PART III: 
                THE ROAD TO NICODEMUS

   Looking for Revelation, I reviewed, studied, 
evaluated, considered, and explored the words and ideas that I
found on my friend's videotape of the public forum that took
place in Lawrence, Kansas in the spring of 1991.  
   The variety of speakers participating in that forum was an
impressive and interesting microcosm of the Lawrence Community.
A cross-section of the Heart of America.  I listened to their 
words and I heard America speaking.
   Speaking at that forum are Americans who, because of
certain visible and invisible factors, fall into certain niches
in the American way of classifying the human race.
   Bill Dulin wondered how many Communities make up the Lawrence
Community.
   Commissioners Bob Walters and Bob Schulte and Bob Schumm have
names and looks that indicate some degree of Germanness in their
families' racial background.  They could, if they wanted to,
label themselves as members and representatives of the
German American Community.  Mr. John Nalbandian's name labels him
as having some degree of Armenianness in his family background.
He could, if he wanted to, label himself a representative of the
Armenian American Community.
   All of those gentlemen, plus other gentlemen who spoke that 
night, Dan Wildcat, Bill Simons, and Bill Dulin, could, if they 
wanted to, label themselves as representatives of the Male
American Community. 
   Shirley Martin Smith also had an opportunity that night to label herself.
She could say, if she wanted to, that she represents some
hyphenated European American Community, and the Female American
Community, as well.  
   But the speakers at the public forum did
not choose to attach those labels to themselves.  The
Commissioners and the Mayor represent the White Majority; other
speakers represent the minority. 
   A number of Women spoke forcefully and eloquently of their 
concerns.  The tired City Commission listened and responded with
gratitude and reassurance.
   A number of Men spoke, too.  One of them, the one
with the outlandish name of "Wildcat" spoke of grief and
insults. 
   Dan Wildcat's oratory was shocking.  Here was an
individual who
dared to tell the Government that the Citizens
are insulted and angry.  
   Dan Wildcat looks like a White Mana
Non Indian.  Yet he is an Indian.  A Yuchi Indian.  An American
Indian.  
   Granted, being Chairman of the Department of Social
and Natural Sciences at Haskell Indian Junior College, he
occupies a position of distinguished leadership at the major
American Indian educational institution in our country.  By no
means is he a "typical" Indian.
   Granted, being President of the
Board of Directors of the Lawrence Indian Center, he occupies a
position of distinguished leadership in the American Indian
Community.  The Master's degree in Sociology that he earned at
the University of Kansas indicates an exceptional level of
education.  He is a brilliant and educated man who could easily
deny, if he wanted to, those factors that keep him imprisoned in
his Minority niche.  If he changed his name to Smith or Jones
and got a haircut and stopped pleading for racial equality he
could pass for White!  "How can such a man be so stupid as to
keep on being an Indian when he doesn't have to?" was the secret
Racist thought that crawled from my Racist mind when I was about
to meet Dan Wildcat.  I wasn't bold enough to ask him that
question.  Exploring it now, I guess his answer would have
something to do with love.

   "'THE ROAD TO NICODEMUS' is the
title I will use when I write about you," I told Bill Simons.
We were in his dining room on a winter day.  Bill Simons was
showing me pictures of his adult children and telling me about
his family.  I had been confused as I watched and
listened to Bill Simons speaking in the public forum.  His name
and his looks told me he was a Non Indian.  He looks like a White
man, yet he was pleading with the Government for equal treatment
for his children and their friends, who are obviously members of
Lawrence's African American Community.  He asked the City
Commission to consider current concerns in a historical context
to halt a cycle of disasters.  
   Bill Simons unraveled my
confusion by explaining that his first wife, the mother of his
children, was the granddaughter of a former Black Slave.  He
told me that his children's great grandparents were on the
Road to Nicodemus in 1884, but they never got there.  That
pioneer couple had a dream similar to the dream of all the
westward moving Americans of those historical times.  They
dreamed of dwelling in a peaceful community where they could
enjoy their freedom to live and love as all human beings have a
right to do.  They were on the Road to Nicodemus, a new and
unique all Black Kansas community.  Their goal was right, but
their timing was wrong.  They never made it to Nicodemus.  The
young pioneer bride was "great with child," so instead of going
on to Nicodemus, they stopped in Lawrence.  And here in
Lawrence, a child was born to them.  Their child grew up in
Lawrence.  He became a truck farmer and a bootlegger.  He used
to tell of how he hid bottles of whiskey inside the sacks of
potatoes that he sold to his customers in the White Community.
And he told of seeing a Black man hanging by his neck from the
bridge over the troubled waters of the Kansas River.  Thus Bill
Simons helped me to put current concerns into a historical
context.  
   He went further, and in so doing he answered a
question that had been wallowing around in my Racist heart.
"Some twenty-nine years ago," he said, "shortly after our
wedding, my bride and I were at a party in Topeka.  A friendly,
well-meaning person approached us, meaningfully looked at me and
my Black bride, and said, 'Both of you seem to be intelligent
and educated.  How can you be so stupid as to get married?' The
answer has something to do with the colorblindness of
love."
   Bill Dulin asked for the unification of the Lawrence
Communities, and he talked of words.  In the beginning was the
Word . . . 
   I was looking for Revelation, but I got sidetracked
and found myself on the Road to
Nicodemus.
   I wondered where that name came from, and I found it in The Gospel
According to Saint John.  I STRONGLY recommend the reading of
the first three chapters of that Gospel.  Nicodemus was taught
that death is a prerequisite to rebirth.  If the Lawrence
Community is to begin recovering from its devastating sickness,
death must occur.  The death of Gregg Sevier can serve as a
symbol of the death of Racist attitudes.  Lawrence, Kansas can
be reborn as the starting place for a new Non-racist Movement in
the Heart of America.
   An Association for the Advancement of All American People.

	Hosted by CYBOLD.COM
	©1997 CYBOLD.COM All rights reserved.