“[I]f you don’t speak out, ain’t nobody going to speak out for you.” Fannie Lou Hamer
Recently I attended a play about one of my extended family members in Tuskegee, Alabama. Remembering Sammy is about Sammy Younge, a freedom fighter born and raised in Tuskegee and later a student at Tuskegee University. He became known for his public voice and organizing against racial segregation. On January 3, 1966, he was fatally gunned down by a racist white man at the Tuskegee Greyhound bus station after he used a “whites only” restroom.
Mr. Sammy Younge is specifically known as being the first African American university student to be murdered in the United States due to his actions in support of freedom for people of African descent during the Civil Rights movement. He became one of many more freedom fighters whose lives were sacrificed for a more inclusive society after him. One of the opportunities that inspired his courageous life and other students of that time was going to Mississippi to spend time with Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, a renowned freedom fighter. In Mississippi, he learned from and worked with Ms. Hamer.
Like Ms. Hamer, Mr. Younge had a commitment to making his freedom message known specifically among people of faith—as well as the wider community. Predominantly white churches were some of the most fiercely opposed to desegregating their churches and communities. Hamer and Younge were closely aligned with young people of faith who were primarily persons of African descent and whose parentage had been enslaved in the U.S. They, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., understood that their fight for freedom meant speaking to the churches, the public and private sectors, and the policymakers. They were motivated by the same strong views that Rev. Dr. Martin expressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice ….”
Mr. Younge and Ms. Hamer understood the ironies of the perspectives of some faith leaders—and their lack of support for a more equitable society. This Black History Month begs the same question that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here? Bread for the World is playing a vital role in addressing this question. Learn about our Offering of Letters and to speak out and act!
Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.
