Supersurvivors

by David B Feldman

  At Yad Vashem, James encountered another shameful past. In one exhibit, he and Virginia slipped into a cool, dark cavern lit with what seemed like a million candles, each flame representative of a child murdered by the Nazis. He realized at that moment that sixteen-year-old James Cameron and the millions of children who had died at the hands of the Germans were linked by a substance far stronger than the hemp fibers of a hangman’s noose. In the Hall of Names, photos of the dead mounted the high walls, floating above their heads like apparitions. The testimony from survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and of ghetto-enforced segregation spoke to James in a surprising way. When he and Virginia stepped back out into the bright Middle Eastern sun, he told her, “We need something like this, to talk about what happened to black people.”

  “He opened the first version of America’s Black Holocaust Museum in his basement,” says Fran Kaplan. “He had fifty years of personal archives, literature, history, and artifacts down there dating back through the Jim Crow era. People traipsed through his house to see it. It was small, but there was nothing like it, certainly not in Milwaukee.”

  The museum’s popularity grew, and James moved it to a slightly larger storefront in inner-city Milwaukee. While it was still a rather amateur offering, for James the museum was his small contribution to a part of the world where bad things had happened. Much to his surprise, that small contribution got big attention. It soon attracted a large donation, and James was able to buy and renovate a twelve-thousand-square-foot boxing gym. He now had the space to bring in traveling national exhibitions and even set up a screening area. The permanent exhibits included a simulation of a slave ship’s cargo hold, a gallery of lynching photos, and videos of Milwaukee’s two hundred days of open housing marches. “The museum struck a chord,” says Kaplan. “People went back home and would send him their heirlooms to add to the collections. Someone sent James a Klan outfit he’d found in an attic. Another guy sent him a piece of the lynching rope that someone had cut up and sold as souvenirs from the Marion lynching.”

  Among these museum exhibits was James Cameron, who was at the museum every day, even into his eighties. He invited conversation and always answered questions.

  “They’d want to know how he survived,” says Reggie Jackson, one of the museum’s first curators. “For those of us who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. For those of us who don’t believe in God, no explanation is possible. He felt there was a reason he survived. That God had a mission for him. He was to give something back to the world. That’s what the museum was all about. His mission was to teach people—we think they know these stories, but they really don’t. We have the assumption we know this history. It’s taught in a superficial way. In-depth information will give a stronger sense of how it worked and help people defeat discrimination.”

  It was a powerful message, witnessed by powerful people. Vice President Al Gore walked amid the museum’s fifteen-foot reproduction of a slave ship’s cargo hold. Julian Bond and John Lewis admired the museum’s depiction of life in an African village before enslavement. In 1998 the museum’s attendance was growing—as was its reputation, not just locally but internationally. In 1998 a BBC documentary crew came to James with an unusual request: they wanted to take him back to Marion, Indiana, the place where it all began. James agreed, and with his permission, the BBC arranged a special meeting with a man James had never met before. His name was William, and in 1930, three boys were involved in the robbery and murder of his brother, Claude Deeter.

  James agreed to meet William Deeter at a church in Marion. When the moment arrived, James didn’t know how to feel: remorseful for his part in the crime, full of trepidation about the memories Marion still held for him, or anger for all the things he had lost in this small town. William and James, no longer boys, understood how seemingly simple acts of indiscretion could transform lives, tossing people into the self-powered gears of history. While innocent of pulling the trigger, James felt deeply responsible for the part he had played in the events that unfolded that fateful night. But when the moment to confront the past arrived, James found he neither needed to ask for forgiveness nor even had the chance to. “William threw his arms around James, and they embraced,” says Kaplan. “Then William asked James to pray with him.”

  “Trauma deals blows to people’s meaning-making processes because it tears them away from the comfort of their meaning-making systems,” writes psychologist and well-known advocate for culturally sensitive therapy, Laura Brown, in her book Cultural Competence in Trauma Therapy. “It teaches them, in the words of a prayer that Jews recite during their period of atonement each year, that they are ‘of little merit,’ in Hebrew ‘ayn banu maasim.’ ”

  At its best, Brown writes, religion offers its adherents methods to “ward off realities of meaninglessness and randomness, whether they worship at the shrine of Vishnu, pray to Allah, say Our Father or the Shema, keep kosher or a vegan diet, or practice celibacy. Through these and other rituals of being human, they generally find ways to make meaning of their lives in the face of that essential meaninglessness and inject a framework of order onto chaos.”

  But Michael Bussee had not been lucky enough to have this kind of faith. Instead, the religion of his youth had given him the message that God was judgmental and even wrathful, a message that turned trauma into bottomless suffering. But now this had changed. “I still believed I had to love God with all my heart, soul, and might, and that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves, but the doctrine, theology, structure, hierarchy, and theological debates over sexual orientation weren’t helpful,” he says. “I had to believe now that the Bible was written by men inspired to write about God, and sometimes these writers got it wrong.”

