Black Religious Intellectuals

The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century

Clarence Taylor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136061783
• Subtopic: African American History

Professor Clarence Taylor sheds some much-needed light on the rich intellectual and political tradition that lies in the black religious community. From the Pentecostalism of Bishop Smallwood Williams and the flamboyant leadership of the Reverend Al Sharpton, to the radical Presbyterianism of Milton Arthur Galamison and the controversial and mass-mobilization by Minister Louis Farrakhan, black religious leaders have figured prominently in the struggle for social equality in America.

CHAPTER 1

Sticking to the Ship

Manhood, Fraternity, and the Religious Worldview of A. Philip Randolph

On July 16, 1926, the African-American socialist, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and avowed atheist, A. Philip Randolph, issued a letter to the Organizing Committees, Organizers, Secretaries and Treasurers of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), declaring: “We are now in the high tide of our struggle. Let us rejoice and be glad, for the God of Justice and freedom is our captain and salvation.” Randolph gave instructions to the recipients of the letter that his statement should be read at meetings of the Brotherhood. For a person who described himself as an atheist and antireligious this language seems odd, because he invoked the very entity that scholars have noted he rejected.¹ Even the term rejoice, a biblical term, seems out of place for a person who has been accused of rejecting the religious world of his father.

Indeed, many Randolph scholars have noted his views on religion and concluded that the union leader and civil rights activist was hostile to religion and in particular to the black clergy. Biographer Jervis Anderson argued that although Randolph was the son of an AME preacher and attended Methodist and Baptists churches when he moved to Harlem at the age of twenty-two, he stopped being a “son of the church.” His interest in black churches was “more intellectual than religious” (as though the two are diametrically opposed). In fact, Anderson contended that Randolph started having doubts about religion before he left Jacksonville, Florida, and that “after being drawn into the world of politics and protest, Randolph had stopped going to church altogether.” Anderson asserted that Randolph did not brush off black churches but made a distinction of the social, political, and economic value compared to their spiritual dimension. Anderson writes that during interviews Randolph told him that the black church was “the most powerful and cohesive institution in Negro life.” Anderson concluded that Randolph “had ceased to believe it had value as a religious institution.” He believed there were too many black clergy who were selling heaven to the people.²

Anderson placed Randolph in the militant political camp of W. E. B. Du Bois. “It was [Randolph] who rallied the most militantly around the Du Bois banner [as opposed to Booker T. Washington's]. He had found The Souls of Black Folk to be the ‘most influential book’ he ever read.”³ Thus, Du Bois's politics shaped Randolph. Anderson makes no mention of religion having any impact on Randolph's worldview. Biographer Paula Pfeffer has also made the claim that Randolph had divorced himself from a religious worldview. According to Pfeffer, Randolph believed “that the black church was a reactionary institution because it bowed to the money power in the community.” Randolph and his associate, socialist Chandler Owen, “also criticized black preachers for failing to educate the people and rouse them against the evils of disfranchisement and lynching. The editors of the Messenger [Randolph and Owen] thought the churches would be performing a higher function if they served as places to house cooperative stores.”⁴

In her portrayal of Randolph's atheism, Pfeffer notes he believed the black churches were inadequate. “Not only did emphasis upon the next world dilute pressure for change in this one, but black preachers failed to encourage their flocks to protest racial oppression because of the financial support they received from white capitalist philanthropists. As these benefactors were also opposed to labor organizations, whether black or white, black churchmen were antagonistic toward the BSCP, giving Randolph no cause to change his opinion of the clergy.” However, Pfeffer contends that Randolph recognized the social significance of black churches, and so attempted to manipulate black church culture. “Despite his opposition to the church, Randolph now realized, as he had not earlier, the dependence of his followers on the institution. He therefore submerged his own disbelief and appealed to the porters in biblical terms and with evangelistic zeal on behalf of the cause, never hesitating to remind his listeners that he was a preacher's son.” She notes that he selected black churches to hold meetings and that the meetings began with prayer. The problem with her assertion is that it is too sweeping and mechanical. Pfeffer presents Randolph as much too calculating, manipulative, and divorced from religion, but nevertheless able to scheme and fool his followers into believing he was one of them. Moreover, there is no mention in her biography of the agency of the black religious community in the struggle to obtain collective bargaining rights for the porters. The head of the Brotherhood held meetings in black churches because he was aware of the connection of black religious institutions and because the members of the clergy were willing to ally themselves with Randolph's efforts. Consequently, it is important not just to see Randolph and the Brotherhood as the only active agents but also to view people from the black religious community as playing a pivotal role in the struggle.⁵

