Recently. our son and his family came to visit us. One of the things we did during their visit was to take them to see the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. My preteen grandchildren were horrified and sickened by what they saw. They had learned in school of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King but they had no idea how bad things actually were at that time.
I told my grandchildren that what they saw at the Institute was true. I know because I was a a child and young teenager during the early part of the civil rights movement. Later, when I was a young adult, our church was split down the middle when we voted to accept for membership a black woman and her daughter. The sight of several respected church leaders rising to yell “No!” and “Hell, no!” lingers with me still. After about 200 of us stood and walked out, the new racially mixed church we started received weekly bomb threats for several years.
Since I believe that racism is totally incompatible with a declaration of faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:28), I was proud that my grandchildren have been raised without a hint of racism. We explained to them that things were much better now but that racism still existed. We also explained that as Christians they must never be a part of any racist activity and that they should never be afraid to oppose it when they see it. (2 Timothy 1:7)
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