[Darris McNeely] Have you ever been guilty of showing partiality to someone that you misjudged, based on appearance? The apostle James, in James 2:1-4, warned us against that. He said, “If you hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, and there come into your assembly somebody with fine clothes, lots of gold, lots of jewelry, and then someone else who is rather poor, in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one with the fine clothes, to the exclusion of the other, he says, “you are showing partiality”. He said, “have you not show partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”

I was reminded of this phrase when I was reading an article about an event that took place fifty-six years ago on this date, as I do this today, February 1st. Fifty-six years ago in Greensboro, North Carolina, four black men went into a Woolworth store in Greensboro, sat down at the diner – a little dinette that they had in those days, in those stores – and they wanted to be served. They were in defiance of the Jim Crow laws of the South of that era. They just wanted a cup of coffee. They were not served. They closed up the diner early because those men would not leave. The next day, about twenty-five of their classmates from Greensboro A&T College came with them, and the same thing happened. The next day, the day after, they came back and they had sixty people with them, and they also sat down, and none of those black people were served as well. By the end of the week they had 300 people come in with them, and they still wouldn’t serve.

It was one of those events in the early civil rights story of the United States of the blacks going up against the laws of the time, the customs of the time, seeking to be served in a public setting. It led to gradual change, incremental change, and the rest of the story goes on into the 1960s.

One of those men – one of those four original men – was named Franklin McCain. He would tell the story in years to pass after that, of that first day when he and the other three went and sat down, that they noticed just a few stools down at the diner there, was a little old white lady who kept looking at them as they sat there for several hours, wanting to be served and denied service. The little lady finished her doughnut and coffee, she got up and she started to walk by the group of four black men. And Mr. McCain thought that – he didn’t know what she might do, maybe she’d stick him in his head or his neck with a knitting needle or something, and he didn’t know what would happen. But the little lady stopped, and she put her hand on two of the men, and she said, “You know what? I wish you guys had done this ten years earlier.” And she walked out.

As he told the story time and again through the years, he was reminded – he said, “You know, I misjudged that lady that day. She was a supporter.” He said, “I learned a big lesson never to look at something like that and make judgments without having sat down and talked to the person and heard them out.”

That story reminds us of what James said. Don’t show partiality. Sit down, talk to a person. Get acquainted with what’s going on in their mind, in their head, before you show partiality, we deny them in any part of our life. What James said then came to fruition that day, with that one man in Greensboro, in 1960. And it should remind us of how to treat people without partiality in our own life.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.