Selecting
non-Christ centric music was a struggle for our Missionary Baptist director.The
center of his theology was Jesus.Being
an inter-faith group, we had non-Christians, myself included, some of whom
could barely sing lyrics laced with God images.We
finally recognized as a group that we just couldn’t do justice to gospel
music without singing some songs about Jesus.So
some of us sang our hearts out for Jesus, not as the one and only resurrected
savior, but as one great living example of how to bring capital ‘L’ Love
into the world.
That
Gospel Choir inspired a vision in me that I bring to this congregation.Whether
we are believers or unbelievers in a wide range of different theologies,
I believe secular images, God images, Christian images, Jewish images,
Islamic images, Eastern images, African images, and other theological metaphors
can encourage our spiritual growth and development.We
gather not to decide the undecide-able.We
gather not to judge the ineffable.We
gather to support each other as we risk expanding our circle of love.We
gather to sing our hearts out while we do it.
After
church the morning of the Johnson meeting this question had arisen in our
Forum Committee meeting as to how we should seat the audience as we had
hoped that many Negroes would attend such a meeting.We
quite quickly decided that the seating should be done without discrimination
but due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, including the absence of
the Chairman in meeting Dr. Johnson at the station, the result was that
most of the white people were seated on the left hand side of the hall
and the Negro group on the right hand side.The
inside story of how this sad mistake happened and its repercussions in
the following days would be of psychological interest to all of you but
right now we are only concerned with its relationship to the start of the
council.
Dr.
Johnson gave a splendid inspirational talk in the course of which he recounted
the recent gains of the Negroes, particularly in the North, and some of
their handicaps, especially from prejudice in the South.In
the question period after the lecture, Dr. Johnson was asked to recite
several of his most popular poems and songs, to the delight of the audience.With
the audience, quiet and relaxed, after a brief silence, a tall white lady
arose in the audience and stated she was from the South which had been
so severely criticized for its Jim Crowism that afternoon but that she
had been greatly surprised when she had come INTO THIS MEETING in the North
that afternoon to find that there was segregation even here in this so
tolerant North for practically all the white people were being ushered
into seats on one side of the church and the Negro group on the other side.This
challenging statement seemed to stir up the emotional tone of the meeting
immediately.Dr. Johnson asked then
what is the real situation in Albany.A
number of Negroes arose and voiced complaints about many housing and segregation
problems in Albany, in several cases rather bitterly.Then
Dr. Johnson asked if there were any local inter-racial committee working
toward a solution of these difficulties.He
was assured emphatically that there were not and never had been such efforts.
At
this point a rather perturbed and indignant Chairman sent a note up to
the Moderator, Miss Elizabeth Smith, at that time City Librarian and a
member of the Forum Committee of the Unitarian Church, suggesting she might
announce that if any one present was interested in the possible formation
of an inter-racial committee in Albany, they might meet for a few minutes
after the Forum in adjoining Channing Hall.Miss
Smith made the announcement and when the meeting had concluded, a small
group of us adjourned to Channing Hall.Like
those who sailed on the Mayflower, that original group was expanded considerably
over the years … (he then lists some names including the notable African
American leaders Mr. Charles and Mrs. Harriet Van Vranken and Ida Yarborough)
… After a brief discussion in which the consensus of opinion was that the
racial situation was such in Albany that an Inter-racial group would be
quite useful, we adjourned because of the lateness of the hour to meet
in the same place two weeks hence.
I
thought when I picked this sermon title, I’d just have to go to a library,
check out a book and have all the information I needed.Such
was not the case.Piecing together
that history hasn’t been easy.I
expect just about everyone who was at that gathering to hear James Weldon
Johnson is now dead.I’ve rummaged
through the libraries of SUNY, the Albany Institute of History and Art,
and spoken with local historians.I’ve
discovered the history of the African American Albany community is buried
treasure waiting to be discovered.One
of the gems can be found in our own archives.
Documenting
earliest African American history here, as elsewhere, is difficult because
they were considered property.We
have documentation from the provincial census of 1697 that 23 Negroes resided
in Albany County.Slavery in Albany
reached its peak around 1790 when 572 slaves were counted as residents
in the first Census.That meant
that a third of the city’s households had slaves.They
were counted, but not named, nor were their occupations listed.
