God’s Messenger: Thomas Merton on Racial Justice Paul R. Dekar This article considers Thomas Merton’s correspondence during the 1960s with three African American civil rights activists: a priest, August Thompson (1926-2019), the musician Robert Lawrence Williams and the novelist James Baldwin (1924–1987).1 It also summarizes several articles by Merton on racial justice,2 highlighting the contribution by Merton to racism awareness work that scholars of social movements of the 1960s have tended to ignore.3 This relative lacuna contrasts with greater attention given other issues Merton addressed such as ecumenism, environmental justice, technology and the threat of nuclear war.4 1. Research for this presentation was funded by a 2018 Shannon Fellowship at the Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY, where Mark Meade and Paul Pearson gave invaluable help; Nancy Dekar, Allan McMillan and Ron Morissey read a draft of this paper, presented at the Sixteenth General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society at Santa Clara University in June 2019. 2. Original texts of relevant essays are found in Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1964) (subsequent references will be cited as “SD” parenthetically in the text) and Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) (sub- sequent references will be cited as “FV” parenthetically in the text); they are also found in Thomas Merton, Passion for Peace: The Social Essays, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Crossroad, 1995). 3. See Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987); Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson, eds., Waves of Protest: Social Movements since the Sixties (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Barry Miles, Peace: 50 Years of Protest (Pleasantville, NY: Readers Digest, 2008). An exception is Ann Charters, ed., The Portable Sixties Reader (New York: Penguin, 2003), which includes Merton’s prose poem Original Child Bomb (109-18). 4. For overviews of the topic, see Patrick F. O’Connell, “Civil Rights Movement” and “Racism” in William H. Shannon, Christine M. Bochen and Patrick F. O’Connell, The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002) 60-62, 377-79; subse- quent references will be cited as “Encyclopedia” parenthetically in the text. Reflecting on Merton’s writings on racial justice while at the Merton archives during the summer of 2018, I asked Merton Center Director Paul Pearson if he had any idea why Merton’s important exchanges with Thompson, Williams, Baldwin and June Yungblut, as well as his essays on racial justice, have been given less attention than his contributions on the Vietnam War, interfaith dialogue or peace. He responded that the whole area of Merton on race seems to have been underdeveloped, a point he reiterated during the ITMS ses- sion at which I presented this paper. Ever modest, he did not mention his own essay on Merton’s voice for racial justice (Paul M. Pearson, “A Voice for Racial Justice,” The 137 0000 Complete 1-304 (2).indd 137 2/7/20 11:05 AM 138 The Merton Annual 32 (2019) In accounts of his January 1940 visit to Cuba and experience work- ing in the summer of 1941 at Catherine Doherty’s Friendship House in Harlem, Merton referred to “Negroes.”5 But otherwise before December 1941, when he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton had little con- tact with people of color. This remained largely the case during Merton’s monastic life. (An exception was in his journal where Merton noted the only Negro in the community was Br. Martin de Porres.6) August Thompson (1926-2019)7 was born in Baldwin, Louisiana and Merton Seasonal 40.1 [Spring 2015] 46-47). Nonetheless, the voice of Merton on this topic has recently received increasing attention: see William Apel, “Crisis of Faith: Thomas Merton and the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” The Merton Annual 31 (2018) 67-74 (subsequent references will be cited as “Apel, ‘Crisis’” parenthetically in the text); M. Shawn Copeland, “The Watchmen and the Witnesses: Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Exercise of the Prophetic,” The Merton Annual 30 (2017) 156-70; Chris- topher Fici, “‘Larger, Freer, and More Loving’: Confronting and Healing the Infection of Whiteness with Thomas Merton and James Baldwin,” The Merton Annual 30 (2017) 171-83; Daniel P. Horan, “Martin, Malcolm and Merton: The Work for Racial Justice and the Responsibility of Catholic Spirituality,” The Merton Seasonal 44.1 (Spring 2019) 3-12; Thomas Malewitz, “From the Mountain to the Cross: Revisiting 1968 through the Prophetic Words of King, Kennedy, Chavez and Merton,” The Merton Annual 31 (2018) 56-66; Christopher Pramuk, “‘The Street Is for Celebration’: Racial Consciousness and the Eclipse of Childhood in America’s Cities,” The Merton Annual 25 (2012) 91-103. The Thomas Merton Center has compiled a list of secondary sources, recordings and African American correspondents. Materials are also available on the internet: see for example Daniel P. Horan’s October 26, 2017 presentation at St. Norbert College entitled “Racism, White Privilege, and Thomas Merton on Transformative Spirituality and Justice”; avail- able at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJvSbhsosy8&feature=emb_title; see also his discussions of racism in his audio series Thomas Merton for Our Time (Rockville, MD: Now You Know Media, 2017). 