Introduction Gospelwoman and pastor Shirley Ann Caesar Williams joined The Caravans, the “best-known black female gospel group of all time,” in August 1958, 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 Caesar formed the Shirley Caesar Singers (Caesar 90). As a Caravan and now participating in the mobility of Black gospel music on a national scale, Caesar entered a professionalization phase of her ministry and career. This phase brought with it the possibility of being alone while on the road which would expose Caesar—a Black woman—to the possibility of sexual and racial violence. Caesar’s first night as a Caravan in 1958 provided such a circumstance, a failed seduction attempt that she describes in Chapter 5, “On the Road with the Caravans,” of her autobiography, The Lady, the Melody, and the Word: The Inspirational Story of the First Lady of Gospel. “On the Road with the Caravans”: Black Gospel Mobility The practice of traveling and touring established a mechanism for disseminating Black gospel music and for advertising Black gospel singers. For example, “Pastors and members told others about singers and preachers that they should invite to minister in their churches” (Caesar 38). “Traveling” made Black gospel music mobile. “I was … elated to be traveling from city to city, state to state, singing and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in song” (Caesar 69). Even prior to joining The Caravans, Caesar logged many hours of traveling by car on the “gospel highway” (Heilbut, Gospel Sound xxix). “We would pack our bags and all six of us would pile into our Cadillac, sometimes traveling all day to get to a concert that night” (Caesar 73). The “gospel highway” involved a circuit of highway and railway routes and cities, a network of churches, radio stations, pastors, singers, musicians, preachers, publishers, promoters, deejays, and audiences, and a repertoire of songs and sermons. “Once we arrived, we only had time to get a bite to eat, get dressed, and go onstage. Often we sang in churches. At other times we sang in auditoriums” (Caesar 73). While Black gospel mobility was legible to both Black gospelwomen and Black gospelmen, proscriptions regarding a Black Christian’s sexuality was not common to both. Caesar, recounting her first night as a Caravan in 1958, connects to personal and communal concerns about Black women’s sexuality. Caesar’s narration reveals underlying anxieties about potential sexual impropriety and predatory sexual violence while on the road. Influencing the lifestyle of sanctified Black women to a greater degree and measure than sanctified Black men, these were and remain gendered anxieties (Butler 76-7; Frederick 105-6). The Specter of Holy Consensual Seduction The Caravans were performing in Chicago and they planned to meet Caesar at the Casbah Hotel in Washington, D.C. Caesar traveled there by bus and notes that it was her first time staying in a hotel (Caesar 67). “I didn’t feel safe there, and it wasn’t much of a welcome for a young girl away from home by herself for the first time. I felt so alone” (Caesar 67). Caesar’s “new world” of traveling with the Caravans involved a Black male gospel singer whom Caesar met in the hotel lobby (Caesar 6). The group of which he was a part was staying in the Casbah Hotel. The group was to perform in the same concert as the Caravans the next evening (Caesar 67). Caesar had eaten after arriving at the hotel and decided to go to bed early “hoping and praying that by morning Albertina [Walker, leader of The Caravans] and the other group members would be there” (Caesar 67). “With great fear” in her heart, Caesar “locked the door with the chain and dead bolt” (Caesar 67). Not long after returning to her room, Caesar heard a knock on her door followed by a man’s voice. Caesar went to the door, kept the chain attached, unlocked the door, and looked out. She saw the male gospel singer she had met earlier in the hotel lobby standing there with a “silly grin on his face” (Caesar 67). After asking him what he wanted, this unnamed gospelman said “’I was wondering if I could come in and get you to bless my cross for me?’ he said. He held out this huge cross he was wearing around his neck” (Caesar 67). In response, Caesar “slammed the door and shouted through the wall, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’ And that was the end of that” (Caesar 67). Unbeknownst to Caesar, her first night as a Caravan had held the specter of holy consensual seduction. The request for a “blessing” in itself was not unusual or unknown to Caesar. A “blessing” is a declarative prayer one person prays on behalf of another person. This prayer serves as a form of approval for the recipient who is usually in a subordinate position in relationship to the person who prays for them. Caesar knew the purpose of a blessing. For example, Caesar sought her mother’s approval, or blessing, before consenting to join The Caravans. “After praying [Mama] now felt that this was God’s will for my life. She said to me, ‘All you have ever wanted to do is to sing for the Lord. Go with my blessings’” (Caesar 66). This nameless gospelman’s decision to single out Caesar specifically to “bless” his cross and to make this request of her in a hotel room rather than at a church altar, for example, is problematic. In fact, several aspects of his actions are suspect. For one, why did he go to Caesar’s hotel room in the evening when he could have asked Caesar to bless his cross when they were in the lobby earlier? Two, he was a part of a male gospel group. Could not they have blessed his cross? Three, why did he not ask his church including the pastor or its members to bless his cross before he went to Washington, D.C., with the group in the first place? The male gospel singer chose Caesar because she was a young woman “on the road” alone. He felt no hesitation about approaching Caesar since “he had used that same line to lure and seduce…many young