Lived Realities: Suffering | Hope
Through a myriad of creative social and political endeavors, many Black artists and activists have deployed their faith, talents, and moral visions to articulate the complex dimensions of the suffering and trauma of Black people in America. Further marshaling their creative genius, these same individuals offered bold visions of Black flourishing and restructured new worlds of Black possibility.
These artists and activists, through their artistic and prophetic gifts, have given rise to an indomitable hope, and emboldened the oppressed in their fight for justice and social equality. While exposing the harsh realities that Black people have experienced and continue to endure, these visionaries and their people found the courage to rise.
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell at Cedar Hill, the historic home of Frederick Douglass, Washington, D.C., 1953; photo by Bertrand Miles (1928–2005)
Cross pendant owned by Mary Church Terrell, n.d.
Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) was a trailblazing civil rights activist, suffragist, and educator. Heavily influenced by Frederick Douglass, she dedicated her life to leading on educational and political fronts. Fighting for equality and justice for all, she organized several sit-ins and other demonstrations in local venues such as the Black church. As reported in Ebony, Metropolitan AME, located in Washington, D.C., served as a central spot where early Black orators like Terrell “lifted their voices” to the masses.
Benjamin Elijah Mays
Dr. Benjamin E. Mays in Mays Hall at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, 1977; photo by G. Marshall Wilson (1905–1998)
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894–1984), a South Carolina native, was an ordained Baptist minister, theologian, civil rights activist, and author. As one of the notable presidents of Morehouse College and dean of Howard University’s School of Religion, he played an integral role in religious education, influencing religious leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. In 1955, Mays wrote “Who Will Preach to Negroes in 1980,” emphasizing the importance of religious education as a means of tackling social issues. He was burdened by the fact that Black ministers were “poorly trained” and encouraged theological training to combat inequalities. In 1958, he helped establish the Interdenominational Theological Center at the Atlanta University Center, welcoming seminarians from various denominations across the country.
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder performing at Madison Square Garden during a charity tour, New York, New York, 1974; photo by Leroy Patton (b. 1944)
A child prodigy, Stevie Wonder (b. 1950) entered the musical stage at the early age of 11, as Little Stevie. Over the years, Wonder’s discography has served as a soundtrack for addressing and acknowledging various social issues, while evoking a sense of pride and uplift. In a 1974 issue of Jet, he discussed the pathway of serving as a conduit for peace, love, and faith by becoming the Good Samaritan. Following a near-fatal car accident in 1973, Wonder galvanized the crowd during a benefit concert in support of the Minisink Townhouse, a Harlem-based nonprofit for disadvantaged children, as seen in this photo.
Sammy Davis Jr. & Abbey Lincoln
Sammy Davis Jr. and Abbey Lincoln singing a duet, ca. 1958; photo by G. Marshall Wilson (1905–1998)
In 1954, Sammy Davis Jr. (1925–1990) survived a severe car crash and lost his left eye. While recovering, the world-famous entertainer began a process of soul-searching that ultimately led him to convert to Judaism. “I knew that there was more to reality than the material world,” he told Ebony in 1960. “Judaism gave me security and understanding.”
As a singer, actress, and activist, Abbey Lincoln (1930–2010) inspired others by expressing and embracing her humanity as a Black woman. Writing for Negro Digest in 1966, she affirmed her belief that “any Black human being able to survive . . . must be some kind of a giant with great and peculiar abilities, with an armor as resistant as steel yet made of purest gold.”
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou working on her bed with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Holy Bible, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1982; photo by Moneta Sleet Jr. (1926–1996)
New York Times clipping with reviews of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970
As reported in Ebony, author Maya Angelou’s (1928–2014) most important writing tools included a yellow legal pad and ballpoint pen, along with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Holy Bible. Angelou’s work has religious influences and often contains rhythm and imagery that evokes sermons by Black ministers. For example, her book of poems, I Shall Not Be Moved, was influenced by African American spirituals and biblical imagery, and it explores the suffering in Black freedom struggles.
Maya Angelou published her landmark autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in 1969. In praising the book, fellow author James Baldwin called it “a Biblical study of life in the midst of death.” Ebony published an excerpt from Angelou’s book in April 1970. Access the issue on Google Books.
I believe it is faith which allows human beings to try to rise in the morning, after evenings of terror and fear and grief and disappointment.
Maya Angelou, Jet Magazine, 1992
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, Stony Brook, New York, 1988; photo by James L. Mitchell (1946–2022)
Toni Morrison, Beloved: A Novel, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987
Born Chloe Wofford, author Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was raised in the AME Church, but converted to Catholicism at the age of 12. She took the baptismal name Anthony, which led to her nickname, “Toni.” Morrison was attracted to Catholicism’s imagery and storytelling, which became essential elements in her writing. Religion and spirituality appear throughout her works, and she saw the church as central to Black survival during and after slavery. As she told Black World in 1974, “Where, for instance, could a person go to scream out his grief among people he trusted and not be embarrassed, except in a church?”
