Bill Moyers Journal

by Bill Moyers

  Like the Jews and the Arabs, right?

  That’s right. And you can’t let each other go. I don’t care what you do. And that’s why those nooses in the news create that kind of response.

  Even so, we don’t like talking about lynching.

  Yeah, it’s ugly. “Black bodies hanging on trees.” That’s ugly. And Billie Holiday can make you feel like you’re at the foot of that tree. People don’t like to talk about stuff that’s really deep and ugly.

  James Allen wrote a book in which he talked about the terrible beauty of the lynching tree.

  Well, that’s my phrase. It comes from Reinhold Niebuhr.

  The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. You teach Niebuhr today at Union Theological Seminary, where he taught for thirty-two years. He’s one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Still relevant today?

  Oh, without question. Especially his perspective on humanity. Niebuhr has a profound understanding of the human being. He sees the human being as a creature who is finite but also free. It’s that freedom that makes us anxious because the good and the bad in us are always mixed together. America’s never clean. And if we could understand that our society isn’t innocent, we might be able to play a more creative role in the world today. Niebuhr could help America see that.

  If you were asked to recommend one of Niebuhr’s books to read, which would it be?

  The Irony of American History. The core of it is, let’s get over America’s “innocence.” Help America to see itself through the eyes of people from the bottom. America likes to think of itself as innocent, and we are not. No human being, no society, is innocent. That would be the book I would recommend. I would also recommend Beyond Tragedy. Niebuhr tells us that Christianity takes us through and beyond tragedy by way of the cross to victory in the cross.

  Go on.

  Meaning that the cross is victory out of defeat.

  And the lynching tree?

  And the lynching tree is transcendent of defeat. That’s why the cross and the lynching tree belong together. That’s why I have to talk about the lynching tree, because Christians can’t understand what’s going on at the cross until they see it through the image of a lynching tree with black bodies hanging there. Because the Christian gospel is a transvaluation of values. Something you cannot anticipate in this world, in this history. But it empowers the powerless. What do I mean by power in the powerless? That’s what God is. Power in the powerless.

  That’s of little comfort to the victims of lynchings. They’re dead.

  Their mothers and fathers aren’t dead. Their brothers and sisters aren’t dead. I’m alive. And I’m here to give voice to those who did die. And all of us do that. That’s why we can’t forget it.

  I went online and watched the video version of your speech at Harvard where you talked about “strange fruit,” the cross, and the lynching tree. I must say that audience didn’t seem very comfortable with that linkage.

  No, they did not. I said it at a divinity school. Mostly whites were there. But blacks felt comfortable with it. They understand the connection because it gives them a perspective on the lynching that empowers rather than silences them. You know, Bill, people who have never been lynched by another group usually find it difficult to understand why it is blacks want whites to remember lynching atrocities. “Why bring that up?” they ask. “Isn’t it best forgotten?”

  I say, absolutely not! The lynching tree is a metaphor for race in America, a symbol of America’s crucifixion of black people. See, whites feel a little uncomfortable because they are part of the history of the people who did the lynching. I would much rather be a part of the history of the lynching victims than a part of the history of the ones who did it. That’s the kind of transcendent perspective that empowers people to resist. That’s why Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was going to win even when he seemed to be losing.

  You think that’s what he meant when he said, “I’ve seen the Promised Land ”?

  Yes.

  And “I’m going to go up to the mountain”?

  Yes.

  He said that in Memphis, his last speech. The next day he was dead. Murdered.

  That’s right.

  And you think he had in mind the symbol of the cross, as you were talking about it? Victory snatched from defeat?

  Oh, without question. The cross was the most dominant symbol in King’s understanding of the gospel and in his life. And the more difficult it became—and it did become difficult—the more difficult it became, the more he knew he was going to be killed, the more he turned to the cross.

  I’m sure you appreciate the fact that my audience includes a lot of people who understand that language, who are of the Christian faith. But many people listening are people for whom the cross makes no sense.

  Yes, right.

  The Roman Empire puts a man on the cross, kills him, and the next thing you know, a religion is growing up from a dead body. So for those people, how do you put into popular language—beyond the dogma, beyond creed, beyond, if you will, the Christian story—the essence of what you are talking about when you talk about “strange fruit”?

  See, the cross is my story. It’s the story of black people. That’s the only way I can talk about it. When people ask me to tell my story, that’s what I tell. Now, my story may not be your story. I’ve been all over the world: India, Sri Lanka, Africa. I’ve been all over the place where people did not have the cross as their dominant symbol. But they wanted to hear my story. When I tell my story, that’s what I tell.

