CHRISTMAS 2019: ITS MEANING FOR US

We wish our readers Happy Holidays. Thanks for being with us this year. Today, we offer thoughts on the season.

                  

Woodson:  Let’s Take the Pain Out of Christmas

Christmas is too commercial and, in many ways, painful. Commercializing Christmas has too often drowned out the story of Jesus.

                  

As a farm kid with few possessions, a belief in Santa Claus allowed me to engage in an

expectation fantasy. Hours were spent leading up to Christmas imagining what I would find under the Christmas tree. Invariably, I received a cap gun with holster, socks, and an assortment of fruits, nuts, and candies. Christmas after Christmas, I imagined myself receiving something really big, perhaps a pedal-driven car or a pony. 

On the Christmas after I turned eight, I received my assortment of fruits, nuts, and candy, but no toy. Someone told me Santa Claus was a fantasy, and my

parents had decided to no longer indulge this costly fantasy. I approached an older brother, hoping to be consoled but he responded, “Dang, man, you still believing that Santa Claus business?” I was crushed. That painful memory stays with me. Hope and I vowed never to lie to our children about a Santa Claus. But we would give gifts. Even that decision left us with the complication of having to decide who to give gifts to, which remains stressful for me. I don’t enjoy buying Christmas gifts. I think I’m contributing to the commercialization of Christmas and perverting the Christian faith. 

There have been times when Hope and I had to charge these expenses to our credit cards when short on cash. So, we spent money we didn’t have on things we didn’t need. 

            

Christmas should be a time to reflect solely on

Jesus’s birth and life and how his life informs our own. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle between Christianity, deceit, and commercialism. A great meal and great conversation on Christmas, without the gifts, would make Christmas what I’d like it to be.

Rob:  Let’s Stay Together

Debating the meaning of Christmas became a political flashpoint a few years ago. Conservatives, who see only a religious meaning

for Christmas, argued secularists were scrubbing Christmas from the public sphere or making it just about commerce. Some saw a “War on Christmas.” The

issue hasn’t flared up much this year as impeachment and the 2020 campaign consumed space in public discourse. So, in an atmosphere not brimming with angst over what the holiday means, I took a step back when contemplating its meaning for me.

I could focus on religion. I practice progressive

Signs of Religions

Christianity, so celebrating the birth of Jesus matters. However, I regard that practice as a year-round activity rooted in understanding and following the teachings of Jesus, not the miracles supposedly attendant to his birth and death. I respect the religious aspect of Christmas, but that’s not my focus.

In our family, and for me, Christmas means togetherness. I live in the same town with only one

of my children; the other four reside near or far, but in each case “away.” Since my wife’s death nine years ago, we’ve rotated where we gather. I now find the process of convening, of making whatever trip I must make so we are together, a valuable part of the exercise.

Christmas, therefore, means celebrating the fact we remain a family despite losing Ida, despite the trials and tribulations of children growing up, and despite my own struggles as I age and experience transitions. As the song says, Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year” because, for us, it’s when we’re together. At this stage, that’s what Christmas means for me.

                                 

                         Andy Williams' The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

                    

Henry: Christmas Everlasting
My memory pulls forth concentric spheres. The

inside, closed, perhaps restricted and protected sphere streams images of two brothers and their parents experiencing incredible joy and happiness waiting for the morning.  There were friends, church, family, gifts, food, speeches, and prayer for all, especially the “less fortunate.”  Acceptance and faith without doubt prevailed - for doubt springs from examination.

As those memories expand, the next sphere reveals a recognition of sadness and an awareness that all is not as well as it once seemed at an earlier time.  The protective shielding of the first sphere is no longer present. Poverty, fear, doubt, hopelessness, despair, hunger, and anger are present, invading the space between the first and second spheres.

As the first and second spheres merge, a third

sphere forms, enveloping all and expanding at light speed, speaking to my mind, soul, and spirit. Hope inspired by love required by my spiritual belief in redemption, forgiveness, and universal acceptance extinguishes all doubt for the moment and takes me to the innocence of the first sphere. Here, however, a more informed faith supporting hope pervades my world becoming our world. This last all-encompassing sphere contains all but has no limits. 

