Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper's Son

The Black Preacher

The Black Preacher Young man— Young man— Your arm’s too short to box with God. James Weldon Johnson, “The Prodigal Son” As far back as I can remember, folks have told me that I had a mark, or gift, which meant that they felt I had been set apart for some special purpose. No purpose in their minds could be greater than that of becoming a minister of the gospel. Admittedly , there was little in my early or later life that dispelled this notion among those determined to believe it. Family members and close friends claimed they remember me clowning around as a child of three or four imitating preachers I had heard. (As I now recall, I might well have been encouraged in my antics by one of the unsaved, who slipped me a drink of beer or some other spirit.) Then there was the work in Sunday school as a demonstrator of the lesson. Later, in high school, I was called upon to preach the “funeral service” for our football rival, Greenville’s Coleman High School, as part of a giant pep rally before the annual Turkey Day classic between Broad Street High and Coleman. My senior class yearbook lists my aspiration as minister. Finally, there was my attendance at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where my interest was in a doctor of philosophy degree and not a degree in ministry or theology.1 I was following a track that would place The Black Preacher 126 me in the classroom rather than in the pulpit. I wound up at Chicago only because the University of Illinois Law School, where I had been accepted, could not grant me a deferment. Once I told my draft board that I was going to a divinity school, they also assumed I was bound for the ministry. I felt no urgent need to clarify matters at that point. It was either divinity school or Vietnam. So, without asking me, everybody just assumed I would become a minister . I often became hostile and defensive when others made this assumption. More recently, when I again felt the need to correct someone on this point, an old classmate confided in me that if I just studied “The Word,” I could very well become a minister. What all this shows is the tremendous respect traditionally accorded the black preacher. Everyone thought I should feel honored to be included among this group. Indeed, the black preacher has often had much more power than his white counterpart. This is certainly true among black Baptists. The reason for this is that, given the structure of the black Baptist Church—or, rather, the lack of it—the black minister is usually left to his own devices to work things out with his congregation. Of course, there is the trustee board, but those individuals are more likely than not to follow the particular wishes of the minister , who, in some cases, inherited the church from his father or grandfather. Furthermore, whites have shown a measure of respect for the black preacher, whether this is born out of fear or the belief that the preacher is more likely to support than threaten the status quo. Philosopher and theologian Howard Thurman once recalled an incident in which a black man was stopped by a white officer for a routine traffic violation. Just as the policeman took out his billy club, the black man earnestly inquired, “You wouldn’t hit a man of the cloth, would you?” The minister was thus spared a certain beating and allowed to continue on his way.2 Many ministers are highly educated individuals who are completely engaged in the affairs of their communities and are making a difference on the world stage. They include college presidents, congressmen, businessmen, and the heads of major civic organizations. They wield power in all areas of life, not just in the pulpit. That ebony magazine’s list of the most influential African Americans always includes a large percentage of ministers is no accident. Du Bois’s comment regarding the power of the black preacher still holds: The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a “boss,” 127 The Black Preacher an intriguer, an idealist, all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination...