Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer

1 The Call of God Brought Him

The Call of God Brought Him At the turn of the twentieth century, Marcelino Manuel da Graca, the future Bishop Charles M. “Daddy” Grace, came to the United States from a tiny Afro-Lusophone island in the Atlantic Ocean. His complex experience as a colonized Catholic “white Portuguese” man of means in his home country did not prepare Grace for the American life. Like so many other immigrants before him, when he stepped off a packet ship in New England he was relegated to the American class of Negroes, whose rights were always negligible. Yet Grace, a keenly intelligent and creative man with a strong religious drive, did not allow himself to be marginalized. Building on the strength of character he developed in Cape Verde, and embracing the immigrant ideal of American opportunity, over time Grace re-created himself as a glamorous bishop whose lively religious services were not to be missed. By 1922 he had begun to transcend his humble background as outsiders took note of the unusual New Bedford, Massachusetts, congregation he had founded. In his first newspaper profile, Grace explained to the public that God had called him to America to spread religious teachings, and for that reason he had opened the small mission in New Bedford. Furthermore, God’s “stamp of approval” for his work was apparent in the numerous spiritual gifts bestowed on House of Prayer attendees, from miracle healings to speaking in tongues. The House of Prayer, Grace confidently declared, would prove to be a gift from God, and he himself was merely the instrument brought from a small unknown island to transmit it to Americans.1 Life on the Island of Brava God had sent Grace from the island of Brava, in the Cape Verdean archipelago . The twenty-one Cape Verde Islands, several hundred miles 1 23 off the northwestern coast of Africa, were first mapped by seamen working for the Portuguese crown in approximately 1460.2 Portugal had begun exploration of Africa at least fifty years earlier in search of gold, territory, and other spoils; by 1420 it had begun colonization and slave taking in earnest. At first the tiny and empty islands, only nine of which were potentially inhabitable, seemed of no value. The mother country invested little in their cultivation, sending only exiles such as criminals, the poor, and Jews to the archipelago. When Portugal realized Cape Verde was an ideal place for friendly trade and slave “domestication ,” the islands became a unique resource in the worldwide slave business. Slave buyers, who preferred to avoid the African continent for 24 | The Call of God Brought Him Daddy Grace eating his favorite food, toast, at his Princess Anne Road residence in Norfolk, Virginia, 1958. Courtesy of Sargeant Memorial Room, Norfolk Public Library, Norfolk, Virginia. fear of problems including disease and violent resistance, could save themselves several hundred miles of travel by making their purchases in Cape Verde. Prices were higher than on the continent but the Portuguese crown sweetened the deal by claiming its slaves had been domesticated , or broken, already. It seems this process entailed putting the enslaved people through small work projects, spending a short time teaching them basic Catholic catechism and some words in Portuguese, and occasionally performing a group baptism before making them available for sale.3 The enslaved people who moved through the islands originated in places stretching from Sierra Leone all the way to Morocco, and they were predominantly sent to Brazil and lower New England.4 With the recognition of Cape Verde’s strategic and economic value, the crown gave land grants and trading privileges to Portuguese people willing to settle there and cultivate the land. These grantees, mostly single Portuguese men, often had little knowledge of how to care for the land properly and directed it to be worked in ways that maximized profits in the short term rather than in ways that protected it in the long term. Initially the labor on the islands was almost exclusively provided by enslaved people, but importation for permanent residence did not last long, and the slave labor force was instead maintained through repopulation. On several islands, manumission was granted quite regularly because it was economically advantageous to the Portuguese power-holders. Formerly enslaved people continued to perform the same jobs, yet now they paid for their own living expenses. So it was that the free, African-descended population grew.5...