Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman

long prayer over the food, and to have everything served family style from this glorious presentation laid out in front of us. This family fellowship would continue long after the plates were cleared and the kitchen was cleaned as the men settled into conversation on one side of the front porch and the women watched out for us children, who, dressed in our Sunday best, played out in the yard. They knew that red clay and grass would have to be cleaned from our shoes and socks, and must have hoped that our clothing survived the games of tag, hide-and-seek, and softball. Perhaps I didn’t fully understand it then, but I do now: that time together laughing, walking, playing, sharing, loving, truly was food for our souls and spirits.
    Of equal importance to my spiritual foundation was the enlightenment, ritual, and sense of community I enjoyed as a child in what was truly the center of our lives, our church. I learned fairly early on that the learning of Scripture and attending Sunday school and the church service that followed were valuable and significant. But so, too, was the bonding, the friendships that came to us through our worship services and social hours. Those friendships were not reserved for Sundays but carried on through the week—at chorus rehearsals and children’s circle meetings, in the deacon board and missionary club meetings my parents attended, and in the barbershop, which my father and several deacons from our church counted as their personal discussion hall for social and political matters and the airing of church concerns.
    In the African American community of my youth, the barbershop served not only as a place where men and boys could go to get their hair cut on Saturdays, but as a gathering place where they could discuss politics, news of the city, prevailing social matters, and the like. The happenings of the church were discussed often as well, because in the case of the barbershop in our neighborhood, all those with “chairs” were members of the board of deacons at our church. Private matters of the church were discussed during lulls in the shop’s activity.
    I remember vividly the younger men and boys gathering in the shop beginning early on Saturday afternoons to listen to those all-important discussions—to listen to the older men simply talk.
    Just a few years ago, I encountered one of these young men—Roscoe—and he wished me to know what a wonderful philosopher he thought my father had been, how he encouraged people to look at things from different points of view and to be able to defend their own thoughts on what was being discussed. Roscoe stated that my father believed firmly that a contrarian opinion should be informed. This lovely man stated that he had learned more from my father and those deacons in the barbershop than he ever did at university. Roscoe went on from the teachings of the barbershop to become a college professor.
    That sense of community came, too, at Vacation Bible School and the many afterschool activities in which we participated. There was an unspoken competition on those occasions when our church would be the guest of another church in Augusta, or in a nearby Georgia or South Carolina town. Which choir was better? Would our preacher bring the congregation to its feet? At every turn, we found ourselves in the company of our neighbors and fellow church members in living rooms throughout Augusta, full of ease and comfort, not from luxurious surroundings, but from the soul-sustaining presence of true amity. This is where our spiritual lives flourished, alongside the deepening core of our social lives. These activities rooted in the church and community provided a wonderful opportunity for people to get together, to talk about things that were important to all: raising children, maintaining stable marriages, ensuring the proper education of the children, politics, staying safe in a segregated climate that made life demanding and, yes, dangerous, for our people.
    It