Unless we have reached the end point of humankind’s moral development, it is pretty certain that the average educated human of the 23rd century will look back at the average educated human being of the 21st century and ask incredulously about a considerable number of our most cherished moral and political axioms, “How could they have believed that?”
We do it every time a movie like Twelve Years a Slave or a novel like The Handmaid’s Tale or a play like Angels in America or a work of history like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee or of journalism like Michael Harrington’s The Other America prompts us to ask, “How could decent, intelligent people have believed they were entitled to treat other human beings like that?”
Just a couple of miles away from where I sit typing these words in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935, Rubin Stacey was lynched from a pine tree as a mob of white folks looked on. Stacey was a 37-year old husband, father and day laborer. Marion Jones, a white Sunday school teacher, reported to police on July 16, 1935, that a black man asked for a drink of water, and then attacked her with a knife.
Stacey was accused of attacking the woman after a passer-by reportedly saw him creeping around some bushes near the Jones’s home. He received no trial. There was no physical evidence linking him to the scene. Stacey denied the charges. Rubin Stacey was not only lynched, but he was also shot 17 times as he hung there, as a gun was passed around. His body was then tied to the back of a car and dragged away down the street.
I remember going to Wrigley Field in Chicago with my family in 1948 as a 5-year old when the Chicago Cubs were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers. All afternoon I heard the chorus of verbal and racial insults that Jackie Robinson endured when he came on the field as the first black person to play baseball in the major leagues. His only sin: the color of his skin.
I ask myself about events and incidents that I witness today. How many years will it take for people to ask about what we are seeing all around us today, “How could decent, intelligent people have believed they were entitled to treat other human beings like that?”
What things going on today will people in the future look back on and wonder how we could ever have done them?
THE MORE HUMBLE WE STAY, THE MORE GOD BLESSES US!
You will find 365 wonderful poems in my book, A POEM A DAY TO PRAY 2025. https://treatsforthesoul.org/a-poem-a-day-to-pray/
Please remember Pope Francis in your prayers today.
