I’m thankful to reside and work in Rock Hill, South Carolina. We chose to live here after exploring numerous other options and determining that it was the right place at the right time. Time is important because every aspect of life is affected by it. Just imagine being in this same place a few hundred years ago. There would have been no great comforts in life, less personal security, no convenient transportation and few of the conveniences we have all come to expect every day. Change seems to be the only constant in life. Many things change quickly, yet like the small child anticipating growth, it seems so very slow when we are waiting for it.
At Gettysburg Lincoln reminded us that our country was, “…dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” If he were speaking today he would have surely said, “…all men and women are created equal.” Turn the clock back a little further and we find that Jefferson originally wrote the passage in the Declaration of Independence prefaced with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” It’s also interesting to note that Jefferson’s original words were, “We hold these truths to be sacred and un-deniable…” Benjamin Franklin helped Jefferson with editing and that’s how it got changed to its final, famous form. As I think about the distinction between the two phrases it occurs to me that Franklin’s edit was probably smoother and more politically correct for the times, but in actuality I think that Jefferson got it right in the first place. The inherent equality of people is both sacred and un-deniable no matter how loudly or viciously any ideology or group tries to say otherwise.
Yesterday we saw the sacred and un-deniable truth play out in a Rock Hill courtroom when a Circuit Court judge declared the 1961 convictions of the “Friendship Nine” null and void. The young black men had been found guilty of trespassing for sitting at a segregated, “whites-only” lunch counter in Rock Hill. In vacating the conviction the judge called the evidence used against the Friendship Nine, “patently flawed and unjust.”
Clarence H. Graham
Their incarceration also produced an historic turning point in the civil rights struggle when they refused to accept bail, introducing a new tactic, “Jail, No Bail.” The strategy caught on ultimately playing an important role in the movement.
One of the most important parts of yesterday’s event was hearing the prosecutor not only apologize, but then go on to thank the Friendship Nine on behalf of the State of South Carolina. There may be those who say that justice delayed is justice denied, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. repeated that basic principle in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, but I’m also reminded of the words of Mahatma Gandhi, whose influence on King’s non-violent approach is well-known, “It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” Justice is welcome, whenever it comes. Sometimes justice comes much later, like in the case of Galileo Galilei who after being imprisoned and excommunicated in 1632, was officially exonerated by Pope John Paul on May 9, 1983. Did it matter after hundreds of years? It’s hard to argue that it did any good for Galileo, but let’s remember that he was also given the same choice between truth and jail.
Yesterday’s event here in Rock Hill made me feel proud to be a citizen of a community that is willing to correct its errors.
Friendship Nine Photo credit: Afro American Newspapers, via Getty Images
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H7GOcWLHCE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2015/01/28/4755841/rock-hill-prosecutor-in-1961-friendship.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.thestate.com/2015/01/28/3955966/rock-hill-prosecutor-in-1961-friendship.html#storylink=cpy