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Born into Jim Crow, she lived to witness DEI debates

Born into Jim Crow, she lived to witness DEI debates

Lexie Webster died in her sleep June 24. The simple recording of that date, in this newspaper and as a matter of public record, is a final testament to a life's journey from marginalization to dignity.
Webster was born June 20, 1929, a time when no White person could be bothered to take notice of a Black baby entering American society.
"Racial discrimination shaped my earliest days," Webster wrote in a 28-page reflection on her life, which she updated just days before her death. "My mother had no doctor or midwife to assist her, and when it came time to obtain my birth certificate, a physician wouldn't issue one until five days after my actual birth."
As Webster grew up, she made people notice. Her five-octave voice range. Her college degree at age 20. Her sip at the "White's Only" drinking fountain. Her home purchase in a White Indianapolis neighborhood. Her decades-long career as an Indianapolis Public Schools teacher. Her marriage — a "tapestry woven with ups and downs," as she put it — to Russell Webster, a notable jazz musician, who died in 2007.
Webster lived a life that was not afforded to Black women born 96 years ago. She did it by bearing the psychological burden of entering places where she was not welcome and refusing to leave.
An irony of Webster's life is that she lived long enough to follow the contemporary debates over diversity, equity and inclusion that treated her existence as a historic artifact.
Webster had first-hand experiences with policies and prejudices limiting where she could attend school, work, dine out and live. Yet, in recent months, conservatives have upended society over wokeness fatigue, a view that racial barriers and discrimination occurred much too long ago to hold relevance.
"She could see the ludicrous hypocrisy and people wanting to blame planes coming down on (DEI)," Kym Webster, Lexie's daughter and one of five children, told me. "It really maddened her, because the only thing standing between a Black person with an education and a determination to be successful are opportunities. If you deny them opportunities to display that excellence, it's kind of like cutting off a plant at its roots before it even has a chance to show you that it's a strong tree."
Webster's excellence emerged in the context of societally imposed limitations. She graduated early from Crispus Attucks High School and went to Knoxville College, a historically Black college, where she sang on the radio with the choir and studied education.
After college, Webster worked for 10 years at an Indianapolis jewelry store where, she said, she was only allowed to handle repairs and engravings in the back, where she couldn't be seen by White customers. Webster began a 36-year teaching career with IPS in 1963, eventually completing a master's degree in elementary education from Indiana University, a "milestone that filled me with quiet pride."
More often, Webster exhibited quiet defiance, pushing back against the constraints society placed on her.
Webster's memoir recounts the constant costs of insisting on her self-worth.
There was the time she rode a Greyhound bus in 1947. A driver told her to sit in the back, but all the rear seats were occupied.
"I refused to stand in the aisle like some second-class citizen," Webster wrote. "His solution? Stop the bus entirely, leaving me to face the glares of impatient passengers. The law was on my side — interstate buses weren't supposed to enforce segregation — but law and justice often travel separate roads."
In a "curious and bold" outing with friends during college, Webster decided to drink from a White fountain "just to see if the water tastes different." Her takeaway? "Tastes like water to me."
Pushing boundaries led her to break down barriers — often only to see new ones erected.
Webster's family became the first Black homeowners on their block in Mapleton-Fall Creek in 1963, but only after two sellers refused to accept their offers.
"The third, a man who supported Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington, welcomed us as buyers," Webster wrote.
Others did not.
"Stockade fences went up on either side of our house, and most (neighbors) kept their distance."
Kym Webster, who was a toddler when they moved into that house, grew up with fear of making a wrong move.
"We were very, very careful not to allow a ball or anything to roll into a neighbor's yard," she told me.
Kym Webster recalls being the only Black family on the block until the 1990s. Eventually, her mother wrote, "we built bridges."
The Websters were a power couple of sorts, with Lexie active in opera circles and Russell being part of the Indiana Avenue jazz legacy. Russell was known as the "Whistling Postman." Lexie discussed her husband's music career in a remarkably sharp and vibrant WFYI interview at age 94.
Lexie was at least equally accomplished. Her brief memoir is steeped in gratitude, yet conveys a determination to live an exceptional life.
"I've always believed in the wisdom of generational wealth — holding on to what's ours so that it can benefit those who come after us," she wrote.