We are forgiven. “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” Luke 1:37

Joy-PLEASE

JOHN WALKER (1937-2019): A FIGHTER WE KNEW

As Thanksgiving approaches, we step back and honor the life and work of John Walker, the Arkansas civil rights lawyer and state representative who died October 28 at age 82. Walker's work had national implications. All three of us knew him in some way. We mourn his loss for different reasons. 

John Walker grew up in Rob's hometown of Hope, AR where he lived until 1952 when he left for Texas and high school graduation in Houston. He returned to Arkansas for an undergraduate degree from Woodson's AM&N College. After graduate school at New York University, he earned his law degree in 1964 at Henry's Yale University.   

Walker opened a Little Rock law practice in 1965. He won a seat in the Arkansas legislature in 2010, serving until his death. We remember him for the years between starting that practice and his death. 

Henry's Memories 

It was an audacious idea hardly anyone would have believed if I'd made it up. Ten years after John Walker told me, then a wet-behind-the-ears freshman at Yale, he planned on starting a civil rights law firm in Arkansas and I should attend law school and join him, I found myself doing just that. John and his wife invited me to dinner one spring night in 1964 when he made that seemingly ridiculous suggestion. He was only graduating from Yale himself that semester.

While practicing with him, first at Walker, Kaplan, and Mays, then at Walker, Hollingsworth, and Jones, I witnessed and played a small part in changing life for minorities and women in Arkansas and elsewhere in America. John, his partners, and associates made a difference still not fully calculated. Thousands of lives improved because of the work those lawyers did under John's leadership. 

He possessed a brilliant legal mind, thought faster on his feet, and more effectively organized large volumes of information than

any lawyer I observed during my years of clerking in the federal courts or in practice. He used his skills in carrying out his mission of wringing justice and fairness from a flawed system. He was my friend and I am grateful for the opportunity he gave me to participate in a cause I hold dear. Little did I know his outlandish suggestion in 1964 was just another of his bold, but accurate, predictions.
  

Woodson Cried

I cried when I learned of John's death. Though I am grateful for what he did for me, that's not why I cried. I cried for what racism robbed him of.

  

After he hired me in August 1976 we toured downtown Little Rock in his powder-blue

1974 Lincoln Continental for a private conversation. He was 40. I was 26. He sought to boost my self-confidence by telling me he believed my having graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School meant that I was one of the smartest lawyers in Little Rock. I was not convinced, though I appreciated the gesture. 

  

Soon, I assisted him in a murder trial in Conway, where I witnessed one of his signature trial tactics. On the morning of the trial he made a plethora of oral motions to the utter consternation of the judge and prosecutor. The prosecutor wilted under the pressure and offered John's indigent black client a deal, allowing him to plead to a lesser offense and receive probation. The defendant

later became a millionaire businessman. John introduced me to employment discrimination law when he dispatched me to Crossett in the spring of 1977 to interview class members for weeks in the Georgia Pacific case. The case eventually settled.

I cried because living in a racist society had cheated John, as it had my own father, of the opportunity to be whatever he wanted to be, as opposed to what he felt compelled to be. My father wanted to become a millionaire farmer. It was not to be. He was restricted to being a farmer in the hills of Conway County because the alluvial farmlands in the county were reserved for white farmers. In the same way, John

became a civil rights lawyer because becoming a business tycoon, law professor in a major university, or federal judge were not realistic opportunities for him. When others celebrate him as a civil rights advocate, I fight feelings of anger that because of racism he did not feel the freedom to do something else.

Will the day ever come when there will no longer be a need to celebrate fighters against racism? Not knowing the answer to that question is why I cried.  

Rob's Recollections 

Even though we hailed from the same town, I knew John Walker less well than my colleagues. We never worked together; indeed, I wasn't a lawyer when I lived in Little Rock and watched him from afar. That didn't keep me from admiring his work or appreciating that America requires people like him.  

John Walker took on powerful forces, using the tool those forces couldn't control - our national dedication to the rule of law. By fighting segregated schools, employment discrimination, and wrongs in criminal justice,

John Walker made Arkansas better. In his sliver of the world, he used the law in holding the system accountable.  

Ironically, I saw Walker up close in one of his losing battles. In 1977, he took on the Arkansas Razorback football establishment.

