Racism to Reconciliation Archives - Ellen Morris Prewitt

My Heart is in Memphis

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on January 28, 2023. Posted in Featured, Racism to Reconciliation. 7 Comments

First, there is racism. I will keep reposting this until it is no longer true. Again. And again and again. Why do killings keep happening? Because, in America, first, there is racism. Tyre D. Nichols’ photography can be viewed here: T. Nichols Photography A photo of Tyre D. Nichols at his memorial service

White Privilege as Spiritual Discipline: When

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on January 22, 2023. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments

When I wrote about examining white privilege as a spiritual discipline, I had no idea how unoriginal it was. Turns out, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Adventists, Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists–all acknowledge examining white privilege as a spiritual discipline. Apparently,...

Our Different Realities

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on January 16, 2023. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments

On this Martin Luther King Day, I acknowledge a truth. The years of us white folks embedding racism in American society has warped our perception. We whites see different realities from Black folk, every day, day-by-day. If I’m inside the white community, I experience life in America differently than those who aren’t. How Different...

White Privilege as Spiritual Discipline

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on January 4, 2023. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 9 Comments

White people hate the term “white privilege.” Why? Because life is hard for all of us. “Privilege” implies ease, and our lives have not, in fact, been easy. Also, as Americans, we value rugged individualism. Only those who made their own way in the world count as successful. No silver spoons for us, thank you very much. You...

Everett’s The Trees

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 12, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 4 Comments

Percival Everett’s The TREES is the most sarcastic, gut-punchingly funny novel about the Emmett Till lynching. As I type that sentence, I think, What the hell? In the apt words of one of the characters from The Trees, it is, “A sentence I never imagined myself saying.” Very on-brand that this book, which short-listed for the Booker...

By Hands Now Known

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 6, 2022. Posted in Racism to Reconciliation. 2 Comments

I have been reading about my American South’s racial violence for over twenty years, and yet, “By Hands Now Known,” caused me to go get a rosary to hold while reading. The full name of the book is a clue to its unsettling nature: “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.” Margaret A. Burnham’s...

Stream of Life

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 3, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GOD, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments

The stream of life is out in the country. You can only get to it by driving dirt roads. Then you have to walk a beaten path through pin oaks, pines, and hickories that will roll an ankle if you’re not careful. Just when you’ve given up, the trees open and a sandy-bottomed creek sparkles in the sun. We enter the water, startled by its...

Safe Space, An Error

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 18, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments

We sat around the table at Caritas Village. The time was the early 2010s, the place Memphis. We were in the back room behind the grey folding partition conducting our Memphis School for Servant Leadership Board meeting. We were probably eating chips or brownies or other snacks Board members brought for meetings. As the Board chair reviewed the Parker...

Kill Move Paradise

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 11, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GRIEF, Racism to Reconciliation. 4 Comments

Usually, I review books in this space. Today, we’re doing something a little different. Because when I was sitting in the audience at the end of Kill Move Paradise, I thought, I have to write about this in the blog. So, today, it’s a play. Hattiloo Theatre My husband and I have been attending Memphis’s Hattiloo Theatre since...

All Saints’ Day

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 6, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GOD, LOVE, Racism to Reconciliation. 8 Comments

On this All Saints’ Day, as we left the church singing “Oh, when the Saints, go marching in,” I connected with my ancestors. If you’ve read this blog, you realize that’s no mean feat for me. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my father’s family and their sins. I do not consider them saints. I don’t...