Webster secured that wealth. Not only in terms of personal possessions, but also by breaking down racial barriers in everyday settings and making the path easier for others. She didn't necessarily record any historic firsts, beyond integrating Mapleton-Fall Creek, but she was part of a generation of Black Americans who demanded to be fully American in public, education, culture and the workplace.
While DEI critics argue the U.S. achieved equality long ago, Lexie's life story proves how recently those barriers stood — and how much courage it took to tear them down.
"If you yourself have never victimized anyone in that way, and you don't have a direct knowledge of someone who has, it's like it gives you license to believe it never has existed, or that the claims are very much exaggerated," Kym told me.
The toll of persistence weighs heavily on Webster's writing — hard-earned words that were completed days, not decades, ago. Yet, through each story of struggle, Webster also gives the sense that she lived 96 years of pure delight.
A child of Jim Crow America, whose birth didn't warrant the attention of a doctor, spent her final days in the neighborhood that once tried to shut her out. The scars of segregation remained on her heart. But they didn't define her.
"I'm surrounded," Webster wrote, "by neighbors who care, family who love fiercely and a world that, despite its challenges, still holds so much beauty."
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The Americans More Likely To Believe In Ghosts

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I've coached kids who got into Harvard, Stanford and Princeton—I recommend 5 'essential' books for raising successful kids

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When You Don't Look Like Anything
When You Don't Look Like Anything

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When You Don't Look Like Anything

1950–73: 'Don't Stare' There was ambivalence about performers in my family. Part of this was caused by middle-class-Negro hypervigilance about drawing attention, especially bad attention. I still get nervous when children are out of control in public. Growing up in 1960s Baltimore, my siblings and I did not dare be out of control in public. In our wildest dreams we could not have imagined a meltdown in, say, Hutzler's department store, where colored people were not allowed to try on clothes, or to return items that didn't work out. When my aunt Esther and I went shopping, she'd throw me her sit-up-straight eye. As Baltimore began to be less segregated, she went to exceptionally fancy stores. I remember sitting in a chic, hushed fur salon, straining not to do anything that would draw attention to myself as she tried on a mink stole. My inhibitions weren't only about race; they were also about sin. My maternal grandmother was a Billy Graham–loving evangelical Christian. 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Sweetheart and Eddie, her third or fourth husband, picked me up at the Greyhound station. Eddie, Chinese American, was a former chef who spoiled us nightly with delicious meals. His English appeared to be minimal, but it was hard to tell, because Auntie, now 80, and still sparkling, was a nonstop raconteur. The tenant in Auntie's basement apartment had just left, so I took it, for $75 a month. I was the least likely person to wind up in a conservatory to study acting. I had no idea that people actually 'studied' acting in the way that was unfolding in front of me. My classmates pirouetted down the hallways of the school. They sang Broadway tunes as they strode up and down the hills of San Francisco. From the March 2024 issue: How a playwright became one of the most incisive social critics of our time One evening when I came home from acting class, Sweetheart handed me a letter from Grandma, who by then had been overtaken by dementia. 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I was one with it all. The next morning, my forehead was on fire. 'Can a performance give you the flu?' I asked our yoga teacher. She assured me that all was well. I had no disease. My chakras were opening and Beethoven was the cause. 1976: 'You Don't Look Like Anything' The acting class turned into a three-year commitment at the American Conservatory Theater, where I completed an M.F.A. in acting. When you finished conservatory and hit the road, your first stop was an agent's office. I walked into the office of an agent who had a deal to meet the few of us who knew nothing about the business. I'd barely sat down on the couch when she stated perfunctorily: 'I won't be able to send you out.' Long pause. 'You will antagonize my clients.' 'Antagonize?' 'You don't look like anything.' Another long pause. 'Will you go as Black or white?' This is when I finally got it, about the staring. Stop looking at them. Why are you so interested in them? They are not interested in you. About 20 years ago, I met a bull rider from Shoshone, Idaho, named Brent Williams. Here's a photo of him, by the great photographer Diana Walker. We was in West Jordan, Utah. And I had this bull shove my face right into the metal chutes. Some buddies drove me to the hospital. Took, like, five hours to sew me up. When they straightened my nose, I had to be at a rodeo that night. I didn't really wanna go under the anesthesia, or however you say that word. So I told 'em just to do it without it. They shove these two rods up your nose, and work their way up, and that straightens your nose all up. Felt like they was shoving it clear through my brains and it was gonna come out the top of my head. And everyone that saw it, they said it should have killed me. Shove my face right into the metal chutes: Over the past two decades, I've said those words thousands of times. But it wasn't until a few months ago that Brent's words knocked on the door of my subconscious and released a memory into full consciousness: 'You don't look like anything.' Long pause. 