That
starts to change after 1800 when the first African American names enter
the historical record.I’d like
to mention a few notables this morning.Samuel
Schuyler is one of the first prominent African Americans in Albany
historians have discovered.While
no one has made a direct association between him and Albany’s founding
Philip Schuyler family, any assumed association probably helped him and
his family throughout their lives.
Born
in 1781, the first records of him show up when he baptized the first of
his eleven children in 1805.He reappears
along the waterfront as a laborer in the 1809 tax records.In
1813, He started buying real estate in the South End and had several properties
by 1815.During the next twenty years
he acquired dozens of properties.He
made his money as a towboat captain making runs to New York City and across
the Hudson. By the mid-1830s, Samuel Schuyler & Company owned a flour
and feed store located at Bassett and Franklin Streets.His
sons built up the Schuyler Towboat Company into a successful Albany
business.
Benjamin
Lattimore is another one of the early notable African Americans.Born
a free man in Connecticut:
in
September 1776, he enlisted the Third New York New Regiment of the Continental
army. A few days later, his company was sent to New York City where he
took part in the losing battle for Manhattan. In 1777, he was on duty at
Fort Montgomery and was captured when the British stormed the fort. Taken
to New York City, he was made a servant of British officers. While on a
trip into Westchester County, he was captured by the Americans and sent
home.
He
found his regiment again and passed through Albany on his way to be part
of an offensive in the Mohawk valley.After
the war, he found his way back, was baptized in the Albany Presbyterian
Church in 1799, marrying, starting a family and again acquiring property.Lattimore
earned his living as a licensed cartman, hauling cargoes and taking away
trash.He was founder and an early
superintendent of the first Black School in Albany.In
1816 a small group of “courageous men of color” petitioned the New York
State Legislature for permission to establish a school in Albany.
Any
record of the early Afro Albanian community must mention Steven Myers.Born
in 1800, freed at the age of 18, he worked as a grocer and a steamboat
steward.He started two publications,
the first called The Elevator of which no record currently exists, and
the second, The Northern Star Freeman’s Advocate, the paper of the Northern
Star Association, a self-help group that among other things assisted fugitive
slaves.Myers was a primary contact
for the Underground Railroad for Albany.He
also helped start the Wilberforce School, in Albany that educated African
American children from 1845 till 1873.William
Wilberforce was an English Abolitionist widely influential in getting the
movement started in America.
From
1873 to 1928 so far, has been a void in my research.From
what Harold Winchester reports from the Negro side of the aisle, I expect
the African American community in Albany had been steadily losing ground
and influence after the closing of the Wilberforce School.The
meeting right here in this room almost 76 years ago began to turn the tide.
They
did meet two weeks later and incorporated themselves soon after.One
of the Board’s first actions at the request of its African American Board
members was to approach the Knickerbocker News and ask that they begin
capitalizing Negro just as they capitalized Caucasian.It
was their first victory.
The
reports of the appalling conditions in the South End motivated them to
engage the Urban League to do a survey.The
results were shocking.I browsed
through the report at the Albany Institute Library.I’d
like to read for you the excellent summary by Harold Winchester:
This survey showed that there were approximately 2500 Negroes in Albany in November, 1928 and that conditions so far as housing, health, employment, recreation, education, availability of social welfare, cultural advantages and business were such as no enlightened citizenry could permit to continue.The housing situation was shown to be particularly appalling.With the exception of a very few houses built by Negro owners for their own use, no buildings constructed after 1900 had been available for Negroes in Albany.The only houses open to them were those in the most undesirable sections of the city where landlords refused to make even the most necessary repairs and the rent charged was not only out of proportion to the neighborhood but was frequently from 50 to 100 per cent higher than that of white tenants in the same house.
Due
largely to these undesirable housing facilities, the survey found that
health conditions prevailing among Negroes in Albany were much less favorable
than that shown in other communities.It
showed that while Negro births were in proportion with white births yet
the rate of Negro deaths was twice that of the white population. The employment
situation was equally startling.Many
concerns refused to employ Negro workers.More
than half of the male Negro workers in Albany were engaged in the domestic
and personal service type of labor.Due
to low wages paid, the employment of a large number of Negro married women
was necessitated.There was, at that
time, no Negro professional man in Albany.There
was no Negro teacher.
Our
survey showed too that there were no recreation facilities for colored
boys and girls.Gymnasiums of the
city, except those in the public schools, were closed to them, as were
swimming pools.There was no place
in which the colored youth could gather for recreation.Except
for the Boy Scouts, no Albany social service organization would take Negroes
to their summer camps at that time.Only
three Negro children had graduated from the Albany High School in the previous
four years and there were only 11 colored children in the High School at
that time.There were no Negroes
attending any of the various private; semi-private, or graduate schools
in Albany.The orphanages would
not accept colored children.There
were no colored social workers.
