Oh, FreedomНамуна

Sometimes the day laborer, housekeeper, and janitor are seen yet unseen. In December 1955, the world saw common folk bring segregation to its knees in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. City officials had arrested Rosa Parks for sitting in the “whites only” section of a public bus. For the bus company, this was business as usual, but the common people were tired of that mistreatment. For 381 days, they wore out shoe leather around their “Jericho,” segregated city busses, refusing segregated comfort for the rigors of stepping toward unrealized justice.

Evenings found them together for mass meetings in Black churches, hearing strategy, and echoing songs from long ago, and a new one, “We Are Soldiers in the Army,” to gain courage while pressing forward. The common people won—buses desegregated—and were a catalyst to the Civil Rights Movement.

An Ethiopian proverb says, “When spider webs unite, they can lie up a lion.” When God renewed His promise first made to Moses, He told Joshua and the Israelites to bring Jericho’s walls down by walking. His promise extended “every place where you set your foot” (Joshua 1:3). Unified in obedience to God, an army of former slaves gained victory over one of the most formidable cities of that day. Israelite masses pressed forward together, playing their music and shouting aloud. God still gives improbable victories to united common folk today. -Noel Hutchinson