Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter eleven

The other great social outlet was the church. My father’s church, Westminster Presbyterian, was centrally located on Sixth Avenue not very far from downtown Birmingham. The neighborhood was solidly middle-class, and this was reflected in its congregation.

Services were formal and short, no more than an hour. Black Presbyterian services were a world apart from the emotional and high-energy services of the Baptist churches. Gospel music was rare, and there was no “call and response,” where the preacher would say, for instance, “Do you hear me?” and the congregation would reply, “I hear you.” There wasn’t even a stray “Amen.” I don’t mean to make the services sound boring. In fact, they were beautiful, even inspiring.

The Christmas and Easter holidays were particularly busy and enjoyable, celebrated with plays for the children and special music that took months to prepare. I loved to go to the church and help decorate, particularly on Easter, when the altar was adorned with three crosses that my uncle Alto built in his shop. There was a glorious sunrise service at six o’clock and then the regular one at eleven.

I didn’t care much, though, for the Easter egg hunt the Saturday before. I thought it was kind of pointless to hide eggs and then try to find them. I was particularly put off when I caught my parents putting an egg in my basket so that I would not be embarrassed if I failed to find one. I asked them to stop doing that, protesting that I was smart enough to find a stupid egg if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to.

My father was a terrific preacher, though he rarely raised his voice above a normal speaking tone. “He was known as a pastor who made you think before you could feel,” to quote one of his elders. This “lecture style” of preaching brought in many new members, particularly teachers who identified with my father’s more cerebral approach to his ministry.

From the time I was very young I loved to engage in theological debates with my father. This started at the age of four, when I insisted that my father was mispronouncing the name Job. It was pronounced “Job,” I insisted, not “Jobe”! My father, ever tolerant of my dissent, argued patiently and I guess decided that eventually I would know better. Our theological debates became a bit more sophisticated over the years. I always felt that my father wanted me to use my intellect to help build my faith. I was never told to simply accept anything on the face of it, and my constant questions were always engaged. Because my father never made reason and faith enemies of each other, my religious conviction was strengthened. I am grateful for that because in the many intellectual environs in which I have found myself, I have never suffered the crisis of faith that so many do. I have always believed, fully and completely.

Westminster grew rapidly under Daddy’s leadership, with new members joining frequently. He knew that it was important to make his church more than just a place of worship on Sunday. Most churches had a social component, but Daddy’s church was ahead of its time, providing a place to gather all week long. Choir practice was on Wednesdays, Bible study on Thursdays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, church members who were teachers offered tutoring in algebra, science, and foreign languages. Dr. Duval, a white dentist, would come to the church once a month to conduct checkups and perform dental work. There were also typing classes and etiquette lessons that taught young people such things as which fork to use at the dinner table. Friday night was “flop night,” a time when kids could come to the church for everything from chess lessons to movies, watched on a projector borrowed from the school. In the summer we looked forward to church-sponsored cookouts, as well as volleyball matches and track meets.

These activities were open to the whole community, not just to the church members. This was somewhat controversial, particularly when Daddy insisted on including the kids from Loveman Village, the government housing project behind the church. There was considerable class stratification in segregated black Birmingham. I remember being told by my mother, for instance, that my friends from Lane Elementary could come to visit me but I could not go to visit them. Their neighborhood was “too rough.”

Many of our church members were not comfortable with Daddy’s outreach activities. I recall one attempt at inclusion that backfired when during a picnic some of the kids from Loveman Village were caught teaching children from the congregation to shoot craps behind the church. “Reverend Rice, I told you they weren’t ready to be with us,” an elder told my father. Daddy came home and told Mother about the episode. He was really hurt and defended his program. But he was always struggling to reconcile his desire for the broadest outreach with what his church’s middle-class membership would tolerate.

Relations were sometimes very strained when my father pushed church members beyond their comfort zone. At one meeting of the Board of Elders, the powerful governing committee in Presbyterian churches, members decided to deny money for Daddy’s “missionary work.” My father became so angry that he turned over a table and stormed out. Daddy was a big man and could be physical in his expression of anger, though never with my mother or with me.

Daddy decided to seek support among the women of the church, getting the Presbyterian Women’s Circle to fund his activities. His stalwart supporters shared his vision of the centrality of a ministry for children—everybody’s children. Daddy, in turn, tried to get the presbytery to ordain these women as elders. When the Presbyterian Church of the late 1950s refused to do so, he created a special category for them. They were allowed, for instance, to serve communion, likely in violation of church policy. He didn’t ask permission, and in the end, no one objected.

