Alphonzo Biggs Rosehill Memorial Baptist Church Sunday, February 21, 1988

Transcription

1 Alphonzo Biggs Rosehill Memorial Baptist Church Sunday, February 21, 1988

2 Thank you! I would first like to thank Reverend Parkman and this committee for inviting me to come. I would like to thank each of you for coming. I am used to a very few, I am used to overflowing crowds. But I always have a message ready, and whatever crowd comes, I deliver my message. And tonight, I have lost no time in searching my memory, going back, and I wants to thank the musicians for the music. I wants to thank (unintelligible) cause we going back through the ages. And I ll tell you, one time I went over to Columbia, South Carolina and I spoke of the black side of the Confederacy. And when it was over, an elderly white lady came up and said, Reverend Biggs, I am delighted and I enjoyed the message. But you didn t say anything about Dr. King, and I was so happy that the good man got a chance to rest! I said, Well, my beloved sister, Dr. King wasn t born in that era. We were way beyond, and I happen to be one of the few who can start at the beginning. So I am going to start with the Pharaohs. We had thirteen Pharaohs, and I have two words I m going to spell for you. And the first word is Mehesi, and when it was translated it became the word Negro. And the next word is spelled Aitihiops, and this word, when it was translated it became dark skinned. And some of these pharaohs was dark skinned. And one of these pharaohs had three daughters, they was beautiful, they made princes, all of them was outstanding. You will know one of them as the preserver of Moses, another married an Egyptian and remained in Egypt, and the third one gave us our first interracial marriage. She married Solomon, the black man of the Bible. So those are the pharaohs, and I have one more time I m going to mention pharaoh.

3 I want you to stretch your hand, and then ball your hand up in a fist just as tight as you can, and I m going to tell you what you re holding. Just ball them up, and hold them just as tight. When that ship got to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, and the many, many blacks who followed the first ship, when they entered Virginia they found they was stripped of their freedom. They balled their hands and they held five things which was the greatest of all. And when they opened their hands, they said, I thank God that in this new world, I have five things that they dare to touch. They stripped me, but in these fists that I ball up are three of the richest cultures on Earth my art, my religion, and my music. He s taken away all of my freedom, he thought he had it all, but I thank God that when I look at these ladies, I am reminded that I have my freedom to faith, I have my freedom to pray. The historic value of those five things is far beyond rubies. The ethics value cannot be expressed. Now, they said, look in front of you. In front of you you ll find many Gods. And today, it seems as if they have doubled. But the God that we salute and the Gods that out parents told us (unintelligible.) Two things always remember wherever you go, I don t know whose hands you ll be in, but you obey the law and trust in the real God. And the God they recommend can take the heat out of the fire, let you stand in the flames and don t get burned. Can pour a shower of darkness down between you and your enemies, and at the same time can set two worlds separate, and can call the wind and say Dry this land, so my children can cross. And after the came across on dry land between two walls of water, he said send twelve mens back and bring out twelve stones, and place them on this land for a memorial. So that future generations will see these stones and can be told of the story of what happened here today. And after they had crossed, and the shade of darkness was lifted, the enemies began pursuing, the waters closed, and pharaoh s

4 army drowned. The pharaoh stood on the banks and looked and said, That must have been the man of God. Don t let nobody fool you; you are one of God s children. Skin has nothing to do with it. Now, we re going to pick the religion. I think as far back as I can remember, it was a church in Jamestown, Virginia was sent there in In 1616 they tore that little church down and they had to make it larger. And in 1621 when the blacks came to Jamestown. In 1623, one Sunday morning, one of the black mens went into this church and he found a protestant hymn book. And he stuck the hymn book down in his apparels, and when he went to the door to go out the white congregation had started to go in. And when he saw them, he came back and sit in his section of the church, with the book down in his clothing. And he said, Lord, I want this book. I need this book. So he waited, and when the white minister had preached to the white congregation, and came down and started preaching to God s childrens, in the middle of his talk, he hollered out, Yea Lord! Yea Lord! And the white mens came and got him, and he went on home. He shouted all the way home, because he had this protestant hymn book. And that night, after the foreman had made his last round, he taken the book and laid it on a stone and called everybody from the village, and they said, This book represent the law that God gave Moses. This book represent education for all mankind. This book represent the Bible. And when they opened the book, it was filled with American Protestant Hymns. And for the first time they saw American alphabets. They saw American words. They didn t lose any time. And ladies swept the soil for paper, used their finger as a pencil, picked up little stones to make those letters just like it was lead. We had nothing, but we had two womens to think and to pray. And when they wrote five songs - a song for work, one for valor, one for faith, one for the