Like Pfeffer, historian Benjamin Quarles declared in his essay “A. Philip Randolph, Labor Leader at Large” that Randolph had an adversarial relationship with black ministers. “Opposition also came from the black clergy, particularly from those black congregations that depended upon white financial support. Reflecting their religious rationality more evangelical denominations were either antiunion or indifferent (‘the greater the religiosity, the less the militancy,’ writes Preston Valien). He could not rely on the black clergy. Not able to count on black churches, Randolph sought assistance in other black quarters.”⁶

Daniel Davis's Mr. Black Labor: The Story of A. Philip Randolph, Father of the Civil Rights Movement mentions Randolph's father and his activities as an AME preacher but does not discuss the impact of black religious culture on Randolph. The author admits that as a child Randolph read each chapter of the Bible several times under his father's supervision. According to Davis, Randolph spent hours reading the Bible, Shakespeare, and other classics. In fact, Davis points out that Randolph's favorite hero was the Apostle Paul. However, despite his studying the Bible, there is no mention in the text of the impact the Book had on how he saw the world or on his association with the black religious community.⁷

The problem with the construction of Randolph by Anderson, Pfeffer, and others is that it presents Randolph's politics as strictly secular, arguing that his relationship with the churches was a manipulative one. It was a fact that for all of his childhood and teen years he was immersed in a community where black religious church culture played a central role. By viewing Randolph as an antireligious person who was hostile to the black clergy his biographers assume that one who rejects the existence of God has managed to become free of any religious influence at all.

A closer examination of Randolph's writings and activities during the early part of the struggle for recognition of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as the collective agent for porters reveals that Randolph had a more complicated relationship with black churches, ministers, and African-American religion. This son of an AME preacher did not turn away from black ministers but sought alliances with them and relied on the black church community. Randolph did not view the black religious community as homogeneous but saw a divided one, especially when it came to support of the Brotherhood. Despite the opposition of many clergy to the Brotherhood, there were religious activists who committed themselves to the union.

Just as significant to the alliance between the Brotherhood and certain progressive ministers was Randolph's reliance on biblical phraseology rather than on a secular language; when interpreting the battle for recognition of the BSCP, he displayed a familiarity with black religious culture. This reliance on religious language throws into question the construction of a Randolph who completely divorced himself from or was completely immune to religious influences. Randolph's use of religion cannot be explained as pure manipulation or exploitation devoid of any religious influence. Despite his professed atheism, his language demonstrated he was shaped in part by the black church and African-American religious culture. While rejecting the existence of God, Randolph still embraced a religious ethos espousing religious themes such as hope and salvation, faith and deliverance, and the triumph of good over evil. He clearly depicted a moral order to the universe in tune with the world of black church cultures and the religious thinking of the larger society.

Gender, race, class, and sexuality are important categories when trying to understand identity, but these categories cannot be viewed in a vacuum, isolated from one another, when one is examining identity formation. People have several identities, and these identities interlock, playing on one another. The language of manhood was unifying because it was an idea that was shared by many Americans. American society was viewed in gendered terms. The public sphere of politics and work outside the home was viewed as the male realm. The private world of home and family was viewed as the female realm. This view of divided gender spheres survived well into the twentieth century, and was held by many people across racial and ethnic lines. In forging a collective identity for the BSCP, Randolph and members of the Brotherhood engaged in the rhetoric of proper spheres for black men and women.

Like gender, race and religion played an important role in the construction of black manhood. In the case of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, they became important identity markers in the definition of the union man. In fact, being a good member of the union was described as being a good “union man.” Even the name of the union, “the Brotherhood,” also reflects this male emphasis. Standing up for the race was being a “race man.” Randolph challenged the view of manhood that had become synonymous with white men in a racist society by defining black manhood as masculine, intelligent, dedicated to the family and race, fraternal, and religious and moral. Thus, African-American religious cultures played an important role in defining black manhood, and race played a role in contesting the definition of manhood.

While proclaiming a disbelief in a deity, Randolph did not completely divorce himself from black religious culture or community. In fact, he embraced various aspects of Afro-Christianity, including interpreting the struggle in religious terms rather than relying on a discourse of class struggle.

