The Reverend Fred Luter, Jr.

As the black community overwhelmingly celebrates the re-election of our first black President, I’ve been surprised to note how few of us are aware of another groundbreaking rise to higher office achieved by one of our own. This office is pastoral, not political, yet the social implications of this occurrence are perhaps no less significant than that of President Obama’s election to the office of President of the United States. I’m talking about the Reverend Fred Luter, Jr. and his own election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptist Convention, (S.B.C.), for those who don’t know, is the largest body of Baptists in the entire world. It is the second largest Christian body in the United States with 16 million members, second only to the Catholic Church. Given that most American Christians are Protestant, you could argue that Fred Luter, Jr., a 56-year old black man from New Orleans, stands as the most powerful religious figure in America. This is a significant fact in its own right. But it’s all the more amazing when you consider the history of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The S.B.C. has an old and venerable history in the United States, and particularly in the south. But to say that the S.B.C. has a questionable history with respect to race would be putting it mildly. It became the Southern Baptist Convention in the first place in 1845, having split with the northern Baptists because it refused to prohibit slave holding churches from sending out missionaries. Though the Baptist community even in the south had a history of racial tolerance and acceptance towards blacks throughout the 1700’s (even allowing blacks to be preachers in the south and opposing slavery), the southern Baptists gradually changed their attitude towards slavery as their membership expanded among the elite, wealthy planter class of the Southern Gentry. (Perhaps ironically, conversions of blacks in the south increased significantly as well during this time, especially among the slaves. Black Baptists formed their own organizations after the Civil War, most notably the National Baptist Association.) From that time onward, and even after the Civil War, the attitudes of Southern Baptists with regards to civil rights closely tracked that of white Southerners generally. Conservative Southern Baptists would support Jim Crow laws (though there was a moderate faction that favored desegregation) and were generally not allies of the Civil Rights Movement.

All this of course makes the election of Fred Luter, Jr. to the presidency of the S.B.C. (he was elected unopposed by the delegates at the convention; itself a first in S.B.C. history) all the more striking. A jovial yet fiery personality behind the pulpit, the senior minister of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans Reverend Luter was born the third of five children and raised by his divorced mother who made ends meet as a seamstress and as a surgical scrub assistant. He turned to God at the age of 21 after a motorcycle accident nearly killed him, leaving him with a head injury and a compound fracture. He began as a street preacher and ultimately found his way to Franklin Avenue in 1983, ultimately leading the growth of the church to 7,000 people prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005; after which Reverend Luter was noted for his leadership in rebuilding the congregation following unparalleled devastation left in the Hurricane’s wake, rebuilding a crushed and demoralized congregation back up to a membership of 5,000 as of his election to the presidency of S.B.C in June of last year. He finishes his one year term in June of this year.

If it is a testament to the degree to which minds and hearts have changed over the many generations of this country’s racial history unto now that Revered Luter could be elected President of a body of primarily white Christians with roots deep in slavery and segregation, it is also perhaps a testament to the power of the Christian message of love and forgiveness, even when articulated across the boundaries and tensions of the color-line. Reverend Luter recalled having been invited to preach at a Baptist church in Crowley, Louisiana, in the early ’90’s (the first time he preached outside of New Orleans). It was a strictly white congregation, and the pastor who invited Reverend Luter to speak had become nervous about how his congregants would react to a black preacher.

“Just don’t put my picture up,” Luter instructed him, preferring to leave it a surprise. Indeed his audience was silent and tense when Fred Luter astonished them with his presence. But then he spoke of the grace and the goodness of God in the warm, approachable manner for which he is known. Their attitudes changed even that night. One woman from the crowd would approach Reverend Luter afterwards, admitting to him that she had begun by feeling angry that a black man was preaching at her church…and ended by thanking God he came.

Mental Slavery

The Black community has two big problems on it’s hands:  the blind leading the blind, and those who can see leading the blind into traps.

With the progression of the Internet, misleading information can spread faster than ever.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of great information out there; but, one has to be willing to do thorough research, and then think for themselves on all the information they have gathered.  If nine sites publish a lie, and only one publishes the truth, how can you tell the difference?  Usually there’s some common-sense processes that will make you re-evaluate the article.  You can spot a lot of lies in the news if you pay close attention.

Here’s a perfect example, which brought me to write this.  Someone on Twitter said “There are more black men in prison than were in slavery!”  I have seen this similar tweet a few times.  I asked to the see where they read that.  And here it is. http://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/black-men-prison-system/

The title of the post says “More Black Men Now in Prison System than Were Enslaved”.  In the first sentence of the article they quote law professor Michelle Alexander, from her book on the prison industrial complex, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  Alexander states: “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,”

Let’s compare these two sentences.  Read them a few times out loud.

1. More Black men now in prison than were enslaved.
2. More Black men in jail, prison, probation, or parole than were enslaved in 1850.

So really, Ms. Alexander is saying: there are more Black men in the American criminal system than the amount of Black men during ONE YEAR of slavery in America.