5 devil, and one to dance by. And they learned to sing their songs. The whites heard the noise, and they came to see. But they didn t know that God s childrens was passing words in those songs from one to another. Over on the other plantations, they heard the echoes, the voices from over here. They began to repeat, over and over, what this plantation s childrens was singing. The Negro spiritual was born. Now, at the church there in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1616, Down in Savannah, Georgia, in 1734, it was a Mormon church was organized there. And General Oglethorpe gave to this church and for its purpose 600 acres of land for their day to day activities. They didn t have money like you have, but those 600 acres belonged to the Mormon Church. And in 1735, one of the white mens there named John Wesley; he organized the first protestant Sunday school in It was a black church that was organized there in 1773, but they didn t have a black preacher, so the church didn t stay. The next year, somebody went to the congress of the state of Georgia, in 1734, and the congress authorized a white church to ordain a black preacher. And in 1774, the first black preacher was ordained in the United States. The state of Georgia was the first one to give the permission, and it was the last state of the thirteen colonies. Now in 1809 in Boston, pardon me, it was Philadelphia, 13 blacks from the white church started a church of their own. Their minister was Reverend (unintelligible), who was a former slave. And the same year, 1809, Boston organized a black church with the help of Reverend Thomas Paul. Reverend Thomas Paul was organizing a black Baptist church in New York in 1809,

6 and there, that church stands today and the name was changed and you will know it as the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. In 1779 on May 20 th, their first preacher was Reverend George Lyles, but they believed the next preacher was Reverend (unintelligible). In 1779 Reverend Lyles organized a black Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia. And just last month I was called. They re having argument - they have two First African Baptist Churches there, who should stay on? I said, Both of you. Because when Reverend Bryan left the church he carried 1,819 members, and Deacon Johnson had the deeds to the lot at (unintelligible) with no members, so both of them was First African. But Reverend Lyles didn t stay there very long, because the slave masters said he exerted too much power over their slaves, and it was causing trouble. And in the war, the Revolutionary War, the same thing happened with Reverend Bryan. And those members (unintelligible) after the Revolutionary War. Some was rolled in tar and feathers. Semper Fi, going for a slow death. They closed the Baptist churches of all slave states and the only church you could go to was the white church. And they made laws because they silenced the black man from preaching. And that was from the Revolutionary War until 1865, when the Freedmen s Bureau brought the black preacher back to life again. Now, in 1870, now the (unintelligible) Sunday School or white churches because we wasn t allowed education. If we got it, we had to steal it. And it was so many of these ladies, and the mens, every time they see a cemetery with a tombstone, they was going to clean off the grave. They would go to get numbers and letters so they would have something to learn and to use, to help their children know how to spell their names.

