Emergency prayer

Like many people, I was riveted by the story of Antoinette Tuff, the woman who saved a school full of elementary schoolchildren and their teachers from harm at the McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia.

When a man armed with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition entered the school, took her hostage and told her he wasn’t afraid to die, this middle-aged African-American woman—the school’s bookkeeper—spoke to the young white man as if he were a member of her own family. She called him “baby” and told him she loved him. She promised that if he put down his weapons she would stay with him until the police arrived, and that he would not be hurt. Her 911 call recorded the entire conversation; you can listen to it on the Internet.

Tuff was as good as her word. No one was physically harmed that day, not even the gunman. In a summer when the killer of an unarmed African-American teenager claimed that his fear justified his actions and was found not guilty, Tuff’s ability to reach across the boundaries of race and fear—to risk herself not only on behalf of the children in her care but also on behalf of the man pointing the weapon—feels like a miracle.