  But then I want people to tell me their story. Religion is always the search for meaning for people who are weak and powerless. And religion in that sense connects me with people all over the world. I want to hear the stories because I know God is not without witness. All over the world. And God speaks in many tongues. I know where God is present when I see little people, “the least of these,” affirming their humanity in situations where they have few resources to do that. That power is what I mean by the cross.

  And you say, “The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, usually reserved for hardened criminals, rebellious slaves, rebels against the Roman state and falsely accused militant blacks who were often called ‘black beasts’ and ‘monsters in human form.’” Exactly how do the cross and the lynching tree interpret each other?

  It keeps the lynchers from having the last word. The lynching tree interprets the cross. It keeps the cross out of the hands of those who are dominant. Nobody who is lynching anybody can understand the cross. That’s why it’s so important to place the cross and the lynching tree together. Because the cross, or the crucifixion, was analogous to a first-century lynching. In fact, many biblical scholars, when they want to describe what was happening to Jesus, say, “It was a lynching.” And all I want to suggest is, if American Christians say they want to identify with that cross, they have to see the cross as a lynching. Anytime your empathy, your solidarity is with the little people, you’re with the cross. If you identify with the lynchers, then no, you can’t understand what’s happening.

  That’s what resistance means for helpless people. Power in the powerless is not something that we are accustomed to listening to and understanding in America. It’s not a part of our historical experience. America always wants to think we’re going to win everything. Well, black people have a history in which we didn’t win, so our resistance is a resistance against the odds. That’s why we can understand the cross.

  How should we respond to these recent events with the nooses?

  They ought to encourage us to connect, blacks and whites. They ought to remind us of the community we do not have. Instead of separating us from each other, they should bring us together. Listen, there were whites in all of the marches in Jena. There are always whites there, witnessing for justice. That’s a sign of hope.

  Jena’s one thing because of the tradition and history of the South. But how do you explain the presence of these n
ooses anonymously in the New York suburbs, for example, not far from where we’re sitting right now?

  Well, racism and white supremacy were not confined to the South. It was all over America. It’s just expressed in different ways. It existed here in the North, but it wasn’t acknowledged.

  There’s a recent book called Lynchings in the West: 1850–1935, photographs from Ken Gonzales-Day. He went searching for California’s lynching trees. And he found three hundred lynching trees out there. The Far West!

  Yes! Yes! Lynching happened all over. Pennsylvania, New York, California. All over America lynching happened. Now, it was more prominent in the South, places like Mississippi and Georgia. The terror was deeply embedded there. But it was a part of America. And that’s why Malcolm X said, “Mississippi is America.” You know, it’s not separate. Now, Malcolm X came from the North, and his voice was a lot more militant than King’s, who came from the South. Malcolm was trying to get people to listen to something that they didn’t want to listen to. King knew the difference. His truth was obvious. Malcolm’s truth was not so obvious.

  The truth that ... ?

  That white supremacy is as present in New York City as it is in Jackson, Mississippi. That’s the truth. And when America can see itself historically— it wasn’t just the South that did the lynching, it was part of American culture—then we can figure out how we can start to overcome that legacy. You can’t overcome something if you never acknowledged its presence.

  Do you acknowledge the presence of crucifixion and lynching today?

  Yes, I do.

  Where?

  It’s in the prisons, especially. But it’s all over. Again, crucifixion and lynchings are symbols of the power of domination. They are symbols of the destruction of people’s humanity. Black people are 12 percent of the U.S. population and nearly 50 percent of the prison population; that’s a form of lynching—legal lynching. So there are a lot more ways to lynch a people than just hanging them on the tree. A lynching is trying to control the population. It is striking terror in the population so as to control it. That’s what the ghetto does. It crams people into living spaces where they will selfdestruct, kill each other, fight each other, shoot each other because they have no place to breathe, no place for recreation, no place for an articulation and expression of their humanity. The ghetto becomes, just like prisons, a metaphor for lynching, if lynching is understood as one group forcing a kind of inhumanity upon another group.

  Do you believe God is love?

  Yes, I believe God is love.

  I would have a hard time believing God is love if I were a black man. Those bodies swinging on the tree. Where was God during the 246 years of slavery? Where was God during the era of lynching in this country?

  See, you are looking at it from the perspective of those who win. You have to see it from the perspective of those who have no power. For them, God is love because it’s that power in your life that lets you know you can resist the definitions that other people are placing on you. And you sort of say, “Sure, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen; nobody knows my sorrow. Sure, there is slavery. Sure, there is lynching, segregation. But glory, hallelujah, there is a humanity and a spirit that nobody can kill.” And as long as you know that, you will resist. That was the power of the civil rights movement. That was the power of those who kept marching even though the odds were against them. How do you keep going when you don’t have the battle tanks, when you don’t have the guns, when you don’t have the military power? When you have nothing? How do you keep going? How do you know that you are a human being? You know because there’s a power that transcends all of that.