7 And in 1770, a slave master was moving from Virginia to New York. And on this (unintelligible), on the voyage, a little black baby was born. They didn t stop moving; they just put a blanket over her and kept going. At the age of 8, they sold her, and her mother, back in to slavery and left her alone. The childrens on the next plantations was workers, (unintelligible) we are your friend, we have come to help you. They grieved, and this little girl grieved, and they told her, We are going to raise enough money, and we are going to buy you. Eight years passed, and she was sixteen when an upper state big wig came to visit. They related the story, and he said, Yes, I ll buy her. When they went to this plantation, the white man said to him, I ll give her to you. But the man said, I mean to buy her. So how much money do you want for her? He said, I don t know. So they used the sale s high price because she was just a girl. He said, Here s two hundred dollars. Take her. So he paid her out, and she had nowhere to live, nowhere to go, but those Prather childrens carried her to a Baptist church, and she lived in this church until the age of 18. She got married, and she gave birth to a set of twins. By the age of 22, her husband had died, and her two children, with tuberculosis. She found herself back in this lonely stage, and the turned to Martin Luther s song book, which he wrote in There were 37 songs, and the greatest song of all time came to be the theme song of the Lutheran church What a mighty fortress is our God. In 1834 he wrote a pageant, Heaven from on High. And during this lonesome stage she went back to this basement of this Baptist church. And in this lonely stage she found herself asking, Lord Jesus, if you will come and live with me, I ll give you the finest bed you will ever lay in. I will cover you with linen, and there s none finer. I will give you a growth which will continue forever you made it grow. Her friends and her neighbors laughed at her and said, You don t have a place to live. You don t have things of

8 your own. Where will you put little boy Jesus? She said, You are too full of earthly possessions. You don t have room, but I do. The bed where Jesus will sleep is located in the center of my heart. The linen that I will cover him with will be the love that I will spread across this world. The growth will ever be the lines of the new little children who will always come. And in 1793, in the basement of Dr. John Mason s Baptist church, Catherine Ferguson organized the first black Sunday school with 40 children of all nationalities, all colors. And she stayed, and she worked across the state of New York. And then she died. And in 1931 the city of New York, they built a home for unwedded mothers, and today, I think, it still stands. And they named this home in memory of Catherine Ferguson. She was the one who organized the first black Baptist Sunday school. Now, from the time of the Revolutionary War, we didn t have Sunday school, we didn t have church, the only way we went, we had to go in the white churches. But one day in the white church, I guess one of the ladies had gotten ill and fed up when the white minister was preaching that master was her God. One of the ladies stood up, now this happened right here in Columbus, and it happened at Holson s Chapel church, because Holson s Chapel church came out of St. Luke church in And they had white preachers at Holson s Chapel until Reverend McAffee came along and he was the first black minister. You ll remember when Reverend McAffee and Mrs. McAffee used to be on Fifth Avenue. And one of the ladies stood up and said, Preacher man, master is alright, but let me ask you a question. Can master create a bone in my womb? Can master create hair in my womb? He looked at her. She said, My God creates a whole human being. Can master do that? He looked at her and didn t answer, but he told master, Don t you hit her. So you see, our prayers is our best weapon.

9 Now, I m going back. I have told you the professional side. We re going to the fortune teller now. We re going to the fairy tales, and we re going to see how they come out on that side. This woman was born in She was described as the daughter of Aretha and her daddy was the Devil. She became known as Mother Shipton, a prophetess, and she has books in the liberries, I don t know which one, in the United States. And all of her predictions have almost come true. And the one I m going to tell you I want you to think about. She said, Mens will live like hogs, will braid their hair. now we re talking about dark-skins now. And when I saw the mens, I thought about this. This was supposed to be a fairy tale. Alright, she said, (unintelligible) will get foolish notions, cut their hair, dress up in britches, ride in carriages, wouldn t be a horse, wouldn t be a donkey, wouldn t be a ox nowhere in sight. Marriages will cease. Sufferings will decrease. God would speak and say, I am God, none other, I am the I am And a few months ago, I was laying there thinking. And it came on my mind very strongly and it seemed like I could hear the voices of God saying, I have given you a voice singing in the wilderness. Now ladies, let me say this to you, I don t mean to diss or degrade you in any way, but I mean to tell you a message and the truth. I ask you to excuse me on this, but he said I give you a voice singing in the wilderness through Elizabeth and John the Baptist. I have given you a savior through Mary and Jesus. I have showed you wonders of Abraham and Sarah. Now man have disobeyed me, and one of those is destroying what I have created. And many of you will remember that diseases pass just like human beings. Our first killer of the diseases was smallpox. The influenza flu. The tuberculosis. The strokes. The heart attacks, then the cancer. But now, I will send another. Aids. And we poor men was caught in it. But it s not God s childrens, it s more of the others, not the blacks. And God said, I m not going to destroy them,

