Mennonite Central Committee News Service
October 23, 1962
I - SERVANTS ON THE HILLSIDE
by Vincent and Rosemarie Harding
On October 15, 1961, Vincent and Rosemarle
Harding joined the Voluntary Service team of the Mennonite Central
Committee, assigned to a ministry of reconciliation in the south.
Now, after a year's service, the Hardings report on several aspects
of their work in a series of three articles. The first deals
with Voluntary Service in Atlanta. The second de- scribes the
broader task of peacemaking. The third looks at Albany, Georgia,
as an example of the search for reconciliation.
It was last March when the call first for
"climbers for a southern hill" went out from Atlanta.
We had been in Atlanta five months then, and were just beginning
to understand the basic elements of our ministry of reconciliation.
By that time it seemed clear to us that we needed help. So, we
called for climbers to come and join us in the trek up the southern
hill. We needed fellow servants who would volunteer their lives
in daily tasks of reconciling work. Two months later, through
MCC's Voluntary Service program, they began to arrive.
Pauline Sawatzky and Marnette Abrahams were
first to arrive in May. They had both been raised among the Mennonites
of Kansas and had experienced Bethel College. Since the Fall
of 1961 they had been voluntary servants at the National Institutes
of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Now, they came to Atlanta, in
search of new service, new adventure, new doors to be opened.
On the same evening Bill Cooper's bus pulled into the terminal.
He had stopped off at Akron, Pa., but his journey had begun up
in Toronto where he had been a student at the university for
two years. Only recently committed to Christ he had stumbled--by
a strange providence--onto the Mennonites. Now he was in Atlanta,
too,
For a month they formed the vanguard of fellow
climbers, sharing the house with us and with the many visitors
who were constantly among us. Mamette worked with children in
a day-care nursery; Bill befriended countless youngsters in a
day camp and on the steps of Mennonite House; Pauline, meanwhile,
found a desk and a typewriter in the office of Martin Luther
King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Then in June the pilgrimage of summer servants
to Atlanta began. Carol Rick had just graduated from Goshen College
and was a member of First Mennonite Church in Philadelphia. Bringing
her skill as a nurse and her ever present laughter, she sat waiting
for us in the Atlanta terminal station one evening.
Mary Bixler was not far behind, though her
trip had begun from home in Elkhart, and her bus had come from
Chicago. As she pulled into Atlanta and neared the terminal,
Mary was frightened, for she wondered, how she would greet us,
especially Rose, her long-time friend. How would she greet us
in the midst of the South's sadly divided life? The thought flickered
faintly inside of us, too; but when we saw each other in the
terminal, love overcame segregation, and she embraced and kissed
without a second thought. More than a few persons, were obviously
amazed, but we were glad for them.
As Curtis Burrell travelled by bus from St.
Louis, there arose within him those strangely mixed thoughts
that only a Negro can know as he travels south. Would he find
a place to eat, a place to use a rest room? Would he be forced
to the back of the bus? Would he be injured in any way before
arriving? All went well, though, and by the time he came, Nancy
Amstutz and Kay Schrag had already arrived by separate cars from
Minnesota and Kansas. Only as the summer went on would they learn--and
learn well--what Curtis' apprehensions really meant.
Liz Moore came, bringing her own apprehensions,
for she was a Southern Baptist, and her denomination had often
borne the criticism of being among the strongest supporters of
segregation. Nevertheless, Liz came. She came because she sought
a new way. It was not easy, though, and when Vincent met her
at the Trailways terminal it was only then that she realized
the Hardings were Negroes, and it took all of her strength to
shake a Negro's hand in public for the first time; it took all
of her composure to walk through the station with a Negro man.
The new life was not easy, but she was determined to live it,
for she knew it was the Christian life.
Before long, the rest of the group had arrived.
Norma Dickson flew from California by way of New Orleans, wondering
what these Mennonites would be like (armed with pins in case
she needed to do away with her buttons!). Jane Souder came from
Earlham College by way of Souderton, Pa. Tina Redekopp made the
long journey from British Columbia by plane, too, and Charles
followed Mary's trail from Chicago by train.
After several days of orientation with the
group that was to serve in Nashville, life at Mennonite House
began in earnest. Soon we discovered that we were becoming a
family. With the help of others, Bill and Vincent had built a
great round table, and there the family's life centered. There
we ate together, spilling over into long discussions. There we
worshipped together. There we confessed our faults to one another,
and sought to learn how really to bear each other's burdens.
There we searched together in weekly study of the Bible.
