Bishop Lawson: First in Speech

For Americans of color, few public figures were held in higher regard than Frederick Douglass. At his demise, covered internationally in 1895, his influence was recognized as a principal factor in the ending of slavery in the United States. When New York City dedicated a space to his memory, there were still many people alive whose time on earth overlapped with his; among them, Bishop Robert Clarence Lawson, who was born in the 1880s, and who participated in the dedication of the Frederick Douglass Circle

After a march down from Harlem, an amalgam of notables and noticers gathered at the newly renamed circle at the northernmost corner of Central Park. An announcer calls the crowd to order and starts the formal dedication. There would be a series of civic speakers, all charged to give brief comments. No invocation was called for, but the emcee, maybe unconsciously, gave a nod to the religious life of the community when he introduced the first speaker on queue, Bishop Lawson, one of Harlem's most recognizable voices.

By 1950, Lawson had become a fixture on the radio (along with his wife Carrie, the "Praying Mother of the Air," now two years interred). He had arrived in Harlem in his 30s, to a water plug and a unexpecting prayer band. This day, before a microphone and about a thousand onlookers, stood a man in his 60s, called upon to set the tone and give voice to the cheer that prevailed among Harlemites that day.

Today, Lawson's most enduring legacy is the church organization that grew from his evangelistic efforts. During Lawson's lifetime, however, he was known to be involved in various aspects of the local, national, and internaional life of his people. He was a Pan-Africanist, supporting Ethiopian independence with an eye toward the liberation of all African people. He ran a summer colony upstate for acquaintances that found vacationing an exercise in avoiding closed doors. He was a civil rights leader, inviting politicians to come uptown to address the people they represented downtown, in Albany, and in Washington.

Above all, however, he was a preacher, a most revered profession in his day. His stature among the preachers of Harlem is such that even Langston Hughes, one of Harlem's most published writers (and a resigned agnostic-atheist), mentions him more than once as one of Harlem's principal preachers. One of his most popular characters, Jesse B. Simple, refers to Lawson in an attempt to prove his devoutness to a friend:

"I have been baptized... also anointed with oil. When I were a child I come through at the mourners' bench. I was converted. I have listened to Daddy Grace, et with Father Divine, moaned with Elder Lawson and prayed with Adam Powell" (The Early Simple Stories, p. 44).

Each reference here intends to peg each minister according to popular opinion: e.g., Father Divine's feasts, Adam Powell Jr.'s lack of airs (notice no title). 'Moaning' with Lawson quite directly refers to the emotional services Refuge Church of Christ was known for, broadcast by air for any to hear.

But today he was not here praying, preaching, or singing. Instead he was standing for, speaking for Harlem, that teeming mecca of aspirants and strivers. His remarks were met with showers of applause. A scriptural reference about the king that forgot to honor Mordecai was pretzeled into a compliment to the committee that worked so dutifully not to let Frederick Douglass go unremembered. The remarks of Lawson and others must have been a well received by Douglass's descendants, who were present for the occasion, the recording of which makes for a warm momento of old Harlem to historical enthusiasts today.

Bishop Lawson: First African Liberation Day

In 1958, the Conference of Independent African States declared the first observance of Africa Freedom Day (later known as African Liberation Day). This observance was part of a larger political effort African countries, most of which were Europeans colonies at the time, to sever ties with the countries that had colonized them. New York's observance in 1959 was part of the first worldwide observance.

There was an official program at Carnegie Hall, and an evening rally at Refuge Temple. Bishop Lawson would have gladly opened Refuge's doors for the cause, as he was a fervent Pan-Africanist. By this time he had made lengthy trips abroad to Africa and had established a relationship with Emperor Haile Selassie, royal head of the only African nation-state not colonized by a European nation. His opinion about the state of Africa, spiritually and otherwise, was super-optimistic. While I t is not clear whether or not Lawson himself was present for this occasion, someone who might be Lawson is sitting on the rostrum, applauding the speaker (with some judiciously delayed applause at the end).

Other notables were there, such as the Liberian ambassador to the UN, Charles T.O. King, and Manhattan borough president Hulan Jack. Jack spoke briefly and left. Taking up the empty space Jack left on the program was one Malcolm X, a minister in a 'cult' known as the Nation of Islam. Karl Evanzz, author of The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, explains that Minister Malcolm's speech at the rally was attended to more than any of the previous speakers by the national media in attendance. The rally also "demonstrated that newly independent African and Arab nations were immensely interested in alliances with American Muslims" (Messenger, p. 192).

