Talking Walls voice hope beyond racial injustice

ART TOALSTON

Kim Napier’s painting of “the door of no return” at the Elmina slave fort in Ghana is in the same dimensions of the doorway through which enslaved Africans boarded the ships that carried them to America.

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Kim Napier recounts her sorrow in painting a slave ship as part of the Talking Walls exhibit.

Iris Gordon speaks about the four schoolgirls killed in a 1963 Birmingham church bombing and Ruby Bridges, 6, who integrated New Orleans schools.

By Art Toalston

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It’s hard to ignore what the Talking Walls are saying.

They speak with the voices of a young black pastor and father of four, the Rev. Chris Williamson, and a white grandmother of 12, Kim Napier.

They speak of people torn from their African homeland and enslaved in America who mounted a freedom movement.

And the Talking Walls speak of grace that, conceivably, is truly amazing.

Williamson had the idea for a time line of images from pre-slavery life in Africa to the civil rights movement and its current remnants. Napier, who briefly had been an art major in college, joined the pastor in nurturing the Talking Walls to existence.

Encompassing nearly 100 paintings, the Talking Walls can be seen inside the Natchez Community Center on Natchez Street near downtown Franklin.

But the paintings aren’t confined to the interior of a building. They also form the basis of a 24-minute DVD and 37-page booklet titled “Hard-Pressed Coal,” produced by Williamson, Napier and several other members of the congregation Williamson leads, Strong Tower Bible Church, which meets at the Factory in Franklin.

“All coal does not become diamonds,” according to the DVD/booklet’s narrative, “but no diamond exists that did not first begin as a lump of coal. The difference between the two is individual content under tremendous heat and pressure.” The paintings depict “some unforgettable ‘diamonds’ produced from hard-pressed coal,” the narrative notes of key events and individuals that help define the black experience in America.

The overarching saga relayed by the Talking Walls and “Hard-Pressed Coal” is more than mere storytelling.

“I saw a generation of young African Americans who were falling behind primarily because of ignorance,” Williamson said in an e-mail addressing questions posed by ClusterPaper about the project. “Typically this current generation does not understand or appreciate the sacrifices our ancestors made to place us in this position” – a position that Williamson does not regard as bleak.

“We are squandering our opportunities as a people,” Williamson continued. “I thought that knowledge of our rich past can spark pride and perseverance for our future once we know the stock from which we come spiritually and socially.”

Williamson also noted, “Franklin is a historically driven town, but it needs more awareness and participation from an African American perspective. We want to see the city depend on us a respectable voice and option for telling the story.”

The Talking Walls and “Hard-Pressed Coal” do not sidestep the troubling “Why?” questions about slavery and segregation.

“History shows us the depth of man’s depravity as well as the sovereign power of God,” Williamson said. “Within all of us is the potential of greatness and the capacity for catastrophe. God ultimately works everything out for our good and His glory. Even though He was often lied on, God never endorsed African slavery. …

“Because Jesus suffered unjustly at the hands of others, we know that this powerful reality will bless and encourage people who have always wondered if God can identify with them in their pain. Jesus not only identifies with our hurts and struggles, but through His resurrection we can experience life, hope and peace,” Williamson said. (His capitalizations are maintained when quoting his e-mail; the full text of his comments will conclude this article.)

For Napier, painting the Talking Walls was “a whole different experience of sorrow, conviction,” of “information I never had.”

When, in 1963, for example, four schoolgirls were killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., Napier acknowledges, “I didn’t pay any attention to it. … Everything in my life was so white, I never had a friend who didn’t look like me.

“When atrocities would happen or when little girls or teenagers would integrate [the public schools], I never thought about what their day was like, I never thought about how difficult that was for them or their families, or the danger of it, or, or, or — I didn’t think about it. … If you’d asked me if I was racially prejudiced, I would have denied that. But I was totally dead to other people.”

Napier’s venture into race relations began in 2000 when she felt an inner prompting to join Strong Tower Bible Church after just one visit. Williamson had begun the interracial congregation in 1995 after leading urban ministry initiatives for Christ Community Church, a Franklin congregation affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America.

Napier did some decorative painting at the Williamsons’ house, and the pastor subsequently extended the challenge of the Talking Walls. She was hesitant at first “because I didn’t know how to paint people. … I was taking art lessons, but I was drawing eggs and cups and dishes.”

Nor had she ever liked or made good grades in “white American history … and I knew nothing – nothing – about African American history.”

“But I was stirred inside. So I prayed about it and came back and said I would try.”

