Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit
416
Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit
416eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
“The dynamics of Black Theology were at the center of the ‘Long New Negro Renaissance,’ triggered by mass migrations to industrial hubs like Detroit. Finally, this crucial subject has found its match in the brilliant scholarship of Angela Dillard. No one has done a better job of tracing those religious roots through the civil rights–black power era than Professor Dillard.”
—Komozi Woodard, Professor of History, Public Policy & Africana Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics
“Angela Dillard recovers the long-submerged links between the black religious and political lefts in postwar Detroit. . . . Faith in the City is an essential contribution to the growing literature on the struggle for racial equality in the North.”
—Thomas J. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
Spanning more than three decades and organized around the biographies of Reverends Charles A. Hill and Albert B. Cleage Jr., Faith in the City is a major new exploration of how the worlds of politics and faith merged for many of Detroit’s African Americans—a convergence that provided the community with a powerful new voice and identity. While other religions have mixed politics and creed, Faith in the City shows how this fusion was and continues to be particularly vital to African American clergy and the Black freedom struggle.
Activists in cities such as Detroit sustained a record of progressive politics over the course of three decades. Angela Dillard reveals this generational link and describes what the activism of the 1960s owed to that of the 1930s. The labor movement, for example, provided Detroit’s Black activists, both inside and outside the unions, with organizational power and experience virtually unmatched by any other African American urban community.
Angela D. Dillard is Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She specializes in American and African American intellectual history, religious studies, critical race theory, and the history of political ideologies and social movements in the United States.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472024162 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 12/11/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Angela D. Dillard is Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She specializes in American and African American intellectual history, religious studies, critical race theory, and the history of political ideologies and social movements in the United States.
Read an Excerpt
FAITH IN THE CITY
Preaching Radical Social Change in DetroitBy ANGELA D. DILLARD
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Copyright © 2007 University of MichiganAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11462-7
Chapter One
EVOLVING FAITH Rev. Charles A. Hill and the Making of a Black Religious Radical
In the short story "Fire and Cloud," published in the 1940 collection Uncle Tom's Children, African American writer Richard Wright explores the conflicts among religion, politics, race, and class by focusing on the inner turmoil and external pressures besetting Reverend Taylor, the story's protagonist. The tale commences with Reverend Taylor, a Black minister in a small southern town, returning from a discouraging meeting with the town's white relief officer. Taylor had gone, hat in hand, to plead the case of the town's nearly destitute and increasingly desperate Black population. He was rebuffed, told only that "Everybody's hungry, and after all, it's no harder on your people than it is on ours." The officer's only suggestion is that Taylor tell his congregation "they'll just have to wait." Mulling over how best to convey the bad news, Taylor begins to think, "Lawd, mabe them Reds is right," which is to say maybe the community should band together, stage a massive interracial march downtown, and "scare 'em inter doin' something!"At the same time, Taylor is worried that such a militant course of action would offend the mayor and the town's white elite, endangering his flock and the entire Black community by stirring up the antagonism of local whites. It would also, he fears, place his own position as minister of his church in jeopardy, especially since Deacon Smith-"A black snake in the grass! A black Judas!"-is looking for any excuse to engineer Taylor's ouster.
By the time Taylor arrives at his home, all of these pressures and worries and competing constituencies have been gathered under one roof, literally. The Reds, Hadley and Green, are in the Bible room; the chief of police, who has been sent by the mayor, is in the parlor; Deacon Smith, who has been using the rumor of a demonstration in his campaign to discredit Taylor and curry favor with the local white political bosses, is in the basement with the other deacons; and a distressed and agitated delegation from his congregation is crowded into the front hallway. The physical structure of the house, then, operates as a symbolic representation of Reverend Taylor's internal conflicts-conflicts that are resolved when Taylor is abducted and savagely beaten by a gang of white men, after which he agrees to support the interracial march. In preparation for that march Wright has Taylor preach an uncompromising sermon, urging his audience to take collective action on its own behalf.
Sistahs n Brothers, Ah know now! Ah done seen the sign! Wes gotta git together. Ah know whut yo life is! Ah done felt it! Its fire! Its like the fire that burned me last night! Its sufferin! Its hell! Ah can't bear this fire erlone! Ah know now wut t do! Wes gotta git close t one ernother! Gawds done spoke! Gawds done sent His sign. Now its time fer us t ack.
Characteristically, Wright leaves the question of the march's success unanswered. We are not told whether the Black and white marchers, united at least for the moment around shared class interests, are able to force the hand of the town's elite. While he suggests that all of the participants, especially the African American ones, have been transformed by the experience of interracial collective struggle, Wright ends with Taylor's newfound conviction that "This is the way!" "Gawd ain no lie!" he tells himself, and the story concludes as he "mumbled out loud, exultingly: 'Freedom belongs t the strong!'"
