Birmingham Post-Herald from Birmingham, Alabama • 21

INisl-Herald Monday October 24 1983 1 a si comes ft 1 A ft i tok tithe Haft praetor may look like a house but a lie black preacher occupied a different position in the black community than the white preacher in the white community The Mack preacher was in the center He had a captive audience when he preached in part because there were so few other diversions available He usually had a superior education to members of his congregation He had confidence as a public speaker a valued skill Most important his parishioners looked on him as called by God Hamilton wrote about the relationship between the preacher and the people was man on that slave plantation in that dirt-road Southern town on the sidewalks of Detroit and he was there to comfort them and tell them as he always had that Lord will make a way if you Just believe in him and be born The black preacher's Job was in part to keep the congregation hopeful through talk of a loving God and freedom in heaven "He made the people as comfortable as possible" said Dr John Nixon Ensley dentist and observer of the black scene here helped them live with their pain" Bat the Mack preacher also was in the best position to affect his lot on Earth Until recent yean there were few other black professionals And the other black professionals the doctors lawyen and schoolteachen depended on the white establishment Not so for the black preacher He worked for black folks minister was said Odessa Woolfolk director of urban studies at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and a longtime observer and frequenter of black churches here had a Job that could not be taken away from him by those who opposed racial integration The preachers did not owe their jobs to the power structure" Because of this independence and because of a certain respect church-going whites afforded all clergymen the black preacher was able to go to white leaders on behalf of other blacks He might give a job recommendation fora new church member He might go downtown to get a black acquaintance out of Jail was the mobile one" Nixon said could go from the Mack community to the white" For decades the black preacher's influence in the community at large was limited to favors accommodations and whatever economic force he could put together from the modest wages paid blacks After World War II the impatience with so little was too great The Mack preacher reached his apotheosis during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s There was a freedom train The black preacher drove By Sain Hodges black preacher in those instances where he served as pastor for whites was the only person of his race during slavery who occupied a position of authority before whites" Hamilton wrote spoke whites listened The reversal of roles surely must have been important and impressive to Perhaps the first Mack preacher of national consequence was Richard Allen who in 1816 established the African Methodist Episcopal Church He had walked out of St George's Methodist Church in 1717 when the sexton directed him and other Macks to sit in the gallery The establishment of a church specifically for blacks was an epochal event in black American history The Mack preacher thrived in the South when after the Emancipation Proclamation and especially after the Civil War he was allowed to have his own congregation The church became all-important to many blacks The Rev Edsel Davis pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Birmingham described the attraction only thing we found that did not de-bumanixe us was religion We have a neat religious heritage coming out of our pain and suffering" For decades blacks had two main institutions: family and church For the most part they were excluded from labor unions and social organisations Segregation especially in the South limited their freedom of speech and movement Church was the one place they could assemble peacefully The Rev Abraham Woods pastor at St Joseph Baptist Church in Birmingham put point in concrete terms church was where blade people could go and fed like they were somebody A yard man who was called during the week who cut some white grass could comd to church and be on the deacon board That was important" The black church performed several functions besides worship Blacks went there for socials and picnics after the Sunday service The pastor and other church leaders stressed education and right behavior Blacks learned organisation and administration in church When blacks borrow money from white banks they could go to organisations formed out of the Mack church such as the Alabama Fenny Savings Bank started by the Rev Pettiford of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church What was true about Hack churches in the United States was emphatically true about churches in Birmingham The city has been densely populated with churches black and white is a dty of churches" Otis Dismuke a historian of Mack churches said you go a church on the corner It King Impressed even those who disagreed with him FBI chief Edgar Hoover worried sufficiently about King to have agents trail him and top his phones King alone In this scrutiny but no white preacher distressed Hoover to the degree King did With the Had a Dream" speech a marvelous blend of sound and sense theology and politics King confirmed forever his place in American history and American oratory If black preachers were God's trombones this speech suggested King was the best musician and lection leader King was extraordinary but he was also representative He was a great orator He was intensely political There are the two dominant characteristics of the black preacher and they are responsible for the authority he carries in the black community VThe black preacher historically has been the leader in the buck community" said Phillip Cousin bishop id the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama true up through Martin King up through Andrew Young up through Jesse Jackson up through Ben Hooks All black The political power of black preachers has a long history Nat Tuner who in 1831 led a slave rebellion in Virginia that killed SI whites was a preacher Among Northern black preachers were many outspoken abolitionists a Southern whites usually allowed Mack preachers preachers though lacking In formal edu-' tes with excellent oratory and impressed whites PMt-BanMRaportv The belt response to anyone who argues that black preachers leadthe black community is a single word spoken enthusiastically Amen! Black preachers proved during the civil righto movement that they wielded enormous power and often as In the campaign to integrate Birmingham with great skin Their ability to lead politically waa