Randolph's model of unionism was similar to what historian Susan Curtis calls the New Protestantism that emerged in the late nineteenth century. With the advent of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, working-class people faced a host of problems in the workplace and at home in urban centers. The Victorian morality of self-reliance and the belief in the Horatio Alger myth gave way to a greater stress on the social gospel and greater emphasis on an activist government state. Preachers and others reformulated the old Victorian morality and instead argued that growing societal problems caused by industrialization had to be handled, not by individuals but by society as a whole. Advocates of the New Protestantism moved away from individual initiative to cooperation. They became advocates of the social gospel. Like the old Victorian Protestantism, stress was on marriage and family and improving the material and spiritual conditions of the working class. Under the New Protestantism people had two obligations: one was to improve oneself, the other was to improve society. Improvement would be brought about through collaboration and societal help. This New Protestantism laid the groundwork for reform movements to eradicate poverty and disease as well as to change immoral behavior. Curtis writes that the “social gospelers launched a campaign to attract the working class by supporting their class interests for fairer working conditions, by easing the discomfort of their lives with material and medical assistance and by living among them, sharing their burdens and speaking to them as brothers and sisters with a message of hope.” By the early twentieth century, proponents of the social gospel had created the institutionalized church, a body that offered a number of social services to its parishioners and the community.⁸

Curtis argues that through a shift in religious thinking, proponents of the social gospel created new meanings of God, Jesus, and manhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The New Protestantism moved away from the “angry Jehovah” of the eighteenth century to a God who was a “kind parent” and befriended people. Government was expected to follow a similar role. The New Protestantism also depicted a more masculine Jesus who possessed the traits of rugged individualism and at the same time possessed a reform spirit. In books and novels Jesus was reconstructed as a friend who was approachable and civic minded and had a “passion for justice.” His attributes—service to people, sacrifice and love, and devotion to humanity—were turned into traits of manhood. Curtis asserted that “Jesus affirmed the social ideal, he relieved the unrealistic burdens of individual success and salvation; but he was not effeminate. The young men who had struggled unsuccessfully to live up to the ideals of the parents in the 1880s helped to create and endorse a new set of masculine ideals that were more appropriate in the larger scale workplaces of turn-of-the-century America.”⁹

In his attempt to force the Pullman Company to recognize the BSCP as the collective bargaining agent of the porters, Randolph reached out to the black religious community. Just as important, he employed the New Protestant social gospel in his struggle. Randolph's presentation of manhood stressed several of the traits associated with the New Protestantism, especially masculinity, as essential to cooperation, service, sacrifice, love of Brotherhood, family, and race. But in Randolph's view of the social gospel the alleviation of suffering was not going to be brought about by the state, as many of the proponents of the New Protestantism advocated, but by union activity.

This chapter examines the early period of the struggle as the BSCP sought to become the collective bargaining representative for the Pullman porters. More important, it explores how Randolph constructed an identity of black manhood analogous to the New Protestantism and how this manhood construction became a central component of the BSCP to win support. It also pays close attention to the relationship Randolph forged with the black religious community. This relationship was more than one of convenience. The black religious community that participated in the porters’ struggle should not be seen as people being manipulated by Randolph but as agents dedicated to racial and economic equality. Finally, this chapter explores Randolph's language and how this reflected his religious worldview. This chapter is not an attempt to tell the full story of the battle of the BSCP for recognition but to examine the impact of religion on A. Philip Randolph.

Race Men and “He-Men”

In Marching Together, her book on women involved in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, historian Melinda Chateauvert contends that early on in the struggle between the BSCP and the Pullman Company, A. Philip Randolph defined the contest as a struggle for manhood. According to Chateauvert: “When a black man could provide a decent standard of living for his family, just as a white union man did, political, civil, and social equality followed.… In the early years Randolph's rhetoric stressed the Brotherhood's goal of ‘Building Black Manhood.’ The BSCP was the vanguard in a new manhood movement, Randolph claimed, for ‘only white men are supposed to organize for power, for justice and freedom.’ The old porter, the former slave, had passed the way of the wooden Pullman car, and the new porter has come into being.” Influenced by the African-American philosopher Alain Locke's concept of the “New Negro,” Randolph declared as early as 1919 in a Messenger article entitled “The New Negro, th...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Black Intellectuals: A More Inclusive Perspective
• 1 Sticking to the Ship: Manhood, Fraternity, and the Religious World View of A. Philip Randolph
• 2 Expanding the Boundaries of Politics: The Various Voices of the Black Religious Community of Brooklyn, New York, before and during the Cold War
• 3 The Pentecostal Preacher as Public Intellectual and Activist: The Extraordinary Leadership of Bishop Smallwood Williams
• 4 The Reverend John Culmer and the Politics of Black Representation in Miami, Florida
• 5 The Reverend Theodore Gibson and the Significance of Cold War Liberalism in the Fight for Citizenship
• 6 “A Natural-Born Leader”: The Politics of the Reverend Al Sharpton
• 7 The Evolving Spiritual and Political Leadership of Louis Farrakhan: From Allah’s Masculine Warrior to Ecumenical Sage
• 8 Ella Baker, Pauli Murray, and the Challenge to Male Patriarchy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index