For fans, scholars, and students interested in research about Black women in American culture and society, please see my recent publication about Gospelwoman and Pastor Shirley Caesar.
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Introduction
Gospelwoman and pastor Shirley Ann Caesar Williams is celebrated and well known for her notable gift of gospel singing that began at eight years old—“I was the little girl with the enormous voice” (Caesar 3, 36)—and she exercised her gift wholeheartedly. “As far back as I can remember I have always loved to sing. Singing for the Lord was in my heart and in my soul… I sang all the time, and I knew I wanted to sing for the rest of my life” (Caesar 62). Although a gospel singer and preacher for most of her life, Caesar’s service as a Durham, North Carolina, city councilperson in 1987 revealed her political aspirations. Caesar ran for office because she wanted to “give back” to her community and she wanted to make her “town one of equal opportunity for everyone” (Caesar 152-3). Caesar sought to improve the basic welfare of Durham citizens during her four-year term. “My immediate goals as an elected official were to fulfill my campaign promises: to provide affordable housing for the elderly, to decrease unemployment, and … to recruit more business and industry to our city” (Caesar 156). Caesar’s campaign promises committed her to breaking (or, at least, weakening) structural domains of power around housing and jobs (Collins 203). Indeed, historically, many African Americans, particularly Black women, in Durham faced structural impediments in their living conditions and economic and educational opportunities (Greene 123; Korstad and Leloudis 176). Caesar’s opportunity to run, win the seat on the city council, and serve in a political role in the late 1980s is due in part to the legal accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. Caesar became a visible political figure in this at-large city council position. However, in the 1960s, she was neither politically active in the traditional sense of political activity nor did she physically participate in the Civil Rights Movement through marching, “sitting-in,” protesting, speaking, and demonstrating in Durham. This is odd considering Durham’s highly effective Black freedom movement activities dating to the forties (Greene). One obvious reason for Caesar’s absence or non-participation was her performance schedule. As a professional gospel singer and itinerant singing evangelist, it was common for her to have engagements in other cities on most days of the week, especially weekends. Although Caesar did not “march and protest,” she, nevertheless, held strong concerns about the status of race relations in the United States, sympathized with the struggles of African Americans, and chose a style of activism suitable to her talents, gifts, and religious calling. Thus, notwithstanding her political activities as councilperson, Caesar’s activism remained primarily a ministerial activism. Patricia Hill Collins provides a gendered, racial framework that opens a space to consider Caesar’s spiritual brand of activism. Collins defines Black women’s activism by assessing our “collective actions within everyday life that challenge domination” from the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power (203). This broader definition “creates space for diverse African-American women to see how their current or potential everyday activities participate in Black women’s activism” (Collins 203). This assessment in turn makes possible the inclusion of Caesar’s version of activism in the Black civil rights activism metanarrative, thereby lessening the overall mediated “invisibility” complex imposed upon the numbers of Black women who were initiators and agents in the struggle (Lott 332). The incident that propelled Caesar into ministerial activism was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968. Caesar’s self-styled and Spirit-directed activism fell in line with her “everyday activities” of preaching and teaching in Black churches, singing in auditoriums, and recording for record companies. Her preaching, teaching, singing, and recording targeted the emotional and psychological survival of African Americans. Caesar’s response to the assassination of King, Jr., catalyzed her ministerial activism. Caesar, Black Women, and Activism in Durham Shirley Caesar was born on October 13, 1938, to “Big” Jim Caesar and Hallie Martin Caesar in their home on 2209 Chatauqua Street, the tenth of thirteen children (Caesar 33). Caesar’s father led a male gospel group, the Just Come Four Quarter, and worked for Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company in Durham (Caesar 13, 14). Caesar’s mother was a “semi-invalid” whose “handicapped foot made it impossible for her to work on a full-time job” (Caesar 19). Caesar’s formative religious upbringing was in two Black Sanctified churches, Fisher Memorial United Holy Church of