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Civil Rights Leader Praises Radio Station: Civil Rights Pioneer Joseph Lowery Delivered a Fiery Sermon to Celebrate WMBM Radio Station's 11th Anniversary, Calling on Blacks to Return to the Principles

Posted on: Sunday, 12 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Bea L. Hines, The Miami Herald

Mar. 12--The mood Tuesday evening at New Birth Church Cathedral of Faith International was reminiscent of a bygone era, a time when black folks came together to praise Jesus and plan strategies for their next step to freedom.

The scene: soothing music; people turning to the person next to them -- oftentimes a stranger -- to utter an encouraging word they'd just received from the pulpit, and the preacher using a form of biblical storytelling that seemed to paint pictures of the scriptures.

That's when the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery stepped up.

Called the "dean of the civil rights movement," 86-year-old Lowery, convener of The Coalition for The People's Agenda in Atlanta, came to town at the request of Bishop Victor T. Curry, teacher and pastor at New Birth, to help celebrate the 11th anniversary of the New Birth Broadcasting Corporation.

Curry and the New Birth congregation created the company that bought the radio station WMBM-AM 1490 and subsequently relocated it from Miami Beach to the North Miami area.

The bishop serves as president and general manager of the station where he and the Rev. Richard Dunn once hosted a talk show.

On Tuesday, Curry and the packed audience celebrated 11 years of progress where he went from being fired for using the name of Jesus on the air to owning the station that now has the motto "The Station That Puts Jesus First!"

'Now, we can say 'Jesus' all we want," Curry shouted to the cheering congregation.

He said, "I am standing on the shoulders of men like the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery."

Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who has walked side-by-side with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the heyday of the civil rights movement, took the pulpit, telling the standing crowd to "Sit down before I take up an offering."

Lowery praised Curry for the progress WMBM has made.

"If we'd had a radio station during the movement, things would have gone a lot better," he said.

"I thank God for independent radio stations like WMBM. And I thank God for Bishop. I like the way he talks about boycotting and about letting justice roll down."

Lowery then read parts of St. Luke, chapter 15 and the 22nd verse, which told the story of a prodigal son who asked his father for his inheritance and spent all the money. Years later, the son returned home broke, hungry and shoeless but his father received him lovingly.

As people in the congregation picked up their Bibles and began to turn pages, Lowery said, "Read it when you get home," and proceeded to lean back from the podium.

You knew then that you were in for a treat. And Lowery didn't disappoint.

"Our ancestors loved that story," he said. 'They used to sing a song, I got shoes, you got shoes. All o' God's children got shoes. You see, shoes have a significant meaning to the human experience.

"There's a history to that song. In those days, one could see the slave children and the children from the house playing together. One difference in them was the fact that the household children had on shoes and the slave children didn't. But the song let them know that all God's children's got shoes, anyway. If Heaven is in you, you are wearing your shoes."

Lowery told the congregation that though the slaves couldn't read, they were smart enough to use philosophy and theology and they concluded that "Everybody talking 'bout Heaven, ain't going there."

Religion, Lowery said, was important to the civil rights movement.

"Our ancestors always saw Jesus as a liberating spirit," he said, "and they learned how to work together. Today, with all our intelligence, we can't seem to work together like the slaves did."

Lowery likened the unity among the slaves to the unity that existed in the early days of The Movement.

"That was the kind of fellowship we had in those days," he said. "And if we are to survive, we've got to get back and get it again.

"Too many people today are slaves to their own mentality," he said. "Some blacks have locked themselves in prisons of drugs, liquor and AIDS."

Being high on liquor, Lowery said, was just as bad as being high on drugs: "A scrambled brain cannot compete in the marketplace."

For blacks, Lowery said, liberation always had a spiritual base:

"You can't mistreat a child of God and know that you are also a child of God. When you abuse or mistreat one of God's children, the Father ain't happy about it."

Until the mid-1950s, he said, blacks pretty much depended on what the courts said about their freedom. "Then God touched two people. One was a humble seamstress who sat down so we could stand up and the other was a young intellectual preacher," he said, referring to Rosa Parks and King. "When you mix intellectual power with spiritual power, you've got something."

For those who were unaware, Lowery said it was in Montgomery, Ala., that the modern-day civil rights movement began. 'It was born out of self-determination. And I've come here today to celebrate that era. There was unity back then. Some 53,000 people were united to fight back. They said, 'My feets is tired but my soul is resting,' " he said, taking a line from one of King's speeches.

As times got better for blacks, other things started happening, Lowery said. "Folks started hijacking cars and our oppressors started hijacking the movement. It was the Cold War era and we closed our eyes to the mutilation of the truth. We started trivializing doing good. We demonized saints and canonized the devil.

"We were so busy integrating that we forgot about the goals we had and we let other people define integration for us. Integration isn't about black folks joining white churches. It's about white folks joining black churches, too."

Lowery referred to the controversial eulogy he delivered at Coretta Scott King's funeral on Feb. 7. "We seem to have joined the mood and mode of the times," he said. "Who has the moral authority to tell me what I must say at a funeral? I get my message from God. They didn't want me to speak about the real Coretta. She belongs up there with Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I preach truth to power."

Lowery told his Miami audience to "wake up." Too many blacks, he said, had "taken off their shoes." Some battles had been won, he said, but the war wasn't over.

"One in three black children live in poverty; our children are having children; there are drive-by shootings and AIDS. We are called today by our ancestors to put on our shoes of dignity and to get back the respect we once had for one another. We are they, who have been the conscience of the nation.

"I have come to call the nation to a new birth. Don't let them hijack the Black Church. Don't let them take away our Jesus. Don't let the temporary crown of riches make you miss out on the crown of life. We are people of hope and we must put on our shoes of hope. We must keep the flame of hope burning."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

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Source: The Miami Herald

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