  Just as Gail Ironson found in her study of HIV-positive patients, Brown writes in her book that some forms of religious belief may be more helpful in the aftermath of trauma than others. “Belief systems that separate the kindness of a divinity from experiences here on earth can be protective at times of trauma,” Brown writes. “Religious beliefs that include a sense of personal connection with a nurturing, parental God can also be protective because many trauma survivors describe being comforted by prayer and the sense that God is listening to them even if their pain and suffering are not immediately relieved.”

  Michael’s spiritual journey had led him to just such beliefs, and these beliefs reinvigorated his existence. At this point, religion changed from a fount of constant burden to a source of great peace. It also gave him a sense of direction he hadn’t had in years. He resolved to set things right.

  “Exodus had become even more dangerous since I left. It had become an antigay movement. I felt despicable for being silent for so long,” Michael says. “I was still a man of faith, but to me, as I saw it now, we didn’t have to get rid of our faith and our sexuality. We could embrace both. That was the message, not the junk psychology, junk science, and antigay politics Exodus was spreading. As a former leader, I never thought I’d ever become an advocate for ex-gay survivors, or become a leader in a small but growing group of ex-gay leaders.” But as a supersurvivor, this was exactly what he would become.

  He’d taken small steps in the past, before Gary’s death in 1991. In their absence, the organization had become part of a network of hundreds of ministries in seventeen countries. Gary said they couldn’t in good conscience be silent anymore. But Michael was hesitant. He felt they had too much to lose. Going public would place them in a vulnerable position at a time when Michael needed to focus on caring for Gary. But Gary was adamant, so Michael called an attorney and scheduled a small press conference to warn others about the dangers of sexual reorientation therapy. They received a mixed response. Some in the gay community, for instance, praised them for coming forward, whereas others claimed they had blood on their hands. For its part, Exodus took steps to distance itself from Michael and Gary, going so far as to downplay their roles as cofounders. Even though there was growing debate regarding the effective
ness of sexual reorientation therapy within the organization itself, Exodus continued to reject any suggestion that its practices were harmful or that it should close its doors. At the time, beaten down by the controversy, Michael had decided it wasn’t worth it to assert himself again.

  But now, on June 27, 2007, spurred on by his transformed spiritual convictions, he was resolved to undo the wrongs he had done.

  “My name is Michael Bussee. I want to thank you for this opportunity to tell my story. Thirty years ago, I helped create Exodus International. Today, I am here to apologize,” began an open letter to the survivors of Exodus. “Today, I am . . . a proud gay man. But thirty years ago, I was not so proud. In fact, I grew up hating my gay feelings. I endured name-calling, bullying and beatings. . . . I desperately wanted to be straight. But how? At about age 12, I began a personal quest to find the ‘cure’ for homosexuality. . . . [But today, I am] one of Exodus’ most persistent critics—not because I want to ‘deny hope.’ On the contrary, I want to affirm that God loves every person—and that God’s love does indeed change lives. It has certainly changed mine. It just didn’t make me straight.

  “I have found harmony between my sexuality and my spirituality,” he continued. “I am hopeful that others can do the same.”

  Despite his activism, public sentiment condemning the program, and even growing debate within Exodus itself, the organization refused to close. So when Michael was invited to appear on television with Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, for the Oprah Winfrey Network series Our America with Lisa Ling, he came up with a plan.

  At the time, he led online survivor groups for hundreds of people who were recovering from the ill effects of ex-gay therapy, many suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. Michael asked group members if they would accompany him to the taping. Face-to-face with Alan Chambers, Michael and the other survivors offered their stories. “We made him listen. At the end of the taping, everyone was in tears,” says Michael. “The survivors were in tears, the crew was in tears. Even Alan’s wife was in tears.”

  On June 18, 2013, a week before the interview aired on television, Exodus’s board of directors released a surprising statement apologizing to the gay community for its role in passing undue judgment. The next day, during what would be Exodus International’s last conference, Alan Chambers announced that the institution would be closing its doors forever.

  “For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical,” said Chambers in his address. “From a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we’re all prodigal sons and daughters. Exodus International is the prodigal’s older brother, trying to impose its will on God’s promises, and make judgments on who’s worthy of His Kingdom. God is calling us to be the Father—to welcome everyone, to love unhindered.”

  In Michael’s transformation—not from gay to straight, but from fearful to fearless—he has become a principal organizer in a small but growing group of ex-ex-gay leaders. Fifty-four years after the trip to the public library that led to a shocking realization of God’s judgment that would haunt him for decades, he is now on the road to becoming free of self-hatred. His new mission is to help others along that same road.

  James Cameron’s invitation arrived in his mailbox in 2005. Since the late sixties, social activists all over the country had become familiar with him, the antidiscrimination writings he published, and his community organizing. Today, at the age of ninety-one, Dr. Cameron’s voice was reedy, and his hair and mustache had long ago gone white. But his boyish gleam and full, round face suggested that he and his legacy might live forever.

