said, ‘Get back, (N-word). Don’t you see a white man coming in?’” the Rev. Lowery recalled in a 2001 Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview. “I went home and looked for my father’s pearl-handled.32 1. I got it and was gonna look for that cop.”

But as he got to the porch, his father, LeRoy Lowery, appeared and asked why he was crying. His father took the gun and gave him a lecture.

10 “I had never seen my father at home during the day, except on Sundays,” Lowery said. “I don’t know why he came home that day. But I am glad he did.”

But for that, Lowery said, he probably would have been beaten, jailed or lynched that afternoon.

Certainly, his life would have been different. He probably would not have become one of America’s most beloved preachers and human rights activists.

15 He would not have helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 2, where he remained at the forefront of the civil rights movement for more than half a century.

He would not have stood before a packed church at Coretta Scott King’s 3 funeral and blasted George W. Bush over the war in Iraq — as the president sat a few feet behind him.

20 And on a cold January day in 2009, he would not have delivered the benediction at the inauguration of America’s first black president. Nor would that president, a few months later, have pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Lowery’s chest while tears — this time of joy — streamed down the elder man’s face.

Lowery said that fateful day in 1933 was his introduction to civil rights.

25 “Although,” he added, “by being born black, I can’t ever remember not being in the movement.”

Coretta King once said Lowery had “led more marches and been in the trenches more than anyone since Martin.”

Now Lowery, too, has led his last march.

Lowery died Friday night in his Atlanta home with his daughters at his side.

30 The civil rights icon was 98. […]

Lowery often said he was grateful to have lived so long, considering that King died at 39.

As a young man, he survived bombings and several attempts on his life, including a vicious 1979 Ku Klux Klan attack that nearly claimed the life of his wife, Evelyn. As an older man, he beat back prostate cancer.

35 “I can’t [retire] because Martin is gone. Ralph [Abernathy] is gone. 4 Hosea [Williams] 5 is gone,” he said at a roast marking his 85th birthday in 2006. “I’m still here. God kept me here because I have been speaking the truth. Because I stand up against war and racism.”

When asked how he was doing, he would always say, “I am just an old man, doing young things. I am tired, but happy.” […]

40 In 2008, Lowery capped his civil rights career by working on the Obama campaign as a national co-chair for voter registration. After the election, President Obama picked Lowery to deliver the benediction at his inauguration.

Lowery did not disappoint, mixing religion, spirituals and even the blues into a speech that was equally celebrated and denounced.

45 In his emotional opening, he recited lines from James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as “The Negro National Anthem.” He ended by paraphrasing blues legend Big Bill Broonzy’s “Black, Brown and White”: “Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be 50 mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right,” Lowery prayed. “Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen! Say Amen! And Amen!”

On later being admitted into Obama’s first class of Medal of Freedom recipients, Lowery said he hoped the president would build the better America for which he and King had laid the foundation.

55 “I get disgusted and mad with America sometimes, and I hear some fools talk about: ‘Go back to Africa.’ I go to Africa every year, but the last thing I do before I get on the plane is check the ticket to make sure it is round trip,” Lowery said. “I’m coming back. This is my country. Africa may be the fatherland, but America is the mother. And I am going to hug mama and squeeze her.”

1.32 – a specific type of handgun

2 Southern Christian Leadership Conference – an African American civil rights organization

3 Coretta Scott King – M. L. King’s wife

4 Ralph Abernathy – American civil rights activist and Baptist minister

5 Hosea Williams – American civil rights leader, activist, businessman, scientist, politician

Suggs, E. (2020). Remembering Rev. Joseph Lowery. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 28 March, 2020. (799 words)

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