directly attributable to their Impassioned oratory bued on the Scriptures One who long ago wrote knowingly about the black preacher as James Weldon Johnson- poet and early secretory of the NAACP Johnson's 1937 bock Trombones" concerns black preachers and folk sermons Johnson beard them preach -H In the preface to Johnson recalled a black preacher he heard late one Sunday evening in Kansu City was wonderful in the way he employed his con sdous and unconscious art and he brought into play the full gamut of his wonderful voice a voice what shall I say? not of an organ or a trumpet but rather of a trombone the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice" Black preachers vary greatly Not many deserve the adjectives Johnson ascribed to this unknown preacher One who did was Martin Lather King Jr 5 1 -x 1 The Rev James Myers is paster of the First Con- gregational Christian Church in Birmingham's Smithheld community three cation BiMical knowledge his book Black Preacher in Charles Hamilton notes that in ISM the Alabama Baptist Association paid ISM to free a slave preacher named Caesar who subsequently preached to whites as well as blacks' An ex-slave named John Jasper preached to thousands of whites and Macks in Richmond after the Civil War And in the North the Mack preacher with a white congregation was more common v- innii 1' Woods was a leader In the King-led demonstrations He maintains exceedingly fond memories of King and an allegiance to ShutOesworth who did not always agree with King about civil rights strategy Woods said he keenly admired the courage and rhetoric of both men but that King was an irresistible influence was a time when I could talk Just like Dr King I found myself doing it unconsciously I tried to stop iL I didn't -want people to think I was Imitating him" Though many Mack preachers retreated from the front line of political tovolvefflent aftdr the Voting Rights Act and other legislative victories Woods stayed now the local president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference When he sees what he believes is a wrong he addrenes it often in a press conference His special interest has been police brutality accuse me of wanting to set criminals free but that's not true just that never believed a policeman should be Judge jury and executioner Even a person in the wrong has some Some white and black see Woods as an irritant He sees himself and the SCLC as a watchdog represent an organisation which had a founder Martin Luther King Jr who wa very articulate in facing the issues just like a watchdog What do you need him for if he's not going to bark?" Payne College in 1979 after he had served a year as guest minister Myers politely declines to discuss in detail his departure from the AME church His parting from the now-defunct Daniel Payne College an AME supported school was not smooth But he seems to have found a home at First Congregational a great deal of warmth here But you have to prepare your sermons well The people here sit and listen to what you have to Myers 55 was born in Georgetown SC He holds degrees from Allen University and Gammon Theological Seminary He came to Birmingham in 1960 to teach religious education at Daniel Payne Myers' role in the 1960s stage of the civil rights movement was limited to counseling Daniel Payne students who were directly involved In later years he has become increasingly involved in community affairs He has been active in the Urban League the American Cancer Society and the University of Alabama to Birmingham's chaplain program Myers says his church has in recent years concentrated on friendliness and on pride to its racial heritage do the heavy stuff but we also do the traditional black music" He objects to stereotyping of the black church He says he has never seen a black church on television that resembles First Congregational have been identified with one type of worship There's nothing wrong with that type But there's a variety of worship within the black church Just as there is within the white Aurch" when he preaches He likes them when I cone but he require them as do some black preachers nothing wrong with the dialogue with the 'amens' but I'm not depending on he says people here love forceful preaching But when I say forceful I mean hollering" Myers is pastor of the small but influential First Congregational Christian Church in Birmingham's Smithfield section The church goes back more than 100 years Several of the city's prominent Mack families belong to it There are few Congregational churches in the South Fewer still have Mack members Myers a regional officer in the United Church of Christ to which the Congregational church belongs knows of no other Southern black church in the denomination The church was started in IMS by Birmingham graduates of Talladega College with the help of the American Missionary Association an agency that promoted Congregational churches and schools in the South Birmingham has one other Congregational church Pilgrim Congregational Church on Montclair Road Its congregation is predominantly white "We are definitely sister Myers says "The relationship is beautiful and has been for a king The Congregational church stresses freedom of thought and speech Also each church is free to select its minister First Congregational called Mvers who had been an AME minister and president Daniel Abraham Woods was a pre-medical student at Morehouse College in Atlanta when he contracted a still-undefined illness that sent him home to Birmingham Before his illness be had decided he did not want to be a preacher He didn't like the responsibilities preachers had to assume He spent a long and quiet convalescence During It his aversion to preaching turned into a call the burden of preaching had weighed so -heavily on me I confessed it And interestingly enough I bgan to get better right after I said I wanted to Woods 55 has been In the pulpit ever since His academic work was interrupted but he resumed It getting undergraduate degrees from the Birmingham Baptist Bible College and Miles College and a graduate degree in history at the University of Alabama For IS years Woods preached at First Metropolitan Baptist on Southside In 1967 he came to SL Joseph Baptist Church on Ninth Avenue North He's still there Woods is one of the few active black preachers in Birmingham who worked in the civil rights movement here In its early days He did voter registration work for the NAACP and when that organization was out-towed in Alabama he joined the Rev Fred Shuttles-worth the Rev Nelson Smith and others in founding the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights That work was preparatory to Martin Luther King Jj'i arrival in In 1963 The Rev Myers hear many Jaimes i.