Lost in thought, I missed my exit. That’s not unusual for me. I once drove almost half an hour past the exit to my own house.
This time it was a fortunate mistake. I was driving from Tennessee, where our state legislature fiercely competes with Oklahoma and Texas for the fastest route back to 1859. I happened to glance at my GPS just when it said, “Recalculating route,” and my destination — Huntsville, Ala. — got 20 minutes farther forward in time — possibly the most a Southern city has moved ahead in time since imposition of the Civil Rights Movement.
After cursing my ADD, I saw there was a state-line rest area two miles ahead, and my Tennessee-Vol bladder started singing Sweet Home Alabama.
Brad Bull
After my envy-of-NASCAR pit stop, I squared up from my parking space, and the black pupils of my eyes were arrested by a triangular monument that said, “ALABAMA We Dare Defend Our Rights.”
In my case, ADD also stands for argumentatively demonstrative disorder. The moment I read the monument, I blurted out, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I checked my rearview mirror, and seeing only a bunch of ghosts in white hoods looking irritated by my Prius, I rolled down my window and snapped a picture.
What was my immediate problem with Alabama’s motto? Let me explain.
According to Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the lowest level of moral thinking involves determining right from wrong by how it impacts oneself.
For example, I once listened to a news story about a problem in Florida where criminals were targeting tourists identified by the “Z” on their rental car license plate. As I recall, an elderly couple had been killed after being robbed in a rest area. The reporter asked an inmate what he thought of “z-ing.” The young man shook his head and said something like, “It’s terrible. Because of people doing things like that, judges are giving out tougher sentences to (petty criminals) like me.”
Notice he expressed no concern for the victims, just for himself and people like himself. He assessed morality based on a behavior’s impact on him. That’s selfish.
All bigotry grows out of selfishness. We can call the racist version of selfishness “racishness.” And we can call the more general version of looking nice while selfishly promoting only one’s own kind “kindishness.” You know: When we say, “I have friends who are (Black/gay/immigrants),” but we only promote the rights of our own kind. (The technical term for kindishness is “ethnocentrism,” but it lacks the sugary coating of superficial church-attending kindness.)
Combined with its Southern history, I suspected Alabama’s motto to be rooted in racism because it expresses righteous indignation with the selfish word “our.” Surely “our rights” originally meant “white people’s rights.” Rather than saying “our rights,” a morally mature viewpoint would say, “We defend everyone’s rights.”
The next day I returned to my never racist, sexist or homophobic home state of Tennessee. I piddled with the photo-editing feature on my phone to amend the rest-area monument. Then I looked up information about the history of the Alabama motto.
I suspected the motto was adopted in the 1860s leading up to or during the Civil War. Nope. It was added in 1923 and officially adopted in 1939. (Since the Civil War never really ended in much of the South, I suppose I was only wrong about the date.)
Still, what made the motto materialize in the early 1900s? Well, it was the brainchild of someone so racist she — yes, she — was willing to muzzle her own rights in order to prevent Black folk from gaining more rights.
Marie Bankhead Owen — born on a plantation to a father who was a former Confederate soldier — was director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. What early-1900s issue got her riled about defending rights? At AL(abama).com, Kyle Whitmire reported:
Owen was adamantly and publicly opposed to women’s suffrage, which she campaigned against.
Her fear was not what would happen should women get the right to vote, but rather, what would happen next — if women could vote, it was only a matter of time before Black Alabamians reclaimed that right, too.
Marie Bankhead Owen
Owen was an adamant and unrepentant racist.
Whitmire’s article prompted his Al(abama).com cartoonist colleague J.D. Crowe to draft a cartoon and article declaring this other more accurate version of the Alabama motto: “We dare defend our whites.”
In this chain of chasing hyperlink information on the motto, I found a gem of righteous irony. One of Owen’s brothers, John Bankhead II, was a U.S. senator. Another brother, William Bankhead, became speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Whitmire described him as “one of the most powerful American politicians during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.”
Bankhead’s Wikipedia page describes this Alabamian as a “strong liberal” who clashed with most of his Southern colleagues of the day. He passed this progressive spirit on to his daughter Tallulah Bankhead (niece to villainous racist Mary Bankhead Owen). You might recognize Tallulah from her award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Lifeboat. Besides her noted acting career, her Wikipedia page says she “supported liberal causes, including the budding civil rights movement.”
So, it looks like Hollywood progressives have been around a long time — promoting justice the way the church should be doing far more broadly. What we see here is that within a single family, one line fought to defend only their own sense of rights while another line promoted the rights of others.
Speaking of which: The Huntsville venue where I was speaking had posters up promoting a wide array of diversity- and freedom-affirming events. Kudos to everyone everywhere promoting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all — but especially in regions where it feels like a single cup of chlorine trying to cleanse a septic tank worth of hatred. But they keep defending the rights of all.
Now, just look what can happen when you miss your exit onto the correct road. Grace turns mistakes into an opportunity to purge impurities while also — um — doing your business. This requires opening our eyes and pursuing the lessons of justice not just for our sake but the sake of everyone.
“Everyone” includes immigrants who are deported and/or imprisoned without due process. It includes the people of both Israel and Gaza. It includes people who express their gender differently. Do we dare defend the rights of all? Doing so is both mature and Christlike — a cross to bear that is never easy and rarely popular.
Brad Bull has served as a chaplain, pastor, university professor and as a therapist. He is a direct descendant of the Revolutionary-War-era gunsmith who founded Bulls Gap, Tenn. At the age of 5, in Augusta, Ga., he was threatened with a spanking from his father for using the n-word. His mother intervened in favor of a lecture that instilled in him a reverence for liberty and justice for all.