ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280028
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
Maybe the picture caught me by the throat because I had just spent two days with 40,000 white and black Christian men who devoted a considerable amount of that time confronting, challenging and repenting whatever racism might linger in their lives.
Maybe it was because a picture really is worth a thousand - or 10,000 - words.
The photo appeared at the bottom of Page 1 of last Sunday's newspaper. If you saw it, you must remember it.
An 18-year-old black woman - whose name, Keshia Thomas, I'm likely to remember a long time - had thrown herself over the body of a white man to protect him from the evil intent of a hostile crowd.
The crowd, gathered to protest a demonstration by the Ku Klux Klan in Ann Arbor, Mich., caught the man Thomas was protecting and started beating him because he wore a jacket emblazoned with a Confederate flag.
We weren't told if the man was actually a Klan member or whether he baited the anti-Klan crowd or whether he just lacked any vestige of good sense by wearing a symbol that was bound to inflame passions in such a situation.
What was clear was that Thomas was willing to stand up to evil even in the face of personal danger and even though the man she protected might have wished evil upon her - before that moment, anyway.
I don't know whether Thomas was motivated to act out of religious convictions - or if she was, what religion that might be. But I could not help but think of one of the most frequently quoted verses of Jesus' recorded teachings.
"Greater love has no man than this, than he would lay down his life for his brother."
Though it was written with masculine pronouns, the observation has nothing to do with gender.
Keshia Thomas must have believed the man she was protecting - despite appearances to the contrary - was her brother.
Here was a man who at the very least was wearing a symbol that reasonable people there in Ann Arbor would interpret as indicating sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan - a despicable association of cowardly, idiotic fools. What's amazing is that such a tiny organization made up of intellectual inferiors could even coordinate any kind of rally or support.
Since Keshia Thomas was at the scene of the rally, she probably was there with others who wanted to let it be known that they disagreed with the Klan's racist, hateful agenda.
Thomas undoubtedly knew that she was a primary target of Klan hatred. As a black woman, she is doubly inferior in the twisted mind of the Klan.
Yet, she risked her own safety - perhaps even her life - to protect the life of a man she may have had every reason to believe thought no more of her than of a bug on the sidewalk.
The power of that action squeezes the air out of my lungs and tears from my eyes.
In her place, would I - could I - have done what Keshia Thomas did?
I honestly don't know.
Like most of us, I would like to say, "Yes. No question." But in reality, I think few of us would be able to do it.
At the Promise Keepers conference I attended, one speaker talked about the need for men who have lived with ingrained racist attitudes to steel themselves against their natural racist reactions. He compared it to the way Secret Service agents must train themselves to resist their instinctive impulse to flee danger and force themselves between harm and the president of the United States.
Keshia Thomas probably never took Secret Service training. She likely had little time to consider the potential consequences to herself. I would bet she acted instinctively.
And that action is evidence of a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong that demanded she act to defend the right.
It fills me with admiration and a bit of guilt. And it leaves me with a determination not to forget Keshia Thomas and her lesson of love.
Neither should the balding white man with a tattoo on his forearm and a leather wristband and a jacket decorated with a Confederate flag.
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