March 18, 2025

The redemption of Clarence Thomas and our selves down by the river side

Read as you float down to South Carolina.

Ride down the river with Ettaphine Tyler as she heads back home.

Ettaphine Tyler, born in Florence South Carolina in 1907. Transitioned into an angel saint in 2011.

Welcome home, brother Clarence!

We’ll welcome Clarence Thomas back home and baptize him in the Combahee river where that great gunboat raid freed almost 800 enslaved people.

Call in the elders of the Gullah nation to reclaim Brother Clarence in waters sacralized by the memory and spirit of Aunt Harriet. 

Blasphemy you say!

But the viability of democracy pivots on Supreme Count rulings as we approach multiple constitutional crises so “we who believe in freedom” in the memory of Ella Baker cannot rest.  How did Justice Clarence Thomas become so antagonistic, so seemingly devoid of conscience? 

And can he be saved?

Not a chance, you say!

But hold up! Here comes Brother Clarence now, dressed in a white gown. He does like gowns.

When he was a young boy, we were striving to be bronze versions of the American Dream in Savannah's Cuyler-Brownville community of doctors, teachers, proper preachers, black business people in a bustling section of grocery stores, restaurants and beauty shops. Clarence Thomas was from the outskirts of town, a place called Pin Point. 

Growing up, Thomas was disdained by both black and white folks, says Kendra Hamilton in Romancing the Gullah and referring to the Thomas biography, Supreme Discomfort.   Thomas went to a segregated black Catholic High School and aspired to don the Catholic priest gown. But the school's white rector dashed that dream, saying Clarence’s Geeche Gullah dialect would never make the grade.   

And particularly cruel was how this baby — black grandmas called almost grown and grown children "baby" as an expression of poetic affection -- how this grandma’s baby Clarence was teased as being “ABC” (America's blackest child) by other black youth.

From Savannah about 107 miles up the coast to Charleston, Dubose Heyward imagined us living in an abandoned, dilapidated mansion called Catfish Row but the real action was in North Charleston where more bronze American dreamers were emerging by disavowing distinctive Gullah genetic traits 

Because back out in the backwaters, when the livin’ was easy for some, and particularly for the baby whose white daddy was rich and mulattress mama, “good lookin’ " -- back out there on the land, away from the prying eyes of civilized society, black and yella gals got plucked to serve the master’s and his sons’ voracious appetites.

Slurs like “ABC” had their counterparts in racist terms referring to impoverished or rural white bumpkins who were called “red necks” and "white trash" by white southern aristocracy and who were consigned to live on the disgraceful "Tobacco Row."

Gullah saving graces include being unswervingly "spiritual" people -- people like Toni Wynn's surrogate grandmother Ettaphine Tyler from South Carolina. 

Miss Ettaphine lived to be 103. Her parting words were, "Always remember to be kind."  Toni Wynn recalls Miss Ettaphine's sterling qualities, including being a life-long gardener in this essay.

(will insert link to Toni's page)

Welcome Clarence home and reconnect him with his Geechee Gullah roots.

Baptize him to save him and our democracy too.

The ceremony down by the riverside will include testimonies.

Can I get a witness?

And then great day in the morning!

Doris Ulman, Preparing for Baptism, c. 1929-1931 (public domain)

Gonna lay down my burden down by the riverside

Doris Ullman, Baptism,1930  via the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (permission pending)

“Down by the Riverside" is an African American spiritual with roots dating back before the Civil War.  The antebellum origin makes the “ain’t gon study war no more” declaration particularly metaphorical while signifying a profound clarity of goodness and mercy.  

Watch Sister Rosetta Tharpe sing the anthem with a choir here.

Down by the riverside

Down by the riverside

Ain’t gonna study war no more, no more

Ain’t gonna study war no more 

Up on the river side

up

up

up

up

up

gettin' 

the 

spirit 

up

on

the

river 

side

we 

rejoice

war no more, no more, no more

down in the murky waters of memory

we go

releasing the burdens of this world

Brother Clareance

is dipped backwards into the waters

to lay his burden down

The waters send shivers through his body 

and expel them as ripples into the river

As his head is lifted Clarence sees a dragonfly circling above

a winged ambassador with its 360 degree vision

Clarence remembers how to read 

signs in nature

yes a winged blessing

so many ways to read 

the indivisible becoming visible

Clarence is raised

water rolling off his face

glowing bright as the rays 

penetrating the clouds  

and the source illumination

flooding his bodymindspirit

And as Clarence is healed from the transgressions of others who removed him from the Afrocreole, Gullah Catholic spiritual path, so are we.  

God save us all.

Can I get a witness? 

Can I get a witness as we?