It was totally natural for me to write about the indomitable, truly weathered but upbeat Rev. C.T. Vivian recently; I had known from years of research and involvement in the civil rights culture that he was and remains, the unsung, bloodied hero of the 1965 Voting Rights Act Campaign:
There are a few clergy who have actually converted scripture into ethics.
Like C.T., I have always hoped to make a difference in people’s lives, through my parallel and intertwining careers as an author and an interfaith-driven rabbi. It hit me when Dr. King was assassinated (and C.T. was one of his closest colleagues): there are some clergy who don’t just preach and get feted like communal demigods. There are a few who have actually converted scripture into ethics. This Judeao-Christian tradition was spawned by the Prophets: highly disparaged men, often marginalized or exiled, who were simply challenging people to feed the hungry and plead for the widowed and generally apply social justice rather than just simulate their piety via empty rituals. This is hypocrisy, not spirituality.
I believe I make a difference in telling people to do and not just pray that God will do it for them. I believe I make a difference in teaching that God does not directly solve problems—from cancer to segregation. God is the source we turn to help us to gather inner strength when we need something beneficial to happen to sick people or sick societies. God created the world, but people are creating it.
C.T. Vivian could have remained sheltered under the shade of his Southern church (as so many of his black and white colleagues did) when it came time in 1965 to use dangerous, nonviolent protest against Alabama’s refusal to let African Americans vote like all citizens (the state was used as a template campaign for national legislation). C.T., armed only with his convictions and courage, lifted by his life-long affair with wife Octavia, now of blessed memory, confronted the notorious Sheriff Jim Clark—a foul-mouthed, visceral racist—publicly and verbally. C.T. was clubbed, beaten, and jailed. C.T. still won the battle because he made others realize that their Bible was just words unless they filled the pages with moral substance.
The advice I give to others, stirred by civil rights leaders such as Rev. C.T. Vivian in Atlanta, Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles of Memphis, Rev. James Lawson of Vanderbilt, NAACP legend Maxine Smith and the great educator Dorothy Cotton of Cornell, is to fulfill in deeds what you say in prayers. The deep root of my inspiration, of course, will always be the tree of life named Martin Luther King, Jr.
In asking me for this essay (as have all the passionate writers in the America Inspired contest), what will I do with the prize money if I win? That, of course, I would discuss with my hero—the remarkable, still working-for-justice C.T. Vivian. Please enjoy his story via the video attached.
Ben Kamin's next book, 'ROOM 306: The National Story of the Lorraine Motel,' will be published this year by Michigan State University Press.
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