Does the Heart Draw Whom It Loves?

I don’t know which came first: my love of people of color or the awareness of how much they were despised by some. It was in the 1950s. My family was visiting in Louisiana and another young girl and I were taking the bus back toward her house. We got on the bus, me first, and I went running  down the aisle. “Let’s sit in back!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“No! That’s where the niggers sit.” I stopped, shocked, horrified.

“What! How can you say that word! They are just as good as we are.”

“They may be as good as you, but they’re not as good as me.” And my friend took a seat.

 I don’t remember the ride back.  All I know is that a pain in my heart that traveled to my gut was making me sick. I ran off the bus when we got to her house, ran inside where my mother was waiting, flung myself into the bathroom, leaned against the toilet and retched.

I don’t remember whether my mother spoke to me about it, whether the girl said anything. I remember nothing but horror that people, PEOPLE were treated in such  a way, disrespected, despised, ignored.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to become a FLAG WAVER (an indictment against me that brought the  teaching agency from Indiana's capital  to confront me years later when I was accused of caring too much about the black students).

I just developed such a love in my heart for people who are black. I don’t know why. I love them.

Incidentally, we started our Forty Days of the Word as a small group in our mega-church this past Wednesday evening. The church members were handed a list of 100 names of people hosting meetings. No one who signed up to be in our group knew us.  But at 7:00 the people who had chosen to join our small group walked in the door. They were all black. Did my heart draw them?