Can I Get a Witness? A Girl Indicted
A Black Eyed Story
Archibald J. Motley Jr. | Tongues (Holy Rollers) 1929
“Their pain and their joy were mine, and mine were theirs.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
*Content warning – in this post I mention my nephew who died by suicide. If that’s not for you right now, I totally understand that. I have included a list of support resources if you feel you need help. Much peace to you.
I grew up Baptist and a member of an all-Black congregation in Oakwood, Ohio – a small town maybe 10 minutes outside of Cleveland.
Our church was no bigger than our 2 bed/2 bath condo. It was called Rome Baptist Church. And, just now, I am getting the irony of an all-Black Baptist church naming itself after Rome – an oppressive, imperialistic force in the Bible. It’s strange to me now that our church honored Rome while the competing church around the corner, Mount Zion Baptist, honored the heavenly hill of Jerusalem.
Hebrews 12: 22-23
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.
But that church was not us. We were Rome Baptist Church.
A Church in Georgia 1941
When I was in sixth or seventh grade, we got a new pastor. Our old pastor either hadn’t lived up to expectations or had committed some great mortal sin. Both scenarios lay far outside my childhood memory. However, I do remember going to Wednesday night church meetings where my grandparents, Deacon William and Deaconess Margaret Alvis, decided with all the other saints—brothers and sisters—what must be done. A new pastor was the decision, though not without hesitation. This one was divorced and had fathered a child out of wedlock. Were these transgressions all part of the same situation? Had he married the woman he “knocked up” but it didn’t work out, or had he gotten a girl into some trouble in his youth but later married and divorced someone else? I never knew and it didn’t matter because the church had decided that though he had sinned, all was forgiven.
What I do remember was when my second oldest sister, Michele, got pregnant her senior year of high school. I remember how my grandparents, mother, aunties and adult siblings and cousins had the same churchy meetings in the privacy of our kitchen to decide amongst themselves what to do about this great mortal sin. Not a single of one of them was happy. All the women took a turn weeping.