  What do you mean when you say God is love?

  God is that power, that power that enables you to resist. You love that! You love the power that empowers you even in a situation in which you have no political power. You have to love God. Now, what is trouble is loving white people. Now, that’s tough. It’s not God we’re having trouble loving. Loving white people—now, that’s difficult.

  Have you forgiven whites for lynching your ancestors?

  Well, it’s not a question of forgiveness except in this sense. You see, when whites ask me about that, then I want to know why they’re asking. First I want to talk about what you’re going to do in order to make sense out of the world to make me want to do that—to forgive. I don’t think my forgiveness of you depends on what you do, but I am curious why you ask me that.

  I ask it because I’m not sure I could give it.

  That’s because when you have a power and a reality in your experience that transcends both you and me, then it’s not just what you can do or what I can do. It is what the power in us can do. That presence of a spirit that is greater enables you to do the unthinkable because you know you’re connected with the scoundrel even though he might have lynched you or lynched your brother. You are going to fight him about that. He’s a bad brother. But he’s still a brother.

  That’s hard to grasp, actually. But that’s what you’re about, it seems to me. You said in your Harvard speech that you hoped, by linking the cross and the lynching tree, to begin a conversation in America about race. What would you like us to be talking about?

  I’d like for us, first, to talk to each other. And I’d like to talk about what it would mean to be one community, one people. Really one people.

  And what would that mean?

  It would mean that we would talk about the lynching tree. We would talk about slavery. We would talk about the good and the bad all mixed up there. We would begin to see ourselves as a family. Martin Luther King called it the “beloved community.” That’s what he was struggling for.

  Okay, what can people do to try to help bring about this beloved community?

  First is to believe that it can happen. Don’t lose hope. If people lose hope, they give up in despair. Black people were enslaved for 246 years. But they didn’t lose hope.

  Why?

  They didn’t lose hope because there was a power and a reality in their experience that helped them to know that they were a part of this human race just like everybody else, and they fought for that.

  All right, I have hope. What’s next?

  The next step is to connect with people who also have hope: blacks, whites, Hispanics, all different ages, all different kinds of people. You have to connect and organize with people who have hope.

  What do you mean, organize?

  You organize to make the world the way it ought to be. And that is the beloved community. You have to have some witness to that, even if it’s a small witness by just you and me.

  You don’t have to be angels to do that. If men were angels, our founding fathers said, we wouldn’t need government.

  No, we’re not angels. But where there are two or three gathered, as it says in the scripture, there is hope. There is possibility. And you don’t want to lose that. That’s why I keep teaching.

  Speaking of race, there’s so much talk today about blackness. People are arguing about whether Barack Obama is black enough or not.

  Well, everybody should be aware of their heritage. Blackness is a powerful, powerful symbol in America. Because we were taught to be ashamed of being black. And in a society in which you are taught to be ashamed, the only recourse is to affirm it. You shouldn’t be bashful about talking about it, because to be bashful about talking about it is, in some sense, to be ashamed of it, at least from the perspective of those who are black and who don’t have the kind of position that Condoleezza Rice or Barack Obama would have. What these people are saying is, express some identity with our history and our culture. It’s okay to identify with the larger culture, because we are one community. But that should not entitle one to just forget about one’s own particular culture of blackness.

  Is Obama “black enough”?

  I’m not sure I’m black enough for a lot of people. I think what is relevant here is that people are reaching out to Barack Obama, wanting him to address some of the issues that are
particularly important to them. He has addressed one or two, but from the perspective of the people who are asking the question, at least, not black enough to affirm the fact that he really is as much for black people as he is for everyone else. The problem here is that whites make it difficult for black people to be black and also for them to support him. It’s because we haven’t been talking about that lynching tree. We haven’t been talking about slavery, the ugly side of our country. So if Barack Obama comes out and says, “I’m black and I’m proud of it,” well, whites would get nervous. And they would be careful about whether they would vote for him. He has a narrow, narrow road on which to walk. Because he won’t be elected if he doesn’t get the white vote. It’s hard to get the white vote if you express a kind of affirmative identity with black people. You get caught between a rock and a hard place. You see, white people are proud of their cultural history. When you talk about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, you’re talking about slaveholders. But you don’t say that.

  Why don’t we say that?

  Because America likes to be innocent. It likes to be the exception. That’s why it’s hard for Barack Obama or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk about blackness; if they talked about blackness in the real, true sense, it would be uncomfortable. But America can’t be what America ought to be until America can look at itself, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and keep working on making ourselves what we ought to be. We’re not the country we can be.

  DAVID BOIES

  This had to be one of the most unusual and intriguing legal teams in American judicial history. Two courtroom titans who had battled each other all the way to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore were back, this time on the same side, defending same-sex marriage.