America and Mount Calvary Holy Church (Caesar 23). She joined the Caravans, the “best-known black female gospel group of all time” in the country, in August 1958, just a few months before her twentieth birthday (Caesar 61-2, 68). Caesar sang and traveled with the Caravans for eight years, ending her association with the group in August 1966 when she went solo. Two years later in 1968 she formed the Shirley Caesar Singers (Caesar 90). Caesar notes that her calling to preach occurred when she was 17 years old (Caesar 10, 29-31, 84, 174, 178, 184). Indeed, part of the reason Caesar left the Caravans was because it was difficult to fulfill her responsibilities to the group and to God (Caesar 84). It was obvious that my remaining with the Caravans was only delaying the inevitable. As long as I stayed, I would only be able to partially fulfill God’s mandate. With them, I was singing the gospel, and in our concerts people were being blessed and many were accepting Christ into their lives. But I was not fulfilling God’s direct edict to evangelize His Word. Our rigorous, inflexible concert itinerary made it almost impossible for me to schedule any speaking engagements and, to a large degree, deprived me of the liberty to accept the invitations I frequently received to conduct revival services. (Caesar 84) While Caesar was moving into the professionalization stage of both her singing career and her ministry in the late fifties, Black working class women in Durham were already actively participating in the Black freedom struggle. Prominent Black women who emerged as neighborhood leaders included Ann Atwater and Pearlie Wright (Greene 180). At a national level, low-income Black women constituted a majority of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People members and of the indigenous organizers hired by the United Organizations for Community Improvement (Greene 64, 121). Caesar’s Ministerial Activism Caesar identified with the social oppression of African Americans. “I grew up during an era when racism, sexism, and prejudice were very prevalent” (Caesar 2). However, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was especially significant to Caesar. She laments, “whenever there is someone who wants to help humanity and unite the people, society always destroys him” (Caesar 104). Discussed in Chapter Seven, “Forgive and Forget,” of Caesar’s autobiography, The Lady, the Melody, and the Word: The Inspirational Story of the First Lady of Gospel, Dr. King’s assassination became central to her impending activism. King made five public appearances in Durham between 1956 and 1964 (Durham County Library). Coincidentally, King scheduled to speak in Durham on April 4, 1968, the date of his assassination on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee (Durham County Library). He cancelled at the last minute, feeling that he needed to be elsewhere. Dr. King’s assassination had a tremendous impact on Caesar, moving her to reflect upon the focus of her ministerial career. “As a young Black woman trying to overcome adversity and accomplish a music career in the sixties, I certainly could not ignore the racial tensions that tore at the edges of America” (Caesar 98). Caesar was concerned about how the heightened racial conflict would affect her as a traveling and performing gospel singer. As a minister and a gospel singer and to some degree a leader in the African-American community, I had to do some real soul searching because, in all honesty, like the majority of Black America I was hurt, bewildered, and quite upset. I kept pondering, What should my stance be? How do I respond? Should I march and protest? Should I speak out against man’s inhumanity to man? I am not a proponent of violence in any form, but I wondered when I stood to minister, what could I possibly say to a world so torn apart by racial division during these dreadful times? (Caesar 104) “Coming out of a season of prayer, fasting, and careful thought” Caesar resolved that she could “serve the Lord best” by “using the pulpit and the stage to proclaim Jesus’ gospel of grace and love and to reaffirm Dr. King’s position of nonviolence” (Caesar 104-5). That is, the pulpit of the Black Church and the stage of the public auditorium. In these iconic spaces, Caesar’s decision to use the pulpit and the stage to convey values of Jesus Christ and Dr. King became her “ministerial activism.” The concept of ministry within the religious setting relates to pastoral, preaching, and teaching functions where authority resides in the spiritual revelation and charisma of the person participating in these functions (Stephenson 412). Ministerial activism is socioemotional, religious, and interior. Caesar’s sermonettes, sermons, and messages demonstrate her ministerial activism. In my first sermon after Dr. King’s death I told the congregation, “We are a blessed people in spite of everything, and the Lord will take care of us. He always has, and he always will. You don’t