This story of one religious man's, one minister's, conversion to the necessity of collective action is instructive for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Wright's ability to capture the complex relationship of faith to action. At the beginning of the tale the sympathetic Taylor is a man of God, whose authority as a minister anoints him a mediator between the Black community and the white power structure. Sustained by his faith, he accommodates himself to the racial and class status quo, viewing his passivity as the only viable option in a town (and a world) where "the white folks jus erbout owns" everything. At the story's end, Taylor's faith continues to shape his identity and his actions, but now those actions are geared toward a nonaccommodationist and potentially progressive politics. What has changed is Taylor's interpretation of what God demands and his vision of how best to serve his congregation.
Reverend Taylor had many real life counterparts in the Depression era, ministers who, like Taylor, were driven by faith and circumstance to participate in mass demonstrations, strikes, and other political actions. Progressive activists and unionists in Detroit in the 1930s and early 1940s were blessed with the presence of three such men: the Rev. Horace A. White, Fr. Malcolm C. Dade, and the Rev. Charles A. Hill. All three played a key role in the city's early civil rights movement, and all three are intriguing in their own right. It was the Reverend Hill, however, who developed the most extensive and militant set of positions and alliances with the Left and whose story therefore seems the most compelling. His biography embodies the dynamic confluence of religion and politics during the formative years of Detroit's early civil rights community.
Charles Hill did not start as a radical in either a political or a theological sense. In fact, he was once described as "an old-fashion Bible thumping preacher whose only political concern was making things right in the sight of the Lord." This wonderfully descriptive statement from Hill's close friend and ally, Coleman A. Young (the labor radical who became Detroit's first Black mayor, in 1973), captures the intriguing admixture of conservative and progressive uses of religion that formed the beating heart of Hill's political theology and activism. Like the fictional Reverend Taylor, there was nothing particularly radical about Hill's understanding of evangelical Christianity. Unlike the radical theologians active in the 1930s-figures such as Claude Williams and Harry Ward, one of the founding members of the Methodist Federation for Social Action-Hill never articulated a direct connection between Christianity and Marxism; nor did he ever directly urge the overthrow of capitalism. And yet this Bible-thumping minister became one of the most militant religious leaders in the city.
Reverend Hill was not a practicing theologian, and unfortunately few of his writings and sermons survived his death in 1970. Yet Hill's early life and young adulthood offer a number of clues to the sources of his later political activism. Born in Detroit on April 28, 1893, Hill was the surviving twin born to Edward Hill, an African American dentist, and Mary Lantz Hill, a second-generation German American. There are two family stories, or legends, about this union. The first, told by Hill's eldest son, Charles A. Hill Jr., maintains that the union was little more than a one-night stand. Edward Hill had come to town "for a convention, you know," and Mary Lantz was "a waitress, I think, at a local place. They met and, well, one thing led to another." The other version, told by Hill's daughter, Bermecia Morrow McCoy, insists that Mary Lantz and Edward Hill were formally married, even though there is no trace of a marriage license or official record. She also points out that Mary Lantz went by the name Mrs. Hill until her death.
In both heavily gendered versions, Edward and Mary defied the racial and sexual norms that structured social interactions in what was then still a small city teetering on the brink of industrial greatness. Although an 1838 statute prohibiting marriage between Blacks and whites had been repealed by the Michigan legislature in 1882, the social stigma attached to such a union at the time of Hill's birth would have been substantial. And, while Blacks were scattered across the German east side, virtually no intermarriages were officially recorded before the early 1900s. The union between Mary and Edward may not have been prohibited by the state, but it was certainly not sanctioned by members of the Lantz family, who, like many other older German immigrants, had become relatively prosperous as skilled workers. As a result of the unpopular marriage/ elicit rendezvous, Mary was forced to sever her familial ties.
Whatever the truth about the nature of their relationship, it ended, but not before a child was conceived. There is no evidence as to whether Edward Hill ever saw his son or provided any type of emotional or financial support for his estranged wife and child. In fact, Hill's birth certificate lists his father as "Unknown." Apparently, Edward Hill returned to Chicago. According to both Hill children, Charles Hill rarely mentioned his father; both children also agree that the two men never met. For his mother, however, Charles Hill seemed to harbor only love and affection. Mary Hill's life was not an easy one. She was left alone with a redheaded infant who in his third month began to "darken"-much to the consternation of her friends and neighbors in the German community near Jay Street and Gratiot on Detroit's east side. His birth certificate lists him as "White," but this did not stop gossip about Mary's "colored baby" from spreading through the community and compounding the hardships faced by the young, ostensibly single mother. Eking out a living for herself and her child without a strong support network in turn of the century Detroit soon proved overwhelming. Shortly after Charles was baptized into the Catholic faith, Mary Hill took the drastic step of placing her son in the care of an orphanage, the German Protestant Home, where he would remain for the next eleven to twelve years.
