'The essence of a judge'

Yesterday I volunteered to usher at the funeral service for Barefoot Sanders, the legendary U.S. District Judge and counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was key in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. One speaker said that Sanders’ contribution to passing these acts was second only to LBJ himself. He was a legend, in other words. He was also a thirty-year member of Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. My church.

This was not a “sad” funeral, per se, though there were tears. Sanders lived 83 years, and any single one of his many accomplishments (too many to list here) could have been the life’s work of any man or woman—but he kept piling them on. He was equally successful in his personal life: fully fifty seats were set aside for his family.

That sanctuary (and a couple overflow rooms) were filled to the brim with family, law clerks, judges, elected officials, and others (like myself) who just wanted to pay their respects—a total numbering in the high 3 digits. Clearly this was a man who had truly lived, and the large crowd gathered yesterday represented only the barest fraction of people whose lives Sanders touched and changed. So no, it was not a sad funeral; what was there to be sad about?

My parents were both teenagers in Birmingham, Alabama, when that city exploded in the ‘60s. They were witnesses to the depredations of Bull Connors, to the bombing of a church, to KKK rallies held on the sides of highways. Their stories of that time impacted me tremendously, and the Civil Rights era means a lot to me.

The players of that era are like gods to me, titans who changed history with every gesture and speech. It was humbling to hear the familiar refrain of Micah 6:8 (“to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God”)—and to know that this man had done so on a grand scale. And that he shared the same sanctuary as me.

Comments

[Terry]

Well said.