December 30

William Croft, Frances Joseph-Gaudet, Erica Garner, and the GM Sit-Down Strike

Author

David Barnhart
December 30, 2025

This is an infographic from the Royal Observatory Museum in London about how the curators choose to display their history. I’m including it today because so many museums and institutions of learning in the United States are under attack from our fascist executive branch, which is trying hard to undercut diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, to distort the teaching of history and analysis of policy. Justice depends on us telling accurate stories. 2022, own photo.

Today is the infant baptism date, in 1678, of William Croft, English composer of sacred music, whose most famous tune, “Saint Anne,” is used in the hymn O God Our Help in Ages Past.

Today is also a feast day in the Episopal Church for Frances Joseph-Gaudet, who died in 1934. She was a Mississippi-born educator and prison reformer who worked in New Orleans. She took a special interest in helping homeless Black teenagers who were in the court system, and eventually founded a boarding school and orphanage. 

Today also marks the death of Erica Garner, in 2017, who passionately sought justice for her father, Eric Garner, who was murdered in 2014 by a policeman who choked him to death. She died from complications in child birth—and probably from the chronic stress of systemic racism.

Today also marks the beginning of the Great GM Sit-Down Strike, which started in Flint, Michigan and spread through the United States in 1936. 

Reflection: 

Erica Garner said: 

“Change is gonna come. Because it’s not just black people being killed, being brutalised. It might be people from a trailer park or poor white people that they [the police] will mess with, rather than messing with a man in a suit.”

Many people mistakenly believe that the struggle for racial justice against unfair policing and criminal law is only about racism. I have often heard community organizers say that although white supremacy “hurts Black people worst, it hurts white people first.” While Black people are disproportionately arrested and convicted for minor crimes like marijuana possession, the majority of incarcerated people in the United States are white. The racist law-enforcement policies of our state and federal governments always wind up hurting disenfranchised white people as well. 

For this reason, community organizers emphasize solidarity. It is always in the interest of oligarchs to divide the loyalties of the rest of us and pit us against each other: white against Black, citizen against immigrant, men against women. No political or rhetorical weapon formed against us can prosper—if we choose disarmament and truth-telling.

Prayer: God, let your people stand in empathy and solidarity with those whose backs are against the wall. Amen.