July Luncheon Address: Rev. Cheryl Moore Adamson

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!!

Reverend Cheryl Moore Adamson, MDiv

Monday, July 20, 2026

VOICEnmb.org/Surf Beach Club NMB

"Sankofa and the Fierce Urgency of Now”

Greetings: Good morning, Everyone! I want to thank each and every one of you for being here this morning share in another exciting time of sisterhood and fellowship. We need to create another word for that. (Maybe Sistership?) I especially want to thank Donna Dowell Saunders and the leadership of VOICE for inviting me here, especially following the likes of our sheroes, Ms. Sylvia Wright, our next State Superintendent of Education and Dr. Annie Andrews, our next Senator from South Carolina. I want to thank my beautiful daughter Mary Louise Adamson Adeogun for that heartfelt introduction. By the grace of God, I am sandwiched today between two generations. My daughter is 47. I’m 74 and my beautiful mother Mary Louise Ervin Moore is with us today and she is 97 years old. I also have a bonus daughter with me today, my niece Frances Adamson along with my friends from various parts of my life, including members of our church. Would you all stand? Thank you.

In the vernacular of my context, were I to put a tag on these reflections today, the title would be “Sankofa and the Fierce Urgency of Now.” “Sankofa and the Fierce Urgency of Now.”

SANKOFA AND THE FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW

My mother, a retired educator with the Horry County School District, was born in 1929. She has lived her life exclusively in South Carolina - born, as she would tell you, just two steps removed from slavery. That means she came into this world when the physical, spiritual, and psychological wounds of bondage still lived on in the bodies of people she knew and loved.

She grew up under Jim Crow - where the law itself told her where she could sit, where she could drink, where she could dream. She heard whispers of young men being spirited away in the dead of night to avoid murderous lynch mobs. She rummaged through the trash cans of the rich young women of Coker College to retrieve their discarded books. She stood in spirit with the women and men who walked through Birmingham, who crossed that bridge at Selma, bleeding for the right to simply be counted as citizens.

She was a grown woman when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally said, on paper, that she was equal. She celebrated when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 tried to make that promise real at the ballot box. And in 1966, she became the first African American teacher in Horry County to teach in a predominately white school.

My daughter, at 47, grew up in the generation that was led to believe that the doors were open - and has spent her life learning how heavy they still are to push. And here I stand, between these two women, in 2026 - carrying every march, every prayer, every sacrifice they represent - speaking to you today. Three generations. Nearly 100 years of American history. And we are still here. Still showing up. Still believing that this democracy belongs to all of us.

So in this Sankofa moment, I want to share some stories more specifically from my life. Know that my life is not unique. It is reflected in the faces, the bodies, the memories, and the lives of many of the women who have come to support me today. I tell my story because it is the one I know most intimately - and the one I can speak to with honesty when your questions come.

The Akan people of Ghana teach us the wisdom of Sankofa - that it is never wrong to go back and reclaim what is precious from our past in order to build a stronger future. The Sankofa bird flies forward while its head looks back, carrying its egg - its future - carefully in its mouth. In all of my interactions with young people, I encourage them to embrace the Spirit of Sankofa, so that they, along with their children, may move wisely into the future, building on the experiences and the wisdom of their elders.

So here we go.

I was born in Hartsville, South Carolina in 1952 and grew up in Conway from the age of two. I attended Whittemore Elementary School - what historians call an Equalization School. These schools were built across the South in a calculated effort to preserve segregation after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling struck down the doctrine of Separate But Equal. The thinking was simple and cynical: build Black children better buildings and the courts will leave us alone.

My life in that school was, in many ways, idyllic. We were surrounded by extraordinarily intelligent women - loving, compassionate, and above all, elegant. (there were only two male elementary school teachers at the time, Mr. Mention and Mr. Cunningham.) These were women who, under different circumstances, could have been nurses, dentists, doctors, professors, attorneys - anything they set their minds to. Their circumstances, constrained by law and societal convention, directed their gifts into the classroom - the one door society left open for educated Black women. They poured everything they had into us. Now that we no longer have substantial numbers of Black women teachers in our schools, I understand with even greater clarity what we received - and what my daughter Mary carries forward in her own work with young people as a math and science teacher to middle and high school students.

