When I was 12 years old, my father succumbed to cancer at the age of just 36 years. While we knew it was coming, when it happened, our family was devastated. Everything changed for us.
My mother had carved out a successful career as a professional Mommy of three kids, and she was suddenly faced with being a widow with three hungry mouths to feed. She got a job at a local bank as a secretary, and I grew into my role as “the man of the house.”
In 1984, I did my father’s old job of playing Santa and arranging the gifts for my siblings for them to discover on Christmas morning. My mom and I tried so hard, but my father’s death just left a huge void.
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One day, a fellow by the name of the Rev. Jackson Parks walked into the bank and passed by my mother’s desk. He passed the desk then stopped, turned back around and spoke to her.
“Child, what’s wrong? You seem troubled, would you like to talk?” he said as he removed his fedora hat.
My mother, who had never met this man before, choked back tears and let her troubles spill out to this stranger.
Right there in the middle of the bank lobby, they prayed together and that was how the Rev. Parks, my family’s guardian angel on Earth, came into our lives.
For me, as a teenager and young man, Jackson was more than just a mentor. He got me my first job washing cars at Garner Auto. He took me to church. He called me his son. I did not know this at the time, but the Rev. Parks had quite a few “sons” like me. He made it his life’s work to mentor young men no matter their race or religious background.
In 2008, I fell ill with an autoimmune disease. I had to be resuscitated twice and fell into a coma. In the midst of all of this, my mother called the Rev. Parks, and he dropped everything and came straight to the hospital. He was allowed by the ICU staff to see me as clergy. He anointed my forehead with oil and prayed.
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When he walked out of my room, he announced to my mother that I had been healed.
“Please Rev. Parks, please don’t give me false hope. The doctors say he is dying,” my mother pleaded.
“No, God told me that Scott has work to do. Your boy is healed.”
And I was.
Why am I telling you this story? The Rev. Jackson Parks was a black man, and I was a little white kid. He nonetheless treated me like his own kid. He instilled in me the importance of the content of a person’s character.
Jackson and I discussed segregation and the struggles he had as a young black man. He related a story that when he was a boy, the family took a road trip. He felt the call of nature, and his dad went from one place to another trying to find a “colored” restroom. Finally, he couldn’t hold it anymore and the young Jackson peed his pants.
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His father spanked him for it and told him that his dignity as a young man was more important than his physical urges, that he had to be stoic in his adversity.
Jackson went on to be a fiery minister who proclaimed from the pulpit that “Heaven has never been segregated! So, if you want to go to Heaven then you cannot support segregation on Earth!”
Rev. Parks put Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy into everyday practice. He was a foot soldier in Dr. King’s army of non violence. Although the two never met that I know of, Jackson spoke about Dr. King often and considered him a mentor.
Without Dr. King and the societal reforms he championed, I would likely have never met Jackson Parks. Before the Civil Rights Movement, a black man would have never been allowed to approach a white woman the way he did in the bank with my mom all those years ago.
My trademark fedora hat actually came from Jackson Parks. He always wore one. As his son, I wear the hat and think about him all the time. MLK Day, as it has become known, is a very special day for me because if it were not for him, I would not be the man I am today.
Scott Hudson is the Managing Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
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