VIDEO: http://bcove.me/gle7h4fh Black History Month: The Black Church in Rochester (03:01) What is collectively known as the black church has played an important role in the African-American community — for it has provided
a place where African-Americans could organize, educate and reach out. Video story by Annette Lein.
Franklin Florence is the senior pastor at
the Central Church of Christ on South Plymouth Avenue.
Churches form bedrock of Rochester’s African-American community
When Minister Franklin Florence moved here in 1959 as pastor of the Reynolds Street Church of Christ, he found that Rochester’s fast-growing African-American community was without a political voice and with few opportunities.
Florence, who had been a pastor in West Palm Beach, Fla., came to a Rochester where the number of African-Americans — many from the South in search of opportunity — had tripled to about 24,000 in a decade. But they were six times more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts.
In July 1964, three days of racial unrest — commonly called riots but described as a “rebellion” by Florence — rocked Rochester.
As a preacher in the streets, Florence tapped into the groundswell of black church activism that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had mobilized nationally as leader of the civil rights movement.
The black church has helped shape African-American history, from the days of slavery. That role continues today, although the focus is on doing work in the churches rather than protesting in the streets.
The Democrat and Chronicle recently brought together Florence, 77, and the Rev. James C. Simmons, 26, to discuss the black church and community activism.
Simmons moved to Rochester last June to be pastor of the Baber A.M.E. Church on Meigs Street in Rochester.
Although generations apart, they both agreed that the black church has been the bedrock of the African-American community, here and elsewhere.
While the black church does not have the visibility it had with King in the national spotlight during the 1960s, these churches are deeply rooted in the African-American experience and offer any number of programs and services.
“Everything that has benefited the black community received its birth in the black church,” said Florence, who is now senior pastor of the Central Church of Christ on South Plymouth Avenue.
In the streets
When Simmons was born in the mid-1980s in rural southern Pennsylvania, Florence was leading protests at Rochester’s City Hall demanding a civilian panel to review complaints about police conduct. Although Florence gave the benediction at Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s inauguration, he still considers himself an outsider — ready to return to the streets.
“One cannot practice the religion of Christianity — be a follower of Christ — and not care for the disenfranchised and call in question those in power who misuse that power against the poor,” said Florence.
He was clearly in the streets during the 1960s.
Florence headed a grassroots organization, FIGHT (Freedom, Independence, God, Honor, Today), that at its first convention in Rochester in 1965 attracted about 1,500 people — prompting Florence to say that they represented “a new generation of hope” and that those who “fear the people” have good reason to tremble.
He led marches to the State Street headquarters of the Eastman Kodak Co., demanding that Rochester’s largest employer hire more African-Americans, in what Newsweek magazine at the time called “one of the stickiest civil rights confrontations.”
The confrontation with Kodak — which had 600 African-Americans in a workforce of 26,000 — came to a head in April 1967, when 700 FIGHT members and supporters filled 10 buses and showed up at Kodak’s stockholders’ meeting in Flemington, N.J. Kodak, after much back-and-forth, finally agreed to send job recruiters into Rochester’s predominantly black neighborhoods.
In the pulpit
Simmons considers Florence an inspiration. He also has a vision of religion shaped by social justice.
“It’s the church that carries the heart for the community, the heart for the vulnerable, the heart for the least of these — that comes from the church,” said Simmons.
Although he’s much more likely than Florence to be found at the pulpit than in the streets, Simmons similarly taps into the history of the black church for spiritual strength.
He noted that his own denomination — African, Methodist, Episcopal — started in response to discrimination against its worshipers in 1787 in Philadelphia, not far from where the U.S. Constitution was being drafted.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, along with other African-Americans who prayed at the St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church back then, were pulled from their knees while praying in a gallery that church officials said was off limits.
Social justice shapes Simmons’ vision of what he said is a call to be a pastor.
“It’s the church that carries the heart for the community, the heart for the vulnerable, the heart for least of these,” said Simmons.
The mantra of the street today, he said, “is to get rich without trying — the prosperity gospel.”
Simmons puts a major focus on education, recognizing those teachers among his flock during services. The city schools, he said, need more African-American teachers.
When Simmons realized how few black teachers worked in the city schools, he said he was shocked. “It won’t be on the table unless we put it on the table,” he said.
“It’s from the church that the voice comes. It’s the church that forces and agitates.”
Black church roots
Each of the more than 200 predominantly African-American churches in the Rochester area has its own history and traditions. But the term “black church” suggests a collective experience and heritage.
“It’s both the spiritual and social center of the community,” said Morehouse College President Robert Franklin, who previously headed the Black Church Studies program at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.
Gayraud Wilmore, who preceded Franklin at Colgate Rochester, tells how the early black churches sprang up on the plantations of South Carolina and Virginia, where slaves — some building small cabins or “praise houses” — created their own independent places of worship.
In Rochester, the first predominantly African-American church has been traced to the 1820s.
Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Rochester dates its founding to 1827 and has a rich history that the congregation continues to celebrate.
Located for many years on Favor Street, not far from its current location on Clarissa Street, Memorial A.M.E. became an important meeting place.
“Harriet Tubman, known as the Moses of her people, used the … building for sheltering escaping slaves. Susan B. Anthony gave one of her last public addresses in the church, and Frederick Douglass, for a time, edited his abolitionist paper, The North Star, from the presses set up in the church basement,” wrote the Rev. Andrew Gibson, who from 1961 to 1993 was pastor of this church.
James Simmons is the pastor of
Baber A.M.E. Church on Meigs Street.
Church concerns today
Avenues of opportunity were opened up by the activism of Florence and others.
The Rev. Lawrence Hargrave, a Buffalo native who is now a special assistant to the president at Colgate Rochester, began his professional career as a sales representative for Procter & Gamble Co. He believes that a factor in his placement in Rochester in 1969 was that companies here were expected to change their hiring practices.
“One of the things that I noticed in the business where I worked was that all of the African-Americans I ran into were basically new to the business,” said Hargrave.
But Florence worries that some churches are not addressing the needs of the community.
“The moral influence of the church has somewhat eroded because of this sense of materialism that has come among us — the name-it, claim-it gospel,” Florence said.
Nor is Florence impressed with the advances, especially with the African-American unemployment rate at 15.8 percent.
“I am not too excited about what the majority people call change,” said Florence.
Florence currently serves as president of the FIGHT Village Apartments on Ward Street in northeast Rochester, which were built in 1974 to provide low-income housing.
He shares his preaching responsibilities with his son, Minister Clifford Florence.
Simmons, during his eight months as pastor in Rochester, has put a priority on reaching out to young people, with events such as “College Sunday,” when college students read scriptures at a service and tables are piled with brochures from colleges.
The church had already started a group, Rise Up Rochester, which promotes nonviolence. And in December, a remembrance service was held at the church for those in the Rochester area who died from violence in recent years.
His church also has its members take a pledge at baptism as a way of renewing their commitment to the community.
“Every baby we baptize, the congregation says that we will live in such a way that we model the gospel in front of these young people,” Simmons said.
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