NOTE: Is this too long? Don’t worry. I haven’t started riding yet. I’m writing long, because I’m not tired yet. Tired is coming. I promise!
Just as the melody is not made up of notes nor the verse of words nor the statue of lines, but they must be tugged and dragged till their unity has been scattered into these many pieces, so with the man to whom I say Thou. I can take out from him the colour of his hair, or of his speech, or of his goodness. I must continually do this. But each time I do it he ceases to be Thou. —Martin Buber
The J.A. Franklin House on the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail
I inputted the corner of Ana and Basil onto Google maps and found the cross-street near the J.A. Franklin House, one of the stops on the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage trail (dffaaht.org). It was about ten minutes on the bicycle, down quiet, bumpy streets. I thought I recognized the house from the picture, but I wasn’t sure, so I asked a woman just getting out of her car if she new where the Dr. Franklin house was. She did, and I was right. I thanked her, took a brief moment to appreciate it, to imagine the lives of its former occupants, of a man who barely escaped Evergreen, Alabama with his life, but landed here where he gave so much to his community.
I took a couple of pictures. Then I left.
What would Martin Buber say?
I found out about Martin Buber from a man named Hune Margulies who I met on Facebook before Facebook got too toxic for me. Hune’s life mission seems to be to carry on the theological work that Martin Buber started. I lost touch with Hune, but because of him, I’m reading Buber bit by bit, a few pages a day.
Here’s what I get so far: Buber says that there are two ways of relating to each other. We can relate to each other as I and it: myself and you as an object to experience, categorize, get something from, act upon, or exploit. Or we can relate to each other as I and thou, where I relate to you, appreciate you.
It’s easier to say what I-it is like, because that’s where we live most of our moments. I-thou must be fleeting, a pure moment that remains with us as an echo to brighten and purify the more transactional stream of our existence.
I think that’s what he’s saying. I’m not on solid ground here.
Dr. Franklin, I learned from the dffaaht.org website, once practiced in Evergreen, Alabama during the flu epidemic of 1918. In 1919, a poor White farmer turned to him, because he didn’t have the money to pay the local White doctor. The farmer’s wife needed treatment. Dr. Franklin treated the woman. When other Whites on the community heard, they conspired to lynch Dr. Franklin. It was taboo for a Black man to touch a White woman—even to save her life.
When the farmer found out, he sold his horse and gave the doctor money for a train out of town. That money got him to Plateau, on the outskirts of Mobile.
The doctor settled here and became a pillar of the community. He eventually built the Franklin building, which became the location of the Finley drugstore, a center for civil rights organizing in Mobile.
All of this is from the dffaaht.org website—and I encourage you to spend some time there.
Here’s what I take from that story:
The people who conspired to lynch Dr. Franklin weren’t a bunch of sick individuals with individual pathologies. This was a social pathology that worked through these individuals;
It was a sickness that played upon powerful fears about race and sex;
Those fears are still alive today and they are being exploited by cynical politicians;
The primary victims of this sickness were Dr. Franklin and his Black patients in Evergreen, who lost a good, kind, doctor. But White supremacy clearly hurt Whites as well.
That’s my takeaway. But I know how easy that was to write. To find the story on a website? To ride a bike a mile or two? To snap a picture? And to ride on to a nearby beignet shop?
This doesn’t feel like a thou place. I’m not at the place where I appreciate the rich fabric of Dr. Franklin’s life and community. But it’s going to have to be enough for me to recognize that. Tomorrow, I ride on to Blakeley Park, and then on—in the months ahead—to Niagara Falls, and over to Maine.
Thank you, David, for your sharing and perspective. I appreciate all you write —and I read thinking about my sister who would be applauding every comment, photo and insight. Onward we go! ~Lee
NOT too long!