Write words about Birmingham. I would rather get in bed with rattlesnakes.

The church had several evolutions in its years as a segregated white Nazarene church. There was a split between two factions of the church, one moving to West Jefferson in the early 1960s. Soon after the remaining congregation sold the building and moved to the very white community of Vestavia. The church community was in the new church at the time of the African American couple visiting the church in the early 1960s Birmingham. (Google Maps is the credit for the photograph) The church building on the right was the one I grew up in. I was a young teenager when the building on the left was completed.

Reared by multiple families, I had to please many different ways to live and think.

I was a disgrace to all sides. An utter liar. A collaborator in whatever camp I was in at the time, and in my world, there were many camps of relatives where I hung my caps. Reared by paternal grandparents, both who had almost opposite sets of views on some things; on others, they were two peas in a pod. But I loved them both dearly and they loved me. And too many ways to conduct myself was the problem. Both parents had me some of the time, my paternal great aunt had me other times, and aunts and uncles, and multiple step families had me other times, and most folks had some different belief that had to be remembered and mimicked. I had a lot of “lies”, different ways to act to keep up with.

Mamma (paternal grandmother) was quite the bigot in some ways and on the other hand, she helped to drive John Henry Brown and others of his African American family and circle, to and from jobs when there was the bus boycott. Daddy Paw, head collaborator, the original liberal at heart, but who had to live in bigot land, had been taught his lesson in 1930s depression-era Alabama bigotry: “How dare he include Black folks in the food share!” But I had hatched as a part liberal. Paw started openly saying that I ‘wasn’t right in the head’. Mamma’s sister, my great aunt, OMG, I like ta’ died in my 20s seeing another side of her. I have spoken words about her already. There were lots of bigoted folks to go around.

It was Birmingham, and most folks around me were loyalists like the segregationists, Eugene “Bull” Connor and George Corley Wallace. But I was fortunate, my Catholic mother had married a Lebanese man whose church was the liberal Melkite St George’s in Green Springs. The priest was a blessing to all, all his life. He worked for the integration of Birmingham and although few of the parishioners ever marched with him, all were at the church helping him, supporting the cause. I remember very little of any of my interactions, but stuffing envelopes to get out the word and ask for support was wonderful fun. All the ladies brought food and I was eating my way through a multitude of world cuisines — the most wonderful foods on earth. It all rubbed off on me. Thank goodness.

This was such a contrast to my grandmother’s evangelical, fundamentalist, works church. One sunday, they had a talk, that they were told to expect a Black couple or two to come and integrate. The plan was to let anyone come in and attend the service and leave them be, they would be shown a seat and they would be shown out at the end of service.

The day the couple came to visit our church must have been the shortest service in the history of the Birmingham First Church of the Nazarene. Few amens were chanted by the regular voices. There were no extra alter calls in the service. There were no extra songs sung.

And that was that, the couple came and we were officially integrated. They were shown in and they sat at rear seats in the middle pews. My grandmother was whispering for me to turn around and face front in my seat — 2nd row from the front. (I was wanting to walk to the piano one day and play the hymnal for offering so I liked to sit up front. I did play eventually. I stopped too soon and they had to walk the rest of the pews with dead silence. I was beet red in the face, of the not right in the head for weeks.)

The couple left, and since all folks were told to stay in their seats as part of the pre-plan, no one moved, it was Brother J that walked them out and Brother H was following down the other aisle. My feet were dancing around the floor like they had jumping beans chomping at the bit to take off and see the folks before they left. The lady had a lovely fur stole and her wonderful pale beige hat matched the color of her wrap. I have no clue of the date but it was not cold enough for a heavy winter coat but it was chilly enough for a wrap.

Right in the head or not, it was difficult to go between the households and keep up with who I was supposed to be for, and who I was supposed to root for, and shun, and hate. I was at a wedding a few years ago where the guests were coming from all over the country. We had flown from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, and a wonderfully, confident woman, part of our brides ‘in’ table arrived and said, “Ok, who do we love and who do we hate.” I thought how I would wish for the freedom to think like that, think what I like.

Years later, I was back in Birmingham for my father’s funeral. I went to that now Black church as a visitor. I had just been through scuds in Israel for Gulf War One and was still jumping to duck when I heard any sounds resembling any part of incomings and outgoings and shots to hit the incomings. I never felt so out of place as on that trip in Birmingham. At the church, I was not the only white person there but there were only a couple of others who were part of their bus ministry to bring folks from the neighborhoods to the church. But it was nice that it was integrated at all.

I sat in the middle, about half way up. For the welcome, the minister called to me and the other visitors among the stranger faces visiting that Sunday. He said welcome and would I like to introduce myself. I told the congregation who I was, and how I had wished I had just run up to that couple and said “hey, I’m Cherie Lynn, welcome to my church.” But, someone would have just called after me and told them, “pay her no mind, she’s not right in the head, she’s just not right in the head.” But my failure in those Christian teachings never left me.

Today the church is the MT Zion Cathedral Church; please go say hello to them for me, I always think of them and their welcoming me to their church, as a beautiful sign, that maybe I and the world, will continue to learn to love each other and help each other and grow beyond the failings of my youth. Never a day goes by that I don’t hope and pray to lose the shortcomings of my soul.

The priest of St George has a biography in Wikipedia. His short time in Birmingham is mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Raya