I called the old Mount Olive pastors widow that night, ninety-four years old, and read her the plaque I had cut the moss off of on Clarences pecan tree, and she was quiet a long time, and then she said, baby, I have been waiting fifty years for somebody to ask me about that tree, and then she told me everything.
The executive pastor had smiled and told me God was doing a new thing, that theyd build a family life center and a parking garage, that my corner was the lot they needed, that the city had approved their plans, that the lot would be the Lords one way or another.
He did not know what happened under that pecan tree in 1971.
The plaque marked that in 1971 a leader of the civil rights movement, a man who once stood on the steps of the United States Capitol, came to our little corner, met with the people of Mount Olive under that pecan tree, and planted it with Clarence as a living marker of the day, which makes our corner a documented piece of the movements history.
Clarence planted that tree the day our first son was born, but it was also the day a great man came to Third Ward, and the two things happened together, and Clarence carved the plaque and the Scripture and the mans name and screwed it to the tree, and the old pastors widow was there and remembered all of it.
With her testimony and the plaque, the corner qualified for recognition as a civil rights historic site, and here was a megachurch proposing to bulldoze a place where the movement itself once gathered, to build a parking garage.
The historical commission moved quickly once the widow told her story. A documented civil rights landmark does not come down for parking, city approval or not.
When the executive pastor came back, I did not argue. I handed him the plaque photographs and the widows sworn account and the commissions letter and I said, God may be doing a new thing, but He is not tearing down the corner where that man stood in 1971 to build a garage. This is a civil rights landmark now, recognized and protected. Build your family life center somewhere that isnt holy ground already.
He read it, and he did not talk about the Lords one way or another anymore. The megachurch built elsewhere, and the corner and the tree stayed.
Under Clarences pecan tree, the pastor had said, not knowing. I still go to what is left of Mount Olive, and the tree still stands, and now there is a proper marker under it telling everyone what happened there in 1971, the day my Clarence planted a tree that turned out to be history.