women” before (Caesar 68). This gospelman attempted to and engaged young Black women victims in “holy consensual seduction.” One can speculate that these young Black women such as Caesar consented to being seduced because they believed that the seduction served a holy purpose and was complying with a biblical doctrine. Biblically grounded, as in relationship to a “blessing,” they consented. After all, prayers of blessing are legitimate so it stands to reason that other activities surrounding it are legitimate as well. Right? One can speculate that the unnamed male singer reasoned that since Caesar, a Christian, was committed to God that she would positively respond to his request. If she responded positively to the male singer’s request, then surely led by her Christian beliefs and values, Caesar would allow him to enter her hotel room. Entrance into Caesar’s hotel room was important because after entering her hotel room, the male petitioner, by now sanctioned through her consent to the “blessing,” could go further in his pursuit of physical intimacy and sexual intercourse. Purity, Gospel Mobility, and the Black Sanctified Church The inclusion of this story—of a failed seduction attempt—reveals Caesar’s own values about her sexual purity as a young sanctified Black woman. Caesar being “on the road” exposed her to the possibility of sexually motivated “attacks,” even if deviously couched in “holy” terms, on her personal purity, chastity, and desire to maintain a holy and sanctified body. This is important because any kind of sexual impropriety would conflict with Caesar’s ethics of accountability to God, or her submission to “God’s gaze” upon her life (Frederick 92). Holiness and sanctification are important values in the Black Sanctified Church of which Caesar was and is a member. Marla F. Frederick describes the early Pentecostal expectations for personal purity as “strikingly rigid and influential” (91). Caesar’s concerns about her sexual purity and restraint underlie a portion of the fear she felt concerning being alone in the hotel. Her participating in the mobility of gospel is partially responsible for creating the conditions in which she found herself. Regarding the incident, Caesar describes herself as a “young, innocent girl from a small town in North Carolina.” Her self-identification as “young,” “innocent,” and from a “small town” in the South implies virginal purity. Though young and innocent, Caesar proved to be not naïve. She was certain she knew what her fellow gospelman really wanted: “I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t about to fall for that kind of line” (Caesar 67). Caesar’s response to the Black gospelman who knocked at her hotel room door in 1958 also reveals her anxiety about possibly being marked as sexually promiscuous or as a jezebel. Jezebel is a sexually aggressive woman (Collins 81). Caesar did not want her sexuality rendered as the “opposite (and absence) of ladydom” due to “jezebelian” behaviors (Lomax 10). What Caesar was afraid of happening to her in her hotel room and what she knew or conjectured had happened to other young Black women was sexual seduction (and possibly rape) which could lead to non-marital sexual intercourse that could result in pregnancy. Any sexual activity prior to marriage was inappropriate and premature in Caesar’s eyes and those of her church. “God intended for sex to be shared between two individuals only within the sanctity of marriage. Save yourself for the spouse that God has for you” (Caesar 135). Furthermore, any sexual activity would be heterosexual. “Like any single lady I desired to have the American Dream, a husband, children, and a nice home, but I wanted a mate who would understand and support my call to the ministry” (Caesar 129). Caesar narrates a somewhat veiled testimony of personal struggle and triumph over the temptations of sexual impropriety rather than the actions of sexual impropriety. She expresses gratitude to God for His delivering her from temptation. “I could have fallen into diverse temptations ... But for the grace of God, I could have become an alcoholic, a drug addict, or an unwed mother ... The power of the Holy Spirit threw a protective shield of spiritual armor around me and gave me strength to resist temptation” (Caesar 41). Caesar’s final assessment of the incident is this. “With the armor of God and the protective covering of my mother’s prayers, I survived attacks like that on the road. The only good thing about that night was that it began to establish the fact among the groups on the road that I was serious about my commitment to Christ” (Caesar 68). Conclusion In her autobiography, Shirley Caesar resists the “culture of dissemblance” that Black women and religious Black women have historically engaged (Hine 915). She narrates sexual discourse as she recounts a failed, seduction attempt at the Casbah Hotel during her first night as a Caravan in 1958. Black gospel mobility, though a practice that opened economic opportunities to African Americans, at the same time exposed the gendered and racialized burdens that Christian Black women bore while “on the road.” Works Cited Butler, Anthea D. Women in the Church of God in Christ, Making a Sanctified World. U of North Carolina P, 2007. “Caesar, Hallie Martin.” Durham North Carolina Cemeteries, Cemetery Census. cemeterycensus.com/nc/durh/cem251c.htm. Accessed 28 Apr. 2021. 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. Frederick, Marla F. Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global. Stanford UP, 2016. Heilbut, Anthony. The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times. Revised and updated. Limelight Editions, 1985. Hine, Darlene Clark. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West.” Signs, vol. 14, no. 4, Summer 1989, pp. 912-20. Lomax, Tamura A. Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture. Duke UP, 2018.
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