'Will you go as Black or white?' A Shoshone bull rider gave me the words to express what I'd felt on that agent's couch. The casting couch holds many different kinds of offenses. 1977: New Rhythms, New Intentions A simple A-frame building with a huge wraparound porch in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe, California, was the headquarters of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a week-long conference where wannabe writers like me enjoyed tutorials with big shots: poets, novelists, screenwriters, directors. The place was peppered with East Coast literati, but the vibe wasn't as pretentious as a certain East Coast theater workshop I'd attended where one of the directors walked around with a cigarette holder and a coat over his shoulders. No need to genuflect to Frank Pierson, who'd won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Dog Day Afternoon and been nominated for another, for Cool Hand Luke. No hush fell when Sam Shepard ambled into the beat-up saloon, and made his way to the pool table. I was in the hang on the wraparound porch when a car full of poet-teachers crossed the field and stopped in front of us. A rail-thin poet-teacher stepped out. He looked like a monk who'd been on a month-long fast. The guy had presence. He gave a public reading. I sat in the front row—nothing between us but a music stand. One of his poems was quite brief but, like Beethoven's 'Ode,' it caused a physical reaction. The next morning, all my muscles were sore, as if I'd just done a massive full-body workout or been beat up. Or was it the flu? At the welcome cocktail party that night, I walked right up to the poet and told him that I'd woken up with aching muscles and that I thought his poem was the cause. His face lit up. 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John Chapman, the drama critic for the New York Daily News, wrote that he has great respect for your play, but he feels that part of the acclaim may be a sentimental reaction—an admirable 'gesture,' I think is the way that he put it—to the fact that you are a Negro, and one of the few Negroes ever to have written a good Broadway play. Lorraine Hansberry: I've heard this alluded to in other ways—I didn't see Mr. Chapman's piece. I would imagine that if I were given the award because they wanted to give it to a Negro, it'd be the first time in the history of this country that anyone had ever been given anything for being a Negro. I don't think it's a very complimentary assessment of an honest piece of a work. Or of his colleagues' intent. Wallace: Well, let me quote him. He said, 'If one sets aside the one unusual fact that it is a Negro work, A Raisin in the Sun becomes no more than a solid and enjoyable commercial play.' Hansberry: Well, I've heard this said, too. I don't know quite what people mean. If they are trying honestly to analyze a play, dramaturgically, there's no such assessment; you can't say that if you take away the American character of something then it just becomes, you know, something else … The Negro character of these people is intrinsic to the play; it's important to it. If it's a good play, it's good with that. Wallace: Is it fair to say that even in proportion, very few Negroes have distinguished themselves … as playwrights, novelists, and poets? … How come? Hansberry: Whether they've distinguished themselves is kind of difficult to discuss because we always have to keep in mind the circumstances and the framework that Negroes do anything in America—which of course is a hostile circumstance. We've been writing poetry since, you know, the 17th century in this country, been writing plays that simply never see the light of day, because the circumstance, as I say, is hostile. Wallce: But the same is not true in the case of Negro athletes, Negro entertainers. Hansberry: Yes, well— Wallace: I think in proportion there are more of them who become hugely successful. Hansberry: Yes, of course, because one of the features of American racism is that it has a particular place where it allows Negroes to express themselves! We're not very warm to the idea of Negro intellectual exploration of any kind in this country. We presume, or at least the racists do—not me—that it's all right to display physical or musical or other features like that, but don't go writing and don't go trying to suggest that anything cerebral is within our sphere, you see … There're any number of professional playwrights who simply don't get their scripts read by Broadway producers. So I'd be the last person to say that it's because they write poorly. An awful lot of poor scripts get to Broadway and, uh, I don't think that's the reason why theirs don't. Wallace: What is the reason why theirs don't? Hansberry: Racial discrimination in the industry, of course. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner: The theater world has never understood Lorraine Hansberry The relationship between the gatekeepers and those of us who do not fit their picture depends on, to use Miss Hansberry's word, circumstances. In 1993, 34 years after that recording was made, Toni Morrison would win the Nobel Prize. This would change how Black-women writers and intellectuals are regarded, and significantly open up opportunities for them. It did for me. 1979: Chasing That Which Is Not Me While still at acting school, I'd sought new dramatic forms. At that time, the American playwrights who were getting their work produced were white heterosexual-presenting males. Like others across the country, but not so many at my conservatory, I thought that our art form could benefit from fewer stereotypes, and from greater particularity, more physical details in characters who lived on our stages. I also thought the sonic life of the theater could use new rhythms, new intentions—like when bebop emerged on the jazz scene. I drew inspiration from something my grandfather used to say when we were kids: 'If you say a word often enough, it becomes you.' In 1979, I set out with a tape recorder to record unique voices, unique stories, with the intention of becoming American word for word. My tape recorder was soon an appendage. I would interview people around the country, especially in moments of disruption and discord. It was in those moments that people spoke in sometimes-profound ways—as they tried to make sense out of disarray, tried to put together the exploded fragments of assumptions that follow catastrophe. This required chasing that which is not me. It was a chase that would never end. I called the overall project, which now includes about 18 plays (the first 12 never made it to major stages), ' On the Road: A Search for American Character.' It meant embodying the words of people who were very different from me and with whom I did not agree, and absorbing them into my heart. What have I learned after interviewing thousands of Americans? Most do believe 'you can make it if you try.' Even rebellion is a sign of belief in that credo. Why protest for fairness, equality, and dignity if you don't think those things can exist? The Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, a close comrade of Frantz Fanon, left revolution behind in favor of what he called the 'poetics of relation.' 'Sometimes,' Glissant wrote, 'by taking up the problems of the Other, it is possible to find oneself.' The not-me and the me are related. In my work, my goal was to get to us. April 12, 2015: 'Just a Glance' Freddie Gray is arrested and beaten. He dies in police custody. The beating is filmed. Riots explode in Baltimore. I interview the man who took the video, Kevin Moore: The screams was what woke me outta my sleep. So I jumped up and threw some clothes on and went out to see what was going on. And then I came out that way, and I'm like, 'Holy shit!' They had him all bent up and he was handcuffed and, like, face down on his stomach. But they had the heels of his feet, like, almost in his back? And he was handcuffed at the time. And they had the knee in the neck, and that pretty much explains the three cracked vertebrae and crushed larynx, 80 percent of his spinal cord being severed and stuff. And then when they picked him up, I had to zoom in to get a closer look at his face. You could see the pain in his face. On Mount Street, [they] pulled him out again! To put leg shackles on him. You put leg shackles on a man that could barely walk to the paddy wagon? Then you toss him in the back of the paddy wagon like a dead animal. You know what I'm saying? Then you don't even put a seat belt on him. So basically, he's handcuffed, shackled, sliding back and forth in a steel cage, basically. I was like, Man, somebody has to see this. You know what I mean? I have to film this. I just basically called every news station that I could and just got the video out there! I asked Moore what triggered the incident. Eye contact. That's how the officers, I guess, wrote the paperwork: that Freddie made eye contact. And he looked suspicious. Oh. 'And that gave us probable cause to' … do whatever. We know the truth, y'know what I'm saying? Just a glance. The eye-contact thing, it's like a trigger. That's all it takes here in Baltimore—just a glance. 'Just a glance.' Don't stare. Why are you so interested in those people? They are not interested in you. 2018: Brokenness and the Promise of Fairness I'm in Montgomery, Alabama, to do my pilgrimage to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice —commonly known as the 'lynching memorial.' While there I am going to interview Bryan Stevenson, its founder. From a distance, the memorial is beautiful and majestic. In close proximity to the columns that constitute the memorial, a story of terror unfolds. There are 800 steel columns, each representing a county. On the columns are etched the names of people who were lynched there. Here's a portion of what Stevenson told me: Some of these were what we call 'public-spectacle lynchings,' where thousands of people came downtown and watched Black men, women, and children being burned alive. Some of these lynchings are as recent as 1949, 1950. I had a case not that long ago where we tried to stop an execution. The man was scheduled to be executed in 30 days. And I learned that he suffered from intellectual disability. Our courts have banned the execution of people with intellectual disability. And so we went to the trial court and said, 'You can't execute him. He's intellectually disabled.' And the trial court said, 'Too late. You should have raised that years ago.' And I went to the state court, and they said, 'Too late.' The appeals court said, 'Too late.' The federal court said, 'Too late.' Every court I went to said, 'Too late.' And