Black Religious Leadership in the Public and Political Spheres: A Critical Analysis By Kyle Brooks Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion May 14, 2021 Approved: Victor Anderson, Ph.D. John. S. McClure, Ph.D. Hortense J. Spillers, Ph.D. Emilie Maureen Townes, Ph.D., D.Min. Lisa L. Thompson, Ph.D. This dissertation is dedicated to the enduring memory of my late grandparents, Hazel Mae Alene Brooks, Isaac King, Jr., and Margaret Jewel King and to my late advisor, Dale P. Andrews, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my committee members for their profound contributions to my academic development and success. From coursework to conversation, I have gleaned so much from your intellect and insight. To John S. McClure, you have pushed me to be sharp and precise in my thinking and writing and have impacted my pedagogy in innumerable ways. To Hortense J. Spillers, you have forever changed the way I think about the idea of black culture, and it has been a privilege to be a student of yours. To Emilie M. Townes, you have been a guiding light since I was a master’s student, and I thank you for seeing and supporting my academic pursuits then and now. Finally, to my advisor, Victor Anderson, I thank you for the countless hours of tutelage and training, for your intellectual and collegial generosity, and for being a mentor and friend of the highest order. I would like to thank the Forum for Theological Exploration, the Lilly Foundation, and the Louisville Institute for grant support as I completed this project. To a cadre of black men who have been brothers – Joshua Brandon Bennett, Jamall Andrew Calloway, Wesley Jarel Morris, and Jeremy Scott Vinson – I thank you for your consistency and courage, your humor and brilliance, your belief in all that I am and can be. You are written into these pages. To Chelsea Brooke Yarborough, my sister in the struggle, my co-laborer in academic life, thank you for a friendship forged in truth, love, and accountability. To Rufus Burnett, Jr., thank you for the many evenings of conversation and laughter that sharpened my thinking and enhanced my life in Nashville. To my immediate family – my mother, Karen Corner, and my siblings Kenneth Brooks, Kellen Brooks, Kristopher Brooks, Kary Choice, Karis Choice, and Karlis Pulley – and the extended Brooks, King, and Ridgell families, thank you all for continual love, support, and encouragement. I hope I have made you all proud. To the extended community that has journeyed with me throughout this process, thank you for your faith and comfort, your encouragement and your belief, and for holding me accountable to a deep purpose and a strong vision. I am because you are. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ________________________________________________________________ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ______________________________________________________iii Introduction __________________________________________________________________1 Chapter 1. Black Preachers and Black Preaching: Historical Formations and Contemporary Challenges_____________________________________________________ 11 “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm” – Rhetorical Roots of Black Preaching ______________________________________________________15 “Made You Look” – The Emergence of the Black Preacher ______________________26 “I’m What the Game Made Me” – The Evolving Sociopolitical Role and Significance of Black Preachers ____________________________________31 2. The Black Public Sphere and Black Public Leaders_________________________________44 “Streets is Watching” – Black Religious Leadership and the Black Public Sphere ______________________________________________ 44 “What’s the Scenario” – Rhetorical Spaces and Charismatic Performances of Black Public Leadership________________________________________________57 3. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Making of a Religio-Political Archetype _______________65 “All Eyes On Me” Benjamin E. Mays and the Making of Public Leadership _________68 “Ladies First” – Black Women’s Leadership in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom _________________________________81 “It Was All a Dream” – The Sermonic Rhetoric of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech _______________________________92 4. Jesse Jackson and the Trajectory of Post-Civil Rights Black Leadership _______________106 “Started From the Bottom” – Jackson’s Early Days_____________________________109 “I’m The King” – Jackson, King, and the SCLC ______________________________114 “Unfinished Business” – The Preacher Turns Politico__________________________128 “Start the Show” – Jesse Jackson at the 1988 Democratic National Convention______140 iv 5. Al Sharpton and the Evolving