  James still did public speaking engagements, but he was getting too weak to travel. One of his last appearances was at the University of Wisconsin, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate for his contributions to the civil rights movement. For everyone who knew Dr. James Cameron, the honor came as no surprise. “It’s amazing to me how many people’s lives this man touched, people who didn’t know him personally, the volunteers, the young people, the older people, blacks and whites,” says Fran Kaplan, who is now the executive director of America’s Black Holocaust Museum. In 2008 the museum moved all its archives online, allowing Kaplan to use online analytics to track exactly who was visiting the museum. A year after the archives went virtual, she logged visitors from 171 countries. The museum still exists, Kaplan explains, because prejudice and injustice still exist.

  Forgiveness, as we will explore deeply in the next chapter, does not come easily. The United States’ reluctance to pass civil rights reform was maddening to James. Over time, however, he came to appreciate the godliness of forgiveness. “He often preached ‘Forgive but never forget,’ ” says Kaplan. “He meant that it is important to acknowledge the past, even if it is traumatic or painful, but it is urgent to forgive those responsible so that you can go on with life, so you can grow.” Moreover, she suggests, he eventually developed the courage to forgive himself. In 1991, James sent a letter to the governor of Indiana, the Honorable B. Evan Bayh III, to ask for a pardon. “I ask for this pardon because I know that God has forgiven me for the role I played in the initiation of a crime that resulted in the loss of three human lives,” read the letter. “When the devil’s envy had destroyed man, God’s mercy restored him.” Six decades after that fateful day in 1930, James Cameron received that pardon. A week later, Marion, Indiana, presented him with a key to the city.

  And then, in 2005, the U.S. Senate announced it was going to pass Resolution 39, which called for lawmakers to issue an apology for the country’s failure to outlaw lynching. James was invited to be a guest of honor at the passage ceremony. “When we arrived to the hall of Congress,” says James’s son, Virgil, “Senator Ted Kennedy came down to dad on his knee. They talked as though they’d been friends for years. To me, he’d always just been dad. But the world knew him as something else. . . . Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama spent a lot of time with him. If dad had known he was talking to the man who’d be the first black president, he wouldn’t have believed it.”

  After lunch, the Secret Service escorted James and the others into a wood-paneled room for a press conference with the senators who had cosponsored the resolution. Flanked by Mary Landrieu, George Allen, and John Kerry, James was handed a microphone and asked by the media what the passage of the resolution meant to him.

  As he spoke, praising the resolution’s passage while denouncing the failure of the government ever to pass an antilynching law, the press’s cameras flashed and flickered all around him like a million candle flames.

  8

  Forgiving the Unforgivable

  Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.

  —DESMOND TUTU

  South Asia’s Kingdom of Bhutan is known as the last Shangri-La. This patchwork of nine-thousand-foot mountain peaks, rushing rivers and lush watersheds, forests of cedar and hemlock, rocky highlands, plains of savannah grasslands in the shadow of the Himalayas, and freshwater springs is home to roughly a million people. In 2006 a BusinessWeek global survey rated the kingdom among the happiest countries in Asia and the eighth-happiest on the planet.

  In the southwest region, just miles from the border of India, is the tiny farming village of Relukha. Bhutan is characterized by hundreds of individual settlements populated by the Ngalongs in the northwest, the dominant Sharchops in the east, and Lhotshampas in the south. Relukha was part of a group of about a dozen Lhotshampa villages like it. Aaron Acharya’s father, Devi, was their leader.

  “I wasn’t close to my father. I was in awe of him. He was a disciplinarian,” says Aaron. Devi was a tough, resourceful man and the highly esteemed patriarch of his fellow villagers. Aaron could show no weakness in front of him. “I couldn’t look him in the eye. He was quite respected, was always providing support to people who asked it of him. He spent very little tim
e with us at home. But I always knew he cared about me.” Once, when Aaron was eight, Devi took him to visit a village in the forested region of Gaylegphug, three days’ journey from home. They were traveling by foot when they came to the yellow mud bank of the mighty Mau River. Devi hoisted Aaron onto his shoulders and waded across. “I think about that river when I think about my father,” Aaron recalls. “I’m reminded how he cared for me even while I was fearful of him.”

  Two years later, when he was only twelve years old, Aaron traveled for five days to Samchi, on the way to boarding school. After walking for nearly two days, he got on three buses and eventually arrived in Khaling, where he would spend the next five years in secondary school. Aaron excelled academically. He learned English and two other languages. His knowledge of history and the sciences put him at the top of his class. He passed the countrywide exam his final year and scored the second-highest grade in all of Bhutan. Each year, he returned to Relukha for vacation having fallen more and more in love with learning. This put him a bit at odds with the predominant ethos of the village, largely the home of rice, corn, cardamom, and fruit farmers. His family, resourceful by nature, had for generations raised cattle and crops on this land. But Devi envisioned Aaron with a different future that only education could provide. In 1992, Aaron received a college scholarship from the government of Bhutan; with Devi’s blessing and high hopes behind him, Aaron left for India to get a degree in civil engineering. Devi believed his son was going to be a different sort of resource to his people, learning to design public works and build roads, bridges, and flood protection systems.

  The true significance of that resource was something the people of Relukha could not yet imagine.