Gulf Pine Catholic

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Gulf Pine Catholic
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July 28, 2017
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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