A Black Teenager is Dead in Bladenboro | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I awoke today to this story:

    The first words spoken in our newscast caught my attention = suicide investigation. I thought, "Uh Oh, have we hit the national news?" We had a suicide in our jail. I breathed a sigh of relief when they said it was at Bladenboro. I have been through there off and on in over 40 years of travel. It was on our back way from Rocky Mount to Loris where I pastored. It is a typical rural town of modest size between Lumberton and Loris. It is a good route to Myrtle Beach. It slows you down and gives you good feeling of small town living. Everybody knows everybody else and gossip travels fast.

    The story deals with interracial relations between a teen and older white woman. The boy's body was found hanging from a swing frame and webbing was used to hang him. They first wanted to attribute it to grief and teen angst. There are things which don't make sense to his mother. The NAACP is now involved along with the SBI. This mother wants to know what happened. Instead of a simple suicide it could be a present day lynching.

    We will find out in time and good investigation. The possibilities are:

    •  A simple suicide over grief from a beloved relative who died

    •  A hate crime because he was involved with an older white woman

    • ; Gang/mob activity because he was violating a quiet rule of "thou shalt not cross racial lines with love"

    The outcome is important. Even more important is the stuff of hate and love emotions which are opposite, but which run at the core of social interaction. It is the stuff that William Faulkner in several of his Deep South novels, used to get our attention and send a message about humanity. Only in the small and rural south do you get a glimpse of mankind at his best and worse as well as the in-between. It is a soap opera in real life. When Luke and Laura were having their love affair on General Hospital, it glued us to the tube with "what will happen next. . ."

    I was privileged at Emory to encounter Dr. Floyd Watkins who was one of my favorite professors and, later, a personal friend. He co-authored a basic anthology used in many college level courses on literature. He specialized in both story and verse. He knew William Faulkner as a hunting buddy in Mississippi where Faulkner lived at Oxford, MS, and taught at their college. His study of literature allowed him personal knowledge and friendship with famous writers like Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren. He made us look beneath the surface of what southerners wrote. I learned to love him as a wise man and good person. He was honored at Emory for his work. He honored me with a personal chat at times. The last was at his modest house not far from Emory.

    Good minds and love of truth let none of us quit and walk away. Now, Dr. Watkins is directing a graduate student in further research on Faulkner. What they have discovered is a number of journals by the people of Oxford as they ran businesses and large farms. What was thought to be fiction is beginning to show up in those journals. The area is almost identical to Beaufort County and other places in the rural South I have pastored. Real life can be more fascinating and convoluted than you might imagine. People appear to be one thing on the surface and entirely another down deep.

    Here is what I found from real life as a Pastor:

    •  Every town has its pecking order from rich to poor

    •  Secrets and gossip tell far more truth than a passing visitor will ever see

    • ; Every Pastor stands in a pulpit before a group of people who reflect that town

    •  Our confidential counseling and some late night calls force us to deal with social realities

    Many of the towns confess their secrets --- and then are glad when the preacher moves on he knows too much and they are scared he might squeal on them.

    Dr. Watkins' best contribution to my training was to require brevity in writing. Our papers had to be 80 words or less. I have exceeded that rule ONLY when trying to be more analytical on important matters. The suicide in Bladenboro should be enough to spur your thoughts to things that apply to us living in Beaufort County. These I view as MOST IMPORTANT:

    What is the reason we have such political angst right now with the County Commissioners?

    •  Why can't we solve the jail problem we have had since the 80's?

    •  Who are pretending to be good and which ones of us is the "real deal"?

    •  Will we ever get along if we don't have good Christian values at our moral core?

    •  How many of our political and church organizations, along with the civic ones, are doing good --- and which are for social climbing?

    •  How do we help the natural gulf between rich and poor?

    •  What is the problem with Conservatives and Liberals working together for the greater good of us all?

    It is now your turn to do some thinking and responding, if you wish.