10 but I m going to let them destroy themselves. But I m going to step down underneath you, now think about it, he said to the teenagers I want you to replenish my (unintelligible) and honey, from one side to the other they re talking about a problem. It s no problem. It s the (unintelligible) of God. And he is speaking loud, I am God. None besides. I am. Childrens have a way of passing messages over our heads just like we passed it over the white man s head. Now, our biggest problem is unemployment. And the only time black peoples make a progress for riches, it will take a depression or it will take a war. But you still have a freedom to pray. Don t forget that! Now back to Mother Shipton, she said There will be five wars; maybe I won t be there for this one. During this time there will be a nation coming from (unintelligible) and you will kill their sufferings. And then a fiery battle on the battlefield. The Jew and the Gentile is going to throw their weapons down, come running, and embrace each other. Then they ll say, We ain t gonna study war no more. Then peace shall come, not until. Your sign to watch is the East. They are raising much sand. But you still have your two freedoms to think and to pray. Now, it was rough in those days. The white man was overbearing to the slaves. But they didn t let that worry them; they didn t let that bother them. They prayed, and as one man said, I m going to pick up my book. He went and picked up the Protestant hymn book, and when he opened it, in the back, a bible verse was there. Eyes has not seen, ears has not heard, neither has it been established in the hearts of men the things that I have in store for you. He left, and went on down to the blacksmith s shop. It taken him three weeks, but when he came out, he came out with this little machine. You can listen to the rhythm; you can listen to many

11 different sounds on it. But this was one of the types of art that cooled and calmed his mind. (unintelligible) Now I want you to see what it will do. You know, I told you we had three our music, our art, and our church. (tape is briefly interrupted) I ve had several of them ask me, Mr. Biggs, don t you believe the (unintelligible) or the white man had a say in the creations of those Negro spirituals? I said no, no way. Those slaves brought that rhythm, those notes, those sounds. And America was surprised when they found under the narrow confinements they had kept the blacks, those black childrens had not only survived, but they had created in those narrow confinements a universal way to open their communications, which was closed. From one plantation, across the slave states to (unintelligible) to their brothers and their sisters. And no one can say rightfully, I created it s We created. And when they did it, those songs was created for groups. And I enjoy so much the way she did it here tonight. Blacks have always had a drum, have always been inclined to music, but the white American knew that blacks would hear the drum beating. It was trouble, and they would come in crowds. As one lady stated so beautifully Master stood and told me, I don t have any praying on my plantation but at the same time, I stood right in his presence and prayed, but he couldn t hear me. But he had to move. And those songs, they expressed sorrow, joy, emotional, dance, and anything about that music we will find it in those spirituals. And those spirituals, the only way you can find their creation is to trace those five signs back to the Africanism those ladies wrote on the ground. And this protestant hymn book was the only tools they had. And the main source of income, the material that they so dearly loved and hoped for, it was denied. That was the Bible.

12 Now, I think I have told you just about enough. I don t want to keep you too long. But I ll be glad to come any time. I ll invite you to come to my house and see the art, the religious, the music that I have collected. And most of it happened when I was up with peoples. It was incredible, and I had a chance to stand in some of America s finest colleges and universities including Columbus College and Bradley s library. But none of them was any more enjoyable than you are tonight. Because we are God s people. And I will leave you with this don t forget you have two freedoms to think and to pray. Now, I want you to reap God s word and do what it say. Thank you!