A black pastor, a white deacon, and a new day
Reverend Andrew W. Gilmore, African-American Pastor of Greater Tulane Missionary Baptist Church and Christian Love Missionary Baptist Church in New Orleans in the 1970s, was the proud father of a beautiful daughter. A Caucasian Methodist Minister in town was the proud father of a handsome son. The two ministers preached a Christian Gospel of brotherly love, equality, and racial reconciliation. Their children took their fathers’ sermons to heart.
When the ministers’ children began dating, the clergymen found their faith tested. How equal are white and black? Is interracial dating acceptable? And if so, is it advisable? Racial tension gripped the city in those years. Danger lurked, as it did in much of the South in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
One Saturday as the two young lovers enjoyed a picnic on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in the city, they found themselves surrounded by a group of ne’er-do-well, white males. The brigands beat the young man severely, breaking both of his arms, rendering him helpless to defend his girlfriend. Coke bottles were then broken and wielded to slice repeatedly her angelic face.
Word spread fast throughout the city. African-Americans, raging on the verge of rioting, gathered at night on the campus of the University of New Orleans. Emerging in the darkness of the explosive evening appeared Reverend Gilmore. Striding to the stage he began:
“Many of you know our daughter. She is in intensive care tonight. Extensive plastic surgery is required to repair her face. I am speaking calmly, but inside I am boiling. Anger at wrong is right. We are right to be here tonight. Both of her boyfriend’s arms are broken, set in casts. It will take time for our loved ones to heal. But, they will not get well any sooner if we hurt other people. Dr. King says we must return love for hate. We must love our enemies and pray for them. Our anger must not lead us to hate, but to change our world. Non-violent change. Violence cannot defeat evil. Only love can do that. I thank you for coming out tonight. I want us to pray. Then I want us to go home and keep praying. We will resist hatred peacefully. Love will win. God will win. Evil will lose; unless, it takes root in our hearts. Then evil will win. Let us pray. Let us love our enemies. Let us win their hearts, and usher in a new day.”
Kay and I were the only white members of Rev. Gilmore’s congregation in the ‘70s. We loved Reverand and Mrs. Gilmore, and they loved us. When it came time for me to be ordained into the ministry, I wanted our Pastor to preach my ordination sermon. Who else, but a man like this?
Roundaway Baptist Church in Sunflower County, Mississippi, Kay’s home church in the Mississippi Delta, was proud of our ministry in the ghettos of New Orleans, where police were forbidden to enter except in pairs. Church leadership beamed when we asked to be ordained in Kay’s home church.
Until.
Until it was learned that I had invited the Reverend Andrew W. Gilmore, our New Orleans Pastor, to preach my ordination sermon. The Reverend, Mrs. Gilmore, and two or three carloads of our African-American sisters and brothers from our Louisiana church were planning on driving the 5-hour distance to the Mississippi Delta to attend the worship service and dinner-on-the-grounds to follow.
There was a problem.
Churches were not integrated in Mississippi in 1977, certainly not in the Mississippi Delta, where African-Americans had long labored in cotton fields as slaves, Freedmen, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers, but never as members of White churches. In Mississippi most white congregations had never even allowed blacks to clean, nor cook, in their segregated churches. A meeting of the Roundaway Church membership was called.
According to my mother-in-law’s testimony to Kay afterwards, many in the church thought the ordination service should be scheduled somewhere else. People became rather exercised over the issue of carloads of African-Americans arriving for the Roundaway Baptist Church worship service. Emotional back-and-forth erupted!
My father-in-law, a long-time deacon in the church, never said a word about it to us, but this is the story we received:
“It sort of got ugly,” Kay’s mother told her sometime after the meeting. “The church appeared to be moving in the direction of recommending that Randall be ordained somewhere else, like maybe his own home church in McComb.” She didn’t say a whole lot more; but did add this word: “Until your daddy spoke!”
“Your daddy, hon, can be a passionate, strong-willed man; but I don’t know when I’ve seen him that passionate, even tearful, voice quivering, with such powerful words. But I’ll tell you this. When he finished, they voted to have the ordination.”
—Dr. J Randall O’Brien
art: Deborah Fagan Carpenter
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I recently led a Bible Study I called “Seldom Seen Scripture.” It was a study of Exodus 21-23.
We have a tendency to stop at Exodus 20 with the Ten Commandments. We seem to be content with a list of do’s and don’ts and never take the time to understand the principles of how to apply the Commandments.
If we spent more time on principles and less time on lists, problems like this would be greatly diminished if not eliminated.