On Trump USA: “I am enraged and I am terrified as an American”

Rev. Sarah Webb Phillips
13 March, 2025

Thank you for this opportunity. I am retired after 42 years serving mostly multi-racial parishes and 3 college campuses across 6 U.S. states. I serve nationally with United Methodist Kairos Response on Israeli bonds divestment and am active with the Atlanta Multi-Faith Coalition for Palestine. I’ve come a long way from growing up in a very different time in America, and because I fear those times may return, here are some remembrances.

I grew up on a hog and cattle farm in West Tennessee, land purchased by my grandfather, part of the “Jackson Purchase” through the Treaty of 1830 under President Andrew Jackson, who as General Jackson was a key player in the forced removal of Seminole tribes from land now Florida. The later treaty moved the nations of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminoles from areas that became 5 states (North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee), known as the “Trail of Tears”. I saw the Cherokee Nation production of “Unto These Hills” in kindergarten, and couldn’t understand why these people had to move and why they cried so much, to which my grandmother responded “because they loved their land so much.”

Why was this part of history not emphasized in my high school American History class? We lived right there where native peoples had thrived and then taken from THEIR land! Was the meaning of “purchase” explained to them?

Every spring when my grandfather would till our vegetable garden, my siblings and I would find completely formed arrowheads, along with in-progress chipped stones, 3 cigar boxes full, over time. I asked why so many, and Papaw said because a creek ran by the edge of our farm, it was a Chickasaw campground, “prime real estate” in today’s terms. We lived only 7 miles from the now Pinson Archaeological Mounds & Museum, a prehistoric Native American complex with the second highest mound in the eastern U.S.

Why did it take until my post college years to really understand the genocide of the continent’s native population to make way for the white Europeans? Perhaps the name of my hometown had something to do with it. I’m from – Jackson, after President Jackson.

My region was very much the Segregated South. Black people passed us on the street with heads down. I used the white water fountain right next to the Negro one. I entered Malco Theater through the main door; a side door led to the balcony black entrance.

In mid September, there was always the West Tennessee State Fair, with a week off from school. Except for farm children because it coincided with the cottin’ pickin’ as we called it. I, older siblings & cousins would be at one side of our field and black kids and adults rows apart. I earned my fair money from this chore.

It was at my ten-year high school reunion that I learned from black classmates that Thursday was set aside for “Negro Day,” the only day they could attend. Why didn’t I know that? Their response was, “Guess if you went on Thursdays you would have been turned away, like we were the rest of the week.”

And I must acknowledge other farmland my family owned was rich delta soil, perfect for cotton, and because a small black community lived close by, that land must have been worked by enslaved folks under other owners. Or by Civil War relatives. It was never mentioned. Only now have I started the research.

Even though Brown vs. Board of Education passed in 1954, it was the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, that put law enforecemnt with desegregating schools. My mother taught in the city system, where I went, and they complied. Our county schools took five more years, and a lot of pressure. I remember the supper conversation where she reported our school was selected to get two black children. She said she didn’t agree but she would teach any child because she was, well, a teacher. Her class was chosen for one student, my class received the other.

How could anyone think just two children per school (12 total that year among elementary schools) was a good idea? How traumatized were those kids, and why did I not know more about it?

I remember three things from that year.

One: In my class, that student’s desk was by the teacher’s, and she kept to herself. I and my classmates did nothing to change that.

Two: In that era, a class picture was always taken along with solo pictures When we got the print, my mother pointed to each child and I named them. I still have it, and on the back, all the white children have first and last names, the black child is noted as Katie B. (period).

Three: Prior to Valentine’s Day, Mama read out class roll while I put names on envelopes and signed valentines. She ended “last one, Katie”. I said I wasn’t going to give her one, but my Old South prejudiced mother, with her best teacher instincts, said, “ I will put it in your bag, just in case.”

That day with decorated bags taped to our desks, we walked around distributing each classmates’. With my last one, I backed up to Katie’s desk so no one would see, and dropped it in.

After cookies and juice the teacher gave the signal. We ripped off our bags and as I dumped out my numerous notes, I glanced over at Katie just as she pulled out from her bag one unnamed, unsigned Valentine.

My 9-year-old heart was pierced. Why had I not been taught compassion for others no matter their skin color? Why did my culture buy into “separate but equal”, when equal was not even the case?

Over time through a changing world and a deepening Christian faith, I came to new understandings of human community and friendships with other formally deemed “different”. I became involved in “helping” organizations so much so that I won the “Good Citizen” award of my county’s DAR chapter. I thought that was really something…

Until I later learned, that in spite of all our democratic intentions in America’s formation that strived to build a more perfect union, settler colonization was at its heart, DAR stood for Daughters of the American Revolution, and those women were full-throttle intwined with that purpose. Maybe I need to return my DAR award after all these years, now that my blind eye has gained vision!

I/We can no longer say, “Why did I not know, Why wasn’t I taught that?” The world is screaming at us, the scholars of this conference are pleading with us. Find out, listen, do not remain silent. Let us mean “Never Again” because this time around, there may no one left to say it.

So many experiences of learning, and engaging with perspectives different than my early years, (protesting war taxes, living in inner cities, studying scripture, gaining international friendships, going to Palestine) have brought me new vision to strive for a reset of America. An America that atones for its sins, provides reparations, raises children to value diversity of skin color, religion, ethnicity and cultures-at-their best, closes the economic and opportunity gap, and lives as curious neighbors, not suspicious of differences, but inquisitive for new insights. In these days of regression of freedoms, we must put our hand to the plow, or in the dirt, to work for a better world.

This is a world that can honor the origin of a child’s found artifact from great cultures long ago.
This forum provides insight toward such effort.
Thank you.

The Rev. Sara Webb Phillips
Decatur Georgia, USA 25 March, 2025