Dove, Inc.

I don’t know how many times I heard it. It was the summer of 1970. I was newly arrived in Decatur. I came as a free-lance community organizer, working the Torrence Park neighborhood. During my first few weeks on the job, people kept saying it. “Fred, there’s this guy you need to meet, down at the First Christian Church. Name’s Ray Batman.” Finally I picked up the phone and arranged to drive my shaky pink Plymouth Valiant downtown to 441 North Church Street. He greeted me at the door. We shook hands and wound our way down the hall to a cluttered storeroom in the basement. It was Dove’s first office, and he was its only employee. He and I had started our new jobs within days of each other at the tail end of June. We had that in common, and as it turned out, much more. What he said that day stuck with me. Memory is a tricky thing, and it’s been a very long time. But in my recollection, he introduced me to Dove something like this: “We’re a small bunch of white church folks, Fred...