In 1966, we were offered what was called Freedom of Choice - the option to attend predominantly white schools in our community. I enrolled at Conway High School while my brother Chip went to Conway Junior High. There were five Black students in the class of 1968, three or four in 1969, and then nine of us - one young man and eight young ladies - in the class of 1970. I was alone in every class except for one period, one year for my entire 4 years there.

I was generally well received among my classmates. And yet, I remember a student saying to her friend within my earshot: "If it wasn't for that N, I wouldn't have to study."

Two moments of inequity from those years stay with me. My father, Reverend Covel C. Moore, Sr., taught biology at Whittemore High School. To ensure his students had the equipment they needed, he walked into the district office, climbed a ladder to the attic in front of everyone present, and retrieved microscopes sitting unused - microscopes never made available to him and his students. He took what his children needed and deserved and carried them down himself.

In my sophomore year, Conway High received a brand new, state-of-the-art media center installed in the space that once held our auditorium. A few days after it was finished, I visited Whittemore High School and found our old auditorium seats installed there - seats carved up by students' knives, old chewing gum shellacked over and gleaming, presented to those students as though they had received a gift, something fine.

Two moments of opportunity from those same years also stay with me.

In 1970, I became the first African American student in Conway High School history to serve as commencement speaker. Later that same week, I became the first African American student from Horry County to attend the University of South Carolina in Columbia. And there is one moment of humiliation I still remember. During my first year at Conway High, a teacher sent me with a message to deliver to another classroom. I walked in without knocking - I simply did not know the culture of that school. The substitute teacher, an older white man, made me stand at his desk for what felt like hours. He ignored me. Then he told me, in front of the class, that I was wrong to enter without knocking. Later that day, he found me in the hall and offered a quiet apology. I was fourteen years old. I looked at him and said: "You didn't embarrass me in front of no one - so don't apologize to me in front of no one."

Of course, our churches were not integrated. And yet I caught the bus every morning in front of a Southern Baptist church - the very church that later housed my first Bible study before I began to pastor. And that girl who said if it wasn't for that N she wouldn't have to study? She later invited me to sit with her and her family on her church pew when a dear friend of mine insisted that I come hear him preach their revival. There is a God.

Because of the frankness and courage of my parents - my mother and my father - and their active involvement in the civil rights movement, I grew up keenly aware of the challenges facing our broader community. What I experienced personally, I later understood systemically.

Richard Rothstein's landmark work The Color of Law documents how federal, state, and local governments - through deliberate policy - legally constructed the racial wealth and opportunity gaps that persist today. These were laws. Government programs. Official policy.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), created in 1934, financed the mass suburbanization of America and explicitly refused to back mortgages in Black neighborhoods, a practice called redlining. It insured loans in white-only subdivisions whose deeds legally prohibited sale to Black families. Entire generations of Black Americans were locked out of the primary wealth-building tool of the 20th century - homeownership.

The GI Bill of 1944 offered returning veterans low-cost mortgages, college tuition, and business loans. Black veterans, who had fought and bled for this country, found the bill administered through local white officials who denied them access to its benefits. White veterans built wealth. Black veterans returned to legal segregation.

The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded domestic workers and agricultural laborers from coverage - occupations that comprised roughly 65 percent of the Black workforce at the time. Rothstein documents how Southern legislators pushed these exclusions specifically to maintain control over Black labor, ensuring that the New Deal's most transformative wealth-building benefit reached white workers while the majority of Black workers remained outside the program entirely.

And when Black communities did build their own prosperity - they were destroyed. Greenwood, the Tulsa neighborhood known as Black Wall Street, housed over 300 Black-owned businesses, banks, hotels, law offices, and a hospital. In 1921, a white mob, aided by the Oklahoma National Guard with an airplane, burned it to the ground in two days. Over 1,200 Black homes were destroyed. Thirty-five blocks of thriving Black commerce - gone. The residents received no restitution, no justice. The perpetrators faced no consequences.

Just over our border, in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, a prosperous Black political and business class had built genuine power in that city. A white supremacist mob overthrew the elected government - the only successful coup d'état on American soil - murdered Black citizens, burned the Black newspaper, and drove Black leaders into exile. They called it Redemption with a capital R.

These were not accidents. These were not the actions of a few bad actors. They were systems - legal, financial, governmental, and violent - designed to ensure that Black advancement would always cost more, risk more, and survive less.

