The Congressional Gold Medal for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley

The Congressional Gold Medal has been posthumously awarded to four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. President Obama signed the legislation Friday, as (from left) Birmingham Mayor William Bell, Dr. Sharon Malone Holder, Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Terri Sewell, and relatives of Denise McNair and Carole Robertson look on. Photo: Pool/Getty Images found at NPR

Today, President Obama signed legislation to award the Congressional gold medal to the four little girls who were killed in their home church on September 15, 1963. The Robertson and McNair families have been supportive of the legislation since it was proposed but members of the Wesley and Collins families have not. The latter families believe that the medal inadequately compensates them for their loss. To support her case, Sarah Collins Rudolph, Addie Mae Collins’s sister and the fifth girl in the ladies lounge with the four girls but who survived the blast, lost and eye and suffered other ailments; as a result, she continues to have medical bills that need to be covered. To that end, Rudolph contends that the medal does not address the material conditions that directly stem from the racist terrorism of the past.

When I was reading bloggers’ comments concerning the posthumously awarded medal, one of them, Collin Walker, asserted that awarding the medal to the girls devalues it. Quoting requirements for receiving the medal, Walker writes, “[f]or those who have performed an achievement that has an impact on American history and culture that is likely to be recognized as a major achievement in the recipient’s field long after the achievement.” Walker contends that awarding the Congressional medal to the four girls is inappropriate in light of this description because he believes that the girls’ achievement is their death. As he writes in one of his posted comments, “certainly victims shouldn’t get a ton of medals just because they died.” He asks, “[w]ho were the real leaders of the Civil Rights Movement? Those people are the ones who deserve medals.” Not realizing that the death he dismisses as the product of racist, white American resistance to civil rights gains helps to explain why awarding this medal to the four girls posthumously is most appropriate. As Martin Luther King, Jr. offers in his eulogy for the girls, they were “martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” Thus, seeing the girls outside of the lens of activism leads to Walker’s claim that their death alone should not qualify them for the congressional medal. For King, and for Birmingham native Angela Y. Davis, the girls were political activists. In scholar Joy James’s reading of Davis’s response to the bombing, the girls figure as “young activists, who at the time of their death were preparing to speak about civil rights at the church’s annual Youth Day program.” Even before their death, these girls were engaged with the greatest issue of their day. Carole Robertson was also a member of the organization Friendship and Action that emerged in response to the 1954 Brown decision. Black and white parents and teachers created the group to facilitate peaceful relations between the children who would soon be schoolmates.

Walker also overlooks the limitations in the narrow way that he envisions leadership. He can’t seem to imagine decentralized leadership as he calls for the awarding of the Congressional gold medal to “the real leaders” of the Movement. Well, “the real leaders” were the domestics who walked in Montgomery for 381 days between 1955 and ’56, the children who marched and went to jail and, in fact, died in Birmingham in 1963, as well as the garbage men who proclaimed their manhood in Memphis in 1968. Their sacrifices led to desegregation, equal hiring practices, voting rights, and other civil rights achievements. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley deserve more than the Congressional medal, but we don’t always get what we deserve. Given that the Congressional gold medal is the highest honor the Congress can bestow, it’s the best that they have to give, then it is only fitting that this superlative go to those four girls.

Models Monday: Flossie

My friend Carmen introduced me to the children’s book Flossie and the Fox after I told her about my interest in cautionary tales about the dangers associated with becoming distracted. It was a great recommendation. Here’s the story: Flossie’s grandmother charges her with the task of delivering eggs to a friend at a neighboring plantation. Flossie’s grandmother warns her that a hungry, slick, egg loving fox is on the loose and to be mindful of him. Flossie has never encountered a fox before and doesn’t even know what one looks like. In response, her grandmother resists offering a thorough portrait; instead, she gives Flossie information that on the surface doesn’t seem very helpful, “Chile, a fox be just a fox,” is what she tells her before sending her off with two instructions: 1.) don’t dawdle, 2.) protect those eggs.