Toni Morrison was awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved. The novel tells the story of a formerly enslaved woman, Sethe, who killed her young child to prevent her from being re-enslaved and is then haunted by her daughter’s ghost. The book uses religion, faith, and spirituality to heal historical traumas from the legacy of slavery.
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes autographing Tambourines to Glory for Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at Marketplace Art Gallery, New York, New York, 1958; photo by Moneta Sleet Jr. (1926–1996)
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926; fifth printing, 1929
The leading literary voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes (1901–1967) infused many of his works with the lived experience of African American religion. He wrote about spiritual subjects by employing language heard in Black churches, on the streets of Harlem, in the lyrics of gospel music, and in the poetic musings of the blues. In the Negro Digest poetry issue published after Hughes’s death, Addison Gayle Jr. praised how he conveyed the realities of sorrow and joy, suffering and salvation: “Few can give voice to their anguish and despair as Hughes was able to do” and yet, “his words made visible to you a new universe, aglow with promise and hope.”
Langston Hughes’s first book of poetry includes the celebrated poems “The Weary Blues,” “Mother to Son,” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In 1946, Arna Bontemps wrote in Ebony that preachers had once criticized Hughes “for the down-to-earth quality of his muse,” but now the poet was “in increasing demand as a Sunday morning speaker in churches.”
Fannie Lou Hamer & Ella Baker
Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker at the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party state convention, Jackson, Mississippi, August 1964; photo by Maurice Sorrell (1914–1998)
Fannie Lou Hamer funeral program, March 20, 1977
As grassroots leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) and Ella Baker (1903–1986) shared a belief in the power of ordinary people to challenge injustice. Both women grew up attending rural Baptist churches, Hamer in Mississippi and Baker in North Carolina. Baker, eulogized by Jet as “an unsung heroine” of the movement, helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and mentored the young activists who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Hamer, a cotton plantation worker, became a voting rights activist after attending a SNCC meeting at her church. Despite being fired, evicted, jailed, and brutally beaten, she never lost faith. “I know I’m right,” she told Ebony in 1966, “so long as I stay here and do my part.”
Any God that delights in the suffering of His people is a sadistic God, and I don’t pray to a sadistic God.
Reverend Ike, Ebony Magazine, 1976
Reverend Ike
Reverend Ike preaching in the United Church in Washington Heights, New York, New York, 1976; photo by G. Marshall Wilson (1905–1998)
A trailblazer in Black religious broadcasting, namely televangelism, Reverend Ike’s (Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter, 1935–2009) media success paved the way for other Black religious leaders to thrive on both television and radio platforms. While Ike’s followers were largely the urban poor, his message of prosperity promoted middle-class lifestyles and aspirations for wealth and sought to distance itself from traditional forms of African American theological reasoning. In a 1976 interview with Ebony, Ike confessed: “I got tired of being poor, while God sat up in Heaven behind the pearly gates, with streets of gold and walls of precious jewels.” Within Ike’s theological vision, there was no space for accommodating Black suffering as redemptive.
Featured Object
Reverend Ike’s Ensemble
Resisting theologies that consigned benefits and rewards for the faithful solely to the afterlife, and believing that religion should make a difference in the daily lives of Black people, Reverend Ike broadened the Black religious landscape by advocating for a radically “this-worldly” approach to African American religion. Ike’s lavish dress is best understood as a theological signification of his teachings, which emphasized luck, wealth, health, prosperity, and abundance in the here and now.
Select details to learn more about this ensemble, which Reverend Ike wore while receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award in Mentoring in 2004.
Jesse Jackson
Rev. Jesse Jackson, leader of the SCLC’s economic justice program Operation Breadbasket, speaking at a weekly rally, Chicago, Illinois, 1969; photo by Norman L. Hunter (1932–1992)
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and the Operation PUSH Choir, PUSH for Excellence!!!, Myrrh, 1978
“I am a preacher without boundaries,” Rev. Jesse Jackson (b. 1941) told Ebony in 1967. Throughout his boundary-breaking political career, the charismatic Baptist minister inspired millions with his messages of hope and empowerment as he organized them to fight for social and economic justice. During this rally in Chicago in 1969, Jackson spoke to the hearts of his people: “For years we were told we were Black and ugly, and we looked into the dishwater and concluded we were ugly. But now we have come to know that it was the water that was ugly all along. And that we were Black and beautiful.”
James Baldwin
James Baldwin, Chicago, Illinois, July 1961; photo by Lacey J. Crawford (1920–2002)
The son of a minister, and a child preacher himself, novelist and essayist James Baldwin (1924–1987) was regarded as America’s inside-eye on the Black Pentecostal experience. His writings exposed his readers to the very inner life of his tradition by unveiling the moral, cultural, and theological worlds inhabited by the initiated, and by depicting the ways in which this religious experience was performed by those who believed. After disaffiliating from the church in his late teens, through his novels and essays, Baldwin continued to use his literary gifts to articulate the complex dimensions of Black suffering and to point his readers to new horizons of hope and Black possibility, especially regarding the social problematic of race in America.