My father climbed that ladder to retrieve those microscopes because the system was designed to make him ask and wait and be denied. He decided his children would learn science regardless. We leave Sankofa and turn now to today and The Fierce Urgency of Now.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared at Riverside Church in 1967: "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now." This moment - 2026 - is a turning point in our nation's history. It is also an inflection point in the history of the world. The question before us is not whether we understand what is happening. The question is what we will do.

Micah 6:8 answers plainly: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

The journalist, author and social commentator Dr. Stacey Patton puts it this way: "Can you imagine the great John Brown camping out on a slave plantation, watching Black people pick cotton, get whipped, get sold, get sexually abused, get hunted, get worked to death - and then turning to them with a straight face and saying, 'I'm just here to learn?' No, you can't. Because John Brown understood that witnessing evil and refusing to confront it is complicity. It is a privilege to spend the bulk of your life 'learning about oppression' while everybody else is forced to survive it. Black people don't get to take a sabbatical from racism. We don't get to 'sit with it,' 'process it,' 'hold space,' or 'keep learning' while the machinery grinds our bodies, our children, our neighborhoods, our schools, our nerves, and our lives. At some point, 'I'm just here to learn' is a moral hiding place. Because if you have been learning this long and still have not found the courage to do the work - then you are just a curious spectator, watching the lash fall and congratulating yourself for being present."

John Brown led the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 - an armed insurrection against slavery. He understood that moral clarity demands moral action.

So does Sankofa. We look back so that we can move forward with wisdom, with courage, and with our whole selves.

My mother's nearly 100 years. My daughter's 47. And every year I have walked between them. And I walk forward now through the life of my granddaughter Cheryl Asua Adeogun- who turns seven years old next month. She carries all of it forward with her. Every microscope retrieved from an attic. Every shellacked seat. Every march. Every prayer. Every first.

She does not yet know the weight of what she carries. My job - our job - is to make sure the world she walks into is lighter, brighter, more just, more equitable than the one my mother entered. That is the fierce urgency of now.

The beloved community does not build itself. We build it - together, on purpose, with urgency, and with love.

Thank you.

 

 

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 Polly Lowman  May 20, 2026  North Myrtle Beach Times   

Dr. Annie Andrews, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, left, speaks to VOICE members Annie Andrews, center, and Cheryl Adamson, right.

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Religion

Buddhist monks and their dog captivate Americans while walking for peace

By  DEEPA BHARATH

Updated 8:55 AM EST, January 11, 2026                                                                            Associated Press

A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route.

In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It’s a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it’s resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics dividing the nation.

Their journey began Oct. 26, 2025, at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas, and is scheduled to end in mid-February in Washington, D.C., where they will ask Congress to recognize Buddha’s day of birth and enlightenment as a federal holiday. Beyond promoting peace, their highest priority is connecting with people along the way.

“My hope is, when this walk ends, the people we met will continue practicing mindfulness and find peace,” said the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, the group’s soft-spoken leader who is making the trek barefoot. He teaches about mindfulness, forgiveness and healing at every stop.

Preferring to sleep each night in tents pitched outdoors, the monks have been surprised to see their message transcend ideologies, drawing huge crowds into churchyards, city halls and town squares across six states. Documenting their journey on social media, they — and their dog, Aloka — have racked up millions of followers online. On Saturday, thousands thronged in Columbia, South Carolina, where the monks chanted on the steps of the State House and received a proclamation from the city’s mayor, Daniel Rickenmann.

The physical toll of the monks long walk

At their stop Thursday in Saluda, South Carolina, Audrie Pearce joined the crowd lining Main Street. She had driven four hours from her village of Little River, and teared up as Pannakara handed her a flower.

“There’s something traumatic and heart-wrenching happening in our country every day,” said Pearce, who describes herself as spiritual, but not religious. “I looked into their eyes and I saw peace. They’re putting their bodies through such physical torture and yet they radiate peace.”

Hailing from Theravada Buddhist monasteries across the globe, the 19 monks began their 2,300 mile (3,700 kilometer) trek at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth.

Their journey has not been without peril. On Nov. 19, as the monks were walking along U.S. Highway 90 near Dayton, Texas, their escort vehicle was hit by a distracted truck driver, injuring two monks. One of them lost his leg, reducing the group to 18.

You can read more:  Buddhist monks walk for peace and captivate Americans | AP News

The following article was published in the North Myrtle Beach Times

Published September 4, 2025, in the North Myrtle Beach Times