In those days, the team won a lot and enjoyed sacred cow status. Walker challenged coach Lou Holtz's suspension of three black players over a dormitory incident involving a white woman. As a sportscaster at a Little Rock television station, I covered the story closely.  The players remained suspended, a threatened boycott by other black players fizzled, and Walker lost his court challenge. Still, the fact Walker took on the case inspired respect I hold until this day. 

ATTENDING TWO REUNIONS

This time, Rob shares an essay he wrote for a church service on family. This piece looks back at his experiences in the ‘60s and asks that Americans act now and spare their children the pain, divisiveness, and turbulence of the past, and even of today.  

High school class reunions generate many emotions – longing for days gone by,    excitement at seeing old friends,regret about roads not taken, reflection on life and what it’s meant, realization of mortality and all it implies. I never thought, however, reunions would generate sadness and apprehension for my children’s future. That’s what happened this summer as a result of attending two class reunions. Those reunions drive my thoughts about family this fall. 

 

My 50^th

Two Thousand Nineteen marks 50 years since I graduated from high school. Due to an odd circumstance, I got to go to two reunions. The thoughts and feelings they generated offer a commentary on the past, on our times, and, unfortunately, on the times my family may see in the future. 

I’m a member of the graduating class of Dollarway High School of 1969. The Dollarway School District lies on the western edge of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I attended DHS from the beginning of my sophomore year until graduation.

I grew up in Hope, Arkansas, so until we moved to Pine Bluff,

I attended school there. I finished my  freshman year at Hope's Yerger High in the spring of 1966.

Like most school systems in the South in the 1960s, the

Hope and Dollarway districts found themselves caught up in the battle over desegregation. Both operated dual school systems. Blacks attended one set of schools and whites another -- by law. They called it de jure segregation.

The Dollarway and Hope districts resisted ending their dual systems by using so-called “freedom-of-choice” plans. Students and their parents could choose the school they preferred. This resulted in desegregation in name only. No whites attended the black schools. A few blacks attended the white schools. Only two other black students graduated from Dollarway with me in 1969.

The federal courts and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare ultimately decided the constitution required unitary systems – one set of schools for everyone. That fall—after my graduation – in both districts, the black schools and the white schools merged. That freshman class I started with was, therefore, the last graduating class Yerger High ever had, as

Back of Yerger 50th Reunion T-shirt

the back of the 50^th reunion t-shirt proclaims. I remained friends with some members of that class and they kindly invited me to their reunion in early July. Two weeks before, I attended my Dollarway class reunion.

Initially, both reunions left me joyous about renewing old acquaintances and reliving my youth. But, as they say in the National Football League, “upon further review,” I saw things differently. 

I had a positive experience at Dollarway. For the most part,  it

was what high school should be – a time of personal growth, youthful exploration, and adolescent experimentation. I had a few racially uncomfortable moments there as I will explore in my forthcoming book The Dollarway Syndrome: Race, Individual Goodwill, and the Continuing Struggle for Equality. By and large, however, my Dollarway

experience left me with warm feelings. That’s what the reunion reminded me of – positive emotions associated with football games, bonfires, drama club meetings, and track practice.

The Yerger reunion provided pleasant moments of a different

kind. I loved spending time both  with the friends with whomI’ve stayed in touch and those I hadn’t seen in ages. I appreciated learning about their triumphs and tragedies, reminding me of the miniscule margin between success and disaster. I didn’t do high school with the Yerger graduates, but they’re good people who played a meaningful role in my past.

Some Things Never Change

Despite the good feelings, generated by different circumstances at the two reunions, being at both reminded me of something else – America’s unfinished business with race. Both school districts have re-segregated. 

Dollarway, nearly all-white when I started there in 1966, is now about five per cent white, the rest of its student population black and Hispanic. Hope is about 20% white, the rest black and Hispanic.

It happened at Dollarway because whites left for private schools and because real estate developers built subdivisions in far out suburban areas. In Hope, a few private academies opened, and some white parents transported their children to a nearby rural district that welcomed them with open arms. So, fifty years after the battles I witnessed in the ‘60s, America still fights wars about race. The reunions reminded me of the depressing fact a good chance exists my children will likely still be fighting about race at the time of their 50^th class reunions. The battles won’t be the same as those of my youth, or even the ones of today.  But so many signs I can see say their society will face racial turmoil. That makes me very sad. I so much wish we would decide we don’t want that for our children, that we really are one family, and do something about it ourselves --- NOW.