SPECIAL FEATURES
being from the oppression of segregation as well. Brother Lowery’s tearful reaction to the waitress’ story shows that a triumphant life is marked by an ability to feel deeply. After reading the story, I began to consider that perhaps a triumphant life rests in the fact that we do not think ourselves through life as much as we feel ourselves through. Another trait of the triumphant life that my brief analysis of Brother Lowery reveals is that he cultivated the habit of listening, especially to those who show themselves to be wise. Not every one who is older is wiser. However, the story Brother Lowery shared about his grandmother proves that she was in fact both old and wise. Brother Lowery tells of a conversation between him and his grandmother, who was a domestic Brother Rev. Dr. in the “big house.” He recalled Johnathan C. Richardson that, although his grandmother’s Black hands were good enough to knead dough and her Black and brown breasts were good enough to feed the hungry mouths of the master’s children, her Black body was not good enough to enter through the front door of the house. Brother Lowery asked his grandmother, whom he called “Ma Polly,” how she responded to this indignity. She answered, “Son, I would come in the back door as ordered and put on my work apron, take the broom, and go out the front door onto the front porch without speaking to anyone in the house and sweep the front porch. When I finished sweeping, I would pull my shoulders back, hold my head high, open the front door, and as far as I was concerned that was the first time I had gone into to house that day.” By sharing this story, Brother
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Lowery showed his ability to listen to the wise and be rendered triumphant thereby. Until his death, Brother Lowery demonstrated how to live triumphantly normal in a strange land which may have been obscured, like many of his generation, by his wit and desire to always draw attention to his mission and not himself. Conclusion This essay is my attempt to excavate Brother Lowery’s body of work, by doing that which he may not have been able to do while still alive, which is slow down. Brother Lowery never took his foot off the accelerator in fighting for, not just equality, but also equity, a distinction he made in a speech during the 2005 Operation Hope Conference in Atlanta. Because his life has slowed to a glorious halt, we now have the opportunity to examine it. Indeed, we find ourselves much like Jacob, in Genesis 32: 22- 32, when he wrestled with God. We similarly find ourselves grappling with Brother Lowery, saying “I will not let you go until you bless me.” In her famous book Beloved, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison placed in the mouth of Paul D a now famous quote. In speaking to Sethe, Paul D says, “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” Now that the “Dean of the Civil Rights Movement” has gone to be with the Lord, whose song he sang faithfully, it is my hope Brother Lowery’s life will continue to not only bless us, but also convict us, and teach us how to be triumphantly normal because, “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” S
THE SPHINX