Farewell, dear brother

Though I am still in shock that Lonzy Edwards has died, I am compelled to reflect upon what he meant to me and to us as a collective community. I recall meeting him for the first time when he worked with Mayor George Israel. I was not impressed. But, a few years later when I had a chance to begin to get to know him, I realized that I was in the presence of a prophet.

Some of you will recall that the prophet has one job — and that one job is to call the people to awakening. Lonzy did that very well. Actually he did it well enough that many folks found him difficult to encounter. Many whites thought of him as being an angry person. I am sure many who heard Jeremiah, Amos or Habakkuk might have had a similar response. It seems to me that what some thought of as merely being angry was far more than that. Yes, he was outraged about the state of affairs for disenfranchised persons in our midst, and he realized that black people were disproportionately represented in the disenfranchised and there were too many controls in place to make sure the situation did not change.

It was this realization that made him see the necessity of practicing law, preaching and being an elected official. The work of faith is to call people to awareness, to help them change their minds about the paths they are traveling when that is necessary. He did that very well. But there were so many young poor people and black people who were falling through the cracks of a legal system that had no interest in their well-being that he felt the necessity to be able to do more than lament about their plight. So he became a lawyer.

Perhaps the horrors he saw in the ways the judicial system conducted its business helped to clarify for him the need to become involved in politics. Because systems of oppression, whether they are legal, economic or political, have to be changed from the inside out. This knowledge made him passionate and impatient.

Oftentimes there were black people who had difficulty with him because he was willing to make a radical critique of anyone who seemingly had internalized oppression to the point of becoming cooperative with the systems of oppression that were weighing the masses down. Those blacks who failed to mobilize their energy and resources for the journey toward liberation were not exempt from his clear-eyed analysis of the harm they were causing to the poor and under served.

It was my pleasure to read a couple of his manuscripts and offer him feedback. He was passionate in his effort to find a way to capture his great understanding of the problems facing blacks and the poor.

He diligently tried to find a way to communicate that wisdom to those who might read his books. We laughed a lot about my high reader fees. The payment for the effort was usually a long lunch at Red Lobster.

I was delighted to hear that he was willing to stand for election again. It would have been so much easier to simply manage his church and practice law than leaving all of that behind to serve as mayor, if elected.

But the heart of the prophet can never settle on the plains. The call is always to the frontier. We had a few conversations about that call. The need is too great and the people are perishing. What is the one who has been given the grace to see and to hear suppose to do?

In order to live in peace, the call to action has to be answered. No plains of comfort can contain the awakened heart, only the frontier will do.

Go in peace Lonzy.

This story was originally published May 2, 2016 at 9:34 PM with the headline "Farewell, dear brother."