The Back of the Bus

Living in the Atlanta area in the 1940s and 50s offered some unique conveniences. One of those was public transportation. We could get on a trolley (it traveled by an electrical current that ran from overhead wires) and in twenty minutes we would be in downtown Atlanta in the front of the Rich’s Department Store. From that spot you could walk to the movies, department stores, the Federal Bakery, the Planter’s peanut shop, and the S & W cafeteria. It was better than a sterile, closed-in mall. There were sights, sounds, and smells that contributed to the special experience of being in the city. The trolley ride only cost fifteen cents and you could get a transfer to anywhere else in the system. To many older Atlantans those were the good old days.

But they weren’t such good old days for the black population of Atlanta. There was a sign in the front of every trolley which read, “White passengers sit from front to rear, and Colored sit from rear to front.” This was not a convenience, among other things, if you weren’t white. If you were black and were seated in the middle area of the trolley and there was no room for a white person to sit you were expected to get up and give the white person your seat. The trolley operator controlled this situation (all the trolley operators were white). No matter how weary the black passenger, the white rider was entitled to the seat. Most white folks didn’t question this state of affairs. Society in the South mandated many entitlements to the white population for no other reason than their skin color. It was the status quo until one cold day on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama that things begin to change. Rosa Parks, a black lady, was sitting in one of those middle seats on the bus when she refused to get up and let a white man have her seat. She was arrested, tried and found guilty of refusing to obey a bus driver. What is strange is that this even had to happen. How could a Christian dominated white culture be so content with the racism of a segregated society?

What is really scary is that as a teenager I too accepted segregation as an inherited fact of life. It aroused no moral outrage. It was just assumed that this was the way things were supposed to be. Where were the Christian voices raised to challenge the system? I don’t remember any, at least in the South. Actually, churches dug in their heels and, by and large, resisted the Civil Rights movement. The owner of a Christian restaurant handed out axe handles in defiance of those who sought to integrate his place of business. The Ku Klux Klan held rallies on street corners where white robed firebrands quoted Bible verses and preached the supremacy of the white race. Christian schools refused to enroll black students. Churches self-righteously turned away protestors (protesting their segregated church) from their services. It was a shameful and sad day in American church history.

All this should not be lost on us. It is easy to adopt a self-righteous and condescending view toward previous generations. We think, “How blind and prejudiced they were.” “We are much more enlightened and have moved beyond the foibles of our forefathers.” The culture of our day bewitches us just as the segregation mentality did decades ago. Living in debt up to our ears and paying enormous sums of interest is accepted as necessary. Compassion as a virtue is the excuse to slay the unborn. There are no protests. Christians divorce and their church is silent. The Bible is butchered and truth is abandoned as churches continue on with their happy hour of feel-good theology. Is anyone sounding the alarm? The church marches to the drum beat of the culture and no one seems to notice. Every generation has its evils to fight. The problem is that those evils masquerade as good. They are those things that pretend to make life better for us. They ensure our security and comfort. We are medicated by what is approved in our society. A Christian school can teach evolution (disguised as theistic evolution) in its science classes, but never mind, we have a dress code and like-minded friends. All is well. It is like sitting on that trolley in 1955 and enjoying the ride when a titanic moral issue was riding with us. All was not well in the back of the bus. It took someone with courage in the name of justice to ask the question, “Why do you all push us around?” With those words, instituted segregation began to crumble.

Racial prejudice has not been banished. It is bound up in every human heart. That is what makes it a perennial social cancer. But there is more. Our moral laziness and lack of biblical convictions continue to anesthetize Christians to the sins of the culture. Segregation went unchallenged by a previous generation of Christians. What evils are we embracing that will astound a future generation?

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church