But the title of the post says something completely different.  That more Black men are in prison than all of the 300 plus years of slavery in America!

It wouldn’t make sense to compare the numbers anyway, since I’m sure the entire African American population has increased since 1850.  I also highly doubt that accurate population records were kept back then, especially since Blacks were considered property and not human.  It also doesn’t make sense because slavery is a LIFELONG status.  The men she speaks of could have been imprisoned for a few weeks, a few months, or a few years.  But they are all being lumped as “Black men in the prison system”.  The African slave trade occurred in North and South America, The Caribbean, Europe, and Africa itself.  This article is mixing apples and oranges with all kinds of other fruit.  But once someone writes the buzz words “slavery” “Black men” and “prison” in a sentence, we all rush to see the train wreck.

Some people are at least half complicit in this mental slavery, because they don’t take more time to analyze the information.  And some others, such as the writer of the article, mislead people on purpose.  Everyone spreads the information on tweets, Facebook, blogs, emails, and text messages.  The next thing you know we have a state of emergency that seems almost too overwhelming to solve.  This increases the insecurity of the Black identity, as we shake our heads and say “Yet another stain on the Black legacy.”  There is no doubt that Black men are disproportionately imprisoned and arrested.  And much of that disproportion can be linked to poverty and racism, which all tie into slavery and Black history in America.  But misleading comparisons such as this (from a Black “educated” woman I might add) do not paint Black men any better, nor do they serve to properly inform people about reality.

What if I told you there are more Black men that have graduated college than are in prison?  You’d question that I’m sure.  But you can see this video where a man does the math.

It never sat well with me when people would assert that there are more Black men entering prison than are rotating out of a 4 year college institution.  And when something doesn’t sound right, a lot of times it isn’t right.

Before you run with any information, carefully ask yourself who is writing it and why?  Half of the titles alone are to shock you into reading it.   As much as the Information Age can spread teachings and truths, it can just as easily, if not more easily, spread lies.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!
-Bob Marley

Black History: Allen Allensworth

Born into slavery in Kentucky in1842, Allen Allensworth gained his freedom in the Civil War when the Forty-fourth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was camped in Louisville, Kentucky. Young Allensworth dressed in an old uniform, plastered mud over his face and marched boldly up Main street with the Union soldiers. After escaping he served as a civilian nursing aide with the Forty-fourth Illinois. He later served a two year enlistment in the U.S. Navy and was Captain’s steward and clerk on the civil war gunboat U.S.S. Tawah when it was destroyed in an engagement with Confederate batteries at Johnsonville, Tennessee.

After being honorably discharged from the Navy, Allensworth operated two restaurants with his brother William, taught in Freedman’s Bureau schools in Kentucky, was ordained as a minister, and served as Kentucky’s only black delegate to the Republican National conventions of 1880 and 1884. After a two-year campaign in which he solicited the support of Congressmen John R. Lynch of Mississippi and Senator Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, President Grover Cleveland signed his appointment as Chaplain of the 24th Infantry Regiment.  While serving at Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, Allensworth wrote Outline of Course of Study, and the Rules Governing Post Schools of Ft. Bayard, N.M. which became the standard army manual on the education of enlisted personnel.

On April 7, 1906, after twenty years of service, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel making him the first black officer to receive this rank. In 1908 retired Chaplain Allensworth and four other black men formed the all-black town of Allensworth, California. Six years later, in 1914, Allensworth was crossing a Los Angeles street when he was killed by a motorcycle.

Black Is: This Week in Photos

Photos and headlines from the week of Jan 31st – Feb 6th, 2011.

February is National Black History month, and its theme is African Americans and the Civil War


A satellite image from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration of the massive storm moving across the United States.

Massive snowstorm blankets US from Texas to New York.

Photo of Chicago taken two days apart after the snow storm

UC Irvine takes flak for MLK dinner menu items of chicken and waffles.


Gov. Jerry Brown's 14-Minute State of the State

Governor Jerry Brown prepares for his State of the State speech.


Pittsburgh Steelers' Hines Ward wears a wig during ...

Pittsburgh Steelers’ Hines Ward wears a wig during media day for NFL football Super Bowl XLV

Halle Berry quits film to prep for custody fight with ex-Gabriel Aubry over their 2  year old daughter, Nahla.


File:Greensboro four statue.jpg

A statue of the Greensboro Four stands on the campus of North Carolina A&T. February 1st marks the anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins.

An injured anti-government protestor rests in a house in Tahrir Square after clashes with supporters of President Hosni Mubarak.

Shooting at an Omega Psi Phi Fraternity house in Youngstown, Ohio leaves 11  shot, one student dead.

Pepsi Super Bowl ad stirs up controversy with stereotypes of the “angry Black woman”

Usher performs during halftime of the NFL Super ...

Usher performs during halftime at Super Bowl XLV (45)

Green Bay Packers' Donald Driver kisses the Vince ...

Green Bay Packers’ Donald Driver kisses the Vince Lombardi Trophy after the Packers beat Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV