My Dad and Martin Luther King – With Remembrance and Gratitude – Cynthia Holder Rich

Director’s Note: We had announced that the new season of ecclesio.com would debut on January 20, 2014.  This would have been our fourth year debuting the spring season on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  But the death of my father, the Rev. Dr. R. Ward Holder, on January 18 postponed that debut.  My mind is filled with thoughts of my Dad, his life and ministry.  Dr. King’s ministry was formational for my Dad’s – and for mine in turn.  Here, a grateful remembrance of them both, as we begin another year of conversations in this space.

My parents were married in 1957, and Dad entered seminary at Western (now Pittsburgh) Theological Seminary in 1959.  By that time, my parents were the parents of two daughters.  My father was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the United Presbyterian Church USA in 1962, taking his first call at a small church in Cincinnati, and my brother was born in 1963.

Meanwhile, change was in the air in the US, particularly around the issue of race and racial relationships.  By the time my parents were wed, the Montgomery bus boycotts had already achieved a greater level of equity and justice in that city, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been founded.  By 1961, freedom riders had begun their trek across the segregated south of the US.  The discourse at many seminaries was impacted in many ways by these events, and by the oratory and leadership of a Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., who had taken part in the development of many of these events and more.

My father felt a strong and urgent call to go south and join the freedom riders during his seminary years and for some years after.  To his everlasting regret, he did not accept this call.  As the parent of three young children, he was afraid of what would happen to his family if he did not come back.  Freedom riders and their buses were often attacked, sustaining injury for many and death for some.  He was afraid, he stated in later years, and so he did not go.

Though he did not join the Freedom Rides, he and my mother were deeply influenced in their understanding and practice of Christian faith by the ministry of Dr. King.  Both of them had experienced racist attitudes in their families of origin and had felt, even as children, that these were wrong and offensive to God.  As a young married couple in ministry, they committed themselves to being about racial equity and supporting racial reconciliation, particularly in the church.  As I became active in ministry in the Presbyterian Church, I gained some sense of this when a seminary classmate of my Dad’s, one of the few African-American students at Pittsburgh in the early 60s, realized at a General Assembly meeting that I was Ward Holder’s daughter.  This man, a leader of the church, immediately gave me a big hug and a kiss – and then explained how close he was to my Dad and how few of the white students at Pittsburgh Seminary were ready to befriend a Negro student at that time.

Our family was impacted by Dad and Mom’s sense of race and how the people of God are called to relate across racial lines.  After the birth of three children, my parents sought to adopt.  In 1968, they were called by the agency and asked if they could get to Wisconsin in two days.  Dad was set for vacation the next week, so he called his Clerk of Session and told him that we were on our way early.  They packed up the car and drove to Wisconsin to pick up our new brother, a 3-year-old child of the Menominee Native American tribe.[1]  He was cuter than cute, happy to see us, and quickly a favorite playmate of us all.

My parents were profoundly naïve about what the growth in 1968 of our family by one cute brown-skinned boy child would mean to them, the congregations my Dad served, and the communities in which they lived.  They were surprised, and often hurt, by the reactions and responses of many in the congregation.  They were surprised, and deeply hurt, by the reactions and responses of some in their extended family.  Their sense of what race means was tempered, nuanced, and given increase through their experiences, and they learned to listen to the teachings of Dr. King and other leaders in the church working for racial equity differently as a result.  A couple stories illustrate.

My brother played, like other young boys, in an often-boisterous and noisy fashion.  My parents came to understand that if something was broken in the course of play, my brother, who was often the only non-white child in the mix, would inevitably be blamed.  In that my brother lacked any competitive spirit, we knew that while he undoubtedly took part in the play, he was rarely the initiator of risky behavior.  That is, my parents learned to suspect that he was often blamed because he was the most likely to be seen by the (always white) adults in authority in a group of mischievous boys.  So if there was a problem – if someone got hurt or something got broken – the blame rarely fell on anyone but our boy.  My Dad had to learn both to curb his anger, which was ready to explode when anyone trampled any of his kids, and to be firm and direct with those in authority.  He learned to be not afraid to play “the race card” and to question what evidence they had to suggest that my brother was ALWAYS at fault.  Because my parents learned to intervene – and undoubtedly, in part because they were white while intervening – my brother graduated high school and gained the confidence in his own abilities to eventually complete a Master’s Degree.  Many other issues arose related to people’s perceptions of and responses to my brother’s race during his education, and in addressing them, my parents learned and grew in their awareness of what race means in the US.

