Bob Jones University was an amazing stop. Entering BJU, we had some idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Mandy, the stop organizer told us some things about BJU the night before that she thought we should know. At first it seemed that surely she was making things sound worse than they really were, but it turns out that was not the case. We started out our day at a local park, where we were supposed to meet community members and talk to them about BJU and discuss the tactics of non-violence with them. It was about this time we started to hear that we already had a group of counter protestors and a (very large and loud) white supremacist group was supposed to appear. This was a first for us and I think that it started the day off making everyone a little un-easy. We started to talk to community members and a group of people walked up and stood with us. I knew something was not right from the moment that they walked up. People started to whisper and Mandy wanted to know how one of the men found out about the community event. He said something that no one believed and then Matt spoke up. The man was Flip Benham and he and his group is with Operation Save America and Matt announced this to the group. He is with a very loud anti-Queer protest group, in which they use huge signs with horrible photos and words on them and always have a mega phone.
Flip and his group were not causing trouble so we went on with our community event. After the event was over and we got on the bus, we headed over to BJU. We were greeted with a large group of people with various signs condemning Queer folk and a few people with mega phones shouting various terrible things about every group of people they could possibly think of. The beginning of the day started with some confrontations, as Flip and his group was not being loud or especially mean and they were standing with us on our side of the street. The police wanted to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’, however Flip and his group refused to move. Since they were not causing trouble, they were allowed to stay. Somehow Flip got in our vigil line and ended up behind our ‘Welcome the Equality Ride on campus’ banner, but refused to hold is, so we moved him to the end of the line. There he continued to calmly spew his hateful messages at anyone who would listen and the other members of his group soon followed. These messages were especially hard to not react to. While they were being calm, they were saying the same thing that the people across the street were screaming and it was hard to not react. I think that today was the hardest test of our non-violence tactics yet and we did really well.
A few of the Equality Riders made art that we attempted to deliver to the art museum at BJU. One piece was about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and one was about the process of ‘coming out’. Both of the riders were arrested for attempting to deliver the art. One rider also attempted to deliver a page of 58 theses, in sprit of Martin Luther’s 95 theses that were nailed to the chapel door, in call for change in the church.
Eventually BJU decided they would be “hospitable” and bring us all lunches. However, none of the Riders or community members chose to eat them. Our thoughts were that if BJU truly wanted to be hospitable, they would let us on campus. Instead, we loaded the lunches up in the back of a MCC pastor’s car and she took them to a homeless shelter, which I was very happy about.
We left to go to lunch and when we came back, the white supremacist group was scheduled to be there, however we never saw them. All of our counter protestors left and everything was quite. A few students from a local university came and stood with us for a while, which was nice. We eventually were able to talk to 2 BJU students and one high school student who was planning on attending BJU.
After we left BJU, we went back to the hotel and everyone was absolutely exhausted. It was such a long day, but a very rewarding one. I am so proud of all the Equality Riders and the community members, and how we all reacted non-violently to everything that was happening. It was a very big test for us and we passed, I feel.
As usual, photos can be found here
Love,
-Adam