we went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they reviewed our motion, and about an hour before the scheduled execution, the clerk called me and said, 'Yeah, the Supreme Court's going to deny your motion. You're too late.' And I got on the phone with this man and I said, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't stop this execution.' He started to cry. It's literally 50 minutes before the execution, I'm holding the phone, and the man is just sobbing. And then he said, 'Please don't hang up. There's something important I have to say to you.' And he tried to say something to me, but in addition to being intellectually disabled, he stuttered when nervous. He was trying to say something, but he couldn't get his words out. Tears were just running down my face. And then he said to me: 'Mr. Stevenson, I want to thank you for representing me. I want to thank you for fighting for me.' The last thing he said to me was, 'Mr. Stevenson, I love you for trying to save my life.' He hung up the phone. They pulled him away. They strapped him to a gurney. They executed him. And I thought: I can't do this anymore. I just can't. Something about it just shattered me. And I was thinking about how broken he was, and I just couldn't understand: Why do we want to kill broken people? What is it about us that when we see brokenness, we get angry? All of my clients are broken people. I represent the broken. Everybody I represent has been broken by poverty or disability or addiction or racism. And then I realized that the system I work in is a broken system. And in that moment something said, You better think about why you do what you do if you're not gonna do it anymore. And it was in that moment that I realized why I do what I do. And it surprised me. I don't do what I do because I've been trained as a lawyer. I don't do what I do because it's about human rights. I don't do what I do because if I don't do it, no one will. I do what I do because I'm broken, too. It's in brokenness that we understand our need for grace, our need for mercy. Brokenness helps us appreciate justice. It's in brokenness that we begin to crave redemption. That we understand the power of recovery. It's the broken among us that actually can teach us what it means to be human. Because if you don't understand the ways in which you can be broken by poverty or neglect or abuse or violence or suffering or bigotry, then you don't recognize the urgency in overcoming poverty and abuse and neglect and bigotry. I even feel broken by this history. When I was a little boy, everybody had to get their polio shot. I was, like, 5. Black people had to go through the back door. So we line up out back. They gave all the shots to the white kids before they gave shots to the Black kids. They had little sugar cubes they were giving the white kids, and by the time they got to the Black kids, they ran out of sugar cubes. The nurses were tired. And they just had lost their capacity to be kind to these little children. And so they were grabbing these Black kids and giving them these needles. And my sister was in front of me, and when she was next, she was so terrified, she looked to my mother, and she said, 'Please, Mom. Please, please don't let them do this.' And they grabbed my sister, and they pulled her aside, and took the needle, and they jabbed it into her arm. And they pulled me aside, and they were about to jab me. And then all of a sudden I heard glass breaking: And my sweet, loving mother had gone over to a wall, picked up a table of beakers and glasses, and was slamming them against the wall. And she was screaming: 'This is not right! This is not right! Y'all should not have kept us out there all day! This is not right!' And the doctor came running in and said, 'Call the police.' And two Black ministers came running over and said, 'Please, doctor. Please, sir. Please don't call the police. We're sorry. We're gonna get her out of here.' One of the ministers fell to his knees. Was, like, just begging: 'Please, please. Please give the other kids their shot.' And he persuaded them not to call the police, and to give the other Black kids their shots. And so I got my polio shot. They didn't arrest my mom, which I was happy about. But you can't have a memory like that without it creating a kind of injury. A consciousness of hurt. That's what I mean when I say I'm broken, right? That consciousness of hurt creates a kind of anxiety that requires a response. I just think a lot of us were taught that you just have to find a way to silently live with your brokenness, with this injury, with that memory. And I don't think that's the way forward. I'm looking for ways to not be silent. Stevenson believes in the promise of treating humans with dignity, as expressed by a law that should keep an intellectually disabled human from being executed. Stevenson believed in that promise all the way up to 50 minutes before the scheduled execution, when the Supreme Court denied his final appeal. Which is when he realized that he works with broken people in broken systems where promises are broken. From the June 2024 issue: The lynching that sent my family north Stevenson's mother believed in the promise that she and her children should be treated equally. That's why she screamed, 'This is not right! This is not right!' When that promise was broken, his mother indicted the system. The preacher believed in the promise, which is why he got down on his knees and begged the doctor not to call the police and to give the other kids their shot. He surely knew that this promise was not yet realized in 1960s Delaware, where this scene took place—but he would not have begged if he did not believe that the promise of fairness was in sight. 