Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Randal Jelks On A

Of the state. Where people had their social networks, their continuities. One of the interesting things has come out of those ofnections was a kind leadership out of a black congregation, particularly the clergy. In this discussion, i am going ,o talk too much about men but males have dominated in some ways the kind of conversation about american politics for a number of reasons as we can see. Let us see if my little thing works. Let us try that again. A host ofare characters. I will not talk about all of them. There are some things that i really want you to Pay Attention to. One, it says Indigenous Community organizations. Black churches are Indigenous Community organizations. By the it is controlled people at the very lowest level. At the ground level. I dont mean that in terms of status but at the ground level. Thatherefore, you can see it creates its own organic leadership. A leadership that belongs to its own community. About that aalk little more, these terms, ecclesial politics. National personalities. One of the things that you will people,hat black clergy whether male or female, have to build a support system and have to be affirmed by their own people. And that is what i mean by organic leadership. That organic leadership is crucial, crucial, crucial to black churches, black american politics, and so on. 1972, this is one of the few books that examines lack politics called the black preacher in america. It came out in 1970 two. Professor hamilton is still alive. He is a political scientist and he is best known for a book he wrote or coauthored with powerhael called lack and the politics of liberation. You can see it at the top there. Hamilton began to study in some ways clergy behavior. And he ended up writing a book on when the people on one of the people that we will talk about, the political biography of an american dilemma. Studied people have black clergy with the exception of dr. Martin luther king junior who gets a lot of ink like abraham lincoln. America. Preacher in he wanted to take this wide sweep in the 1970s to look at it. This book comes in the context of a book you have already read by arthur. There are a group of books shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther king. All of these books were coming out after the assassination of king as a minister, king as a leader. There were a number of books coming out and people were thinking about what did black history mean . Particularly in the era of black power. In ahat did that mean revision of black history . And of course, if i can get this that in you can see the 1970s, along with your book by al, there were plenty of books coming out about slavery and all of them made reference to slave communities and slave churches and the invisible institution. All of them made references to or jean asked the question why didnt slaves in the u. S. Rebel more . As they might have in a place like haiti. What kept slaves from rebellion . Is ahe comes up with marxist formulation. That there is a kind of paternalism and religion was one thing that kept the slaves from rebelling. These were kind of books that were coming out. Wanted tocommunity revise how people understood what was going on at the time. This as a you backdrop to the book because it is important to understand that ans conversation is in academic conversation with other books. If you thought about it for a moment, if you thought really d about what is going on in the 1920s, the American Academic establishment wrote that slavery was a good thing. And that people were happy. And after reconstruction, africanamericans had no place in politics. They were written out of politics. This was then a kind of reversal of this. This became a long going conversation through the late 1950s, through the 1960s and the 1970s. And of course, we keep getting the new studies. I just wanted to put the context in here for you to understand hamiltons book on the black preacher. What was that role . Pacification . E of was it the role of charlatan . And so forth. The context for black preachers is this black preachers are as much american as apple pie. And what i mean by that is that black preachers come out of the same stuff that White American preachers come out of. The same stuff that you might have heard of for billy graham, or from george, whitfield in the 1850s. Richard allen. All of those are coming out of the same source material. They are using the bible. They are evangelical in the protestant sense. Showmencourse, they are. All religious leaders have to be showmen. And i do not mean that to be insultingly. I mean that if you say the mass, you have to be a performer. If you are a rabbi, people want you to be an excellent or door. They do not want to be people want you to be an excellent orator. There is all of this performance that goes with this. Are in anericans oppressive situation of slavery and post slavery, building institutions so people can live. Politics, i mean how black leaders engage the state regionally and nationally. Pertaining to laws and social inequities. I love this this took place in harlem. There was a Funeral Service for jim crow. That took place on the street. The social inequities. Jim crow. Racial apartheid. Jane crow, sexual apartheid. Voting, economic disparities. Black ministers in a way were different from their white counterparts have had to encounter not just the religious lies of their own people but the very laws that constrict the lives of their people. And it is important to note, that for a while, not now, but for a while, the clergy was the most educated people in the u. S. We forget that in the 19th century, many of the people that were educated were clergy. This is why Morehouse College was called Atlanta Baptist seminary. Spelman college was called the seminary for women. These were the educated people and therefore they would take a place in leadership. And of course, we have now gone and over the institutional