Yesterday’s Story by Eyesbright, about the congregation of Friendship Baptist Church near Appomattox VA walking out of Sunday services because the preacher refused to take down the “Love It Or Leave It” message on the church sign was taken by many, (including myself!), as a hopeful sign that rural residents might be rejecting racism and tRump. It felt good but it seemed so unlikely that I dug a little deeper. You won’t like what I found. I don’t like what I found. I thought about remaining silent so as to avoid damaging our morale, but I had just posted a diary on the death and life of Paul Krassner and decided that hiding the truth because it was unpleasant would not be a fitting tribute to the Editor/Publisher of The REALIST Magazine…So… I contacted a relative who has friends in the Appomattox area and was informed about the following details:
The Church membership is largely composed of tobacco farmers who depend at this time of year on local seasonal workers for the harvest. Harvesting Tobacco is a complicated process requiring several trips down each row of the crop over the course of about 1 month. The lower leaves of each plant are taken as they reach full size and put in a drying shed. A few days later, each plant is again harvested and so on and so on until the season is over . One can see that this requires large number of workers over an extended time period. These workers are largely African Americans who might be justifiably angry about the sign’s message.
According to the story I got, the congregation was upset, Not because its message offended them, but because of the “fuss” it was causing. They feared that it might jeopardize their source of Labor and cause a loss of much of their crop. They told the preacher this but he refused to remove the message, so they walked out.
Not nearly the uplifting story we thought we had, but I am compelled to pass this on. I have no verifiable sources for this, but that is the inside rumor as it was related to me.