Learning from the Pain of Black Music
By: Shannon Mary Sims
Tags: Christianity, BlackLivesMatter, Racism, Equality, Religion

My dad first introduced me to Mahalia Jackson years ago, and when I listened, she captivated and consoled all at once. Her long trills fitted neatly into the grooves in the air, as if she had her own key to them. And in the caverns created by her deep, lilting voice, I heard the faith and resilience of a Black American woman who had lived through the trauma of the Jim Crow south to tell about how “the grace of God” had gotten her “thus far.”

So last week, when my friend, whom I’ll call William, a Black man in his sixties, texted me a clip of himself singing “He’s Right on Time,” I found Mahalia Jackson’s recording and sent it to him, prompting a stream of texts back and forth. We usually share grandbaby pictures, but now, we’ve started sharing stories. William recalled how his mother played “In the Upper Room” until the record wore out, how every Black woman of her generation listened to Mahalia’s “How I Got Over” over and over, because that’s how they got over.

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, a conservative Christian blogger in my outer ring of Facebook friends posted a photo of a group of anti-racist demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, a state that was whites-only until 1926. According to CBS station Koin 6 reporter Danny Peterson, the group was burning some books that appeared to be Bibles left behind by a Christian wanting to reach out with the gospel earlier that day. The fire had started organically, with the group in the photo adding items to keep it going, after most of the demonstrators had left for the day. In an email, Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Kevin Allen wrote that the fires weren’t an immediate threat, and so police left the group alone. After about an hour, the group dwindled to about a dozen people. The fire reportedly was put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, and the group largely dispersed by 2:30 a.m.

In his post, my acquaintance offered his own suggestion that these book burners wanted to take his religious freedoms away. Some of his subscribers began to weigh in with agreement, and when I asked them a few questions, it was clear they believed the group was burning Bibles out of a desire to end religious freedom for good and all. Suspicion and paranoia negated any chance of learning anything beyond what they were all too sure they already knew.

The thing is, listening — closely, deeply listening — would reveal, to my blogger acquaintance and his subscribers, at least part of the reason why anti-racism demonstrators might burn Bibles. Yesterday, still listening to old Mahalia Jackson recordings, I heard her tell Studs Terkel, “ . . . the only thing we are interested in is equal rights, where we can make a living, to survive, and get an education . . . here’s another thing that puzzles me, I don’t know, this thing, it’s peculiar. When I’m on stage, or on television, or working with white people, they’ll hug me and love me, and say I’m so wonderful and so great, and then, when I’m walking around on the street, like an ordinary citizen, they don’t recognize me, and when I go into a department store in the south, I can’t get a sandwich, I can’t get a bottle of pop, I have to stand outside. I can’t even get a cab, and I’m just Mahalia Jackson that they just got through saying how wonderful I am . . . it just hurts me.”

And then she said, “it keeps me praying, for the Lord not to let hate get in my heart. This world will make you think, I tell you . . . and I don’t want to hate, I want to love.”

When white people disrespected Mahalia, she prayed. She read her Bible. And this is the historical context my blogger acquaintance might be missing.

Photo by Dave Brinkman (ANEFO) on Wikimedia Commons

From the first century, according to the Bible, Africans were among the world’s first Christians, starting with the Ethiopian eunuch. And yet, centuries later, my own Anglican denomination, slavers in Virginia, made baptized Africans agree not to demand their rightful freedom. They intentionally misinterpreted the Bible, so they could use it to support slavery. Decades later, Christian pastors failed to support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the fight for equal rights, and Mahalia herself lamented the hypocrisy of Christians who wouldn’t work for civil rights. Now, freed from the constraints of a Christianity they see as complicit in abusing their elders, some Black Americans may feel they’re done with a Christian Bible.

How can I respond to this history, and to the political climate we’re in today? I honestly don’t know. But the first thing I can do is listen, something else my dad taught me.

I’m still listening to Mahalia Jackson. Thanks partly to Mahalia, I’ve been hearing a lot of stories from William. But I still haven’t asked him the question I most need to ask him. How has it been for him? How has he navigated being a Black man, a Black son, brother, husband, daddy, granddad, and Christian, in America?

It’s a big question, so I haven’t asked him yet, but I will.

And when he answers, I’ll be listening.