REMEMBRANCE

Murky Beginnings

I was one of two children born to Carita Andromeda Churchville, an extraordinary woman who was intuitive, intelligent, independent-minded, indomitable and intimate with the Lord Jesus. My father was not (as I had naturally assumed for most of my life) John Elliott Churchville, Senior, but rather, James E. Kirkland, D.D., Pastor of Union Baptist Church in South Philadelphia—my mother explained that whenever asked what the D.D. meant, my father would grin and reply, “Donated Dignity.” I first learned from my mother who my real father was when I was an adult in my mid-40s. When I was a child, I remember attending Union Baptist Church and seeing Dr. Kirkland. And as a young adult, I remember having two brief meetings with him, without ever having a clue that we were in any way related. My mother, under the pretext of having me ask him to support my work at the Freedom Library, had set up the meetings so that he could see how I had turned out as an adult.
What sticks in my mind most about Union Baptist Church is being in Sunday School with other children who looked like me and seeing pictures of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man whom I was taught to revere as my savior.
Growing up, I was so impressed by not having a father or other significant male in my life (I was so young when my mother and the man I thought was my father were separated that I have no memory of who he was or what he was like), that I decided at the age of 12 that I would be both a committed and very present father in the lives of my future children. The issues raised by my early childhood experiences relating to my identity, to my maleness, and to the essence of fatherhood would be driving forces and recurrent themes throughout my life.
Although my sister, Eileen, and I were only one year in age apart, my closest connection was with my mother. She was a warm, wise and wonderful woman who was sensitive, open, and always eager to add to her learning. Well-read with a high school diploma, but having the wit and vocabulary of an Ivy League college graduate, my mother was a musician, teacher, choral director and writer.
I have many memories of our countless “deep” conversations around the breakfast, lunch and dinner table related to the issues of the day—particularly my concern as a teenager that the church was “gutless,” irrelevant and, indeed, as Chairman Mao Tse Tung had observed, “the opiate of the masses.” My mother never defended the church: she always lifted up her personal relationship with Jesus. She would ask me whether I found fault with Jesus as a person. I never could. Because of her committed life, her honesty—she was never an apologist for slavery, discrimination, outrageous atrocities, wars and other historic evils committed by Christians who claimed they were led by God—and her concern for social justice, I loved her without measure and respected her spiritual convictions and personal relationship with Jesus, although I wanted no part of either.

Growing Up Absurd

As a child, I attended public schools, and encountered my first experience of discrimination in the Philadelphia Public School System. Because of an extreme case of myopia, I attended a special program for the visually handicapped, known as “Sight-Saving” within the Philadelphia Public School System, from the first through the eighth grades.
The program was operated out of a “Regular” school, but “Sight-Saving” students were segregated from “Regular” students: there was a “Regular” lunch room and a “Sight-Saving” lunch room; a “Regular” safety patrol and a “Sight-Saving” safety patrol; but, worst of all, a “Sight-Saver” had no rights that a “Regular” was bound to respect. For example, “Regular” safeties could report on or make comments to “Sight-Savers” who disobeyed school rules. “Sight-Saver” safeties—I was one of these—could only police other “Sight-Savers” and any deviation from this norm was met with stern displeasure from the school administration.
Perhaps my first role as activist began when I started to complain about the unfair treatment we “Sight-Savers” were getting. One of my teachers suggested that I get on the school's student council and try to do something about the problem there. Although I followed her advice, it didn't take long for me to learn that student council was not about dealing with substance (facilitating institutional change) but, rather, about perfecting form (legitimizing the status quo).
Anyway, my efforts were not completely in vain: I managed to become the school's first “Sight-Saver” president. And, quite interestingly, the issue of the unfair treatment of “Sight-Savers” somehow got lost in the shuffle. My personal achievement neither solved nor addressed the problem of fundamental unfairness to the “Sight-Savers.” But, it did obscure the problem's reality. After all, I chose to believe that one plus one equals four: if a “Sight-Saver” is president of a “Regular” school's student council, then that fact, alone, is at least clear and convincing evidence (if not beyond a reasonable doubt) that it is not possible for that school to support or foster a climate of fundamental unfairness to “Sight-Savers.” Of such dubious, fallacious logic is an integrationist and capitalist apologist born.
What really happened was that I was co-opted by the student council system because I lost my “Sight-Saver” group identity, focus and orientation when my personal fortunes propelled me into a respected position among the “Regulars”: “Regulars” who were the very beneficiaries of the system of unfairness to the “Sight-Savers.” In short, I sold out cheap and bought into the myth that my personal accomplishment had advanced the cause of my “Sight-Saver” group.
This critical analysis may seem a bit harsh on a fifth-grader's behavior, but it is precisely such an analysis that will help me to understand that whether I am in fifth grade or at my seventieth birthday party, I have neither identity nor purpose, neither belongingness nor accomplishment that transcends my connection to my group and its social condition—I am, principally and primarily, because my group is.