Gazing into a pool of courage

By Rev. Lucy Waechter Webb

Sun contributor

Where does the story begin?

I am tempted to start with the trip I took to my mother’s hometown with her this spring. Or when I first got into ancestry work about seven years ago. But to begin there would be to begin the story with me.

And that is not what this story is about.

This story is about the courage of Benny Gordon, Jr.

It is a story about the power of everyday people choosing to show up and speak up for their own dignity and the dignity of their neighbors. It is a story about a small group of local citizens who refused to accept the status quo in their hometown.

Benny Gordon was a father, a businessman, a veteran and a civic leader in Webster Groves, Missouri, a town just outside of St. Louis. He grew up during Jim Crow segregation and was committed to building a community that was no longer governed by the inhumanity of a law that saw us as separate from one another.

In July of 1949, as the thick Missouri summer air hung heavy, he and seven friends decided that it was time to go for a swim in the freshly minted city pool. They were refused entry because they were Black.

This spring, I visited that pool with my mom in Webster Groves, her childhood home, for the first time. She remembered riding her bike up the hill to practice for the swim team in the 1960s. It was here, just a decade earlier, that her grandfather, my great-grandfather, “Happy” (Clarence) Appel as the mayor of Webster Groves, denied Black residents access to swim in the city pool.

It was a story I had not heard growing up, but learned more recently in my adulthood as I began asking questions about my ancestry and our people’s relationship to the history of racial violence in this country.

As we stood there together on the outside of the 8-foot security fence that surrounded the modernized splash pad and water park features of the 21st century pool, we reckoned with the role of our ancestor in the violence that took place there. We spoke words of prayer, apology and hope. As we turned to leave, I bent down and took a large stone from the land, a symbol, that I was committed to carry the weight of this story forward. I didn’t know how just then, but I knew that the story needed to live in the telling of my family’s history, and in the histories that I passed on to my children.

Back in northern Michigan, a few short weeks later we met Ben Gordon III, Benny Gordon Jr.’s son, over the phone. The city’s newly renovated Recreation Center and Pool had been renamed in honor of his father. The dedication was happening in two weeks; he had heard that my mom and I had been in town recently, and he invited us back to Webster to speak at the dedication.

In May, we returned to the pool. I stood there with my mom, my sister and three of our children and we offered a public apology for what our grandfather did. My mom said, “Although I was not personally involved in these past actions, we recognize that silence, inaction, and lack of awareness can contribute to ongoing inequity. For that, I am sorry.” Together we celebrated the life of Benny Gordon, the change he fought for, and broke bread with his family.

Just a couple generations later, we were able to imagine a different way of being together. Ben Gordon III quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in our conversation, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” And then he said, “Over these last years we’ve been able to have enough love to make this conversation between our families possible.” This has left me feeling profoundly hopeful.

This public dedication was to honor and celebrate Benny Gordon Jr. specifically. And, for every courageous African American who has pushed back against racial violence, there was an adversary, sometimes many adversaries on the other side. Often those faces fade into history as if only real in another time. When we remember the people in these stories were some of our own ancestors, our grandparents and great-grandparents we can feel for how we are like them. We can touch the weight of our own choice and complexity more. Because here’s the thing: we are capable of both enacting the same violence or mustering the same courage of those who resisted.

Now is the time to get clear about what we want our own legacy to be. This specific story about a pool in Missouri is the story of all of us. It is the story of this country. As we observe the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, it matters where we begin our story. There are real consequences for how we tell the story of our origins as a nation.

As the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes, “If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story with ‘secondly’.” The author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie continues this logic in her Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” by offering this example: “Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British and you have an entirely different story.”

When I moved to Leelanau County, I picked up the local history account from Bingham Township Hall to learn a little more about where I live in the county. As I cracked the cover, I was disappointed to read that the first line began, “The white man’s first possible visit to this land of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is thought to be…” centering the ‘white man’ in the story. The paragraph goes on to read, “the Indian tribes signed the Treaty of Washington giving [emphasis added] the government the upper western portion of the state…”

To start the story with the pioneer families who arrived on the land erases the history of all those who lived and loved, who hunted and fished, who made art and sang, who grieved and died on this land before the white settlers came. To start the story with “secondly” erases the violence and land theft that occurred to make it possible for these settler families to make their home.

This land was not “gifted.” It was taken from a people whose descendants still live as our neighbors here today.

Leelanau County was built by systematically shrinking Indigenous access to land through a series of laws (Allotment Act, Pre-Emption Act, Land Sales Act, etc.). What was once held by Indigenous people as common land, rooted in the idea that we are not separate from each other or the land itself, was within a generation converted to parcels for private ownership, ripe for fences and ‘no trespassing’ signs. Where eventually, access to swimmable water would be greatly reduced because ‘the closer to the Bay, the more you pay’.

In these consequential days of our nation, we are reckoning with what story we’re going to claim about who we are. In a time when racism is becoming unabashedly explicit again, we must continue to call out current and historical racial violence.

As I return home and reflect on our journey, I am left with immense gratitude for Mr. Benny Gordon Jr.

As he reflected on his military service in his later years, he told the Webster-Kirkwood Times in 2002, “We were drafted with the premise that we were fighting for democracy, yet we didn’t have it. If I could go thousands of miles from home to fight for an ideal, certainly I could stay here and make it happen.”

Benny Gordon Jr. insisted that we be a people committed to equity, justice and inclusion. He insisted our lives are connected to each other, and should not be held separate. He understood this value to be central to the choices we make as citizens and community members. He knew to build a nation worthy of the democracy we claim that we would have to struggle for it, and live by the philosophy: “Things don’t just happen; people have to make them happen.” This is what I am celebrating and willing to struggle for as we mark the 250th anniversary of this nation.

Note: We believe that a commitment to repair is more than words. My family has contributed to the Freestyle Pool Pass to support the ongoing work of ensuring that every person, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, physical ability or class are able to use the public pool in Webster Groves. In honor of Benny Gordon, we invite those in our own community who have benefited from the exclusion of others inside the broader history of our nation to make a donation. Find a link to donate on the Freestyle Pool Pass Facebook page or via check, payable to Webster Rock Hill Ministries, 111 East Waymire, 63119. Include “Freestyle Pass Fund” in the memo.