The US. government was also 'immensely interested' and collected information about the rally via FBI informants. Later, around October 1959, notes from Minister Malcolm's speech were deposited in a file. Not very keen on Christianity (probably for reasons that W.E.B. Du Bois outlined in "Of the Faith of the Fathers"), the minister nevertheless reached out to Harlem's religious black leaders to unite. The FBI notes also quote an article on the rally from the Los Angeles Herald Dispatch, wherein the writer expresses "surprise" at the "enthusiastic stomping and roaring" and "thunderous applause" that met Malcolm's caustic generalizations of the white race.

As powerful and moving a speaker as Minister Malcolm was, he would later come to throw off the teaching of 'the Messenger,' Elijah Muhammad, after revelations about ethical compromises in Muhammad's life and due his own spiritual awakening during his pilgrimage to Mecca. Was it Muhammad's apparent faith in Malcolm as a preacher that compelled him to develop into the prophetic titan of an orator that he became? Comparisons can be made in that regard, perhaps, to Pentecostal preachers sent out by Lawson and other Pentecostal leaders, and indeed preachers and religious workers of all stripes, who found their purpose and calling in the vision of great leaders, and stirred and challenged their communities. While many people used religion to transcend the present world, Malcolm remained fundamentally prophetic to the end; his messages still buzz on gadfly wings some 50 years after his death.

That being said, the whole affair -- Africa Freedom Day, Malcolm, CBS, the FBI -- happened at "Bishop Lawson's Refuge Temple" on Seventh Avenue, marking Lawson's religious headquarters as a venue of regional prominence, and at times national prominence.

Bishop Lawson: The First March on Washington

Here Bishop Lawson is speaking at the first major march on Washington, the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. The first major march on Washington by African Americans, the Prayer Pilgrimage brought some 25,000 to Lincoln's Memorial and is one of a handful of national demonstrations that preceded the 1963 March on Washington. Lawson, an established minister with an international following, joined A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Martin Luther King Jr., who called for the march to urge the federal government to stand by the Brown v. Board decision of 1954. Other national figures were also in attendance.

In the background of this photo, a young King is shown with longtime partner Ralph Abernathy. The picture represents something of a changing of the guard. Lawson had for a long time spoken out against race prejudice, and embraced Pan-Africanism. King, the last speaker that day, May 17, 1957, would take up the mantle as a (even better: the) national spokesman of civil rights with his first national address, "Give Us the Ballot." 

Those familiar with Lawson's story will know that 1957 was a very important year. Lawson would decrease while a younger generation, but especially King, would increase. By the time King returned to the National Mall in 1963, Lawson and many of the pillars of the first half of the century had made their final exits.

Bishop Lawson: "First in the Islands"

There was a time when intelligentsia, white or black, was a much smaller percentage of the population than it is today, when almost anyone can publish a book or get an online following. It was during these times that Robert Clarence Lawson became a very visible member of the Black community, the Pentecostal church, and the tight-knit fellowship of ministers that served Harlem. This clipping from the New York Age (May 6, 1950; credits to www.fultonhistory.com) shows Lawson's ceremonial appreciation of Mahatma Gandhi "as the representative of 15 million colored people in America."

If those words sound a bit elevated to modern ears, consider the meaning surrounding this visit to Gandhi's grave. It is clear that the revered Indian leader, known for his nonviolent overthrow of British occupation, was not unknown to a large segment of the black population. Lawson's act presages the eventual success of nonviolence in overthrowing Jim Crow. While the southern nonviolent marches of the 1950s and '60s are best known to Americans, marches and nonviolent demonstrations had been going on in New York as far back as the 1910s.

Lawson himself was very outspoken against segregation. Among his observations, which were often broadcast by radio, was the fact that white Pentecostals were silent on the segregation issue. Surely, Lawson wrote in 1956,

the Pentecostal people ought to have seen long ago and lifted their voices against this iniquity as Isaiah states, "Cry loud and spare not, lift up your voices like a trumpet in Zion; show my people their sins and the house of Jacob their transgressions." But as a whole, nothing has been said or done but all the status quo of society have been accepted or supinely submitted to and pattern followed. Up until this day, even after the Supreme Court of the United States [made the Brown v. Board decision of 1954]... , no white Pentecostal movement has declared its stand and support and advocacy of this revolutionary edict... .
(Defense, 402-403)

Lawson was from the first wave of Pentecostals, and integrated worship had characterized his ministry since the beginning. Thus, when abroad, Lawson evangelized, knowing that the blood of Jesus Christ was atonement for all, regardless of race of ethnicity. A previous posting here mentions an Italian church on Staten Island under his supervision. In the present clipping above, Bishop Lawson is installing a pastor in the Philippines, and is credited as the first Negro minister to oversee such an installation in that part of the world.