4
Fighting without Fists

Joe Louis was one of our heroes: a famous black man who knew how to fight with his fists. Louis, born the son of a sharecropper from Alabama, was called the “Brown Bomber.” When I was a kid, for blacks he was our Jim Thorpe, our Jackie Robinson, our LeBron James, our Stephen Curry, our Babe Ruth. He was the best heavyweight boxer in the world.

In those days I couldn’t watch boxing matches or any sports on television—we had no ESPN, no internet, not even a Motorola TV set with rabbit ears. My family didn’t even possess a radio. But Mr. Fred Bush had one. Mr. Bush was the white owner of the plantation where we lived as sharecroppers at the time. He always encouraged me, just as he did his own children.

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. On June 22, 1938, six days after my eighth birthday, my uncle, my brother, and I scampered up to the Bush house to join others listening to the radio broadcast of the battle of the century. Joe Louis was pitted in a rematch against the only man who had ever defeated him—Germany’s Max Schmeling. The three of us had to stay on the porch and listen from a slight distance, but the Bushes made sure the radio volume was turned up so we could hear. At that time it was a big deal that a plantation owner would allow us to be even that close.

Louis opened with two powerful left hooks, and Schmeling was hobbled. The 70,000 fans at the old Yankee Stadium in New York where the fight was taking place roared in approval, and so did we, trying not to make too much noise. Schmeling threw only two punches the entire bout, and Louis knocked him down three times. Thump. Thump. Thump. The last jab ended the fight, which had lasted only two minutes and four seconds. I was jubilant!

As blacks, we celebrated the Brown Bomber’s triumph—so did all of America. President Franklin Roosevelt even invited Louis to the White House, where the president jokingly squeezed the boxer’s biceps. It was a big win.

The Louis-Schmeling fights had muddy racial overtones, made even more complex with the outbreak of World War II a year after Louis’s win. Schmeling was a German paratrooper and had unwittingly become a symbol of Aryan superiority for some, even appearing in a rally with Adolf Hitler. However, the German boxer was not a member of the Nazi Party, and it was later learned that he had risked his life to save two Jewish children. Of course, as an eight-year-old boy, I knew none of this. All I knew was that one of us, a black and an American, was the boxing champion of the world.

Outside the boxing ring, I have a very different take on fighting.

The first clash I witnessed in real life took place a little more than a year before we huddled on the Bushes’ porch to listen to the battle of the century. I was six years old and probably helping Grandma with the chores on a nice Saturday afternoon. Uncle Bud burst into the house, all sweaty with rage. He had been gambling with some friends, not far from the house, and they had caught one of the players cheating. The trickster deserved to be shot! Uncle Bud grabbed his gun and stormed outside, intent on doing “justice” with a bullet.

Grandma was scared and would have none of that. She knew the outcome would not be good or just for anyone. After catching up with Uncle Bud in the yard, Grandma tried to wrestle the loaded weapon away from him. I was scared. Here was a mother fighting with her son who desperately wanted to kill another man. Finally, thankfully, she got the gun away from him.

Though I was only a kid, the fight left a strong impression on me. I didn’t like the fear, ugliness, and futility of it all. What good would have come if my Uncle Bud had shot the cheating gambler? He would have felt a rush for a moment and then landed in jail—or worse. And what if the gun had gone off while he was struggling with my grandma? I still shudder to this day when I think about it.

Another time, not too long after that, some teenage boys came to our house to get some whiskey. My aunt’s boyfriend, Dudley Longeno, was a little intoxicated but not quite drunk (they called it “high” in those days), and he was clowning around with his friends when they started beating him up. He was cursing and striking back but was not in any shape to land many blows.

That time there was no gun, but it was a big brawl—even my aunt was screaming and throwing fists. I was only seven years old, but I pushed my way right into the middle of the fracas and attempted to stop it. There was something corrective in me even back then, and I didn’t want to see anyone hurt. I’ve always known it’s important to not take advantage of people, even someone under the influence of whiskey. Everyone was surprised when I stepped in to defend Dudley. If they were going to beat up my aunt’s boyfriend, they were going to have to beat up me too. So they all stopped fighting.

I never intentionally set out to be a peacemaker, but through the years I have come face-to-face with quite a number of fights, and each time, something would rise inside me that was stronger than the present danger or fear.

One time I was in Harlem and saw a man beating a woman; it looked like he was going to kill her. This was happening near a church on a Sunday, and a number of people were standing around outside, just watching or trying to ignore what was going on. I told everyone around we needed to do something, but they were afraid to get involved.

I should have been fearful too, but something got into me. I walked up to the man, who was in a total rage, and told him, “Don’t do that. You’re killing her. It’s not worth it.” He stopped. It was almost like when Jesus calmed the storm at sea—it got that quiet and still. Whew, was I surprised! So were the others who were watching. They told me later how dangerous it was to have stopped the man because they knew him and were certain he was going to turn on me too.

I don’t set out to do these things—they just happen. Another time, while I was visiting Nairobi, Kenya, I saw a woman running away from a man who was beating her. The custom among some Kenyans gives a man the prerogative to beat “his woman.” Thankfully, I didn’t know that until afterward. When I said I was going to step in, the people I was with were terrified; they feared for my life. But I could not just stand there. I knew what it was like to be beaten by someone who had absolute authority over me—someone who could beat me for any reason he wanted, or for no reason at all. I stepped between the man and the woman. The man was shocked. He did not touch me or say a word. He just walked away. Of course, I have no idea what happened later, but at least on that day the beating stopped.

