Feature

In 1970 a black man named Henry “Dickie” Marrow was murdered in Oxford, North Carolina, allegedly for making a sexual comment to a white woman. Despite eyewitness testimonies, the killers, who were known to be Klansmen, were acquitted by an all-white jury. Vernon Tyson, a United Methodist minister, was one of two white people who attended Marrow’s funeral. His son Timothy was 10. Read the CENTURY's interview with Timothy Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name.

In a marriage, two people with different backgrounds and often different values come together and work to merge their two worlds into some kind of unity. When they divorce, however, the job of making sense of their two worlds and the conflicts that arise between them gets handed from the adults to the child. Now the child is on his own to negotiate the different beliefs and values and ways of living that he finds in each parent's world.

When I asked my friend about his work as an associate pastor, he ripped into his senior minister: “He won’t communicate! He doesn’t even seem interested in what I do at his church!” When I spoke with a senior pastor, he sighed. “Sometimes with my staff I feel like my dad did during a long car trip. When we kids would get rambunctious, he’d take just so much before turning around to give us a good whack.”

A speaker is talking to staff members about leadership and character. “The academy has been isolated and has drifted away from standard air force practice," he says. "If you see anything that doesn’t jibe with standard practice, please question it.” He is no doubt referring to indecent behavior by drunken cadets or incidents of sexual assault. The most recent controversy, however, has nothing to do with violence or drunkenness among cadets. It's about religion.