For the last 15 years a remarkable black man named Thomas Outlen (Mr. Outlen to us) has cut our grass, cleaned snow and handled landscaping at our house. While college educated, he now operates a modest grass and landscaping business and is sometimes assisted by his 3 sons who are in their 20s and live with their dad.
When the boys were younger, he became disenchanted with their elementary school education and so he homeschooled them. All three were then accepted at the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts, then on to college to get their degrees. All three (Thomas, Jr. and twins, Neiman and Aaron) now have good jobs but still find time to help their father.
A number of years ago I represented Mr. Outlen in a dispute with his now former wife over his entitlement to ownership in their marital home. His name was not on the title but he alone had made the mortgage payments for 15 years. The trial took the better part of the day and resulted in a judge ruling in his favor, a ruling that was upheld on appeal.
But what I remember about the trial had little to do with the case. During lulls, Mr. Outlen was reading a book by Paul Tillich, a German-American. Tillich was a Christian existentialist theologian and a leading Protestant thinker who immigrated to the United States, taught at the Harvard Divinity School and at the University of Chicago. He may be the most celebrated theologian of the 20th Century. I knew about him in the sense that I recognized his name and may have read one of his books while in college. To say that Paul Tillich is “dense” in his thinking is a massive understatement.
Mr. Outlen has a wry sense of humor. A few years ago two baby foxes were squashed by a passing car on our front street. My wife asked Mr. Outlen if he could dispose of the carcasses. He along with Neiman and Aaron conducted a funeral in the rear of our property and he reported to my wife that they had said a few prayers and had even christened the two baby foxes. Their names: Neiman and Aaron.
I think it is safe to say that Mr. Outlen is the only person in the history of the Baltimore City Circuit Court to have brought Tillich to a trial. Years later, I was kidding Mr. Outlen about reading Tillich during the trial and he then said something that remains with me to this day: “I read people like Tillich to keep my mind straight; otherwise the anger will well up in me.”
Martin Luther King once said: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” This is one of the favorite sayings of President Obama but, I think, it is probably wrong. Why wrong? Because it assumes, that justice will always prevail when I think that the truth is that it will only prevail if people help it prevail. True justice is not self-executing but is a goal to be attained and, in this world, will probably never be reached.
Which brings me to Juneteenth, the recently declared federal holiday representing June 19, 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas became aware of the Emancipation Proclamation issued two years earlier. They were the last slaves to be set free. For those interested in numerology, the first African slave landed in the Virginia colony in 1619. The last slave received their freedom on 6-19. I don’t know if Juneteenth was the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. I do know that America then began the very long road ‒ with numerous fits, starts, reverses and progress ‒ to a destination where, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.” We still have not arrived at that destination.
The notion that “all men are created equal” is – contrary to the word of the Declaration – not “self-evident” as the history of mankind reveals. It is, however, a proposition on which the United States was founded and is a proposition that must govern our future.
Hopefully, in that future, Mr. Outlen’s sons, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren will find that equality and be able to release all feelings of anger.
If there was ever a person who was created “equal,” it is Thomas Outlen.