My father’s somewhat controversial youth ministry became central to Westminster. The links between the church and the community were nurtured through the Youth Fellowship program and the club that Daddy formed for teenage boys, the Cavaliers. They wore yellow hats with “Cavaliers” written in purple across the front. Daddy involved several other men from the church and the community in what is now called mentoring.

Youth Fellowship met every Sunday afternoon at four in the church, with social activities for high school kids. My father and a parishioner named Miss Julia Emma Smith arranged panel discussions, tutoring sessions, and a one-week summer leadership conference at Stillman College. Daddy wanted the kids to know that there was a bigger and different world outside of their immediate environment. He befriended a rabbi and on Sundays took his students to Temple Beth-El and Temple Emanu-El to learn about Judaism through lectures arranged specifically for them. The young people of Westminster also participated in an “exchange” program with a large white church, South Highland Presbyterian, during the early 1960s, when segregation was still almost total. The minister and my father decided to do this despite trepidation on the part of both congregations. It appears that the exchanges happened only a few times, likely owing to growing opposition in the congregations.

In addition to these educational and cultural opportunities, my father could also provide something that the Baptists couldn’t: dances and parties. Some members complained that the church should not be used for dances. Daddy countered that the church was the safest possible place for kids to have their parties. Moreover, parents trusted him, and the dances he arranged were always heavily attended. One night some of the kids decided to hold a house party and tell their parents that Reverend Rice would be there, which was not true. When Daddy found out just before the party was to take place, he went to the students and told them to recant their story or he would go individually to their parents and explain the truth. I rode in the car with him as he confronted each student. Playing the role of a vindictive little sister, I lobbied to have him tell their parents. Daddy refused, saying that it was important that the students come clean themselves. He left it to the parents to discipline their children. He never had that problem again.

In fact, Youth Fellowship and the Cavaliers were vehicles for my father’s educational evangelism. Much like his father before him, he would insist on strong academic performance and counsel each student toward college. Daddy’s “kids” turned out to be a remarkable lot. For example, Freeman Hrabowski III (a black teenager apparently with Polish ancestry) lived at the corner of our street. My father called him his “little math genius.” Freeman went to college at fifteen, received a PhD in higher education administration and statistics, and now serves as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he became well known for his pioneering work in inspiring young black students, particularly men, to pursue careers in math and the sciences. Sheryl McCarthy, who once wrote and delivered a “newscast” of the crucifixion on Good Friday, went on to become an award-winning journalist at Newsday and the New York Daily News, as well as a national correspondent for ABC News. Amelia Rutledge, studious and quiet, was the valedictorian at Ullman, eventually earned a PhD in medieval studies from Yale, and now teaches at George Mason University. Larry Naves, a member of the Cavaliers, became chief judge for the Denver District Court in Colorado. Mary Kate Bush finished Fisk magna cum laude, received an MBA from the University of Chicago, and became a Treasury official in the Reagan administration, as well as the first black woman to serve as the United States government’s representative on the board of the International Monetary Fund. Carole Smitherman served as president of the Birmingham City Council and became the first black woman to serve as a circuit court judge in Alabama.

These were the children of middle-class Titusville. But the success stories extended to less-advantaged kids. Gloria Dennard became director of library media services at the Jefferson County Board of Education. I cried at Daddy’s memorial service when Gloria said that but for my father’s intervention with her parents, who were not college-educated, she would never have gone on to college. Barbara S. Allen, who served as interim superintendent of the Birmingham public schools, also says that it was my father who insisted that she get a degree. And Harold Jackson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editorial editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was a Youth Fellowship kid. Harold credited Daddy for laying the spiritual foundation for his life and inspiring his older siblings to pursue a college education.

These were just a few of the scores of teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who grew up at that time in deeply segregated Birmingham. They clearly took the right messages from their parents, teachers, and mentors like my father and mother, who emphasized excellence and hard work and never tolerated victimhood. And these future professionals were, in turn, role models for younger kids like me.

Over the years, I have come to understand that it must have been much tougher for these older kids to stay focused and positive. I was very young in segregated Birmingham and perhaps easier to insulate from its negative influences. But these teenagers were well aware of their circumstances. They must have felt the sense of injustice and harm more intensely than those of us who were younger. That they still succeeded and internalized the positive messages of their teachers and parents is a great testament to their focus and perseverance.