Condolences Baltimore
(photo from the Baltimore Sun)
In memoriam, Rev. Vernon Dobson, 1923-2013
Just this week a well-informed citizen leader
in Washington, DC asked me “What happened
to Baltimore?” Meaning its economy, meaning
its port and politics, meaning its black community.
As always I dipped into the inherited memory,
the shared analysis, the anger-infused grief ─ what
we all learned at the Vernon Dobson school
of public life. Today he “went home to the Lord”,
but the Lord was always “at home” at his right hand:
in the coffee house, in the Laundromat, the make-
shift neighborhood gym at the heart of Union Baptist
Church. Amid the marble-stooped Druid Hill Avenue
history ─ think Thurgood Marshall, think Juanita,
Parren Mitchell, and the doctors, lawyers and school
principals whose ghosts linger into harsher times….
The least of these ─ Bobby Lee washing cars with his
well-used soapy water ─ were welcomed here, and
memorable. For those of us who’d missed
“the Goon Squad” ─ Rev. Dobson and cohorts,
their early firebrand years, there was his fierce
─“If they dare threaten ..touch a hair on your heads”─
defense of low-wage workers daring to question
their poverty, in their hopes of climbing
Jacob’s ladder to a living wage ─
A lion’s ferocity
protecting its young, and he could roar, but also
with laughter, recounting the antics of some
irreverent caper, political prank or the blunder
of some public ego. Almost never more than
one levered window away from the sidewalk,
street level stream of life chaotic and dear,
the sidewalk of our first encounter in the snow.
He was shoveling in army jacket and boots.
I thought: the custodian. We later laughed,
as he changed to go negotiate for the first
of hundreds of new houses in Nehemiah’s
name. He’d later rent a trolley and bullhorns
to turn out the vote. I never heard his take
on Obama’s election, the expectations and
disappointment. Hard to imagine him
silent, this void. His dead-on wisdom and
advice, barbershop yarns and laughter still
reverberate. To us the hand-off: anthems,
and spirituals in which we heard him loud
and clear, now guide our feet ─ for we, for sure
….. don’t want to run this race in vain.
by Kathleen O’Toole, former BUILD lead organizer and current Senior Organizer for VOICE