Getting to the Promised Land:
Black America and the Unfinished Work
of The Civil Rights Movement
By Kevin W. Cosby
A Review by Dwight A. Moody
Who would ever think to use the Ezra-Nehemiah saga of the Bible to promote reparations for the Black community in America? Where did this idea come from? I intend to ask Dr. Cosby himself when he is my guest in The Meetinghouse!!
I know he will have a clear and decisive explanation, because Dr. Cosby is an intelligent, educated, and articulate man. He is also convincing, and I am sure after listening to him I will also wonder how we have missed this application all these years!! Dr. Cosby is pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Louisville, president of Simmons College of Kentucky, and an unceasing pursuer of knowledge, even now pursuing a PhD degree!
Cosby is a leading public advocate of the cause of the group known as American Descendants of Slavery, or ADOS. He segregates this demographic from Black people in general and certainly from the broader group now commonly known as People of Color (which usually includes Latinos and many Asians as well as Africans). His focus is clearly and narrowly on the group whose ancestors came to America as slaves and worked in these United States as slaves. They have been denied restitution even as the country at large has moved ever so slowly toward release, freedom, autonomy, and opportunity.
This ADOS demographic, he contends (although he never offers statistics to buttress this essential claim), has never recovered economically and socially from their enslavement. I can’t imagine anyone would contest this claim, although he likewise never acknowledges how some ADOS have indeed overcome their legacy of slavery and discrimination to achieve great success (financial and otherwise). Regardless, Cosby reiterates this point throughout, that ADOS need to keep their specific identity ever before them and not allow their continued claims for economic justice be subsumed into the broader appeal of a larger racial or color group. He connects this with Ezra’s rejection of intermarriage by the returning Jews! I found this approach to ethnic purity to be one of the more complicated elements of his argument.
What Cosby does do with great skill is re-read the Ezra-Nehemiah story of the Bible and find in it a paradigm for ADOS activism. Yes, he tips the hat to Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Cone, and rightly so. But fundamentally, Cosby is calling for the nation to move past the older more famous biblical story of Exodus as a vehicle for interpreting the plight of ADOS and embrace the second most consequential story of the Hebrew Bible, the Return: the Return from the Babylonian Exile under the leadership of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel (537-430).
Cosby’s book, chapter by chapter, is an exposition of these two books of the Bible: Nehemiah and Ezra. And as a preacher myself, I find throughout the books many homiletic marks, leading me to think these chapters were first preached for the good people of St. Stephen Baptist Church! If so, those people are fortunate indeed, for they have been blessed with creative, faithful, and powerful teaching, the kind that binds their lived experience with the narrative of the Bible. I could wish as much for myself, as either a preacher in the pulpit or a listener in the pew.
Cosby describes the Babylonian strategy of exile: removing the leadership of the Jewish people from their home in Judea/Jerusalem to some foreign destination in their realm. He describes, then, the decision by Persian authorities to release these exiles to go home. He points out that that decision was accompanied by provisions sufficient to re-establish the Jewish state and capital. Cosby calls these provisions “reparations” and asserts that “there is no justice without reparation” (even invoking other biblical texts, especially the famous and familiar story of Zacchaeus in the gospels).
Cosby connects the ADOS story, not only to a Biblical narrative, but also the Supreme Court ruling Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896, the Hart-Celler Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the building of the new YMCA in West Louisville, the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, three television sitcoms of the late 20th century, and the kneeling of San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick. In other words, this book is a tour de force, not only of the biblical narrative, but also of our own American history and culture. It helps to be an alert and educated person when reading this book!
Thank you, Kevin, for this masterful exposition of Scripture and history and for applying it so fearlessly to the situation in which we all find ourselves today, of doing justice and seeking mercy in a spirit of humility before God.
(September 2021)
