1
1
::::::::
Friends:
A recent posting on Huff?post Social News caught my attention. The posting was about a Virginia Supreme Court case against the late Rev. Bevels. The criminal complaint in the case accused Bevels of having incestuous relations with his daughter.
I first met the Rev. James Bevels at a national Clergy and Laity conference I helped organize for progressive ministers and religious leaders in New York City in 1983. Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) was founded in 1967 by Re, Dr. MLK and other nationally recognized ministers and rabbis to stop the war in Vietnam. I was CALC's national nuclear disarmament and peace desk resources coordinator.
Later I interacted with Rev. Bevel's several times mainly at his North Philly compound and in Camden at several venues back in the mid-1990's. In Omaha I have family members and friends who knew him well or were acquainted with his stint out in the Midwest.
Rev. Bevels worked in both Omaha and Philly in his later years. In North Omaha (I am told by those who had the fortune and/or sadly sometimes the misfortune to have associated with Bevels), that he made an attempt to make the long planned project (started in the early 1970's by the Omaha black community's late great activist Mother Rowena Moore who purchased the land) to memorialize Malcolm X's birthplace a reality. The attempt failed for whatever reasons, though in the past few years others have successfully brought the project to completion. A beautiful memorial ground with historical markers, a winding path of stairs, a vibrant rolling hill type landscape and a spacious meeting facility now takes up several green acres of land next to Malcolm's birth home at 34th and Pinkney St. in the old "plum nelly" section of Omaha.
Travelers going to Omaha should make a must stop at Malcolm's birth home memorial. It's one of the very best tributes to black heroes I have seen in the whole country. For my two cents its beauty and quiet dignity nearly matches the newly unveiled $110 million dollar King memorial in Washington, DC. When visiting Omaha check in with Brother Walter Brooks, the imaginative and fully engaged Executive Director of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation 1.800.645.9287.
In North Philly and Camden Rev. Bevels held community organizing forums and workshops. His style of organizing was likely based on his approach to and application of many philosophies including mysticism, Africanisms, theosophy, the esoteric-occult, the ideas of Martin L. King, Jr. and that of black Christian liberation theology with a touch of socialist economics. He was helpful in the national organizing around the Million Man March of 1995 and he dealt with post-MMM march activities in Camden; especially in the organizing around the local inter-faith religious task force that I chaired for two years. He also penned several articles for the Final Call newspaper and was well acquainted with Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Why incest? I have no idea, except that it just may have sprung from some of the more twisted musings in Bevel's unfortunate reading of the puzzling ways of mysticism. Some versions of ancient mysticism and even theosophy call for sexual liberty wherein sexual freedom is allowed to those seekers and adepts in higher degrees or orders of esoteric knowledge to engage themselves (in behaviors most think of as reprehensible and fully criminal) and to teach others, especially the young, the novice and, at times, those most closely associated with as in extended family if not immediate family members. Sexual license to do whatever one pleases is understood by adepts on some fringes of mysticism to be beyond our ordinary or pedestrian understandings of everyday morality, upright religion or right and wrong behavior.
I am just guessing here. I have no proven facts or evidence that this is how Rev. Bevels approached these ancient metaphysical teachings. It may be that he used no philosophical musings at all. He may have just did the staright out father-daughter "Color Purple" type thing that Alice Walker so eloquently re-opened our eyes to with her book and movie that now drives black feminism and black womanism in their two-fisted fight against the misogyny of some badly behaving black men.
If the Virginia Court proceeds with his case we may find out more. Meanwhile let's pray for his daughter(s) continued healing.
Peace then, Doc Z
