78 The EconomistApril 4th 2020
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s he ranhome crying, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks,
he knew exactly what he had to do. He would find his father’s
pearl-handled .32. He knew where it was. Then he would run back
to the family store while the white police officer was still there, the
one who had told him “Get back, nigger! Don’t you see a white man
coming in the door?” and had smacked him in the belly with his
nightstick—and he would shoot him dead.
Luckily his father stopped him in time, saving his child-self
from being lynched by the outraged whites of Huntsville, Ala-
bama. And it seemed to Joseph Lowery that a seed was planted that
day, a seed of struggle. It could have made him hate: just one more
insult among the many he was used to, being born black. Instead, it
grew towards love. He had learned non-violence. Several years lat-
er, when he had given up struggling against the Lord’s call to be a
Methodist preacher, the New Testament repeated the lesson: do
good to them that hate you. Or as he liked to put it later in one of his
rhymes, not suppressing a smile, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth, will leave us all blind and gummin’ our food.”
That conviction grew all the stronger when he met Martin Lu-
ther King. (He liked the guy from the start, even though he was Bap-
tist.) Together in 1957 they founded the Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference that led, with prayers, sit-ins and marches, the
civil-rights campaigns of the 1960s: for desegregated lunch coun-
ters, for equality in hiring and education, for the vote. When Mar-
tin was killed, at 39, in 1968 the sclcfell on hard times for a decade,
but in 1977 he took over as president and broadened what it did.
Now it raised its voice against poverty and discrimination in gen-
eral, against police brutality and the death penalty, as well as for
peace in all corners of the world. Justice would roll down like wa-
ters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
He felt no fear in speaking truth to power. Both Jimmy Carter
and Bill Clinton felt the hot lash of his tongue for failing to raise uppeople out of poverty. Both Bushes, senior and junior, were scolded
publicly over Iraq: for war, billions more, but no more for the poor.
After the march on Selma in 1965 he presented a voting petition to
Governor George Wallace—going like Moses through the Red Sea,
through a Blue Sea of state troopers—and told him frankly that God
would hold him accountable. Though he might seem a mild fellow,
with his spectacles and jokes, he had a fire in him that fire-hoses
couldn’t wash out. For years he had thought that social justice on
Earth had little to do with the kingdom of Heaven. Now he knew
that a minister’s job was also to make Earth more heavenly.
Besides, non-violence had wrought a spiritual change in him.
He had become a new creature, perplexing to his enemies, as
everyone in the movement had. The first proof came early. In Mo-
bile in 1955 he and another minister rode one day in the front of the
bus to Prichard, a more racist town. When a white passenger came
up to bawl them out he quietly told him to sit down, and the man
obeyed. Pretty soon, no black person on Mobile’s buses had to give
up his seat to a white. After this success Martin asked him to help
with the year-long bus boycott in much bigger Montgomery, which
in 1956 led to the desegregation of buses all over America. Patience
paid off. Love worked. They were crazy, perhaps; but good crazy.
Time and again as he campaigned the Lord protected him.
(Preachers were useful to Him for that streaming down of justice:
independent, strong and servants of the people, not servants of
chambers of commerce.) The Lord made him decide to take a train
back to Nashville on the night his motel room in Birmingham was
blown apart. He held him and his wife Evelyn in the palm of His
hand when Klansmen’s bullets whooshed over his head, and
through their car, in Decatur, where he was supporting a mentally
disabled black man accused of raping a white woman. The Lord
even organised it that when he and others were judged by an Ala-
bama court to have libelled a state official, the Supreme Court in
1964 overturned the judgment, and his car, which had been seized,
was bought back at auction by a member of his flock.
In each of these trials the old anger would flash through him,
and with prayer he would hold it back. The hardest point came on
that spring day when Martin was shot in Memphis, a rare day when
he was not at his side. He curbed his grief by pouring energy into
the two big United Methodist churches, Central and Cascade,
which he ran in Atlanta for many years, building up membership
mightily. But he poured even more into the sclc, Martin’s organi-
sation as he saw it, by keeping that flame burning and by remind-
ing Americans what sort of man his friend had been. A doer, not a
dreamer; a revolutionary who challenged the capitalist system and
the powers that be, whose birthday should be marked every year
with marches against the injustice and inequality that still stalked
the land. The job was far from finished. And they had marched too
long, bled too profusely, to give up striving now.
He believed deeply in that struggle. But he also knew that God’s
plan was bound to work out. Crooked places would be made
straight, the lion would lie down with the lamb and every tear
would be dried. Sometimes he could feel God moving in history,
nudging it along. It happened when the boss of Morrison’s cafete-
rias in Montgomery, who refused to desegregate his lunch coun-
ters, dropped dead just before the Civil Rights Act; and it happened
when a black man in 2008 ran for president of the United States.
At Barack Obama’s inauguration he was asked to give the bene-
diction. He was delighted to; that way, he would get the last word.
Time for a rhyme, but a heartfelt one. He prayed for a day when
black would not be asked to get back, brown could stick around,
yellow would be mellow, and white would embrace what was right.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was the only thing that followed him.
As an anti-war campaigner it was not a piece he liked, with all
that “bombs bursting in air” stuff. But it sounded better than ever
then. It was not the anthem that had changed; the country had
changed. Say amen! And amen! In the fierce cold of that January
day, hot tears coursed down his cheeks. 7Joseph Lowery, preacher and civil-rights campaigner, died
on March 27th, aged 98Justice like waters
Obituary Joseph Lowery