trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

I encourage you to read an essential book this summer, “Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church  Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness” by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at The Charleston Post and Courier Jennifer Berry Hawes.

The book won the award to which I aspire, The Christopher Award that goes out to Artists whose works “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”

This book does just that.

As do all great journalists, JBH takes us into the who, what, when, where and how of the story. She takes extra care to help us ask the question why this happened and still happens in America today.

As she took me by the hand and led me into the story, I found myself many times with a lump in my throat and a tear on my cheek.

A few years ago, before the massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME Church, I wrote a poem after I visited the Holy City. 

It asks some of the same questions JBH asks of us.

The Holy City

Once

I walked along 

Queen Street 

into the middle 

of downtown Charleston 

to the waterfront park 

at the harbor.  

As I ambled 

the cobbled street 

past Poogan's Porch, 

Mother Emmanuel,

and Meeting Street 

I thought 

about the Civil Rights history 

of the holy city.  

I saw tourists huddled 

around tour guides,

hearing stories 

of the places 

and people 

of the old city.

Patrons of pubs wobbled

with their arms around each other, 

enjoying their pints of beer,

their glasses of wine.

Reservers of restaurant tables huddled

in small groups together,

waiting for their shrimp and grits,

their low country boil.

A young black man sat 

by himself

on top of a table 

on the harbor walkway,

weaving flowers and crosses 

out of sweet grass 

in the way 

of his Gullah ancestors.

I wondered 

that not so long ago,

Thurgood Marshall argued

the case 

of Briggs v. Elliott 

in the federal courthouse 

in Charleston,

a case 

that would evolve 

into Brown v. Board of Education 

of Topeka, Kansas.

I wondered 

that not so long ago,

Judge J. Waties Waring heard

Marshall’s plea

and was despised 

by the high society folk 

of the city 

and was offered 

a one way train ticket 

out of the state 

by the South Carolina legislature.  

Do I still ask the old questions - 

What does it mean to be human?  

How can we weave a more human world 

for everyone?  

I wonder.  

I breathe.

I hope.