http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=101890
February 28, 2010
By Nicholas C. Stern
When Barbara Foster learned that Andrew Young would speak this month
at her alma mater, Indiana State University, she immediately made
plans to attend.
Forty-five years ago, Young was among the directors of a weeklong
nonviolent resistance training program in Atlanta. Foster attended,
along with about 600 other American college students.
Young was a rising leader in the civil rights movement and a close
ally of Martin Luther King Jr. He has since served as mayor of
Atlanta, a Georgia congressman and the first black U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations.
To Foster, Young embodied King's message, and she viewed him as a
born leader, if somewhat out of the media's spotlight.
"I saw him as an equal to King," she said.
The training was preparation for a summer spent tutoring black
families in Albany, Ga., and helping them register to vote.
The mobilization was part of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference's Summer Community Organization and Political Education program.
Foster responded to King's call to stand with black residents in the
South as they sought to confront the injustices they faced.
Racial tensions were high, and Foster knew she would likely be
putting herself in danger.
"But if I made the step in faith, it was OK," she said.
That summer Congress passed the first Voting Rights Act.
Hometown incubator
Foster is married to Joseph Foster, pastor of Grace United Church of
Christ in Frederick . She grew up on a farm in southeast Indiana.
Her hometown was close, stable and comfortable, she said, but she
also witnessed bigotry and xenophobia, not just toward people of
different races or nationalities, but among followers of different
branches of Christianity.
"People didn't rock the boat," she said.
Her parents were not bigoted, she said. They instilled in her the
forthright toughness of a farm girl, tempered by gentleness and a
sense of justice.
Faith augmented those qualities, along with a desire to speak truth
to power and to resist evil, a force she came to see in America's
segregationist policies.
She left home to do church work in Pennsylvania and later for
college. These were not acts of escape, she said, as much as a blossoming.
At Indiana State, a group of nuns based in Terre Haute persuaded
Foster to enter the SCOPE program, which included a $300 stipend to
help pay for her studies.
Passive resistance
King, Young and others foresaw the need to use nonviolent techniques
to end discrimination and injustice.
Foster instantly recognized the efficacy of passive resistance, as
well as its link to her own religious tradition.
Such messages from King and others as "Everybody can be great,
because anybody can serve," and "If you can love somebody, you can
love anybody," drew Foster closer to the movement.
King spoke to the SCOPE group twice, Foster recalled. He seemed
thrust into the spotlight, both by the media and by his willingness
to stand up for what he believed in, she said.
"King didn't force anything on anyone, but he made clear where he
stood. É When you stand in the face of evil and will not buy into it,
that makes people angry."
The SCOPE leaders told the volunteers to respond to nastiness with
kindness, and answer physical threats with prayer and song. They had
to dress nicely, appear clean-cut, she said.
"'Don't give them any excuse to criticize,'" she was told.
Summer school
Foster lived among the black families she taught that summer in Albany, Ga.
The group rented a building that they turned into a schoolhouse.
She taught mothers to read their children's names for the first time,
and a young boy how to add.
At home, she developed a casual rapport with the families, but in
public, her behavior toward them was guarded, especially with the men.
She was aware of intense scrutiny by the locals, she said, and she
heard a story about a black high school boy who had been drowned the
year before for some perceived public impropriety with a white women.
"It was making sure someone else wasn't harmed because of something
you did," she said.
At one point, police arrested the group for running a stop sign,
after they were told to follow a police car that had done the same thing.
Their court appearance seemed pure farce, she said, and the judge
eventually threw out the charges.
Foster said she kept her focus on the mission at hand: registering
black residents to vote.
By summer's end, she had registered 67 people.
Lessons learned
At Indiana State, on Feb. 4, Foster saw Young again.
She spoke with him at length about the summer of 1965, and he seemed
pleased that she had kept some training materials, though she does
not think he remembered her.
"I was reminded of how gracious he was," she said.
Helping young people stand up for what is right, to serve, is a
lesson Foster has tried to pass on, she said.
"When you live in another area, or step out of your comfort zone, it
changes you."
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