Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper's Son

The Black Church

The Black Church The Negro church of today is the social centre of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk Booker T. Washington once quipped that if you could find a black man who wasn’t a Methodist or a Baptist, some white man had been tampering with his religion. Although not generally known for his humor, Washington was giving a fairly accurate picture of the state of religion during his time. With the notable exception of certain new religious movements that have gained some traction in the South, it hasn’t changed much since then. In fact, one of the most significant aspects of African American religion is its general constancy through the ages. When I was growing up in the Delta, I thought that the Baptist and Methodist churches were the only two denominations open to blacks. To the predominance of these two groups, we should now certainly add the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Yet, in August 1998, on the corner of Bowie Lane and Broad Street in Greenwood, I saw something happening that was both familiar and unusual. A clean-cut, middle-aged black man in coat, shirt, and bowtie was selling newspapers . Dressed as he was in the sweltering, late summer heat, I immediately The Black Church 120 recognized him as a Muslim. I had often seen Muslims selling papers on busy street corners in places such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Knoxville, but not in Greenwood, where one was either Baptist, Methodist, or some form of Pentecostal . I paid my dollar for the paper and later had the opportunity to talk with Muhammad, as he now called himself. Standing outside the Wal-Mart and fighting off mosquitos, I listened carefully to his explanation of why he had joined forces with Louis Farrakhan. Indeed, one of the most significant changes in the region has been the arrival of the Muslims, who can be found in even the smallest communities in the Delta today, places where they wouldn’t have been heard of twenty or so years ago. Their growth in the rural South is due to several factors: the widespread impact of television, especially cable television, and the number of blacks who travel from the South to the North on a fairly regular basis. To this must be added the charisma of the leader, together with the general message that Islam offers a better alternative for African Americans. The typical profile of a Muslim in the Delta is this: a young black male in his mid-twenties who has run afoul of the law and quite probably spent some time in prison. In fact, it’s usually in prison that such a young man first hears of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975), the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam. This, in all likelihood, is not his first exposure to religion. As a child, he likely grew up as a Baptist and attended church, as most of us did, because his parents so dictated. But now he has become convinced that Christianity itself is a tool the white man uses to keep blacks under control. As with many of his brothers, as indeed with the patriarch Elijah Muhammad himself, he has the physical and psychic scars to prove his point. Islam, in its various forms, has made significant inroads in the Delta. So have several other traditions—so much so that one needs to exercise caution in talking about the black church as if it were a monolithic institution or comprises only two or three major Protestant traditions. Perhaps this has never been the case, and it’s certainly even less true today. Yet, it may serve some historical purpose to speak of a religion with deep African roots, one that our forefathers brought with them and that has formed the substance of “the invisible institution ”1 whose features persist in many ways to this day. We may have some difficulty outlining all its contours, but we know it when we hear and see it. It’s a tradition that E. Franklin Frazier, Melville Herskovits, W. E. B. Du Bois, Benjamin E. Mays, and James Cone, among other intellectuals, have attempted to describe. 121 The Black Church While the Baptist and Methodist strains may be dominant, it transcends any one tradition...