Racism to Reconciliation Archives - Page 4 of 12

Our Different Realities

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

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 on White Privilege as Spiritual Discipline

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 on Everett’s The Trees

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 on By Hands Now Known

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 on Stream of Life

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 on Safe Space, An Error

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 on Kill Move Paradise

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 All Saints’ Day

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...

Lynching On the Courthouse Lawn

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 1, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments on Lynching On the Courthouse Lawn

It’s a hard topic to write about, lynching. This stream of violence running through the middle of American history like the great Mississippi flowing down the center of our county is hard to face. But Sherrilyn A. Ifill uses an apt phrase in the introduction to her book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st...

The Truth of High School

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on October 4, 2022. Posted in General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 6 Comments on The Truth of High School

Y’all wanna see the truth of what I looked like in high school? It’s a hoot. And now it’s out there for everyone to peep at. Why, you might ask? Well, I wrote an essay about my odd junior high and high school experience in the land of the integrating South. Journalist Ellen Ann Fentress was kind enough to publish the essay...