At the Natchez Community Center, Napier spreads out an array of Williamson’s sketches conceptualizing the Talking Walls. “I can’t quite let go of them,” she says. “I don’t know if I ever will.” She frequently went to the library to research such individuals as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass and such topics as Jim Crow segregation laws. And she used a projector to enlarge the images before committing them to the walls with acrylic paint.

“I got to kind of represent him [Williamson] and what God put in his heart by being the hands in it,” Napier reflects.

“Every time something turned out,” she adds, “I would step back and look, and I’d think, ‘God, I don’t know how to do that, and you just made it come off the brush and onto the wall.’

“I don’t mean they’re masterpieces in here, because it’s flawed work by a flawed painter, but I saw that he [God] was turning out better work than I knew how to do. … Now that I am studying portraiture, I’m learning [that] I did lots of things wrong. Everything I did was by chance in the natural, but by God in the supernatural.”

Sorrow often punctuated the eight months Napier spent on the Talking Walls three years ago.

As she painted the belly of a slave ship, for example, she realized, “It must have been just full of terror there, besides the death and the stink of it all.” And she pondered how she was painting the figures not nearly as tightly as they would have been in the ship. “These were called coffin ships because there was less space for a person than in a coffin,” she says.

“I needed to experience that,” Napier recounts. “I needed not to just whip through a bunch of stick figures and not think about them [as real people]. … I felt like I was in a memorial service. … I wish that I could tell somebody, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry we did this. I’m sorry that you went through this. I’m sorry.’”

Napier’s experiences with Strong Tower Bible Church and the Talking Walls have shown her a redemptive side to the cultural differences between whites and blacks.

“We are not the same,” she says, explaining, “We are [the same] in the eternal way that we need Jesus and that he satisfies us, but there are so many different things and giftings. And I think maybe God fit me [at Strong Tower] because I need what I see in them. I’m jealous for what I see in African Americans who are given to Jesus.

“It’s not the skin color. It’s what African Americans have been through and do go through as people of a different skin. If they walk with the Lord and let him be seen in them, I am jealous for that.”

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Strong Tower Bible Church member Iris Gordon regularly leads tours of the Talking Walls for individuals and community groups. She can be contacted at irisgordon@aol.com. For information about ordering the “Hard-Pressed Coal” DVD and booklet, e-mail info@stbch.org.

The full text of Chris Williamson’s comments to ClusterPaper follows:

Question: Why did you begin a project like the Talking Walls and the accompanying “Hard-Pressed Coal” DVD and booklet?

Williamson: I was stirred to do this project because I saw a generation of young African Americans who were falling behind primarily because of ignorance. Typically this current generation does not understand or appreciate the sacrifices our ancestors made to place us in this position. We are squandering our opportunities as a people. I thought that knowledge of our rich past can spark pride and perseverance for our future once we know the stock from which we come spiritually and socially.

Q: How did others help sharpen the vision for the project or give support to it?

Williamson: Kim Napier gave me the encouragement to stick with it and to design the walls with the right flow historically. She would not let me get overwhelmed with my other responsibilities as a pastor. She kept me focused.

Q: Is there part of the vision that is still ahead?

Williamson: We want to continue to expose the city of Franklin to what is available through the Talking Walls project. Franklin is a historically driven town, but it needs more awareness and participation from an African American perspective. We want to see the city depend on us a respectable voice and option for telling the story.

Q: Much injustice and sorrow are recounted in the DVD and booklet “Hard-Pressed Coal,” along with affirmations of God’s grace. Some likely wonder how a loving God could allow all these things to happen to a people. How have you felt it best to answer such questions?

Williamson: History shows us the depth of man’s depravity as well as the sovereign power of God. Within all of us is the potential of greatness and the capacity for catastrophe. God ultimately works everything out for our good and His glory. Even though He was often lied on, God never endorsed African slavery. The Talking Walls quote the passage from Genesis concerning Joseph being sold into slavery by his own brothers. Eventually, God brought Joseph out of slavery and used him to save the lives of the brothers who enslaved him in the first place. That’s redemption.

Q: How might you see the narrative in “Hard-Pressed Coal” as helping stir a person to faith? And what are some of the ways that faith in Christ will transform a person’s life in regard to the agonies that have been endured over these many years?

Williamson: The gospel of Jesus Christ is clearly displayed on the walls just as much as the sins of men are displayed. We took the time to paint Calvary, the place where Jesus died, so as to depict the only message and means of salvation for all people. Because Jesus suffered unjustly at the hands of others, we know that this powerful reality will bless and encourage people who have always wondered if God can identify with them in their pain. Jesus not only identifies with our hurts and struggles, but through His resurrection we can experience life, hope and peace.

