Church Ladies

Grace Jones: None of the stores hired black people. We had Woolworth’s. We had Kresge. We had Blumstein’s. We had Lerner’s. (My aunt, Aunt Louise, got her job on 125th Street because they were breaking the color bar. It was two years later that she got the job there.) We were fighting to get into these jobs. We were marching on Blumstein’s, which was very important because that was like the Saks Fifth Avenue of 125th Street. They had other little stores, but they had designated certain stores that you would picket in front of, for example, in front of Kresge. One of my mother’s friends got a job downstairs at Kresge. It was so nice to walk by. You didn’t interrupt them while they were working, but you wanted people to know that you know them. 

I remember picketing in front of Weissbecker’s, a big produce market—groceries and vegetables—on 125th Street near Eighth Avenue. It had sawdust on the floor. It was so clean, and when you walked in there, there was always a hostess who would offer you rye bread cut into small wedges. They had hogshead cheese and cottage cheese. I remember one time there was a different taste on the rye bread, kind of curdy. They said, “This is to introduce you to cottage cheese.” We would stroll through there. Everybody went shopping there, but we couldn’t work there! 

I used to hear my aunts—young adults—talking. They chatted freely. Because of hearing Powell speak, I knew what they were talking about, and I’ve applied it in my life since: what we stood for was not about me individually, but about us together. He always said that we were “someone.” We should know what was going on. We needed to know what was going on in other communities, so we could compete with them, more or less. Adam would talk about this from the pulpit. I remember one time when I was maybe about fourteen or fifteen. He was saying that so much was going on out there; and he was taking it upon himself to preach on what was going on. 

Manier Webber: I know that they started hiring blacks after we started picketing them and the news started going out: We lived right here in Harlem, and if we couldn’t work in Harlem where we shop in Harlem, then we don’t shop in Harlem. I only know one woman who got a job as a result of the protests. I forgot her name. She lived in 151st Street. She was a light-skinned person. Very light. You couldn’t tell her from white when you get right down to it. At that time, most of us was doing domestic work. 

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The character of the new Abyssinian Church of the Masses was reflected in the actions of its pastor and in the actions of its Church Ladies as well. All were committed to an improved quality of life for themselves and for other black people. Increasingly, they were successful. 

Adam’s political career took off. The momentum of the various protest movements increased Adam’s visibility and his reputation—from that of a privileged playboy who worked at the soup kitchen of his father’s big church to an intrepid David confronting the Goliaths in the landscape of Harlem and beyond. His increasing leverage as pastor of America’s largest Protestant congregation gave him a reason to think big, and the political redistricting of Harlem provided an opportunity. So Powell was electable and had an office that he could seek. 

In 1941 he campaigned for and won a seat on the New York City Council, the first black person to serve on that newly created body. Soon, after one term there, he thought even bigger: he ran for Congress. In 1944 the people of Harlem chose Adam to be their representative to the US Congress from the Twenty-Second Congressional District. In January of 1945, when Adam was sworn in, William Dawson of Illinois was the only other black person serving in Congress. Representative Dawson was quiet, unobtrusive. Adam, however, was not, and he wanted no confusion on that point. He tried to make the difference clear. His taking office, Adam said, made him “the first bad nigger in Congress.” Powell went to Washington doing the same things he was doing in Harlem: actively protesting racism and actively demanding equal opportunity for all. The Church Ladies did the same back at home. 

Helen Brown, Grace Jones, and Estelle Noble were among many who had participated in the protests for jobs. Each also fought other battles in their own right and in their own way. Culture-minded Helen Brown found employment during World War II in a manufacturing plant in Queens. That job gave her the opportunity to challenge segregation in the city’s cultural institutions. Grace Jones, a youthful veteran of the 125th Street picket lines, finished high school a few years later and headed for the realities of the world of work and a stunning rejection. Estelle Noble heard a mid-fifties rumor about the KKK’s plans that spurred her to launch a citywide campaign. Their recollections recall the spirit of Abyssinian’s Church of the Masses. 

Helen Brown at the War Plant 

In the early 1940s, Helen Brown, a Howard University graduate, was working in a plant in Long Island City: Gussack Machine Products, wartime manufacturer of supplies like knob assemblies, insulators, and stakes for the US Army Signal Corps. Helen and some of her coworkers decided to see if they—black and white workers from the plant—could socialize together away from the job. They wanted to attend cultural events together. Helen told Nora Holt, Amsterdam News theater critic, of the effort that the black and white workers at Gussack were making to see if blacks and white could pay for tickets to go out together to a play or concert. “I’m going to Carnegie Hall first,” she told Holt, and promised the journalist an update on her efforts.