Friday, July 4, 2003

By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

"My family came over on the Mayflower," the smug, well-dressed lady expressed to my father well over four decades ago.

My dad, the late William E. Epps, Jr., ("Bill" to his friends, "Junior" to his Mom and siblings, and "Sir" to me), replied, "So you come from a long line of losers, too, do you?"

Dad was never the tactful one. The lady snorted, turned on her heels, and stormed off into the warm summer day. Dad simply grinned from ear to ear.

Later, Dad chose to impart a lesson to me about America. "Listen, son," he said. "That lady was just trying to make herself and her ancestors seem more prominent than they were. We're all just immigrants here, even the Indians (the term "Native Americans" was unknown at the time). Almost all of the early settlers and pioneers came to America because they couldn't make it in Europe or wherever they came from. The folks who had it made generally stayed home."

As I grew up and went to public school, I discovered that Dad was right, as he was about most things. The Indians (oops Native Americans) came from Asia via a land bridge in Alaska, I'm told, and most other immigrants in the early days came from Europe where they were on the bottom of the social scale and were willing to risk their futures and their lives for a new start in the rugged New World.

After living in this wilderness for some 370 years, they finally stuck their collective thumb in the eye of King George on July 4, 1776, and, from those most humble beginnings, a superpower would be born and forged by a nation of immigrants, losers, and paupers. Oh, they were tough and they were brave. They would fight with great ferocity against anyone or any nation that would seek to do them harm. Most of them would start with nothing or next to nothing and work hard all their lives so that their children might build on the foundation that had been laid in their sacrifice, sweat, and blood.

Not all immigrants were Europeans. Not all came freely. The Spanish, lords of the slave trade, imported captured people from Africa and brought them to this infant continent.

In 1998, a Bishop in Africa said to me, "Every night the black people in your country should get down on their knees and thank God that their ancestors were brought as captives to America. Any of us here would do anything to be able to come to the United States and be Americans." That particular bishop, a black man, received his graduate education in the United States before returning to Africa. Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Condeleeza Rice, to name a few descendants of slaves, are now three of the most powerful people in the world.

The Chinese were imported to California in the 1800s to build a railway. They fared little better than the slaves of the South but, because they came, the Chinese communities established in California and elsewhere now thrive and prosper. The Irish were a despised lot as they came to escape the famine in their homeland. Some bars and taverns in the North sported signs denying access to "dogs and Irish." The Kennedys, and others, have built on the foundation laid by their poor and destitute forebears. The Italians, the Poles, the Vietnamese, the Jews, the Cubans, and those from another hundred nations have left their lands to come to America. Why? Because America offered them a better opportunity than they could find in their own country.

My college history professor said that a nation could be judged by the "principle of the open gate." He said, "If the gate is open, do they rush into the country or do they rush out of the country? This is the measure of a great nation." Today, we do not have a problem with people wanting to flee this nation. We do have a problem, however, with millions of men and women people struggling by whatever means possible, legal and illegal, to get into the United States. Does anyone really blame them? Would any of us trade places with them?

We are a mongrel people, we Americans. My ancestors are English, mostly, with a little Cherokee Indian thrown in and who knows what else. My wife is of Scottish and English decent. We both come from a line of European losers who had the guts and the drive to come to a wild, untamed land and scratch out an existence, free of inflexible caste and imposed class, for themselves and their children. It is still true that, in America, you can go as far as your drive and abilities will take you. We're not perfect but at least we know it and strive to make things better.

My great-great-grandfather on my dad's side was a Tennessee dirt farmer who scratched out a subsistence living in a place called "Poor Valley." He came, they say, from North Carolina where he couldn't make a living. But, in moving west, he laid a foundation for his children and his descendants to build on, just as his ancestors had done earlier. Most of us, come from a line of people who were losers in their homeland but who were determined that, with God's help, it would be different for their children and grandchildren.

So, on this 4th of July weekend, raise a glass and toast our ancestors, those losers, slaves, paupers, and peasants, who were the first building blocks in the greatest nation in the history of the world. And here's to usthe sons and daughters of immigrants. God bless America!

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church, which meets Sundays at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. in new facilities on Ga. Highway 34 between Newnan and Peachtree City. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com.]

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