2025: Errantry and Hope It's around broken promises that we have a chance at restoring, changing, improving. But of course we need a deep belief in the promise to do that. I am particularly interested in what happens to language when a promise is broken. Sometimes the shards make something intoxicating. Such an assemblage of broken shards can be found Atopolis: for Édouard Glissant, an extraordinary 2014 painting by the late African American artist Jack Whitten, which is being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art through August 2. Glissant, the Martinican poet and philosopher whose 'poetics of relation' I mentioned earlier, said: 'The thought of errantry is not apolitical nor is it inconsistent with the will to identity, which is, after all, nothing other than the search for a freedom within particular surroundings. One who is errant (who is no longer traveler, discoverer, or conqueror) strives to know the totality of the world yet already knows he will never accomplish this—and knows that is precisely where the threatened beauty of the world resides.' Whitten wrote the following about Atopolis: Elsewhere, Whitten wrote: 'Ever since white imperialist entrepreneurs forced us into slavery, Black identity has been linked to our not having a 'sense of place.' This 'sense of place' for us had to be created through hard work involving all of our faculties of being.' In America, that hard work has been done with courage by individuals who have, to some extent, found 'us' through: 1. Unique meetings of their 'me'-ness and their 'not me'–ness. (Sometimes there was bloodshed around that meeting.) 2. Recognizing when good intentions become bad intentions. 3. Practicing hospitality. 4. Manifesting grace. 5. Understanding that, as Senator Cory Booker once told me: 'Black folks have to resurrect hope every day.' Amazing Grace In 2015, I interviewed the late Congressman John Lewis, and then portrayed him in my play and film Notes From the Field. I been going back to Selma every year since 1965, to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that took place on March 7, 1965. But we usually stop in Birmingham for a day. And then we go to Montgomery for a day. And then we go to Selma. On one trip to Montgomery, we stopped at First Baptist Church, the church that was pastored by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. It's the same church where I met Dr. Martin Luther King and the Reverend Abernathy, in the spring of 1958. A young police officer—the chief—came to the church to speak on behalf of the mayor, who was not available. The church was full. Black. White. Latino. Asian American. Members of Congress. Staffers. Family members, children, and grandchildren. 'What happened in Montgomery 52 years ago durin' the Freedom Rides was not right,' the chief said. 'The police department didn't show up. They allowed an angry mob to come and beat you,' and he said, 'Congressman? I'm sorry for what happened. I want to apologize. This is not the Montgomery that we want Montgomery to be. This is not the police department that I want to be the chief of. Before any officers are hired,' he said, 'they go through trainin'. They have to study the life of Rosa Parks. The life of Martin Luther King Jr. They have to visit the historic sites of the movement. They have to know what happened in Birmingham, and what happened in Montgomery, and what happened in Selma.' He said, 'I want you to forgive us.' He said, 'To show the respect that I have for you and for the movement, I want to take off my badge and give it to you.' And the church was so quiet. No one sayin' a word. And I stood up to accept the badge. And I started cryin'. And everybody in the church started cryin'. And I said, 'Officer. Chief. I cannot accept your badge. I'm not worthy to accept your badge. [ Long pause.] Don't you need it?' He said, 'Congressman Lewis, I can get another one. I want you to have my badge!' And I took it. And I will hold on to it forever. But he hugged me. I hugged him. I cried some more. And you had Democrats and Republicans in the church. Cryin '. And his young deputy assistant—a young African American—was sittin' down. He couldn't stand. He cried so much, like a baby, really. It was the first time that a police chief in any city where I visited, or where I got arrested or beaten durin' the '60s, ever apologized. It was a moment of grace. It was a moment of reconciliation. The chief was very young—he was not even born 52 years ago. So he was offerin' an apology and to be forgiven on behalf of his associates, his colleagues of the past … For the police chief to come and apologize, to ask to be forgiven—it felt so good, and at the same time so freein' and liberatin'. I felt like, you know, I'm not worthy. You know, I'm just one. I'm just one of the many people who were beaten. It is amazing grace. You know the line in there, 'Saved a wretch like me?' In a sense, it's saying that we all have fallen short! 'Cause we all just tryin' to just make it! We all searching! As Dr. King said, we were out to redeem the soul of America. But we first have to redeem ourselves. This message—this act of grace, of the badge—says to me, 'Hold on.' And, 'Never give up. Never give in. Never lose faith. Keep the faith.' Keep the faith, yes. But don't look away.

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