Stories of Encounter, Choice, and Identity
Mitch Fulton
Friday February 1st was the 48th anniversary of the lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC. As I was driving home from work that evening, “All things Considered” on National Public Radio had a piece on this early civil rights event. Michelle Norris was interviewing Franklin McCain, one of the Greensboro 4; the four African-American men who began the Woolworth lunch counter sit in. As I am sure many of you have experienced with NPR, I pulled up to my house, turned the car off and sat there totally caught up with the story. I have a connection to this now historical event. A good and dear friend from Norfolk, VA, Ann Vernon, was a student at the Women’s College in Greensboro, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and was one of the few white women who participated in the Woolworth sit-ins. I guess I was curious to see if Ann might be mentioned or interviewed as part of the story. She wasn’t but Franklin McCain did talk about an older white woman who sat at the lunch counter when he and the other three began their quiet act of civil disobedience. He said this in the interview…
“And if you think Greensboro, N.C., 1960, a little old white lady who eyes you with that suspicious look … she's not having very good thoughts about you nor what you're doing," Eventually, she finished her doughnut and coffee. And she walked behind Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil, another member of the Greensboro 4 — and put her hands on their shoulders. "She said in a very calm voice, 'Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn't do this 10 years ago.'" "What I learned from that little incident was … don't you ever, ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to them. I'm even more cognizant of that today — situations like that — and I'm always open to people who speak differently, who look differently, and who come from different places".
Franklin McCain’s comments immediately struck me and caused me to remember a similar encounter that I had had in Dec 1998. I had come home from Italy to celebrate what would be my last Christmas with my parents. My Mother was battling colon cancer and was not winning the fight. The day after Christmas, my Father suffered a major stroke and was in intensive care at the local hospital. And my partner Michael who had been with us for the Christmas celebration had already returned to Norfolk to go back to work. I was alone with my failing Mother and an unconscious Father in hospital. I needed some spiritual help in a big way. So I called the interim pastor at my Mother’s church. When I left home my Mother had returned to the Church home that she had grown up in 25 miles away. My connections to her church were not very strong. I didn’t know many of the members and certainly didn’t know this new interim pastor at all. I did know that my Mother really liked him and so I gave him a call. I told him about my Dad’s stroke and my Mother's deteriorating condition and he immediately said that he’d come see us tomorrow if that was OK. When he rang the door bell, I’m sure my face gave away what I was thinking. He was a tall burly man, about 6’ 2” with long, straggly, blond hair and a large scar on his face, wearing a beat up leather bomber jacket and old worn khakis. He looked more like a street thug than any Presbyterian minister that I had ever met. My less than poker face may have caused him to be somewhat confessional or perhaps he realized that he didn’t really look the part. Whatever the reason, Doug Madden told me bits and pieces of his own life story of how he had led a fast and rough life that involved heavy drinking and drugs and numerous bar room fights. The scar on his face was testimony to his previous life. He confided in me his own “on the road to Damascus” moment of how Jesus had come into his life and dramatically changed it for the better. He confessed that had this not happened to him he thought that he would be dead by now from the excesses of his rough and tumble existence. He had gone to Seminary rather late in life and was now waiting for a permanent call to a church. He talked at length with my Mother and comforted her with reassuring words for both she and my Father. But it was when he asked if we could pray together and the three of us joined hands in prayer that I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit descend upon us and I too was comforted.
Doug visited with my Mother and Father on other occasions and he officiated at their joint memorial service in the Spring of that next year but it was my first encounter with him that afternoon when he ushered into my parent’s home the loving, caring and comforting Holy Spirit that has stayed with me. I learned a valuable lesson that day, much like the lesson that Franklin McCain spoke about on the radio that you should never ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to them. In a way I can credit the unlikely looking Doug with reawakening in me the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus Christ.
