My friend Tom Shaw posted an excellent comment on yesterday’s blog:

[quoting yesterday’s blog] “Just because anarchists, ‘Communists,’ etc., are using the discontent as an opportunity to escalate and destabilize, doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate grievances.” Being a Viet Nam Era veteran I hear echos… It is too easy to be distracted or to choose to focus on ‘law & order’ (the 1960s Domino Theory) and thereby not deal with the fundamental issues. Injustice exists because people do not put themselves at risk to correct it. Am I willing to be a pariah on the police force, in my neighborhood or wherever? Will I stand up and say “I’m calling you out; This needs to stop!” -Tom Shaw, Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 2020

I just read an article that referred to the integrating of the New Orleans schools in 1960 and about Dr. Robert Coles, a Harvard psychiatrist who ended up being involved with the family of Ruby Bridges, the lone black girl who attended an all-white elementary school. Dr. Coles wrote a provocative essay on his experience with Ruby Bridges, and there is a lot of food for thought. I think we’ll be here for a couple days: please stay with me. Here’s part of the opening of Dr. Coles’ essay:

Outside the Frantz [Elementary School in New Orleas] I saw a mob of people standing and screaming. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and I realized they were waiting for something. I asked one of the people what was happening. He answered, “She’s coming out in half an hour.” I said, “Who’s she?” And then I heard all the language about who she was–all the cuss words and the foul language. I decided to stay and watch… Soon, out of the Frantz school came a little girl, Ruby Bridges. And beside her were federal marshals. She came out and the people started in. They called her this and they called her that. They brandished their fists. They told her she was going to die and they were going to kill her. I waited when she left in a car, and I wondered who was going to come out of that school next. But then I found out no one else was in the school. The school had been totally boycotted by the white population. So here was a little black child who was going to an American elementary school all by herself in the fall of 1960. – Dr. Robert Coles, “The Inexplicable Prayers of Ruby Bridges”

My question for today is, where were the people who were willing to call out this injustice? At the beginning ALL the white families pulled their kids out of that school. 50 – 75 people per day came to taunt and threaten a 6-year-old girl. Even if you believed that integration was wrong or federal interference was wrong, is that a reason to take your frustrations out on a 6-year-old?

There are other lessons from this story. Stay tuned.

You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. (Exodus 23.2, NKJV)

[Jesus said, ] “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7.12, NLT)