He gave no thought to this person’s humanness. What he saw was the stereotypical “dangerous black man” and a member of the “undeserving poor.” Hartgrove moved his body quickly out of the way to keep himself safe. In his mind he imagined the panhandler as dangerous. A few strides later he realized what he had done.
Hartgrove didn’t see the person, not really, and he kept walking. The man asked Hartgrove for spare change. As he left Thurmond’s office after a long day of work, he passed an African American holding a cup. It was a path that ran from the Capitol to Union Station. Things went well for Hartgrove until the day he walked his own Damascus road. Hartgrove traveled to Washington, DC, ready to do the Lord’s work, eagerly joining Thurmond’s vanguard of maintaining law and order in an increasingly brown and, as they saw it, unruly society. It is an objective fact, though, that the policies he supported were racist in their effects. Whether or not Thurmond had malice in his heart toward people with dark skin, we may never know. However, he went to his deathbed keeping this relationship a secret. Possibly this is true since he fathered an illegitimate child with his black housekeeper. All the while, Thurmond denied he was a bigot.
#FIRST HUNDRED DAYS FULL#
He continued this opposition into the 1960s, fighting legislation that was intended to end segregation and ensure full voting rights for African Americans. He is also infamous - some would say morally bankrupt - for conducting the longest ever single-person filibuster when, for over 24 straight hours, he tried to block the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Thurmond has the distinction of being the longest-serving senator in the history of the United States. At the spring-footed age of 16 he became a Senate page to his hero, James Strom Thurmond. He fully embraced the teaching of his church and believed he would best serve God and country with a career in politics. As a child, he was taught that the United States is always on the right side of history, and that if Jesus were to register to vote he would undoubtedly declare himself a Republican. Hartgrove was born in the Deep South to a Southern Baptist family. But instead of being blinded by a flash of light, Hartgrove’s eyes were opened by a black man holding a Styrofoam cup. Hartgrove tells the story of his life - a story of conversion as swift and miraculous as that of St. Hartgrove aimed Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion at the president’s most fervent base, white Evangelical Christians, and he writes in a pattern they are familiar with. They understood their work as direct counter-arguments to the 45th president, but Bass and Hartgrove imagined their opposition in very different ways.
While Trump released a “contract with America” that resulted in Muslim bans and tax cuts for the rich, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Diana Butler Bass underwent vows to write books. Trump’s presidency was as holy a time as Advent or Eastertide. A few presidents managed to get significant things accomplished within this window, but generally the first hundred days is more marketing gimmick than substantive governance.įor two writers, though, the beginning of Donald J. They spent their first three months passing key legislation, signing executive orders, and sending cabinet nominees to the Senate for confirmation. EVERY AMERICAN PRESIDENT since Roosevelt used the first hundred days of their administration to lay a foundation for the rest of their presidency.
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