Years ago, an African-American friend showed me the worship bulletin his church had prepared for the memorial service of a mutual acquaintance. At the top of the page, I was surprised to read: “The Funeralization of John Doaks.”

Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that a funeral for my people was a funeralization for his. It was the first of an unending line of reminders I’ve received over the years in the ways blacks and whites in this country do things differently. Some readers of this blog reside in other countries — in recent days, we’ve heard from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and this morning from Scotland — and they may be surprised to learn while we’re all fellow citizens of the USA, our cultures are vastly different in many ways.

Saturday’s memorial service — they called it a celebration; I like that — for Pastor Marshall Truehill was unlike anything you will encounter in an Anglo service in this town. I counted the names of 17 ministers in the printed program. At one point, host pastor Dr. Dwight Webster (we were at neighboring Christian Unity Baptist Church) asked all ordained men and women in the audience to stand and introduce themselves; there must have been fifty.

I’ve paid tribute to Marshall in previous articles on this website, so I’m confining this to a few things readers will find interesting.

My part on the program representing our association came over two hours into the service which had begun at 11 a.m. Looking out at Marshall’s wife Miranda and their extended family, I said, “I was once teasing Marshall. ‘You’re the only pastor I know who every morning at breakfast has his “Miranda rights” read to him.’ He answered, ‘Yes, and when she’s finished, I remind her that I’m still the Marshall!'”

In this morning’s (Monday’s) Times-Picayune, columnist Lolis Eric Elie, who had devoted a recent column to Marshall, quoted the text I had used, Jeremiah 22:16, which if you’re not familiar with it, you’ll treasure. “Your father pled the cause of the poor and the needy, and it was well with him. Is not this what it means to know the Lord?”

Elie picked up on something I had missed in the service. When the mayor and three members of the City Council approached the podium to pay tribute to Marshall, a community activist with whom they constantly disagreed and frequently considered a burr under their saddles, Pastor Webster turned the tables on them. “The Rev. Webster invoked an instruction familiar to Truehill and anyone else who has attempted to speak before the city council. ‘You have two minutes,’ Webster said to resounding laughter.”

Elie says, “The elected officials then proceeded to demonstrate their inability to count to two.”

In the printed program (12 pages of photos, tributes, and the order of service), Miranda Truehill wrote about her husband. “When I first met Marshall, I was an atheist. Later on, after he led me to Christ, we would often joke that it would make for a great story…. I often told people that had I known what was in store for me being married to a preacher, I would have run screaming in the other direction! …He often told me how much he appreciated having a partner who would work beside him and boy did we work! We spent many long hours and sleepless nights preparing for worship, cleaning the church, moving equipment, wiring offices, writing letters, visiting members, or preparing food for the homeless. And that was just for First United, not to mention the work of…the numerous other efforts, boards, initiatives and programs he was involved in.”

She writes of Marshall’s determination to do whatever the job took. “If it meant sacrificing his sleep (or mine!), he was willing.” She says, “I am overwhelmingly proud to have been his wife and grateful to God for such an amazing husband. He made me feel more loved than anyone ever has. He was my role model and godly example as well as best friend, lover, and confidant — he was the other half of me.”

On December 31, an African-American judge in another part of our state wrote in a letter to the editor that he is still waiting for an apology after 45 years. Retired Judge Calvin Johnson, from the town of Plaquemine (not to be confused with the parish of Plaquemines, just below New Orleans), told how in 1964 he and some other high school students decided to hold a peaceful demonstration to call attention to the segregation of their school a full decade after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. He pointed out they were non-violent and singing hymns, when they were attacked by the local police. They were arrested and charged with inciting riots and jailed. Johnson pointed out he is still waiting for an apology.

Two letters to the editor have appeared in the Times-Picayune in reply. Retired Judge Moon Landrieu (former mayor of New Orleans; father of Senator Mary Landrieu and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu) wrote, “Although I was not in Plaquemine, LA, at the time, I was an adult who stood silent as that inequity and countless others were inflicted on him and other African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.” He continues, “My gift is not much and words may seem wholly inadequate, but I apologize to him for my inaction.”

Roger Stetter of New Orleans writes, “It is amazing that high school students were arrested in 1964 for peaceful protests against racial segregation in our public schools, then convicted of inciting a riot for singing old ‘Negro spirituals’ and walking two by two to Court Street.” He concludes, “I’m not sure the good judge will ever get an apology from the folks in Plaquemine, but he certainly deserves a full pardon from our governor.”

Reading this brought back my own memories of living in Birmingham from 1959 into the summer of 1964. I recall riding past the Greyhound bus station where the burned out bus of the Freedom Riders had been towed. Bull Connor was our police commissioner then, and Martin Luther King was a sometimes-resident of our local jail. Those were scary days for everyone — black and white — for many reasons. In late 1962 I began pastoring a small white church just north of the city and started trying to figure out how to shepherd God’s people and to bring meaningful sermons. I recall little of those messages, but am confident I never once mentioned from the pulpit what was happening to the African-Americans living there. It’s as though it were happening on another planet.

A decade ago, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution in our annual meeting apologizing to all descendants of Africa in this country for slavery, our condoning of slavery, our defense of slavery, and for all forms of racial injustice and for whatever roles our people and our pulpits played in prolonging it.

I sometimes wonder if God’s other white children who lived in the Deep South during those troubled days feel as I do, that we would like to walk up to every dark-skinned person we meet on the streets and say, “I’m sorry, friend. I am so sorry.”

It’s not much. It’s just words. It can’t undo any of the wrongs, and in most cases these words cannot reach the victims of injustice and prejudice from those past generations. But it’s something.

I didn’t live in Plaquemine, LA, either, Judge Calvin Johnson. But for what it’s worth, I apologize to you for the unkind and harsh treatment you received from those charged with protecting you.

And I pledge myself anew to love my neighbor as myself.