It was also at Southern Brum that, calling on Reverend Williams, I happened upon this singular conversation:
“Now, isn’t it absurd for us to have white angels?”
“You surely would not like them black?”
“We give Sunday-school cards to our children with white angels on them. It’s wrong.”
“Black angels would be ugly.”
“No more ugly than white.”
I thought the whiteness of the angels was as the whiteness of white light which contained all color. That, however, was lost on the reverend, who happened to be a realist.
“Christ himself was not white. He would have had to travel in a Jim Crow car,” said he. “But put it to yourself: isn’t it absurd for us to be taught that the good are all white, and that sin itself is black?”
“It does seem to leave you in the shade,” said I.