5. See Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation. Journals, vol. 1: 1939-1941, ed. Patrick Hart (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995) 157-58, 172, 189, 197, 384-85; and Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948) 344-49 on Harlem. See also Michael N. McGregor, “The Persistence of Harlem in the Life and Legacy of Thomas Merton,” The Merton Annual 29 (2016) 90-98. For Merton’s relationship with the founder of Friendship House, see Thomas Merton and Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Compassionate Fire: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Catherine de Hueck Doherty, ed. Robert A. Wild (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009). 6. See the December 9, 1963 journal entry in Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. Journals, vol. 5: 1963-1965, ed. Robert E. Daggy (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997) 44; subsequent references will be cited as “DWL” parenthetically in the text. 7. For Thompson’s obituary, see ITMS Newsletter 26.3 (Fall 2019) 4-5; see also Gregory Hillis, “A Sign of Contradiction; Fr. August Thompson, 1926-2019,” Com- monweal (26 August 2019); available at: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ sign-contradiction, as well as Hillis’ article in the current volume of The Merton Annual. 0000 Complete 1-304 (2).indd 138 2/7/20 11:05 AM Dekar God’s Messenger: Thomas Merton on Racial Justice 139 ordained a priest in New Orleans in 1957 for the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana. In October 1963, Thompson visited the Abbey of Gethsemani where he met Merton briefly one evening. At the time, Thompson was rector of St. Charles Church, Ferriday, Louisiana. Merton wrote in his journal for October 29: “New light on the South, again, and how impos- sible the situation really is. Actually it is quite a unique one for which new formulas must be sought and are being sought. But what will it avail? Whatever will happen if [Barry] Goldwater manages to get himself elected President in 1964” (DWL 30). Subsequently, Thompson and Merton ex- changed letters until 1968. Their correspondence dealt with issues such as prospects for elevating an African-American to a bishopric and a dialogue with John Howard Griffin (1920-1980) who wrote of his travels in the southern United States after having had his skin temporarily darkened. The procedure enabled him to pass as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account as a series of articles. Griffin’s journal of his experiences became the genesis of Black Like Me.8 Edward M. Keating (1925-2003), publisher of Ram- parts, a Catholic political and literary journal, wrote Merton that he had met “a most interesting Negro who is extremely interested in engaging in a rather unique dialogue, and I immediately thought that you [Merton] would be the ideal person to engage in this with him.” Subsequently, an interview of Thompson by Griffin appeared in the Christmas 1963 issue of the publication. A photo of Thompson with the caption “The Negro and the White Conscience” took up most of the cover.9 Merton wrote of having received a copy. The lead article was his “The Black Revolution: Letters to a White Liberal” (SD 3-71).10 8. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (New York: New American Library, 1961); see also Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin, a film by Mor- gan Atkinson (Louisville, KY: Duckworks, 2011) released to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication. Merton’s estate initially chose Griffin to write the authorized biography of Merton, but poor health prevented Griffin from completing it. Part of the project appeared as John Howard Griffin, Follow the Ecstasy: Thomas Mer- ton, The Hermitage Years, 1965-1968 (Fort Worth, TX: Latitudes Press, 1983); see also John Howard Griffin, The Hermitage Journals: A Journal Kept While Working on the Biography of Thomas Merton, ed. Conger Beasley, Jr. (Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1981). For Merton’s letters to Griffin, see Thomas Merton, The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends, ed. Robert E. Daggy (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989) 131-41. (Columbia University houses the original letters.) 9. “Dialogue: Father August Thompson and John Howard Griffin,” Ram- parts (Christmas 1963) 24-33.