parameters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church with the starting wilberforce college. Normally, the educated people ,ecome leaders, spokespersons whatever the case may be. Because we created indigenous thetions, because ecclesial politics is first. Where do your politics begin . Inside the church organization. Inside the temple organization. Inside the rabbi. And so forth. This is where the ecclesial politics become very important. It is a Training Ground. If you want to learn how to lead , you need to have an organization to leave. Such as weuxiliaries have read about the women of church of god. All of the places that people get training to have leadership. And they learn how to play politics. How do you organize your coalition . Within the church to get something done . How are you going to persuade the clergy that your program is valuable . Church politics was the first. As i told you about my grandfather. He became a deacon on sunday and that was a very Important Role and a political role because you had to be unelected deacon in your church. You did not just become a deacon. And you wanted to remain on the deacon board so you had to learn how you had to learn procedure. Ecclesial politics is a Training Ground. Has at the church you think no similar organization. It has organization. An indigenous learning. My grandmother understood roberts rules of order better than the people i see running the meetings here at ku. Out of ordere you and she had a seventh grade education. And i wondered where she had dealt where she had learned all about. And she said at the church meetings. Ugly zeal politics. There is a clay zeal politics between the clergy. In ais, if you are hierarchical system, a bishop system, you run for bishop. How are you going to become a bishop . Now, there are people who self appoint themselves bishops. Right . And they start an organization and call themselves bishops but there are also people that have to have that conferred by the people and the other clergy to vote you up the chain. And that also requires organizing and politics. There is nothing like going to a baptist convention, an ame convention, the Church Convention of any sort to watch the politics aspect because people operate at a very high level. And this was a Training Ground for a lot of the people. This a clay zeal politics is a part of that indigenous organizing that is going on. People learnhat the rules of order. I want to give you one example. Two baptist ministers. The one is Joseph H Jackson. The head of the National Baptist convention. And the other one, you will recognize, Martin Luther king jr. Jackson, a joseph use to be more aggressive about civil rights. And Joseph H Jackson did not want to do that at all. He thought that the church should not be in politics. Im going to see if i can switch here for a minute. Will it work for me . Something is spinning. All rights. It is slow. , in 1961, the National Baptist convention met in kansas city and it was a controversial action going on. You should look at this site. The king global site. Hentroversial leader was elected over and over again even if he had to do it semifraudulently. He was a political leader. Jackson often clashed with other leaders who believed that jacksons opposition to the use of civil this obedience for civil rights was too conservative. You have got to persuade your people at the convention who should be in. An uneducatedt man. Very sophisticated. Born in mississippi. Went to jackson college. Went to Colgate Rochester Divinity School in rochester, new york where Frederick Douglass is buried. And then he came out here to the midwest. And he went to Creighton University to get his ma. He was ordained as a baptist minister. He resisted the civil rights impetus by king and others because he thought the church should not be in politics. The thing about jackson was that in chicago, he was very much in politics. Withs very much aligned mayor Richard Daley. Withs very much aligned Richard Daley and others because he wanted his people to get jobs. He wanted his people to get things. And chicago politics meant you had to be a lined with the machine. You had to be aligned with the daley machine. On one hand he did not want the National Baptist to be involved with civil rights too much, he, on the other hand, in chicago politics, tried to be kind of like a mini political boss. By the 1960s, there was an outright battle to take over the convention from jackson. At the 1961 convention, you see this paragraph. In kansas city, missouri, jackson and taylor both claimed the presidency. Taylor,le that gardner a famous black preacher from new york city, brooklyn, concord baptist. And a scuffle broke out. Was pushed off the stage and died. Ministers, you know, all churches can get into a scuffle. They got into a scuffle. What happened was that jackson would blame king for this and write scoreless scurrilous oped. Thiser bad this may seem, was a struggle and it led to the formation of another baptist convention. Called the progressive baptist. One baptist cannot tell another baptist what to do. These are the internal organizing politics of a community. Procedures,knew the and there isoving, always a power struggle. A power struggle for who will run the institutional members of the community. Reconstruction, there 2000 black elected officials nationally. They were all males given the 15th amendment and roughly a third or more were clergy. I point out to you Henry Mcneil Turner who was in the georgia statehouse. Bishop. N ame they were all part of it because they were the reading populace. The question was whether or not these clergy people were on the side of their own people or were they on the side or were they too easy to compromise . This is a question that scholars ask all of the time. Do they compromise . Are they selling out the people . There is a myth that black arele that black clergy selling out their own people for their own self interests. Some are. But this is the kind