HOWARD THURMAN'S
GRANDMOM'S TESTIMONY
When I was a boy it was my responsibility to read the Bible to my grandmother, who had been a slave. She would never permit me to read the letters of Paul, except on occasion the 13th Chapter of First Corinthians. When I was older, this fact interested me profoundly. When at length I asked the reason, she told me that during the days of slavery, the minister (white) on the plantation was always preaching from the Pauline letters – "Slaves, be obedient to your masters," etc. "I vowed to myself," she said, "that if freedom ever came and I learned to read, I would never read that part of the Bible!"
From Deep River and The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death
by Howard Thurman page 16 & 17
A Strange Freedom
It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is the need of mooting, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give. The urge to be accountable to someone, to know that beyond the individual himself there is an answer that must be given, cannot be denied. The deed a man performs must be weighed in a balance held by another’s hand. The very spirit of a man tends to panic from the desolation of going nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no friendly recognition makes secure. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men.
Always a way must be found for bringing into one’s solitary place the settled look from another’s face, for getting the quiet sanction of another’s grace to undergrid the meaning of the self. To be ignored, to be passed over as of no account and of no meaning, is to be made into a faceless thing, not a man. It is better to be the complete victim if an anger unrestrained and a wrath which knows no bounds, to be torn asunder without mercy or battered to a pulp by angry violence, then to be passed over as if one were not. Here at least one is dealt with, encountered, vanquished, or overwhelmed – but not ignored. It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one’s own.
The name marks the claim a man stakes against the world; it is the private banner under which he moves which is his right whatever else betides. The name is a man’s water mark above which the tides can never rise. It is the thing he holds that keeps him in the way when every light has failed and every marker had been destroyed. It is the rallying point around which a man gathers all that he means by himself. It is his announcement to life that he is present and accounted for in all his parts. To be made anonymous and to give to it the acquiescence of the heart is to live without life, and for such a one, even death is no dying.
To be known, to be called by one’s name, is to find one’s place and hold it against all the hordes of hell. This is to know one’s value, for one’s self alone. It is to bow before an altar that is one’s very own, it is to worship a God who is one’s very own.
It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men, to act with no accounting, to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one’s own.
From The Inward Journey by Howard Thurman Section 20, page 37 & 38