Issues also arose in personal relationships within the congregations Dad served.  One family had a daughter who was a close friend of my youngest sister, who was years younger than our brother.  Our sister was often asked for sleepovers at this friend’s home, particularly in her later elementary and middle school years.  My brother was in high school, and the rest of us had moved on to school or jobs. My sister tried to return the invitation multiple times to her friend, to come sleep over at my parents’ home.  The invitation was always refused.  Finally, my Mother, whose sense of manners was being violated by her daughter accepting invitations that our family was not returning, pushed our sister and the family of her friend to accept a return invite to sleep over.  In private conversation, the friend explained to my sister that she couldn’t sleep at our house. When asked why, she was matter of fact – her parents did not trust that she would be safe in our home with our brother present.  While it must be admitted that this girl, this child of God, was going through a singularly unattractive middle school phase and while our brother, as a high school junior, saw ALL of my sister’s friends at that time as annoying, childish, and uninteresting – these realities did not matter in the least.  My brother, by virtue of the color of his skin, was understood to represent a physical threat to any females in the house.  Further, my parents could not be trusted, clearly, to safeguard those who were guests in our home.  These events created something of a crisis in ministry for my Dad, who was the family’s pastor, and the father of the friend served on the Session (the governing council) of the church when these events occurred. My father was seen as sufficiently pastoral that this family chose to join and become leaders in the church he served – they deeply respected my Dad as a pastor.  But that respect did not extend to his family, particularly one member of the family. This turned into a significantly-painful compartmentalization which my parents ultimately could not join – when the beliefs of this family came to light, it did make ministry with them very difficult and ultimately impossible. These and other stories and happenings continued the oft-painful learning and growth curve for my parents, white progressive mainline Christian leaders, about what race means and how it is perceived and received in the US – and in the church.  My parents were radicalized in their response to race in the US because of all they learned through my brother’s presence in the family, and they turned to the writings of Dr. King and other leaders for help in how to think through and respond.

Later in his ministry, my Dad was offered the opportunity to join a Witness for Peace delegation to Nicaragua. He joined the delegation, which included protesting in front of the US Embassy in Managua, an action that deeply moved him and impacted his ministry – making even more of his congregants mad, a fact of which he was aware and which he took as a mandate and call to speak ever-more plainly and clearly about Jesus’ call to the church to be firmly engaged in working toward justice.  He always reported that in going to Nicaragua, he was making up for not answering the call to join the Freedom Riders.  Dr. King’s impact continued for my Dad throughout his life and ministry.

For me, the decisions my parents made in growing their family and in life and ministry, and the ways in which they grew in their understandings of race and its impact, have been profoundly formational.  We are the proud parents of a biracial group of young adults. I research, write and present on race and its impact in church and society.  I regularly serve on groups across the church working toward reconciliation, including ACREC in the Presbyterian sphere and others.  As we celebrate and reflect on Dr. King, his work and his legacy, I am deeply aware that the dreams he spoke into our consciousness are not yet realized.  I am equally committed, as my parents have been, in working toward that realization.

The service of witness to the resurrection for my father was celebrated on Martin Luther King Day this month.  That “coincidence” seemed both appropriate and good.  Today, as we celebrate, I am grateful for them both – the one everyone knows, and the one fewer people know, and for the struggles they both made toward the goal of faithfully answering God’s call.

Cynthia Holder Rich is the Director of ecclesio.com.