In the civil rights movement...
Illustration
In the civil rights movement of the 1960s, one of the key strategies of empowerment for southern African-Americans was voter registration. Many from the South as well as from the North converged on southern counties and parishes to encourage and facilitate local blacks to become registered voters. It was not uncommon for some of these workers to be killed by whites who did not want to enfranchise what in some areas was the majority race. One such worker who lost his life in Mississippi in this cause was Herbert Lee. He has been immortalized in a song that for Mississippi has the same renown as "We Shall Overcome" has for the national movement. Here are the words of the last verse:
We have hung our head and cried,
Cried out for those like Lee who died
Died for you and died for me,
Died for the cause of equality,
But we will never turn back
Until we've all been free
And we have equality, and we have equality.
This sentiment, in a small, human way echoes what Jesus has done on a far grander scale. If we can get a sense of the human will ready to die for another, it can be a stepping stone to understand more deeply the divine will to suffer and die "once for all."
We have hung our head and cried,
Cried out for those like Lee who died
Died for you and died for me,
Died for the cause of equality,
But we will never turn back
Until we've all been free
And we have equality, and we have equality.
This sentiment, in a small, human way echoes what Jesus has done on a far grander scale. If we can get a sense of the human will ready to die for another, it can be a stepping stone to understand more deeply the divine will to suffer and die "once for all."
