Celebrating Juneteenth in Burke: 'We Walk in Solidarity'
Religious leaders remarked on racism, unity, and 'moving forward' during the NAACP's 2024 Juneteenth Freedom Walk around downtown Morganton.
MORGANTON, North Carolina—During the Civil Rights Era, it was Christian churches throughout the southern United States that catalyzed people toward racial justice and equality.
These congregations were the primary organizers during the 1960s.
This activism stands in stark contrast with white Christians who continued employing the Bible as a defense for white supremacy in the form of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and discrimination etched into the social fabric of the American South.
That racism is a pernicious outgrowth of the religious language used to perpetuate chattel slavery during the previous three centuries. White Christians deployed scriptures to buttress their “peculiar institution,” citing God blessing ancient patriarchs with slaves and the so-called “Curse of Ham,” among other justifications.
For obvious reasons, African Americans have railed against this oppressive strain of Christianity, differentiating it from what many believe is more in line with the compassionate and liberating message preached by Jesus of Nazareth.
“For, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,” wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography condemning pro-slavery churches in America, “I recognize the widest, possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
And yet, a century later, it was Christian churches that powered the fight for racial equality in the 1960s, those congregations embodying the “Christianity of Christ.”
So, it’s fitting that numerous Christian churches throughout Burke County remain an invigorating force in calls for racial justice today, including those manifest during the NAACP’s Freedom Walk this morning.
‘The people that were enslaving them already knew that they were free, but refused to tell them.’
“The Civil Rights Movement began in the church,” said Burke County NAACP President Alicia Connelly to a gathering of more than 50 people standing outside Gaston Chapel AME Church on Wednesday morning, preceding the Juneteenth Freedom Walk around downtown Morganton.
“We can’t do anything without God, but we can do everything with God,” she continued.
Only recently becoming a federally recognized holiday, Juneteenth commemorates the day more than 250,000 people enslaved in Texas were finally informed of their liberation. This came two years after President Lincoln declared, in the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, that “all persons held as slaves" within Confederate states were free.
Some of the Freedom Walk’s participants wore Juneteenth and NAACP-themed t-shirts, while others carried banners embodying the resolute spirit of the group.
Several ministers stood in solidarity with members from their congregations, activists with Burke Coalition for Reconciliation, and other residents. This ministerial cohort included Pastor Wesley Hendrix of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Valdese.
“The people that were enslaving them already knew that they were free, but refused to tell them,” Hendrix remarked. “So we’re now living in a society where we know that we’re free, but there are people out there who don’t want us to understand just how free we are. We’re free to do anything that anybody else can do in this nation. We are free.”
Hendrix’s booming voice then broke into an a cappella rendition of the spiritual “Walk With Me, Lord.”
The fervent crowd joined in refrain: “Walk with me, Lord! Walk with me! Walk with me, Lord! Walk with me! While I'm on this tedious journey, I want Jesus to walk with me.”
With heads bowed together, the steadfast pastor offered up a prayer for “protection” and “peace” throughout the walk.
“We’re showing what unity really means,” he continued with resonance. “We thank you that as we’re out here today, we’re showing what it means that Blacks and whites can stand together, and walk together, can move together, and can live in harmony together as we continue to walk in the freedom that you have afforded us.”
The assembly traversed several blocks, walking past the Burke County Government Building, Wednesday Farmer’s Market, Historic Burke County Courthouse, and the Confederate monument that looms over downtown Morganton.
This collective act was designed to demonstrate the continued march toward liberation.
“In 1865, it was then that everybody realized just how free we are,” Hendrix continued. “And we have come to walk today to let them know that no matter what stipulations they try to put on us, no matter what they try to say, as we walk today, we’re walking in our freedom to let everybody know that we know how free we are.”
‘I’ve been committed to that since I was a child.’
The group eventually slowed and circled up again upon reaching Slades Chapel AME Zion Church. A few other religious leaders delivered more remarks.
Dr. Kevin Frederick, a now-retired pastor at Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, was only a child when he witnessed the Civil Rights Movement unfold.
But it has inspired his lifelong commitment to racial justice.
“Back on August 28th, 1963, my father called us into the living room where we all sat together and watched the evening news,” he recalled. “That was the day that Dr. Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the nation’s Capitol. One line from that speech stuck with me as an eight-year-old, that in the hills of Alabama, a white boy and a Black child would be holding hands together. That stuck with me as an image of what we are called to do and I’ve been committed to that since I was a child.”
For this reverend whose ministry spans several decades, his vision of racial justice and reconciliation goes back even further than MLK.
He believes we are called to “hold hands of support and grace with each other, to recognize the humanity in each other, to acknowledge that we are all children of God, blessed by our Maker and given us the responsibility to share that gift with others. That’s why all of us are here. That’s why we have a vision that was started long ago, not even by Dr. King, but by Jesus Christ, who had a vision of unity amongst all people.”
Several officers from Morganton’s Public Safety Department shut off sections of the street so participants could walk or wheelchair unimpeded. A woman of advanced age completed the trek relying on her walker for support, making a statement, inch by inch.
Numerous drivers delayed by the entourage waived in support while other onlookers were left to ponder the meaning of the mid-day gathering.
Walking in Solidarity for Freedom
“We walk because walk is symbolic of life,” explained Reverend Allen Warren of Gaston Chapel AME Church in Morganton at the end of the demonstration. “We walk in solidarity. We walk in unity. We walk in peace at a time when a nation is so divided and so fragmented. It’s time for people to come together.”
Like many counties throughout Appalachia, Burke remains split on several fronts, from the removal of the Confederate monument in downtown Morganton and the degree to which educators can discuss race and other social issues in public schools to the upcoming elections.
The political stakes somehow seem to rise every year.
“One of the first principles of war is to divide and conquer,” Warren continued. “We must be together. Thank you all for being together this morning, for loving on one another, smiling, rejoicing, and even when we remember the past and some of its atrocities, some of the things that still affect us today, we must be committed to moving forward, together, no matter what anybody says, or anybody does.”
The veteran minister spoke not only of his hopes but what a spirit of reconciliation looks like.
“Thank you all for displaying the love of God, the peace of God,” he said. “We’re not going to hold the past over anybody. We’re ready to move forward.” This magnanimity was met by emphatic affirmations vocalized by the crowd.
“Yes,” “Amen,” and “Say it,” echoed out from among joyful faces as he preached and prayed.
“We’re ready to lock arms,” he intoned, “to join and put our resources, our ingenuity, our intelligence together, God, to move Burke County, to move, God, Morganton, to move, God, North Carolina, to move the United States in a way that God would have us go.”
As to what direction or course of action that takes, for many Burke residents, it will be guided by a Christian faith cleansed of the centuries of racism and hate that have attached to a gospel built on equality and compassion—despite our temporal differences.
With it's sordid history, it's difficult to parse through American Christianity. How do you figure out which parts are inherent to the religion and which ones are unfair attributions?!? I'm not so interested in a person's beliefs. I care about their actions. Show me how your faith makes our community better. Spare me the theology.
Good to see local leaders still fighting the good fight.