During a recent podcast, I asked what seemed like a simple question, then sat back as these legendary leaders of United Methodism talked for more than an hour.
What accounts for your personal commitment to social justice, especially around economics, poverty, and wealth disparity?
Kenneth Carder
I am fortunate to have come out of southern Appalachia. And I was shaped by the culture of poverty. My parents were tenant farmers. My dad was also a textile mill worker. I was shaped by that culture of poverty, of the working class, and therefore I was fortunate enough to have experienced some of the issues around economic disparities. Not only did I live in poverty as a young child and through my teenage years, but I then moved into privilege. So, I have lived with the tension between poverty and privilege, powerlessness and having some sense of power or influence.
Therefore, my own view of the world emerged from an experience on the margins of society. And, fortunately, I grew up in a family where the values of integrity, honesty, hard work, and fairness were emphasized. Even though that exploitative culture shaped us, there was an element of resistance to that culture.
I can still hear my father, my grandfather, and those around me say, "Well, it just ain't fair."
There was this recognition that fairness is important. Just growing up in that culture, I experienced marginalization; I experienced the struggles of poverty. It’s more than economics, but it is economics. It's also the lack of benefits, the lack of education, and so forth.
Tex Sample
My dad had three jobs during the Great Depression. I was born at the very end of 1934. I'm 10 days older than Elvis Presley. My dad was a school bus driver, and he delivered ice to old ice boxes, if you remember those things at all.He also was a cobbler. So, we had at least, maybe not a living wage, but we had a little money.
I get my name, Tex, which is my real name, from a black woman named Texana Gillum.When my dad was born in East Texas, his mother's milk was not good. And by the time they found it out, he was going to die if they didn't get something done. Texana Gillum is one of those old South things. I'm not defending it, but she kept milk, and she would suckle children of both black and white women.
She suckled my father for I think almost the first year of his life. And without her, I never would have existed. So, my dad, thinking I'd be a girl, decided to name me Texana. When I showed, he changed it to Tex.
I think the very fact that I was named after a black woman – I have never been able to articulate that adequately even to myself – affected me in terms of my witnessing what went on with black people in the world I grew up in, which was Brookhaven, Mississippi. I had an early introduction to violence. I remember a pistol whipping on the street in my hometown where a white policeman was hitting a black man who was inebriated, kept hitting him in the head with the butt of his pistol, though the black man was not resisting it. And I remember that I was seven years old. I question how much emotional depth I would have had then. But I remember distinctly feeling like he was going to kill him. Right there in front of us, a group of about 12 or 15 people gathered as this took place. A white barber went into his barber shop, got a 38 pistol, and came out and pointed it at the policeman. Remember, this was in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
He told him, "If you hit him again, I'm going to shoot you. If he's done something wrong, then you take him to jail, but don't you hit him again."
And the policeman stopped. And I remember the impact that that had on me. At that age, I didn't realize what a courageous act that was by that barber. But in that world, that was extraordinary. And I remember developing an admiration for that barber.
That was powerful to me. The question I didn't ask was, “What happened to that black man once he got to jail?”
You know, those kinds of questions would come later. I just grew up in a world where a lot of problems got solved by knocking somebody down. That did not happen inside my own home.
To be continued in the next issue of UM Insight.
