Paula Young Shelton grew up in Atlanta in the 1960s, as the civil rights movement grew up alongside her. Her father, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, helped lead the struggle as the executive director of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Young Shelton, 48, now teaches first grade at Georgetown Day School. She recently completed a children’s book called “Child of the Civil Rights Movement,” and will welcome Black History Month by speaking about it at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. She shared with The Examiner by e-mail thoughts on her faith rooted in a remarkable childhood.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a Christian and a member of People’s Congregational Church, United Church of Christ. I am third generation Congregationalist on both sides of my family and very proud of the activist tradition of Congregationalists, who were abolitionists. They also started many schools for African Americans in the South, which I think must have attracted my grandparents to the church. I believe that Jesus died for my sins, but I also believe that God speaks to others in many ways and through different prophets. The concepts of forgiveness, unconditional love and helping others appeal to me most in the Christian church. I also think it is necessary to recognize some power greater than yourself.
Did anyone or any event especially influence your faith or your path in life?
I was raised in the church, my father was a minister and my mother ran the Sunday school, so I always believed in God. However, when I was 23, I believe God spoke to me in a vision and told me to go to Africa, which, of course, I did. I went to Uganda with Habitat for Humanity to teach, and it was the most spiritual time of my life. I believe that during that year I was born again. It was not the sudden transformation that many experience; for me it was a long labor and a period of great spiritual growth. It was an amazing time for me, teaching 60 children in a classroom who walked to school with no shoes, to learn with few books, and were eager to soak up whatever I could offer. Though I went to help others, I found that I gained so much more than I could have given.
Recalling the voices of great leaders surrounding you as a child, what do you think they would like to add to our nation’s collective memories of the civil rights era? Have any lessons been lost in history?
One thing that has been lost is that the civil rights movement was made up of hundreds of thousands of ordinary folks who risked everything to create a better America. One thing I tried to convey with my book was that Dr. King was not some mystical figure, but he was a real person who ate dinner, went swimming, played with the kids. So many people that we have never heard of organized, recruited for and participated in marches, sit-ins, freedom rides, voter registration, and demonstrations of all sorts. It was a mass movement, a movement of the people that brought about the change we enjoy today.
When you recall the events of the civil rights movement, was God a motivator on the sidelines of the movement, or a player amid the battle?
God was at the head of that movement, no question. God called the players one by one and they took their places. Sadly, many were asked to give their lives, but we have all benefited from their sacrifice. God was always present — in the speeches, in the prayers, in the songs, it was a very spiritual movement.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe God loves us in spite of ourselves. I believe we are all part of God’s family and we should treat each other as such.
-Leah Fabel
