My Country, 'Tis of Thee

I took today off so that I could watch the whole inauguration without feeling interrupted. I was prepared to watch alone, but a colleague called and invited me to watch with friends. It was a great day, full of so much symbolism, and I was glad that I didn't have to watch it by myself. Democrats celebrated and Republicans admired the moment, having run a campaign espousing their ideas, but not attacking the race of their opponent.

In the coverage of the election and inauguration of our first African-American President, there has been a lot of attention paid to the legacy of the heroes of the civil rights movement. People like John Lewis, Joseph Lowery and the Tuskegee Airmen, who were pictured today, and many who have passed away, have inspired a couple of generations, and today's events represented the fruition of their ideals.

I would like to mention another group of people. A battle like the civil rights movement has great heroes, but it requires a lot of foot-soldiers, too. Recently I've been trying to teach my children about my parents. They know their grandparents as typical retirees, and I am trying to help them know what it was like in the 1960's, when my parents were among those foot-soldiers. They had grown up in the deep south and were both the first in their families to attend college. They both became educators, and, somewhere along the way, began to believe in an America where people were treated fairly and given opportunities regardless of their race. My brothers and I were taught to ignore and disagree when our classmates expressed racism as we grew up in a small town in Georgia. When school integration caused the founding of an all-white private school, we continued to attend the public schools, and our parents attended all its events and supported its efforts to provide educational opportunity to students who hadn't received it before. And they helped form a new Baptist church that would be open to all, and would also offer women equal access to positions of leadership.

As I look back, I realize that they risked their jobs and their positions in the community when they took these stands. They, like many others, were the foot-soldiers, doing what was right because it was right.

I am spending my time working on the plans for an event next week at which white and black baptists will joyfully gather at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to promote unity and collaboration as we try to help the poor among us. I'm enjoying meeting the music leaders and clergy of other churches in our area, and I am convicted that we remain mostly segregated at 11:00 on Sundays. But I am grateful that I had parents who, 40 years ago, saw what was right and stood for it, regardless of the cost that was evident in the tragic newsreels from Birmingham. And while they didn't risk life and limb like John Lewis or our other heroes, they made a great impact on a generation who helped elect the man who took the oath of office today.

But this blog is about musical meanings, so what does this have to do with music? It relates to music to the extent that you know the history of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. In addition to being the site of a terrible terrorist attack at which four little girls were killed while attending church, it also served for many years as the location where great Americans appeared in Birmingham to speak, or sing, or perform because they were denied access to the city's theatres due to the color of their skin.

When we join our brothers and sisters in our service next week, we will be singing in the same building where a young opera star named Marian Anderson once performed. She was denied the opportunity to perform in Birmingham's Alabama Theatre, just as she was denied the opportunity to perform in Constitution Hall in Washington by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Just as Eleanor Roosevelt intervened to get her performance approved in Washington, the good members of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church intervened to provide the stage for her performance in Birmingham. She sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, beginning the concert with "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."

Music matters on its own, because it is a beautiful expression of our humanity. But it matters more when it becomes the catalyst for societal improvement. Did you hear Aretha Franklin sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" today? The fact that it seemed natural and uncontroversial was due to people like those foot-soldiers in a Birmingham church and heroic figures like Eleanor Roosevelt. And to heroes of the civil rights movement and to foot-soldiers like my parents. They all helped to make today a day for singing.

Thanks to all.