https://medium.com/@karen.shipp/invitation-to-begin-38df4241c9b5
I have a story to tell. It hovers sometimes in memories just beyond my reach. The more I grasp at it, the more I discover that I do not hold the story. The story holds me.
The facts of my story are simple and easily told: In 1969, the pastor of a small Southern country church 6 miles outside of a small town refuses to yield to the pressure of the deacons to cancel his children’s party in the parsonage. The deacons and other members object not to parties in general, but to this party which includes both Black and White friends and classmates. An hour into the party, double-aught buckshot crashes through the picture window. Sixteen or seventeen large pellets spray a pattern of black holes across the living room wall. Seven of those pellets come through the wall into the room where the party is taking place. No one, by some miracle or chance, is struck by the shot. The next morning, a Sunday, the pastor is asked to resign, and when he refuses, a special business meeting is called, and he is summarily fired for being a “disruptive influence in the community.” He and his family are told to move out of the parsonage as soon as possible. A sympathetic couple in town take them in, while the pastor completes his last semester of a Master of Divinity.
Those are the bare facts of the bare beginning of the story.
The pastor of that country church was my father. I and one of my brothers were the children who threw the party. My friends, both Black and White, were the ones who risked their lives.
This is not my story alone. It is our story.