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But who were the best young Americans of the I careadmired by Don Milani to the point of adopting that expression of theirs for the Barbiana school and inserting it into the Letter to the judges? We can assume that the prior was referring to a civil rights demonstration on June 21, 1964, called at the Soldier’s Field in Chicago, Illinois, with the motto “I care, I’ll be there”, that is, “I care, we I will be.” It was an event of the Illinois Rally for Civil Rights, physically organized by Jay Miller (who is not the author of theI care?), which was attended by Martin Luther King Jr., president and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Father Theodore M. Hesburgh (1917-2015), Catholic priest and president of the University of Notre Dame, who had been appointed the November 7, 1957 in the Civil Rights Commission commissioned by Eisenhower. Between 57 thousand and 75 thousand people participated, to say no to racial discrimination, also with a show of jazz and gospel music and a choir of 5 thousand voices led by Mahalia Jackson. After the 1963 March on Washington, 100,000 people were expected, but morning rain discouraged many from reaching the destination. In any case, within a few days (July 2) US President Lyndon Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Bill of 1964: «We have come a long way in the fight for civil rights – said King -, but let me remind you that we still have long, long way to go. The passage of the civil rights bill does not mean that we have reached the promised land of civil rights.” Hesburgh’s words have a strong impact: «Be proud to be a black – he said at the Soldier’s field -. Demand respect by proving yourself worthy of respect. We want to commit ourselves to human dignity together with you.”
There are no books by Martin Luther King in the Barbiana library (five published until 1967, the year in which the prior died), to which the volumes and magazines that Don Milani obtained belonged, however thanks to the cataloging that Sandra Gesualdi did of them together with other volunteers for the Foundation dedicated to the prior, we learn that there was an essay by an author who is now in full rediscovery: Richard Hofstadter, of whom Adelphi successfully edited this year, The paranoid style in American politics (1964). Don Milani instead had it in the original language The American Political Traditionfrom 1948, as well The making of american democracy by Loewenberg, Billington and Brockunier from 1960.
Between the pages of The American…a very timely consideration by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who after retiring from an unhappy career as a railroad executive, observed that of all the magnates he had met, “not one… I would like to meet again in this world or in ‘other; nor is one associated in my mind with the idea of humor, thought, or refinement.”
A first summary survey of the Barbiana library is contained in Don Lorenzo Milani: “I care”. Still on the side of the last for a new humanityproceedings of a study seminar of Cisreco di San Gimignano (International Center for Studies on Contemporary Religious Studies) curated by Arnaldo Nesti, Andrea Banchi and Giuseppe Picone for the Tuscany Festival promoted by the Regional Council. The volume, published by Cisreco edizioni, contains interventions by Pietro Domenico Giovannoni on “The city and the church of Florence in the years of Don Lorenzo Milani”, Mariangela Maraviglia (“From beasts one can become men and from men become saints”), Severino Dianich (“Faith and civil conscience”), Sergio Tanzarella (“The epistolary genius of Lorenzo Milani and the question opened by the original sources”), Andrea Banchi (“The master Don Milani: teaching children is believing in God”) , Donatella Puliga (“Gianni, Pierino and the question of Latin”) and, indeed, “The readings of Don Milani and the boys of Barbiana”. There are 1,020 books found and registered in the Barbiana school, some of which, not many to be honest, are subsequent to the death of Don Milani on 26 June 1967 and testify to the continuation of the school’s activity, then led by Michele Gesualdi and other students, for a few years, before the “descent to the piano”. «Some confirmations are arriving, supported for example by titles cited by Don Lorenzo himself in his letters – we read -. For example, when he wrote to his cousin Carlo on 30 October 1950, he quoted a thought from the Dominican Lacordaire (1848): “Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it is freedom that oppresses , it is the law that liberates.” Now, this letter was written while Don Milani was still in Calenzano and this means that when he had to go up to Barbiana he brought several volumes with him.” However, we must ask ourselves whether there too he found volumes belonging to the priors who had succeeded one another at the helm of the church of Sant’Andrea, up to Don Torquato Mugnai, whose place he took over in 1954.
Net of any transcription problems, other volumes, which are known to have been used in Barbiana, such as the life of Savonarola by Schnitzer and that of Saint Francis written by Joergensen, the synopsis of the four Gospels by Lagrange, do not appear in the census. Therefore a beautiful path of study and in-depth analysis opens up, also in relation to quotations from books contained in testimonies and letters. Meanwhile, some bits of curiosity: next to the school books, we find the Office of Holy Week, The Gospel of every Sunday, a book on the Comboni missionary Federico Vianello (1872-1936), From work to Godil A brief synopsis of moral theology by F. Cimetier, A. Cance, in French, from 1933; Christianity minus superstistion and Simon and… by John H. Brocklesby (Onward Press, 1938), Applied Cristianity by father Jogin S. Hugo (1944), The Christian adventure by Emmanuel Mounier (Libreria Editrice Fiorentina), 1954, Bible readings for the home (Review and Herald Publishing, 1958) e The parish priest’s yearbook by Giuseppe De Luca (Ina, 1959).
