‘But thank God we ain’t what we was’

November 5, 10:00 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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“We have a long way to go before the problem is solved,” declared Martin Luther King in the quaint and stately St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of comfortable white folks in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on May 14, 1963. And then he quoted the words of “an old Negro slave preacher:”

“Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God we ain’t what we was.”

If the dead live in any way, Dr. King is sighing in heaven this morning. It’s one thing to read history, it’s another thing to recall history, it’s the most amazing thing to actually be alive in a moment of history.

We will all look at each differently today, black and white. Old grizzly black men, their scars of degradation leathered permanently into their skin, their heads shaking a bit in disbelief, will feel a spring in their step. Black grandmothers will hold their backs up a little straighter and try to wipe their stained eyes dry. White folks who swore it wouldn’t happen will adjust their necks a bit. White folks who swore it couldn’t happen will tell their children and grandchildren—we will remember, almost incongruously, the day the president was shot in Dallas, the evening the preacher fell in Memphis, the midnight that Bobby, once “our last hope,” lay in his own blood and we almost weren’t surprised. We will hear the echoes of “I may not get there with you…”

A whole lot of things are as unsolved this morning as they were yesterday. But no problem in this remarkably progressive and blessed America will ever be dismissed as black and white again.

And we can almost hear the proud teacher of social studies, African-American, old enough to remember, young enough to dream, praying to herself as she enters the classroom for a new day: God keep the president safe. Amen. 

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