In Memoriam for George Hrbek: A Life of Radical Hope
Grief and Gratitude
I first met George Hrbek in January of 2021, just one month after launching the White Antiracist Ancestry Project. The project was committed to telling the stories and lifting up the lessons of White antiracist history, in order to strengthen White antiracist efforts today. George’s story blew me away: during the early civil rights era, he had been a White antiracist minister in Selma. George moved to Chicago during the Black Power era, where he worked closely with everyone from Fred Hampton to Jesse Jackson… and where he founded a White antiracist spiritual community after brainstorming with Martin Luther King in the basement of a union hall. In the early 70s, George relocated to Cleveland, where he continued organizing for the next half a century. For months, George and I met regularly, as I wove dozens of hours of interviews into a story about his remarkable life.
When I learned that George was dying last month, within my grief I experienced a profound expansiveness of the heart, in which I encountered a timeless quality to human community and connectivity. I felt a deep sense of gratitude for George in the moment of his passing. And, knowing that his life had touched so many others, I found myself envisioning their gratitude as well. I felt that George was being held in an immense field of love and appreciation. In touching the lives of so many others, I could feel how George’s influence flowed through them, and contributed to the ways they were able to touch the lives of others… just as so many people had touched George’s life, and in so doing, flowed through him. They all felt present to me, at the same time, within the single life of George Hrbek.
In this state of grief and gratitude, I envisioned our individual lives as rocks dropping into a great pond, causing ripples that touched other lives, which then rippled out and touched other lives. My heart opened to a vast pattern, in which our individual selves became absorbed into the greater wholeness of human togetherness, past and present, near and far, in this moment and in all moments.
Hope & Human Togetherness
This great and timeless human togetherness reminded me of an important theme in George’s life: the belief that hope was a powerful source for social change. George believed that the resources that allowed for hope were important to cultivate… chief amongst them, community and togetherness. In the months before George’s death, we discussed publishing a separate interview exploring his reflections on hope, building on interview material that hadn’t made it into his story. Since George and I never got around to that interview, reflecting on the role of hope in his life feels like an especially meaningful way to honor him.
George’s commitment to hope was profoundly influenced by his experiences of organizing alongside Black communities, as they fought everything from Jim Crow to COINTELPRO. His first experience of Black Freedom Struggle organizing was in Selma, where he organized between 1958 and 1962. The Selma community he worked with organized around the principle of “making a way out of no way”, and I got the impression, in speaking with George, that he received that message coming from the struggle like a steady drumbeat… and that the phrase came to embody his understanding of hope.
The phrase “making a way out of no way” doesn’t ring with the sound of “rosy optimism”… and rosy optimism was something George was quite critical of. He understood hope and optimism to be entirely different. The optimist assesses the conditions of the world with a view that things are moving in the right direction, and will be ok. As Cornel West says in an interview about why he is hopeful, but not optimistic: “Optimism for me has never been an option. Because there’s too much suffering in the world.” Hope, on the other hand, is “an act of courage and imagination” in the face of circumstances where optimism would be naïve. If we pause to think about the words “making a way out of no way”, we can see that they express a teaching about hope: a teaching that possibility — “making a way” — exists even within seemingly impossible situations: “out of no way.” The phrase clearly acknowledges harsh realities, while expressing a commitment to keeping the spirit and the struggle alive. Hope is a path, carved between naïve optimism and pessimistic defeatism.
One of my favorite philosophers of hope, Rebecca Solnit, elucidates these points beautifully in her book Hope in the Dark:
“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act . . . Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.”
Embracing the “spaciousness of uncertainty” and the commitment to “making a way out of no way” are practices that require cultivation. As the great prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba teaches us: hope is a discipline. Part of that discipline is a sincere investment in the resources that allow for the spirit of hope to thrive. The Black Freedom Struggle communities that George worked with exemplified that investment: they carved paths between naïve optimism and pessimistic defeatism by lifting each other up through community and culture; spirituality and song; and through all the other resources that keep the human spirit strong.
Of all the resources that allowed for hope to flourish, George Hrbek emphasized community, above all. When I asked George what helped to cultivate hope, he replied:
“I always go back to the absolute necessity of community. When you’re part of a hope movement, if you’re talking about how do I keep up my spirits, and how does hope stay alive in my own life, it doesn’t come by me operating singularly. It’s within community, together with other people who also hope, and who provide encouragement to each other.”
Community was of central importance to the great discipline of hope… and George understood the practices of joy and self-care as central to the building of strong communities. When George talked about justice communities, he emphasized the ways that people bonded over organizing and taking action together… but also by cooking, dancing, singing, and creating spaces for meaningful conversation, connection, and spirituality together. (He was, after all, the guy who co-founded a social justice theatre in Cleveland, and who ran a White antiracist spiritual community in Chicago.)
Also central to George’s understanding of hope was that social justice work is a long-haul, intergenerational, and ongoing task… an orientation that, once again, was greatly reinforced by his participation in the Black Freedom Struggle. It is easy to lose hope, George believed, when we expect to see large-scale changes on a short time scale. It’s easy to despair and become cynical when we work hard for a cause, only to feel like we’re banging our head against a wall. Just as the discipline of hope is nurtured by community, joy, and self-care, it is also strengthened by a long-haul orientation towards social justice work. As George puts it:
“I’ve felt the struggle is a long one. Coming from my biblical context, Moses didn’t see the promised land himself, but he kept the people moving towards it. And I’ve thought about that, in terms of myself. In my time on this Mother Earth, I have the responsibility to keep that struggle alive. To be part of the leaven, that eventually enables the bread to rise. So I may never see everything that I have hoped for. But to realize that I’m participating, I’m making my contribution to keeping that dream alive, that movement still going… I see that as my role. I think it’s hope that compels us to bring to realization what ought to be… even it won’t happen in our lifetime, at least we know we were part of the process.”
One of George’s greatest sources of hope, and of joy, was the younger generations of activists. He thrived during conversations with them; was inspired by watching them; and he felt that he had more to learn from them they did from him… even when they were the ones seeking him out for advice. The way the generations learn from one another and receive hope from one another is part of that long-haul vision of justice. It also brings me back to the vision this essay opened with… the vision of that vast pattern of human togetherness, and the way that what we do ripples out and touches other lives; which then ripples out and touches other lives.
I think of the wise and playful humor of George’s flapper mother, rippling through George’s life. I think of George’s father, explaining to his young son that Jim Crow needed to be overthrown, rippling through George’s life. I think of the influences of the Czech immigrant circles George was raised in, where community was everything, rippling through his life. I think of the examples of everyone from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Fred Hampton, rippling through George’s life. Those influences flowed through George, and out to all he touched. For anyone reading this who loved George: so many people were a part of George, and George is a part of you; will always remain a part of you… and you are a part of George. We are all part of a great togetherness… and I can hardly think of anything more hopeful than that.
