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Gulf Pine Catholic

July 28, 2017

3

Gulf

Pine

Catholic

(ISSN No. 0746-3804)

July 28, 2017

Volume 34, Issue 24

The

GULF PINE CATHOLIC

,

published every other week, is an

official publication of

the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi.

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Bishop Braxton: Justice, love must be ‘written in

our hearts’ and daily actions

BY JEAN GONZALEZ

Catholic News Service

ORLANDO, FL (CNS) -- In 1955 in

Mississippi, a white woman lied and told

her husband that Emmett Till, a black teen,

flirted with her in the grocery story. In re-

taliation, her husband and another man kid-

napped, beat, shot and lynched the youth.

His body was found three days after his

murder and returned to his native Chica-

go. His mother had an open casket for the

14-year-old’s funeral, where tens of thou-

sands visited his body. Among them were

an 11-year-old Edward Braxton, his brother,

Lawrence, and his uncle, Ellis. They waited

two hours in line to view the body.

“I peered into the glass coffin and beheld

the terrifying remains of a vicious murder,”

said the now 73-year-old bishop of Bel-

leville, Illinois. “He did not look like a hu-

man being. Emmett’s mother was sitting in

a chair, uncontrollable crying, saying, ‘My

baby. My baby. Why? Why did I send him

down South?’ I looked into her red-rimmed

eyes not knowing what to say.”

Uncle Ellis repeatedly told his nephews,

“I don’t want you ever to forget this night.”

And Bishop Braxton never did. Emmett’s

killers were never convicted of murder. And

when he visited the National Museum of Af-

rican American History and Culture, he was

transported to that day in 1955.

“For me personally, the most devastating

experience in the history gallery was com-

ing face-to-face with the original coffin of

dear Emmett Till, which I had not seen in

60 years,” Bishop Braxton said during his

keynote address July 8 at the National Black

Catholic Congress in Orlando, adding that

“dear Emmett Till” was one of 3,446 Afri-

can-Americans lynched between 1882 and

1968.

“I have never forgotten (my uncle’s)

words. I have never forgotten the unrecog-

nizable bloated, totally mutilated face behind

the glass in that coffin. ... Seeing that coffin

again brought it back again,” he said.

That was only one piece of history at the

museum that registered great emotions for

the bishop, who has written extensively on

the racial divide in America from a theologi-

cal and pastoral perspective.

Among his writings are two pastoral let-

ters,

“The Racial Divide in the United States:

A Reflection for the World Day of Peace

2015”

and

“The Catholic Church and the

Black Lives Matter Movement: The Racial

Bishop Edward K.

Braxton of Belleville,

Ill., addresses more

than 2,000 delegates

July 8 during the

12th National Black

Catholic Congress

in Orlando, Fla. The

theme of the congress

was drawn from words

of the prophet Micah:

“The Spirit of the Lord

is upon me: Act justly,

love goodness and walk

humbly.”

CNS photo/Jean Gonzalez,

Florida Catholic

Divide in the United States

Revisited,”

issued in 2016.

In his congress address,

he described how the Na-

tional Museum of African

American History and Cul-

ture museum is in eyeshot

of the monument to George

Washington and the me-

morial to Thomas Jeffer-

son, both of whom owned

“enslaved free human be-

ings.” Not too far away are

the Capitol and the White

House, both built in part by

“enslaved free human be-

ings,” as he put it.

The history presented at

the museum is not pretty but so important,

and he urged everyone to visit the museum,

especially the lower levels.

“I realized 60 percent of the museum is

actually underground and it is underground

deliberately because the architect wanted to

give you the feeling that you were ... maybe

inside a slave ship crowded with very little

room to move about,” Bishop Braxton said.

“The images in the museum reminded me

of what happened to free human beings as

they crossed the Atlantic in the Middle Pas-

sage,” he continued. “Human beings chained

side by side on top of one another in un-

speakable squalor, cramped in darkness. ...

An estimated 2 million people lost their lives

during the Middle Passage of this African

holocaust.”

In January, he wrote an essay on the mu-

seum titled “

We, Too, Sing ‘America’: The

Catholic Church and the Museum of African

American History and Culture.”

Although he recognized the museum as

an outstanding achievement, Bishop Braxton

in his remarks to the congress lamented the

lack of references there to leading African-

American Catholics such as Father Augustus

Tolton, the Sisters of the Holy Family, Sister

Henriette Delille, Father Pierre Toussaint,

Mother Mary Lange, or Sister Thea Bowman

at the museum. There are nearly 68 million

Catholics in United States, but only 2.9 mil-

lion are black.

“These absences reminded me that Afri-

can-American Catholics then and now were

already invisible in the larger influential

black church,” Bishop Braxton said. “At the

same time, African-Americans were and re-

main all but invisible in the larger influen-

tial and largely European-American Catholic

Church.”

The bishop told congress attendees they

could all do something to know their own

history and to be engaged in the community.

They must exercise their rights to vote, par-

ticipate in public life, run for public life, use

resources that develop discussion about the

racial divide, inspire young people to be-

come involved.

“I give you these imperatives: Listen,

learn, think, act and pray,” he said. “African-

American Catholics need to get into real

conversations with others in the community

about this history so we can grow by means

of knowledge.”

Before closing, Bishop Braxton brought

up a theme that he has “raised for years, to no

avail” -- that “people of color should no lon-

ger accept the designation of African-Amer-

icans as a minority. We are not a minority;

we are Americans.” Referencing the words

of the poet Langston Hughes, “We, too, sing

America.”

“The word minority group is a term used

to divide, not to unite,” he said. “The God

who is God has no color, has no race, has di-

mensionality. It is so important that we de-

pict the universality of the mission of God,

showing diversity of the city of the kingdom

of God.”

In his remarks, Bishop Braxton also

spoke about the prophet Micah, known as

the prophet of social justice, whose warnings

and criticism of political corruption and urg-

ing of caring for the poor still ring true 2,700

years later. A passage by Micah provided

the theme of the congress: “The Spirit of the

Lord is upon me: Act justly, love goodness

and walk humbly.”

SEE ORLANDO BRAXTON, PAGE 7