Injustice is an evil in society that must be fought. But what does that fight look like? The word fight immediately makes most people think of violence—it conjures images of fisticuffs and physical domination. But other ways to combat the wrongs in society do exist. In 1955, on the eve of the December 5 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. King put it this way:

Now let us say that we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest.1

One of the great surprises of recent history is this idea of nonviolent protest. Dr. King, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela (after he came out of prison), and others led revolutions that didn’t depend on bloodshed and the violent overthrow of power structures. They realized the power in what Jesus taught about loving our enemies.

In the face of power, some resort to violence as a way to create chaos. That’s terrorism. That’s what people use when they don’t have the power to win. Nonviolence is a better way. It’s radical. And the hope is that it’s so different that the enemy, seeing your nonviolent actions, will not be violent toward you. This idea dominated the civil rights movement.

Of course, one of the challenges Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and other leaders faced was keeping their followers convinced that love is a better way to fight than violence. So they found unique ways. Gandhi and Cesar Chavez, for example, were great fasters and used that to their advantage. Their hunger strikes had multiple goals. For instance, Chavez used fasting as a way to restrain his union workers when they would start to get violent. He didn’t want them to kill people, but the situation was out of his control. So he would fast.

Back in Mendenhall, I had my own difficulty helping people understand love is a better way to fight than violence. As the young people in the area woke up to the civil rights movement, I started getting frequent reports of broken windows at local businesses or vandalized washing machines at the laundromat. Soon I found out that my sons were involved in these destructive activities. They saw such acts as an extension of the movement. So then I was really in a mess. Everybody knew this vandalism was connected to the civil rights movement, and I was one of the leaders of that movement in our community. I knew people would think I was condoning violent behavior, which I certainly didn’t. Consequently, I had some serious conversations with my kids and others in the community to let them know, like Dr. King said, they shouldn’t be like the enemy, fighting fire with fire. I also did some fasting and praying. Like Chavez, I had a situation I desperately wanted to change but couldn’t really control on my own. I quickly came to understand that nonviolence takes more strength than violence—and it takes more than just human strength. It takes God’s strength working in human beings to produce self-control, gentleness, and the other fruit of the Holy Spirit. God’s power comes in our weakness and brokenness.

Some whites at the time, I’m told, were afraid that blacks—as we gained rights and power, and as our population grew—would take over the country. Some also feared that blacks would then kill the whites who had been oppressing them. Although I’ve just acknowledged the potential for violent behavior by those who have been oppressed, I believe this particular fear is unfounded. The sad truth is that when black anger against racism boils over, the black community usually suffers the most damage. I think most blacks who riot would say they’re rioting in reaction to some white act of violence or injustice—like after the Rodney King verdict. People were angry and disappointed. They felt that whites who still wanted to keep blacks oppressed had taken care of these white officers and gotten them out of jail. Now, in the riots that followed the verdict, some black rioters did pull one white man from his truck and beat him. But most of the hostile energy turned toward damaging property within the black community—and carrying off televisions and other loot.

More recently, the same type of violence occurred in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. Both men were black and died at the hands of white police officers. The anger from both blacks and whites concerning these deaths was intense, and people were unable to listen to one another. Many whites thought the violence and rioting were unnecessary, but many blacks said that in the wake of so much oppression, they didn’t know how else to respond.

These differing reactions resulted from our own polarization and victimization in the African American community. Whites need to take some responsibility for centuries of imperialism and failing to repent, but blacks also need to take some responsibility for the breakdown of our families. We all need to take responsibility for providing equal education and job training for all people and doing a better job of training our police officers not to resort to brutality. The nonviolent Black Lives Matter activist movement has been a successful and much-needed way to bring attention to the problem of violence against black people. But what about the epidemic of violence within our own African American community—African Americans killing one another? That too needs to be addressed. We the church are called to be the light that shines in these dark places.

But even more, the church needs to be a witness to the world of what nonviolent change can look like. We should be leading the way in offering alternatives to the broken systems of this world, so that cycles of poverty and hatred don’t lead to violent reactions. Whatever the solution, the church must work it out together.

People are quick to find something or someone to blame in these situations. For example, many criticize the state of America’s poor, urban schools and place the blame on teachers or curriculums that don’t teach the students how to grow up and be successful. They condemn the government for not giving schools enough funding or attack parents who choose to send their children to private or Christian schools, leaving the poor behind. Some of these arguments might be valid, but the issue is bigger than this. It’s more than education or any other single issue.

One of the tenets of CCDA is holistic development, or looking for a multifaceted approach to caring and ministering to others. When we try to pin these issues on a single problem, we are more likely to resort to violence. We think that by violently eliminating one thing, we can solve the entire issue. But when we recognize that incidents like the Michael Brown case are the result of many different broken systems, we realize that violence won’t solve anything. Instead, we need to talk to one another, listen to one another, be willing to confess our sins to one another and, in turn, forgive one another. When we have these types of conversations, we begin to understand where the roots of some of the problems lie.

American society has lost its capacity for pluralism in many ways. We have begun to believe that if others don’t agree with us, then we don’t have to listen to them. We dehumanize people who don’t think like we do and, consequently, justify our violence against them. But we all are created in God’s image. We all are His children. We live in a country that proclaims freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and we must be willing to listen to and try to understand the thoughts and ideas of others. This is the way to make change happen without violence.

The apostle Paul, before his conversion, knew all about fighting. He condoned extreme violence—and maybe even participated in it. After his encounter with Jesus, though, he became the kind of man who would endure violence at the hands of others without returning blow for blow. When Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy, “I have fought the good fight” (2 Tim. 4:7 NKJV), he was not referring to anything he had accomplished with his fists. My prayer is that as I approach the end of my days, I too will be able to say that I have come to understand what the “good fight” is and that I have persevered in that battle.