The
first recommendation the Council acted upon from the Urban League survey
was to set up an administrative social organization, inter-racial by design,
with the purpose of “ameliorating the social difficulties affecting the
Negro.”An executive director, James
H. Baker, Jr., was found and his salary funded through the Community Chest.Next
they publicized the report in the community to gain support for reform.
The
strongest recommendation of the survey was the need for a community center
in Arbor Hill, a place where “the colored population” could recreate, have
dances and activities for young people and provide room for local civic
organizations. Remember this was 1928.The
white community didn’t consider desegregation as a viable solution to providing
these amenities.So with their eyes
wide open to what they were doing, they began to seek a location for a
community center.They felt a segregated
facility was better than none at all.
In
1932, the Old Sixth Presbyterian Church at 122 Second Street became available
and was purchased for this purpose for $12,000.After
taking the pews out and renovating it, in October it opened its doors as
the Booker T. Washington Community Center.This
was the first incarnation of what became the Arbor Hill Community Center
today.
There
is much more to tell, but my time unfortunately is brief.What
was remarkable to me as I researched the Inter-racial Council was the energetic
Black-White cooperation and the fiscal support of the White community.When
the White community was educated, they responded.It
speaks powerfully to the blindness of oppression.For
the most part, the first families of Albany were not setting out to grind
their boot into the Black man’s back to hold him down.They
just weren’t paying attention to the results of their actions.And
if they did notice, the discomfort of seeing the pain would make them avert
their eyes.Or worse, blame the
victim for their inability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
This
disturbs me today because the dissolution of the Albany Inter-Racial County
and the Urban League collapse more recently in the beginning of this century
leaves a vacuum of institutionalized inter-racial cooperation.Without
such an organization, I fear we may be slipping backward toward polarization.As
I’ve learned in ARISE, marginalized communities only gain real power through
organizing.Unfortunately ARISE has
not, so far, been able to become the vehicle for this to happen.
One
bright spot has been the West Hill Ministers Fellowship in which I participate
that brings African American ministers together with European American
ministers and priests right in our neighborhood.I’ve
seen this organization strengthen since I’ve been here, particularly with
the support of the Prayer and Healing Center on Clinton Avenue.While
I part company with their Fundamentalist Christian theology, I cannot fault
their steadfast commitment to resurrect West Hill.Rev.
Beresford Bailey, minister of the Star of Bethlehem Missionary Baptist
Church has been a guiding light of the Ministers Fellowship from its founding
about ten years ago.
The
reason we need these Inter-racial organizations is not just to address
social iniquities in the community.We
need them because of what they do to grow individual human hearts.Hear
Harold Winchester’s description of how he has been affected by his involvement:
They
were busy years, full of meetings, regular and special, full of crises,
full of unusual situations.It was
grand to work together in inter-racial co-operation and with mutual respect
and tolerance.We learned much from
our joint endeavor in trying essentially to realize the brotherhood of
man.The writer looks back upon his
six active years as President as some of the most interesting and exciting
of his life and is grateful for this lesson in brotherhood which he has
tried to carry into other spheres of activity.
Realizing,
in more modern language, the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity--reminiscent
of loving your neighbor isn’t it?Crossing
the color line in particular continues to be challenging.As
long as that remains true, inter-racial organizations can help make that
possible.
Julian
Bond, at General Assembly in Boston last summer, suggested one path for
us right now.He urged us to become
active members of the NAACP.I met
with Anne Pope, President of the Albany Chapter of the NAACP, as part of
my research for this sermon.She
told me how difficult her work is on both sides of the color divide and
her need for black and white support.
The
work of Racial Reconciliation is far from done.Racism
is alive and active in our community.It
isn’t the active racism of the KKK lynching people and burning crosses
on people’s lawns.It is the more
insidious variety--ignorance, abandonment and neglect.Turning
toward learning and engagement is not easy, but it can carry you into very
personally fulfilling work that will teach you what loving your neighbor
really means.When we truly work
in partnership to solve these problems, we discover the transforming power
of love working through us.
As
our hometown hero Harold Winchester discovered, this is enough meaning
for a lifetime.
Copyright
© 2004 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.