Finding God In The Ghetto - The Hallelujah Epiphany Of A Lifetime Liberal

Victoria Chalmers grew up on the Main Line of Philadelphia, not the cheap inner end but the manor estate end in Villanova.  She was the last issue of the historic Chalmers, descendants of the first English colonial settlers of Pennsylvania who themselves were descended from the Third Earl of Northumberland, squire of Northumberland Hall, the social epicenter for royalty, the intelligentsia, and the New World entrepreneurs who saw and acquired great wealth in the New World. 

Victoria knew only wealth and privilege and from an early age, and was schooled in manners, demeanor, propriety, and noblesse oblige.  The Chalmers, influenced by their Philadelphia Quaker forbears of whom Benjamin Franklin was the most noteworthy, and respectful of the more ancient history of the serfdom and peasantry well-taken care of by the Northumberlands, had a more liberal bent than many of their wealthy neighbors.  

The white Anglo-Saxon residents of Villanova, Ardmore, and Radnor were the inheritors of patrician privilege - the essence of America's ethos of opportunity.  Wealth, status, influence, and privilege were not markers of social insularity - anyone with ambition, talent, will, and ability could succeed in the new republic - but were expressions of the best of New World culture.  They had no responsibility for those not in their class, for they were endowed with the same gifts of opportunity and entrepreneurial possibility as any American. 

They all fraternized at the Gladwyne Country Club.  Their daughters were all presented to society, golf rounds were moments of shared experience and camaraderie; but this one niggling, significant difference - this sentiment of social obligation vs the essential Darwinian imperative held in reserve during social moments - was always there. 

Although or perhaps because the 18th century Chalmers family had invested along with Franklin in the Three Cornered slave trade - shipbuilding, shipping, trading, and ancillary commerce - they felt some responsibility or accountability for their questionable past and African American penury.

Vicki's natural ethical liberalism was honed and sharpened while at college.  Vassar was not exactly a hotbed of social activism, but the seeds of modern progressivism were certainly sown there.  She and a group of Jewish girls whose family tradition traced back to La Follette, Gompers and early American socialism, formed the college's first progressive forum. 

Few classmates had any idea of American socialism, the slave trade of the North, or the historical tradition of noblesse oblige, and so the group largely talked to each other; but the camaraderie and sense of communal values were unmistakable. 

After Vicki graduated and went on to a PhD in American Studies, she secured an Instructor position at one of America's 'Historically Black Colleges and Universities' and taught in the English Department.  Now, as a young woman of impeccable white credentials, she was unique among the all-black faculty.  The recruitment committee thought that she would add diversity to the school.  She looked forward to associating with the people she had long championed. 

It was a bit of an adjustment, what with the culture of the street, the ways and mores of the inner city, the language, the preferences, and unusual and very different sexuality; but Vicki found her place, and after a few years, her home.

For years as she made her way up through the ranks of the college, she was content with her academic duties, which, if she were being entirely honest, were a bit of a slog.  English I was not exactly Fun With Dick and Jane, but close, yet the meme of the Department was 'From the Dimmest to the Brightest' and Vicki never lost sight of the goal, the challenge, and the opportunity. 

After a number of years at the college, socializing with her colleagues and interacting with her students, she still remained a very white girl.  No one had invited her to their homes or offered to share social experiences.  The black faculty and students respected her to a point, but in private had to wonder what she was doing on their turf; and as the years of Martin and Ralph racial integration morphed into radical identity black-only politics, the suspicions increased and the social gap widened. 

Until one professor in the Philosophy Department thought it was time to give this white girl an education and invited her to his home in Anacostia, Washington, DC's worst, most pestilential slum.  It was one thing to talk about the black experience, to read slave journals and women's emancipation memoirs, and to trace lineages back the great Ghanaian, Gao, and Mopti African empires; another altogether to run with the street. 

At first Vicki was dismayed if not taken aback.  'Whatchoo doin' up in here white girl?' were the shouts from street corners, tenement stoops, and balconies on the projects, nothing welcoming and accommodating, nothing friendly or communal. 

It got worse - needles, syringes, Colt45 cans, the sound of gunfire, streetcorner whores, do-dadded up pimps, and the foul smell of excrement and urine.  'This is what I have spent my entire life defending?', she asked herself.  'There must be more to it'. 

 

And so there was, for when the car turned a corner and parked in front of the New Light Baptist Church of the Redeemer and she saw something familiar - religion was an integral part of her patrician colonialist and Early American history - her spirts improved; and when she heard the gospel chorus filling the all of the church and spilling out onto the street, she knew that the world had orbited in her direction. 

'Come in, Sister', said the pastor who met her at the door, 'and sit with the Lord'.  It was summer, and the church was rank, airless, and hot; but the congregation was on their feet, shouting praises to the Lord, and she could do nothing but stand and shout. 

She had sung only traditional Bach hymns in her days in Villanova, in unison with great respect and solemnity; so this unrestrained, unhinged, African tribal voodoo hoopla was new, a bit unsettling, but inspirational in a strange sort of way.  She joined in the prayers, swaying and raising her arms like those to her left and right, and even managing a 'Praise the Lord'. 

Yet after a few minutes and at the crescendo of verse and chorus, she lost her shyness and raised her voice louder and louder.  Congregants left their pews and went into the aisles, shouting, shaking, and trembling with ecstasy.  'He is here...He has come...Oh, Jesus, save me...Jesus, be my companion' they shouted as the pastor raised his Bible, his voice louder than any in the assembly.  'Oh Jesus, heal me with the blood of your wounds...Come to this poor sinner...'. 

When the service was over Vicki wondered how she could ever go back to her life, the college, and the dry, empty world of academia .  There were black people and there were black people, she now knew, and her Anacostia epiphany carried her from soulless academia to the Jesus-anointed streets of the ghetto. 

However, when she asked her colleague to take her back to Anacostia and the church, he was diffident, indifferent and uninterested.  'Knit your own sweaters', he said enigmatically, and left the room, so Vicki was left on her own, hesitant to back downtown without an escort but with Jesus as a guide, what could go wrong?

The shouts from the terraces, streetcorners and project balconies were even louder his time. 'Whatchoo doin' up in here' was now, 'Get yo' white, stinkin' mackerel-smellin' pussy up outta here, bitch'; and not a note of warmth, welcome, or reception in the litany. 

When she pulled up to the church, heard the choral hymns being sung, and the organ loud and impressive, she smiled broadly and began to walk up the steps. 

'We full up, sweetheart', said a black man dressed in a zoot-suit, a welcomer with an armed guard. 'Why don't you get yo' lily white self back where you belong, and don’ choo come back up in here, hear?'; and with that the aura of the multicolored epiphany turned grey and then black and then sodden and lumpy. 

The lead-up to epiphany is exciting and tempting beyond belief.  The epiphany itself is transformative and existential; but the letdown is more horrendously precipitous than ever imagined.  She was back to nowhere, deceived, wasted, and dishearted. 

She quit her job, her black mission, and every and all traces of noblesse oblige.  She returned to Villanova, assumed her proper life as privileged matron of the upper classes and never looked back.