When in the course of human events…

We gather here in the course of our human event to celebrate and commemorate the 65th anniversary of the historic student strike at Robert Russa Moton High School.

In the language of Abraham Lincoln — three score and five years ago.

That is enough. But that is not all.

We are here to celebrate and commemorate the 65th anniversary of the birth of the modern civil rights movement in that strike against separate and unequal schools for African Americans.

Three score and five years ago.

And that is enough. But that is not all.

The students’ action, led by Barbara Johns, began its journey across this nation more than four years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of an Alabama bus.

Three score and five years ago.

That is enough. But that is not all.

We are here to celebrate and commemorate the 65th anniversary of what became the key component, providing the most plaintiffs, of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case and United States Supreme Court decision three years later.

It is known as Brown, rather than the landmark Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County decision ending segregation in public schools, only because the court went in alphabetical order. B comes before D, but Brown is not more important than Davis.

Three score and five years ago.

That is enough. But that is not all.

Two hundred and 40 years ago, the fathers of this nation brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, Lincoln said during his Gettysburg Address, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

That was all. And that was not enough.

The Declaration of Independence did assert that all men are created equal but what the signers really meant was that a certain, and quite small, percentage of wealthy white men, in their blind eyes, were created equal.

Everybody else was on their own. And so many of them were bound in the chains of slavery, then freed from those shackles to find the audacity of their hope fettered by Jim Crow segregation.

Separate and unequal liberty. Separate and unequal justice. Separate and unequal schools.

Three score and five years ago, beginning on April 23, 1951, Barbara Johns, her classmates and their families, powerfully led by the Reverend L. Francis Griffin, brought forth on this continent a movement that demanded that the founding fathers, with their high and mighty words of nation-creation, meant what they said.

And, by doing so, all them became founding fathers, all of them became founding mothers, all of them became founding brothers and founding sisters.

The history books should record Madison, Jefferson, Griffin and Johns as among the founders of our nation. So, too, are Johns’ classmates, the plaintiffs in the Davis case and their families.

The Declaration of Independence famously declared “when in the course of human events.”

On April 23, 1951, this nation’s human event was ongoing. We are still in the course of our human event today. We will still be in the course of our human event tomorrow. Look around the country. There’s a whole lot founding that still needs doing.

America had always talked a good game during the 18th Century and the so-called Age of Enlightenment, but America couldn’t walk that talk even one single solitary mile without falling down flat on its liberty and justice for all face.

America set the bar high, but had a very hard time reaching it unless that America happened to be wealthy, happened to be white and happened to be male.

What part of “all” did America not understand? The answer, of course, is just about all of it.

Thankfully, throughout our nation’s history, people like Barbara Johns and her classmates and Rev. L. Francis Griffin and the Davis plaintiffs from Prince Edward County, along with their families, have taken America’s founding words at face value.

They have rightfully seen their own reflection in the promise of equality, the promise of freedom and the promise of justice for all, then grabbed hold of that high bar and raised the rest of the nation up with them.

They put something real into the lofty rhetoric of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Madison’s Constitution. They put themselves. That’s as real as it gets.

That is what began on April 23, 1951. That is what continues today.

We honor Barbara Johns, a founding mother of this nation.

We honor the Rev. L. Francis Griffin, a founding father of this nation.

We honor Johns’ classmates, the Davis plaintiffs and their families.

But the honor doesn’t end when we leave this sacred space.

The honor really just begins when the doors close behind us.

Be founders, I believe Barbara Johns and Rev. Griffin would tell us.

Continue lifting each other, lifting this community, lifting the state and the nation. Change the world one moment, one person at a time.

Be founding mothers and fathers, founding sisters and brothers in the course of our human event.

Doing so is how we ensure that this nation, under God, shall have a continuous new birth of freedom and that government of all of the people, by all of the people, for all of the people shall not perish from the earth.

We haven’t finished giving birth to this nation yet. We need to give it our own hands and feet, our own wrinkles and veins, our own heart and soul.

That is what we need to do to make the self-perpetuated myth of America fully real for all.

Like Barbara Johns and Rev. L. Francis Griffin gave themselves.

Just as her classmates did. Just as the Davis plaintiffs and their families did.

That is enough, but even that is not all.

For there are others, too, we celebrate and commemorate here today.

The children of this community who were locked out of school by Massive Resistance. The children who were wounded.

Massive Resistance against not only the Brown decision but Massive Resistance against the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Massive Resistance for five barbed wire years against the true soul of America.

We honor every child who was locked out of school and we hold this truth to be self-evident — every day they were denied a public education was combat duty in the war for the very future of liberty and justice for all in the United States of America.

Combat duty in defense of the Constitution. Combat duty in the course of our human event to protect the true soul of America.

They were on the front lines of this war — the Brown decision ruled that public schools must be integrated. Fine, declared Prince Edward County’s white power structure, then we shall shut down our public school system.

The fate of Brown across the country was in grave peril. As were other attempts to integrate society. Make no mistake, leaders on both sides of this war, here and across the nation, knew it.  If Prince Edward County won, any locality could have defied Brown by closing its public schools. So much was at stake.

In 1964 — two score and 12 years ago — the Supreme Court’s Griffin v. School Board of Prince Edward County decision affirmed the Constitutional right of every child in America to public education in integrated schools. The Griffin decision ensured the Brown decision would be the law of the land everywhere in this nation.

So much was at stake and so much was won. But at a cost. At such a cost in this community.

There were so many Purple Hearts among those children. So many Purple Hearts among the adults they became. So many Purple Hearts who, though they have departed this world for the full embrace of God’s grace, have surely left the imprint of their victorious lives — their victorious lives—upon this world.

And so many Purple Hearts, as well, still beating with us today, their blood coursing through this community’s veins and out across county lines, out across state lines. North. South. East. And West. From sea to shining sea.

So many Purple Hearts among those founders of our nation. Founding fathers, founding mothers, founding brothers and founding sisters.

Gathered in this sacred space, we celebrate and commemorate them, too.

Their Purple Hearts were not in vain. Theirs was the victory for us all. The victory of Barbara Johns and Rev. L Francis Griffin. A victory for endless generations of Americans across every score of years, a victory that turned darkness into light.

With that wondrous truth, and in that wondrous spirit — in the course of our human event — we are called to worship.

Former Farmville Herald editor Ken Woodley delivered the preceding remarks as the call to worship during Sunday’s Johns-Griffin Day Service at First Baptist Church that celebrated the 65th anniversary of the historic student strike at Robert Russa Moton High School. Woodley, who was master of ceremonies for the event, has just finished writing a book on the 2003-2004 Brown Scholarship Crusade through the General Assembly, “Gather Your Light: Overcoming The Shadow Of Massive Resistance And Healing The Wounds Of Race In America.”