wfn.org | UMNS# 05081-Artist uses stained-glass windows to tell story of

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Artist uses stained-glass windows to tell story of civil rights
struggles

Feb. 3, 2005	 News media contact:   Fran  Walsh * (615) 742-5458*
Nashville {05081}

NOTE: Photographs and a UMTV report are available with this story at
http://umns.umc.org.

By John Gordon*

DALLAS (UMNS) - Even though she retired from the classroom, Jean Lacy is
still a teacher. Now she uses colorful slivers of glass, instead of
chalk, for her lessons.

The Dallas-based United Methodist artist designed stained-glass windows
for three churches, and her latest project is a college chapel.  Her
windows interweave Bible stories with events from modern history.

"I see the windows not as something just to look at, something pretty to
look at -  they're educational tools," says Lacy, 72.

Her biggest work is the Windows of Our Heritage - 53 stained-glass
windows surrounding the sanctuary at St. Luke "Community" United
Methodist Church in Dallas.  Besides showing traditional biblical
scenes, some of the windows also chronicle African-American history and
the civil rights movement.

"I wanted to really not go the traditional route," she says. "I think
it's important for people to see their history, not only in terms of
ancient history, but also contemporary, and I wanted them to see
themselves in these windows."

The windows show such leaders as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson
Mandela, Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. The windows also deal with
subjects such as school busing and segregated lunch counters.

One of the windows, "No Room at the Inn," alludes to Jesus' birth and
provides a commentary on housing segregation.

"We have a mother and her child - if you want to say that's Mary and
Christ, all right," Lacy explains. "And then there's a policeman here,
and actually it's saying that you can't stay in this particular
apartment house, there's no room for you."

Other windows show a sit-in at a lunch counter and African Americans
marching for the right to vote. She spent six months doing research and
designing the windows.

"I think these windows really are for the children, in particular," Lacy
says. "Because I think if you don't know your own history, and if you
don't know who you are as a person, as a part of a unique culture as
well as a part of the world, that there's no way that you can survive as
a person."

The windows are used as teaching tools for youth at St. Luke.

"They just talk to me in a way," says William Edwards, 10, a
fifth-grader.

"They tell all the hard work that people in the past have been through
to get us where we are today."

Jenae Brent, 11, a sixth-grader at the church, learned things from the
windows that she has not seen yet in a textbook.

"Some of the pictures told me things I really didn't know," she says.
"It says that we've been through a lot. We've been through too much to
give up now."

Lacy also designed stained-glass windows at two other churches - New
Hope Baptist in Dallas and Trinity United Methodist in Houston.

She is doing research for windows for a chapel at Wiley College, a
United Methodist-supported school in Marshall, Texas. She hopes to have
the Wiley project completed in about a year.

A native of Washington, Lacy received a degree in art education from
Southern University in Baton Rouge and continued her art studies in New
York and Los Angeles.

Most of her work is smaller in scale than the windows at St. Luke. But
she says the windows are important because schools have "failed
miserably" in teaching African-American history.

"I think if I die tomorrow, I will think that I've done pretty well,"
she says, "because I have presented something that, hopefully, will have
staying power, and will continue to inspire and hopefully will give hope
and faith to people who are able to see them."

# # #

*Gordon is a freelance producer and writer in Marshall, Texas.

News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5458
or newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org