Q: How is the mission of Strong Tower Bible Church reflected in the Talking Walls and “Hard-Pressed Coal”?

Williamson: Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus from every nation. A disciple is a student and a learner, in this case, of Jesus. We believe that God is just as much involved in the pages of world history as He is involved in the pages of Biblical history. There is no divide between the so-called sacred and secular. God is a God for the world and not just the church. The church has been separated to a fault to the degree that its people don’t want to encounter the things that are mainstream in culture because they figure those events have no bearings on their relationship with Jesus. That’s the problem of the church: We have been so heavenly minded that we are earthly irrelevant. Although Strong Tower Bible Church is an institution, we don’t see ourselves as a traditional institutional church. We are a people on the move who strive to be in the city of Franklin for the city of Franklin. Because we are a cross-racial church, we have a responsibility to be a bridge and example in the community of what authentic community should look like.

Q: At different junctures in your life, how have you reflected on the black experience, such as when you were a child, a teen, a young man and college student, an aspiring gospel artist, a husband and father, and then a pastor.

Williamson: There’s never a day that goes by that I don’t reflect on being a Black man. And if I am ever tempted to forget that beautiful truth, society will quickly remind me. I’m comfortable with who I am, but every one else is not. When I walk into stores, banks, neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and, yes, pulpits too, the atmosphere can sometimes change. My white brothers and sisters will never experience what I am trying to articulate. If they are open, the closest they will come to understanding what it means to be Black in America is to adopt a Black child or enter into some deep relationships with other minorities to experience some of their pain and frustration. America was built with a racial divide from its inception and has continued that way for hundreds of years. America was formed on the false racial superiority of the white man and the false racial inferiority of the Native American and the African. These mythological ideals were overtly spoken about, preached about, written about and stitched into the fabric of the American and even “Christian” way of life. To deny this is to deny history. Those attitudes still exist today in a more covert fashion, which makes them harder to identify and destroy.

Q: Watching the DVD, it seemed as though God has made African Americans a picture of his redemption through Christ’s death on the cross. Is that a core message of the project? Or is there another central message that you’ve envisioned?

Williamson: Apart from Jesus Christ there is no message. Everything is filtered through Christ and His Word. My “blackness” is secondary and filtered through my relationship with Jesus Christ. That being said, God never called me to stop being Black and turn into a “clear brother.” I am Christian who is Black by the providential design of God. That is my reality and never my limitation or excuse to not be who God called me to be. Hosea the prophet said in Hosea 4:6 that his people, the Jews, were destroyed for a lack of knowledge about God and their history. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge about God and their history as well. In addition, the history displayed on the walls of the Natchez Community Center is for all people because these are stories of hope and courage. Everyone should be inspired when they leave.

Q: It seems, though, that God’s redemption in the black community is sporadic, or far from complete, in regard to large numbers of black men in prison and other struggles battering families. What are the signs of God’s redemption that you see afoot in the black community?

Williamson: God’s redemption in the Black community is occurring. It just doesn’t make the news. There are tens of thousands of Black men and women who are choosing life, going to college, building families, being financially independent, starting and owning business, avoiding pitfalls, etc., but the system is not set up to promote these images or individuals. We have people in our church who represent the power of God to change a life whether Black, White, Native, Asian or Hispanic.

Q: What do you think can be done to spread God’s healing in the black community? To what extent does the matter of racial reconciliation enter into this? Are there crucial ways that Christians in the white community can come alongside churches like Strong Tower that have a vision in order to work together and make a difference?

Williamson: To help with the issues at hand you have to first see them and know they exist. No one gets healed who is in denial of being sick. That is the big disconnect in this country and especially the church. We don’t want to acknowledge that racism still exists and that after 400 years of slavery and segregation there are still many negative and powerful aftershocks and ripples affecting America. Most people will admit that racism played a negative role in the formation of America and the church in America, but my questions are: When did it end? How did it end? Who were the key players who stood against it? What are the effects of it upon people, institutions and systems? Who are the culprits still perpetuating it? What does healing look like? How was the Bible misused in the process? Who’s willing to publicly denounce the sins of the past? How can we move beyond interracial church events that make good photo ops to working together and living together in unity? We can’t sweep the past under the carpet and complain when we trip over the lump. We can’t act like there’s not an elephant in the room when there is a huge one walking by the china cabinet. We have to be equipped to reach a world that is racially minded and racially divided. The church has been ill-equipped for too long. We’ve got the racially divided part down, but we are far from being racially minded. Jesus was racially minded. He was intentional at reaching out to Gentiles. We need to see Jesus, His words and His methods in a whole new light if we are to enter into the mandate of truly seeing His kingdom come.