Much has been made about the lack of support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has received from prominent members of the black civil rights establishment. Key figures have demonstrated ambivalence toward Obama’s candidacy at best, and an aversion to the Illinois Senator at worst.
Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta threw his full support behind Hillary Clinton from the outset; despite his early endorsement, Jesse Jackson has repeatedly criticized Senator Obama for ignoring the plight of African Americans to the extent of accusing Obama of “acting white”; Andrew Young offered a sexist and semi-senile commentary about Bill Clinton being “every bit as black as Barack Obama,” based on the numbers of black women Clinton has bedded; and Rev. Al Sharpton has remained uncharacteristically quiet—aside from repeated accusations that Senator Obama does not have the civil rights track record that Sharpton has claimed for himself.
Yet these men share something more than hesitancy toward Senator Obama. They each exemplify the widespread view that the black church is the principal site of African American political participation, and that the black male preacher is the embodiment of political representation.
The seemingly naturalized nexus between the pulpit and politics in the black community has deep roots that are many and varied, but much of it has to do with prominent personalities and public perception. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., former pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, is a good example of this connection; his Depression-era community activism propelled him to almost three decades in Congress where many regarded him as the “President of Black America.” Likewise, the nattily-attired male ministers who fearlessly marched on the front lines of the civil rights movement are staples of America’s cultural memory of the time.
It was Martin Luther King’s lieutenant Andrew Young, an ordained UCC minister, and John Lewis, who served as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman as a 23-year-old seminarian, who emerged from the era to serve as mayor of and Congressman from the city of Atlanta, respectively. In 1984 and 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson turned the Democratic National Convention into a tradition revival service by rendering what were arguably two of the most dynamic and stirring addresses in convention history.
And in recent years, former Congressmen Rev. William Gray III of Philadelphia and Rev. Floyd Flake of New York attest to the continued correlations of the ministry and African American elected officials. Couple their achievements with the many boisterous, though unsuccessful, political campaigns of Rev. Al Sharpton over the previous decade, and it makes sense that there is widespread public perception that links black politics to black preachers.
But the creation of a new political terrain in the post-civil rights era has deemphasized the black preacher’s role as political spokesperson. In fact, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier describes a de-centering of the black pulpit during the Great Migration era, the movement of more than one million African Americans away from the rural South between World War I and World War II; according to Frazier, increased levels of education and occupational differentiation among urbanized African Americans contested the prominence of church-based leaders in the community as early as the interwar era. Moreover, political theorist Adolph Reed’s text The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis Purpose of African American Politics compiles statistical data to substantiate what he refers to as the “mythology of the church in Afro-American Politics.” The most telling data raises questions about the role of religious leadership during the civil rights era—a time that is considered by most the “high moment” for black church political activity.
Between 1955 and 1965, church-based groups accounted for no more than 13 percent of all civil rights movement-led activity, and polls among African Americans in Southern cities like Greenville and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, reveal that of all persons considered credible political leaders within the community, only an average of 25 percent were preachers.
So despite the notable African American ministers that have served public office, statistically speaking, most African American political leaders have secular backgrounds. And despite the “religious representative men” in the African American community that have ridden the wings of media attention to public prominence within our collective cultural imagination, the recent success of Barack Obama tells us that public prominence and political influence are not one in the same.
Let us note Senator Obama’s overwhelming support by African Americans as an example: it appears that the senator’s newfound success among blacks has much more to do with familiarity and perceived electability than endorsements or appeals to racial authenticity.
While many political pundits have tribalized black support for Obama along racial lines, it must be noted that in October of 2007 only 33 percent of African Americans planned to support his candidacy. As African Americans have grown more familiar with him as a candidate, as well as with his political positions, many have begun to switch their votes.
Furthermore, Senator Obama’s early victory in Iowa and strong performances in predominantly white caucuses have further helped his cause among African Americans. Minority voters tend to be politically pragmatic and are less likely to throw their support behind a nonviable candidate regardless of race or gender.
It seems that it is Senator Obama’s cosmopolitanism, rather than his attempts to be the stereotypical HNIC (Head Negro in Charge) that contributes to his appeal among black voters. This idea is supported by the negative response of many African Americans to former President Clinton’s attempts to isolate Obama prior to the South Carolina primaries as simply a “black candidate” analogous to Jesse Jackson.
In fact, Senator Obama seems to have mass appeal in spite of the fact that many respected and powerful black preachers have endorsed and opened their pulpits to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Despite having large support from black preachers in South Carolina—she was able to gather 60 together for a gathering in Spartanburg—it proved futile. Senator Obama won African American support by a 4 to 1 margin there. And in New York where Clinton received the public endorsements of prominent clergy like Calvin Butts of Abyssinian Baptist Church, Floyd Flake of Allen Temple A.M.E., and Suzan Johnson Cook of Bronx Christian Fellowship, Senator Obama still received two-thirds of the black vote.
Now one might argue that Senator Obama has received his fair share of ecclesial endorsements—Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Senator Obama’s home congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ, for example. But the sensationalized media attacks directed toward Dr. Wright due to his proto-Black Power leanings hardly raises this endorsement to the level of being “politically valuable.”
This may in fact support my overarching point: in the big scheme of things it all seems irrelevant. Whether it is the cold shoulder that Senator Obama has received from self-professed political gatekeepers of the civil rights generation, the endorsements of prominent African American preachers for Hillary, or the sheer silence that extends from a critical mass of African American pulpits concerning electoral politics, the opinions of preachers seem to matter little among voters.
Senator Obama’s campaign has revealed an important lesson about African American political activity: the black pulpit is not the sole source of political authority. Political success is not dependent on having the “blessing” of the black church. And the charismatic authority of the “HNIC” standing behind the political pulpit has been proven to be little more than a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
At least to this latter point I say, “Amen.”