of thing that black clergy had to be the because many of them had access to the kind of education that was needed to make legislation. Thing that you have to andrstand black face religion grew up in oppression. And so we talk about protest politics. You have two always address the issue of inequities. A matter of a local church issue but a national issue. Slavery was a national, international in many ways issue. Slavery went from argentina all the way up through north america and the caribbean. Clergyman, garnet , really wanted to say he called for slave rebellion. He believed that slaves should rebel against their masters. One, he thought this because first of all, he said it violated his own the logical proposition. The sabbath. He said slavery violates the sabbath. Thiso, scholars often miss point of his. It is a violation of the sabbath and that means this is not a godgiven institution. They are damaging people. They are working people. , andgod took a day off the seventh day ought to be honored. Slavery has spread its dark wings of death over the church. The priest prophesies to falsely. It has grown, is established, now 3igns triumphant and million of your fellow citizens are prohibited by law and public opinion. Which in this country is stronger than law, from reading the book of light. You could not even read the bible. It was against the law. With theood protestant book. Him, the for protestant version of the bible. He died and is buried in monrovia, liberia. Turner, peopleil began to think maybe i should return to the african continent. But you see, this is a long tradition of people protesting the very public sphere. This is not a new thing in black life. Movements, with an black Protestant Churches are also a political ground. Studieden, scholars women a great deal, but more women were in the church than in black womens clubs. I will probably get hit by some of my scholar friends. But more women went to church. More ordinary women went to church and this is where they learned their politics. They first learned their politics sometimes in support of or against their clergy. Politics, they learned in support of or against their clergy. They may not agree with their clergy and they would hold. If they wanted their clergy out, they would whisper. Many of them were married to the deacons if they were baptists and they would say get that person out. It was a form of politics going on. And also, black clergy, as ive told you before, are trying to dont allowat they women to get too much power. It is a power struggle. Sometimes, about who is going to control. And womens movements within the black Protestant Church is all over. Women ofng was from the church of god and christ. Im going to move up a minute. This is my man. Reverend ike. The preplo dollar. If you are a student of black churches, you have seen these. And if you havent, you can go on youtube. Reverend ike is one of the most fascinating americans. Why i chose him is because most people associate black clergy with a reverend ike or the big televangelists. He is kind of the father of televangelists and the prosperity gospel. That has been around for a long time. Before reverend ike, it was Norman Vincent peel. Be happy. Think and grow rich. Positive attitude. People thinkaith confers value. These have always been in the american psyche. From the 19th century. Being positive, being selfreliant. There was no one quite like ike in this regard. This is from the new york times. His obituary. And, these were the kinds of lines that he used. You can see in the third paragraph. He says close your eyes and see green. Right . He would tell his 5000 in washington heights. Way uptown, past harlem in new york. Much of it is a dominican neighborhood. This headquarters. Money up to your armpits. A room full of money. It around,re tossing in it like a swimming pool. Like the cartoon character, little richie rich. This exhortation was quoted by the new york times. His philosophy. Prosperity. Lled you just have to think of it and you get it. Black associate all of clergy with ike. Ikes had a social role. We will get to that. But then, we have another kind of clergy. Outside a protestant is a. In the nation of islam. Stemming from alternative theology as a challenge to the state. Mohammed is probably the most misunderstood and misinterpreted in many ways his faith was nationalism. He believed that white that black people were priority and came that way. I will see if this works for us but there is a little part of an interview that i want to show you. There is part of an interview i want to show you. [indiscernible] the white man, we say, is the devil. Why . Because of his [indiscernible] the reason i show you part of this is a lisha mohammed built is eli jeff Elijah Mohammed built an organization with an interesting collaboration conglomeration pose forto try to people an identity outside the state sanctioned black identity. That is, in his era you were born negro, you died negro, and you are impoverished. He is trying to come up with a cosmology that is different. Tryingel tois reshapeijah the minds of people he considers that are poor, misguided, and he is trying to build an organization where they have some strength of identity. People who were migrating from the south like you did. His targets were people who had substance abuse, like he had once had in detroit. His targets were these people. He tried not to make himself until a discovery of the nation of islam by tel wallace in a documentary the hate that produces hate that came on television, that they discovered there was a whole nation of islam. I know you all know about malcolm x, but nobody really knew about this organization outside the black community really until it hits television. Followingubstantial of people in major cities, york,elphia, chicago, new and he is trying to give an alternative identity. Hasolleague at princeton written a wonderful book about these kinds of organizations the nation is under called new world coming, abou