NEWS FEATURE: Common Ground: In song, racial ethnic divide is overcome

c. 1997 Religion News Service WESTMINSTER, Md. _ Kim Nichols recalls when she and her younger sisters, Kellie and Krissy, ventured into a black church one fall Sunday in 1994.”It was a life-changing experience,”said Nichols, 23.”It was joyful. It was overwhelming.” It was the hand-clapping, foot-stomping sounds of gospel music that inspired the Nichols Sisters, […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

WESTMINSTER, Md. _ Kim Nichols recalls when she and her younger sisters, Kellie and Krissy, ventured into a black church one fall Sunday in 1994.”It was a life-changing experience,”said Nichols, 23.”It was joyful. It was overwhelming.” It was the hand-clapping, foot-stomping sounds of gospel music that inspired the Nichols Sisters, a blond-haired, blue-eyed trio. Since then, the sisters have performed African-American gospel standards at Elks and Lions Clubs in their white Maryland suburb, and in churches, black and white.”I guess you can say I’ve dispelled some prejudices,”said Nichols, adding, however, she prefers to speak not of her old notions but of her new ones.”I can see how much alike we are, more than I had thought.” Words like that are music to Walt Michael’s ears. He runs a group here called Common Ground on the Hill, which seeks to foster racial and cultural harmony through traditional music and the arts.

A nationally known folk singer and instrumentalist, Michael founded the organization three years ago out of frustration with the slow progress of race relations since the 1960s. In those days he traveled the South with a guitar on his back, volunteering in voter registration drives during summer breaks from college.”In 1967 I would have never guessed things would be where they are in 1997,”he said, pointing to the racial divisions that surfaced over the O.J. Simpson trials, as one example.


Michael’s hopes for a better future were inbred.

As a teenager in the 1950s, he rode the preacher’s circuit with his father, the Rev. Marion Michael, who helped desegregate the Methodist churches of southern Maryland and Washington, D.C.”He got the descendants of slaves and slave-holders to come together,”Michael said in his tiny office in the chapel of Western Maryland University, a Methodist-related institution.”I went to a lot of churches, and I witnessed the power of music to bring people together.” After college, Michael went back on the road, as an entertainer. He toured with various acts including Walt Michael & Company, and became known for his renderings of traditional American and Celtic music on the hammered dulcimer, a stringed instrument with a bell-like sound.

Just a few years ago he came home _ to his alma mater, Western Maryland, and in a deeper sense to the search for common ground in a nation still divided.”I think people are parked out in different camps. We’re not talking to each other,”said Michael. He thinks one way to get people of different cultures talking together is to get them singing together.

In that spirit, Common Ground holds”Gospel Extravaganza”concerts that bring together black and white choirs, and other local acts such as the Nichols Sisters. In the summer, the arts organization draws people from around the country to the hill-top campus west of Baltimore. The cross-cultural fare includes such offerings as”Celtic Harp,””African Dance and Drumming,””Appalachian Bark Baskets,”and dozens of workshops.

One of those who have reached common ground is Melanie Hampton, a nurse in Pikesville, Md. She got involved by signing up for the choir class at a week-long workshop two summers ago.

At the end of the week, her class performed in a Common Ground concert at Union Street United Methodist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation just off campus. Hampton liked it so much she stayed there _ and became a full member of the black church.

Now on Sunday mornings, she dons her choir robe and belts out traditional black hymns and spirituals.”I’m the only white in the choir,”Hampton said.”I don’t have a great voice, but I do OK in a choir. I think gospel music speaks to the soul. It resonates with the body. It comes from people who have been through hard times.” Sometimes, however, the music isn’t enough.

Michael and others at Common Ground tell a story of a young white woman involved in the group who had a romantic interest in a young black man, but couldn’t pursue it because of her father’s opposition to interracial dating.


Larry Brumfield, a board member of Common Ground who sings in the Union Street Church choir, said he sat next to the father at a concert where the young black man sang an old gospel tune,”Jesus Never Fails.””The father was sitting there with tears coming down. He said, `Oh, that’s one of my favorite songs,'”said Brumfield, an engineer who is black.”And I leaned over to him and said, `You mean this man can bring tears to your eyes, singing this song, but he’s not good enough to date your daughter?'”He said, `Larry, I can’t explain it. I’ve thought about it. I’ve prayed over it. It’s just the way I was brought up.'” Lingering prejudices illustrate one challenge facing this unique arts organization.

A further obstacle is funding. Common Ground operates largely on the shoestring of tuition payments; Michael, who stopped touring to start the group, has yet to draw a salary.

While expecting the struggle for racial understanding to be long and hard, those who congregate at Common Ground say they can already see the changes _ beginning with themselves. “Now, when I hear my own black folks, in my own black church, in my own black community, speaking about white folks in ways that are inappropriate, I speak up,”said Brumfield.”And I didn’t used to do that, not because it didn’t offend me, but because I wanted to keep peace, as a lot of people do.” (OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)

The Common Ground message resonates as strongly overseas as it does at home.

In December, Brumfield and 22 other members of the interracial Common Ground Choir took their music and message to a small village near Vienna, Austria, for an annual festival called the International Advent Sing. They performed on stage, but the highlight came in a chance encounter at a restaurant with Russian women choralists from the Ural Mountains region.

The two choirs sang their way through Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel in a musical blend of African-American and eastern Russian spiritual traditions.

At the end of the evening, the choir members exchanged home addresses and gifts, such as religious medallions and other personal items.”It was a moment of grace,”said Ira Zepp, a Western Maryland University religious studies professor who accompanied the choir.”They didn’t understand each other’s language, but they crossed every conceivable line: religious, ethnic, racial, national, you name it. It was music, the sheer act of singing, that broke down the barriers.” MJP END BOLE


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