That she was able to place her "colored" baby in the home was fairly remarkable in itself since nearly all of the city's orphanages practiced a policy of racial exclusivity. In fact, in a June 1916 exchange of letters between the Rev. John Webster, superintendent of the German Protestant Home, and Forrester B. Washington, the first director of the Detroit Urban League (DUL), Webster reported that "we have never had any colored children in our Home" and had none presently. Throughout her son's tenure as a ward, Mary continued to work odd jobs-taking in laundry and hiring herself out as a maid-and visited Charles sporadically. Aware of his ambiguous status as both "son" and "orphan," not to mention as both legally White and socially colored, his years at the German Protestant Home passed slowly.
As an adult, Hill rarely mentioned these years. The one story that his eldest son was able to clearly recall had to do with Hill sneaking into the cellar of the orphanage to lick the sides of the maple syrup barrels. While humorous, Charles Hill Jr. remembers this as a story of deprivation. Although Charles Sr.'s love for, and loyalty to, Mary Hill was never questioned by friends or family, there is little doubt that he was deeply affected by his experience in both negative and positive ways. "I think that's why Daddy was such a good father," Bermecia recalled. "I mean not having a father, and the orphanage, made him value fatherhood that much more." But the implications of his years in the orphanage extend even further. On the one hand, his early and prolonged exposure to white children and administrators may have accounted in part for his later ease in interracial and majority-white settings. Perhaps it even formed the basis for his abiding faith in the possibility of integration and racial reconciliation. If a much later remark by his grandson, David Morrow, is accurate, then Hill found a certain amount of acceptance and support at the home. "During his early years," Morrow said in a speech entitled "Charles Andrew Hill-the Family Man" delivered at his grandfather's retirement celebration in 1968, "his teachers in the home recognized his strong character and depended on him to escort them to and from evening prayer service."
On the other hand, it is surely the case that his early experiences complicated Hill's efforts to work out his own racial, or interracial, identity. By his eleventh or twelfth year, Hill had had enough. He returned to his mother's house on Jay Street determined to assist her and continue his education. The character of the Jay Street neighborhood, like the city as a whole, had begun to change. Jay Street was still part of the area near Gratiot Avenue populated by less affluent Germans, but by 1905 the area also included "the better class of the colored people," as well as Jewish families. Naturally, he would have explored his new surroundings as he traveled from home to school to whatever after-school jobs he could secure to augment the relatively meager family income. West of Gratiot, near the heart of what had been known as "Little Berlin," was Woodward Avenue, the broad main boulevard that bisected the city, stretching from the river outward past Detroit's ever-expanding northern boundaries. To the far east lay DeQuindre Avenue, with an ethnic and racial patchwork in between.
Detroit's near east side, the center of Hill's geographical existence, was the traditional point of entry for immigrant Detroit, first for the French, then for (relatively fewer) Irish, and later for innumerable Germans. In the 1880s and 1890s, it became the portal for immigrant Italians, who established a colony near the river called Paradise Valley, and for Greeks, Jews, and waves of Poles, who would quickly become the largest cultural minority group in the city. By the turn of the century, the deep east side was identified with Irish, Gratiot with Germans, Hastings Street with Poles and Russian Jews, and Paradise Valley with Italians. The narrow sector to the south of Jefferson, the major avenue following the contours of the Detroit River, was filled with dilapidated old warehouses, decaying housing stock, vice, crime, and the poor from all racial and ethnic groups. In a pattern that was replicated generation after generation, each group would establish a beachhead within the east side and gradually move out-and up, socioeconomically speaking-generally toward the city's northern reaches. This is what the better-off, native-born white population managed to do as Detroit experienced its first major population boom, from 132,956 residents in 1884 to 205,876 in 1890. The last group to manage this transition in class and social space would be African Americans, who occupied more and more of the east side as others moved on.
In the early 1900s, when Hill first encountered it, this African American enclave was still relatively small. Before the Civil War, the tiny Black population of roughly 580 souls had been clustered in the area between Randolph Street on the west, Hastings on the east, Gratiot on the north and the river to the south. By the 1870s, Blacks, who made up less than 3 percent of the population, began to settle in the old Kentucky district, twenty blocks north of Gratiot and St. Antoine, and throughout the east side. As the Black population increased (from 4,111 in 1900 to 5,741 in 1910), so did its concentration, creating the early outlines of what would soon become a city within a city, with a variety and breadth of institutions that could match those of Detroit itself.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from FAITH IN THE CITY by ANGELA D. DILLARD Copyright © 2007 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.