The charge given to young Flossie in light of the circumstances places this story in a world far beyond the boundaries of our own. Flossie and her grandmother live in a world where danger is inevitable. Since Flossie’s grandmother wasn’t trying to shield Flossie from danger, a contemporary reader might be led to conclude that her grandmother was essentially feeding that child to the wolves. Not only was Flossie sent out into the world with a cunning foe on the loose, she was sent with goods most likely to entice him. How is this love?

Flossie worries about her fate, as we would as contemporary readers, but it is through the way she processes her anxiety that we come to understand her grandmother’s love. “What if I come upon a fox?” Flossie wonders before remembering her grandmother’s words, “Oh well,” she thinks, “a fox be just a fox.” In other words, a threat is just a threat–it can take on any number of guises; it is nearly impossible to capture for a child just what that looks like. Too, a threat does not amount to its conclusion. Flossie’s grandmother sends her on a mission where she has a chance of flourishing. To flourish, Flossie’s grandmother tells her that she will need to be efficient and show great care. Flossie decides that she can confront the unknown and not be ruled by her fears.

While on the way to deliver “Miz Viola” the eggs, Flossie does indeed encounter the fox, and the way that she deals with this encounter offers a model for facing the world:

1.) Embrace the wisdom of your ancestors. Flossie does not dismiss her grandmother’s description of the fox as a failing; instead, she decides that her grandmother passed on useful information.

2.) Commit to a productive strategy. When Fox introduces himself to Flossie, she decides to tell him that she “just purely [doesn't] believe it.” As Flossie continues to move along, Fox shifts his focus from the eggs Flossie carries to trying to convince her of his identity as a fox.

3.) Be aware of your authority to decide your identity. You are not responsible for other people’s expectations of who you are. At one point, Fox tells Flossie that “a little girl like you should be simply terrified of me.” Flossie disrupts Fox’s plan for terrorizing her because she rejected his vision of who she was and placed her authority in her own ability to name herself.

If you get a chance, read Flossie and the Fox. That little girl offers “a model by which to live.”

Models Monday: Genuflecting before Survivors II

I read Joanna Connors’ insightful article regarding motherhood and the compelling and dramatic story of the rescue and recovery of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight  from a house of horrors just last week in Cleveland, Ohio. The article considers how rape, an ancient violence, helps to set in relief the capacity of mothers to stand firm for their daughters and to thus aid in their recovery. I read parts of the article to my mother yesterday and she described the difficulty she imagines for Amanda Berry in having to explain to her daughter that Ariel Castro, the man responsible for decades of brutality against the women, is her father. Though I do not discount the difficulty, in my reading, Berry’s daughter would seem less inclined to grand delusions regarding domestic life and thus may not need to reconcile the reality against a well-lit fantasy. Thus, I do not discount that child’s witness to Castro’s monstrosity in negotiating her world. Moreover, to Connors’ point, the long history of sexual violence against women gives Berry a catalogue of cruelties to draw from as models of endurance. In addition to the mythological examples that Connors cites, there are historical ones. In an American context, enslaved women who were routinely raped for both the slaveholders pleasure and profit offer a model. There are also the twenty thousand children said to be born from rapes during the Rwandan genocide. Jonathan Torgovnik erases the seemingly unknowable dimension of these stories in his book Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape. The book features photographs, like this one of Valentine with her daughters Amelie and Inez:

Jonathan Torgovnik photograph from Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape

Torgovnik’s photographs are accompanied by interviews with the women, survivors of dastardly deeds. Valentine tells Torgovnik an achingly honest story of her growing feelings for her daughter who was the product of the unimaginable brutality she endured:

I love my first daughter more because I gave birth to her as a result of love. Her father was my husband. The second girl is a result of unwanted circumstance. I never loved her father. My love is divided, but slowly, I am beginning to appreciate that the younger daughter is innocent. Before, when she was a baby, I left her crying. When it came to feeding, I fed the older one more than the younger one, until people in the neighborhood reminded me that was not the proper thing to do. I love her only now that I am beginning to appreciate that she is my daughter too.

More of these stories are chronicled in a video entitled Intended Consequences that you can view by following the embedded link.

So many of us have made life work through “unwanted circumstance.” Valentine’s reflections remind us of the significance of community for helping us to grow and nurture love when it seems most unlikely.