fight hate with hate; you fight hate with love. So love those who despitefully use you, and persecute you, and speak evil against you. Don’t condescend to the enemy’s level. Remember that Jesus always responded to hate with love, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. personified the teachings of Jesus. If he were here this morning, I believe he would tell us, ‘And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap if we faint not (Galatians 6.9 KJV).’” (Caesar 105) Caesar’s activism resisted a type of hegemonic domain of power of which Blacks were acutely aware: profoundly limiting beliefs and attitudes regarding Black self-identity (Collins 302-5). Caesar acted as a “centerperson” (Collins 219-20). She fostered group solidarity by focusing on the grace and love of God in her sermonettes, sermons, and messages to Black Christians to whom she ministered during her travels. She fulfilled a distinctive and important psychological and emotional function for African Americans, boosting their morale, assuaging their fears, and encouraging their dependence on God (see Raymond 147). “We are a blessed people in spite of everything, and the Lord will take care of us. He always has, and he always will.” Through preaching and teaching, Caesar’s activism also attacked thought processes within Black Christians that said that Blacks were unequal to whites and that whites were superior to Blacks (Caesar 105). We “are all made in God’s image…the color of our skin is immaterial…[I]in God’s eyes we are all equal and …no person, race, or nationality… is superior to the other” (Caesar 105). Caesar’s ministerial activism was no different from Dr. King or the other local Black male pastors in many Black churches across the nation. Caesar stands out because this was her primary form of activism and she was mobile while delivering it. That is, Caesar’s itinerancy meant that she traveled most days of the year. She sang in Black churches in many cities, making her ministerial activism mobile with the ability to reach African Americans outside of Durham. Conclusion Caesar’s ministerial activism connects to Black group struggle for psychological and emotional survival. Her decision to use the pulpit and the stage to preach the love of Jesus and to reaffirm Dr. King’s support of non-violence is a form of resistance. Drawing on her ministerial calling, Caesar resisted white supremacist ideologies that dehumanized, stereotyped, and limited the mobility of Black Americans in the late sixties. Shirley Caesar’s ministerial activism while not “removing the mountains” of institutional arrangements, organizational practices, and cultural processes that reproduce and maintain racial hierarchy nevertheless, addressed the daily psychological aggressions and emotional traumas experienced by average Black Christians. Works Cited Caesar, Shirley. The Lady, the Melody, and the Word: The Inspirational Story of the First Lady of Gospel. Thomas Nelson, 1998. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge, 2000. Durham County Library. “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Visits to Durham, 1956-1964.” The Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project. www.durhamcountylibrary.org/exhibits/dcrhp/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021. Greene, Christina. Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina. U of North Carolina P, 2005. Korstad, Robert R. and James L. Leloudis. To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America. U of North Carolina P, 2010. Lott, Martha. “The Relationship between the ‘Invisibility’ of African American Women in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and their Portrayal in Modern Film.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 331-54. Raymond, Emilie. Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement. U of Washington P, 2015. Robb K. “Thread: House of Beauty/HOB Records.” Motown Forum, 7 Apr. 2020, www.Soulful Detroit.com FORUM. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021. Stephenson, Lisa P. “Prophesying Women and Ruling Men: Women’s Religious Authority in North American Pentecostalism.” Religions, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 410-26. 73 years ago today on September 12, 1947, Mahalia Jackson recorded the double-sided recording of W. Herbert Brewster’s “Move on Up a Little Higher” (Apollo 164) for Apollo Records. The song was released in December 1947. In the early months of 1948, the song had already reportedly sold tens of thousands in Chicago and was receiving heavy radio play. The record not only became a bestseller but it was reportedly black gospel’s first million-seller. “Move on Up a Little Higher” garnered Jackson’s first critical evaluation on December 6, 1947, in Billboard, the music trade publication. (Source: Mark Burford, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field, Oxford University Press, 2019.)
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