Spectacle of Black Politics___________________________156 “I Know You Got Soul” - Sharpton’s Charismatic Leadership Roots______________160 “I Ain’t No Joke” - Sharpton and the Realm of Public Spectacle _________________167 “Laugh Now, Cry Later” – Popular Media and Sharpton’s Political Presence _______174 “Black on Both Sides” – Contesting the Future of Black Political Leadership _______180 “Life After Death” – Sharpton’s Pulpit Politics _______________________________185 6. Conclusion _______________________________________________________________199 BIBLIOGRAPHY ____________________________________________________________206 v Introduction On Wednesday, May 25, 2016, near the intersection of Mount and Presbury Streets, the 148th gathering of West Wednesday convened in West Baltimore at the Tubman House, an abandoned row home turned community center.1 This gathering was one in a long series of weekly assemblies led by Tawanda Jones in protest of the July 18th, 2013, killing of her brother, Tyrone Antonio West, by Baltimore police officers. In attendance at this gathering was prominent black pastor and public figure Jamal Harrison Bryant, founder of the Empowerment Temple African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Baltimore, MD. As Bryant departed, Baltimore community activist PFK Boom (Davon Neverdon) confronted him on the sidewalk. In the brief encounter, Boom criticized Bryant for his shortcomings in public leadership. Boom began this colorful exchange with a brief but significant assertion: “I’m the streets, man.” His words function in multiple ways: as a naming of Boom’s orientation to and affinity with the public community that informs his organizing; as a means of differentiating himself from Bryant’s social and political posture; and, intentionally or not, as an affirmation of his capacity as a representative speaker for “the streets.” Boom’s verbal salvo suggested that he assumed a similar representative capacity and responsibility in Bryant, as he reminded the pastor “you got our people all up in your church…you supposed to led (sic) these people.”2 Boom communicates an implicit set of expectations from Bryant’s role as a minister. 1 Baltimore BLOC, “Jamal Bryant G CHECKED by PFK Boom & Shy Lady Heroin,” YouTube video, 3:09, May 25, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ECdKuAgxo&feature=youtu.be. 2 Ibid. 1 Boom chastised Bryant for being a latecomer to the various organized actions in Baltimore: “Tyrone [West] been on the ground like…300 and something days, you down here now.”3 But beyond the temporal concerns, Boom’s criticism extended into the qualitative effects of Bryant’s compromised presence, a presence Boom read as death-dealing and in alignment with problematic authorities in the city of Baltimore: “And then you fucking with our oppressors…you fucking with [Mayor Stephanie] Rawlings-Blake and all of them, man. You tryna kill us man…the streets feel like you killin’ us, man.”4 Boom marked Bryant as a familiar other, a simultaneous friend of the Baltimore establishment and foe of the Baltimore citizenry. Once more, Bryant’s proximity to the community supported a reasonable expectation of meaningful presence, while also underscoring the potential for his perceived absence or political loyalties to be read as intimately betraying. Bryant, by any measure, was deeply embedded in the milieu of Baltimore social and political life, and as such, his performance within that context came under great scrutiny. The climax of the encounter featured Boom urging Bryant to leave the city permanently. Boom’s sentiments again illuminated the representational function of his rhetoric: “Don’t come down here no more. Boom said it. Me! As a man! The streets don’t want you here. I’m speaking for them.”5 However, the intensely personal nature of his words cannot be overlooked. Even as Boom insists that he speaks as proxy for a community of people, his assertions are reinforced by particular confrontational language that reminds us that at the heart, this is a conflict between two grown black men. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 2 I describe this scene in detail as a way of delving into the various implications of this amplified rhetorical battle. First, a host of power relations are crystalized through this encounter. One can observe how the conflict between Boom and Bryant is a struggle along lines of social location and social distance, orientation to and affiliation with the political establishment, notions of sacred and secular roles and responsibilities, and intra-racial conflicts around representational authority. All at once, the contention between Boom and Bryant is just as much about interpersonal dispute as it is about conflicting approaches to realizing the social, material,