The table was not ours alone, though. For
it was shared with many guests--guests who came from as near
as across the street and as far as Africa. Students, of every
color came.
Our neighbor, Coretta (Mrs. Martin L. King.,
Jr.) shared it to. Whites and Negroes, young and old, came together
in a circle of unity, sharing with us the house of reconciliation.
There were Uninvited guests, too, however.
We discovered before long that our phone was being tapped, and
we took the opportunity to make good use of this unusual channel
of witnessing. Guests from the police force regularly rode by
or parked near enough to watch the house. However, we could never
entice them to come in, nor could their presence tempt us to
move away. For we had decided that it was right for Christians
to live together wherever they might be, even if it went counter
to the customs of the society. We were willing to pay whatever
the price might be for that. However, we knew that phone tapping
and police surveillance were unimportant prices, compared to
what others had suffered.
For us the house was only the base of operations.
We had come to offer to Atlanta not only the example of our life
together in Mennonite House, but the meager gift of our individual
lives in reconciling service throughout the city. Each morning
the servants went out to their work. Two went as teachers to
day-care nurseries. Two others taught in the vacation Bible school
programs of several churches, (and their children were amazed
when they heard that this Negro and his blond fellow servant
were actually "brother and sister," and really lived
together). Two members of the family walked from home to work
in a girls club in a low income housing project for Negroes.
Another pair went by bus over to a Methodist sponsored community
center. At Goodwill industries, Tina offered her loving service
to a class of mentally-retarded young adults who happened to
be white. Meanwhile, Mary stayed home to cook and care for the
house.
For those who went out, the work they met
was not such as could be defined by a job description. They went
to teach, to lead, to guide--all, these--but primarily they went
as servants of reconciliation among Negroes and whites. They
went to befriend and to share. They went to offer some balm to
those whose wounds were so deep. They went to climb the hill,
the steep hill.
On the streets of Atlanta, this family stopped
traffic again and again, for we were simply going against the
grain of the Deep South's pattem. Trusting, however, that we
were in the grain of God's will, we continued to walk and talk
and laugh. Most often we hardly heard the occasional curses that
were thrown our way. Such are the costs of loving, we thought.
At Koinonia farm in Americus, Georgia, we
relived, through memories, the embattled days of this Christian
community (persecuted not only because they dared believe that
Christ had brought black and white together in His cross, but
because they dared act on that belief). We worked and worshipped
and prayed with them.
In Albany, we caught the spirit of a mass
meeting. In a Georgia state park we caught the immediate attention
of a sheriff who told us with mixed feelings that he had been
sheriff there for 35 years and he hadn't seen anything like us
yet. (We live in hope that he will not have to wait another 35
years to see brothers dwelling and playing together in unity.)
Thus we lived, worked and played until we
could no longer escape the nagging reality: the summer's end
was drawing near. One by one the family's members had to leave.
No one wanted to go. Those of us who would remain could hardly
bear to see them go; and all of us were comforted only by the
joy of what we had shared and by the hope that we would some
day meet again, perhaps at Mennonite House.
When the time for partings came, Atlanta's
terminals and airport shared a new experience. Here was this
strange band of pilgrims of varying shades (almost everyone tried
to see everyone else off) walking hand in hand, taking leave
of each other with tears and kisses, some times singing, "We
Shall Overcome" as a parting song.
Perhaps the most meaningful departure of all
came at the same bus terminal where Liz, the Southern Baptist,
had arrived. In June she had hardly been able to bring herself
to shake Vincent's hand or to be seen walking with him in public.
That evening in August, as a crowd waited to board the bus, Liz
embraced us.
It did not end there. For when Liz boarded
the bus, not one man would even look at her, as she struggled
to put her suitcase on a rack, nor would they speak to her as
she sat down. She had chosen to love the oppressed, counting
the cost. There on that bus, in a small but meaningful way, she
was paying it--with great joy.
Now the buses, cars, trains and planes begin
to deliver their passengers to us again, as the year-round voluntary
servants arrive. On World Communion Sunday the new and old members
of the family shared with God and with each other in a time of
confession, feet washing and partaking of the Lord's supper.
None knew where the path would lead from that table. We only
remembered where it had led from the first table in Jerusalem.
However, we left it with a confidence that we would overcome,
that we would overcome all of the powers of evil and fear and
injustice which threaten to separate men from each other. Because
of what God had done in Christ we knew that there was nothing
that could separate us from Him and from each other, whatever
our colors might be.
Meanwhile, the doors of Mennonite House continue
to stand open to all who would share with us in this adventure
of reconciliation, this experiment in peace.
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Ik23october62