Yea, Lord! Moving with the Spirit: Fifty Years a Minister and a Scholar to the Glory of God

By Mozella Mitchell

This is a searching perceptive examination of the fifty years of Dr. Mitchell’s service as preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church ministry and a scholar in the church and university, how she was led into this dual profession, how she survived in it as a Black woman, how social movements and changes in the society impacted her life and ambitions, and most of all how God was always working in her life over more than eight decades, guiding, directing, sustaining her and enabling her to achieve His purposes for her life, thereby getting the glory out of her life for the good of her family, others, friends, and the church and society. She accepted her role as a divine instrument, and only God could have enabled her to adjust and readjust to the rapid changes taking place from one decade to another in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, the Black Womanist Movement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796087390

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Copyright © 2020 by Mozella Mitchell.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2020902661

ISBN:                 Hardcover               978-1-7960-8725-3

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter 1   God Plants Seeds

Chapter 2   God Cultivates a Garden

Chapter 3   God Gives the Increase

Chapter 4   God Reaps the Harvest

Chapter 5   God Prunes the Branches

Chapter 6   God Enlarges the Garden

Chapter 7   Garden Graces

Conclusion

Works Cited

Endnotes

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of the late Bishop Richard Keith Thompson, 86th Bishop in succession in the AME Zion, who served as our Bishop for twelve years and promoted me in running and campaigning for the office of Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. It is also dedicated to the memory of the late Presiding Elder Jimmy R. Caldwell, Sr., who made us all proud in the way he served the AME Zion Church ministry in the short period he was pastor and presiding elder; to the memory of my mother, the late Mrs. Odena M. Graham Gordon, who nurtured me and encouraged me in ministering to our family, especially all of my ten siblings who passed away during my fifty years of ministry and whom I also revere.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This has been an intense and searching undertaking with accompanying pleasures as well. But how I came up with the notion of writing these memoirs is due largely to our bishop of the Alabama/Florida Episcopal District of the AME Zion Church, the Right Reverend Seth O. Lartey, who has served this district for the past three and one half years. Not that he ever mentioned to me the idea writing such a work, but his method of requiring and urging ministers and laity alike to write and submit reports outlining our vision for ministry, our special spiritual gifts, purposes, goals and accomplishments set me to thinking seriously about such things. As the senior minister/pastor in the South Florida Conference division of his episcopal district, having served in this conference for thirty-five years as pastor, presiding elder, and in other leadership and administrative positions, when this bishop assumed the leadership of the district in 2016; I found it very difficult and challenging to come up with visions, goals, purposes, gifts, etc., as I was in the waning years of my ministry with many notable achievements and could for the most part reflect on what had motivated me in the past that were still driving forces in my present ministry journey. And so, giving serious thought to these things and making such reports, it occurred to me that I should do in retrospect what Bishop Lartey was encouraging us to do as ministers, which meant going back to the beginning of my ministry and recounting those visions, motivations, goals, purposes, achievements, etc. With my fiftieth-year preaching anniversary coming up in 2020, I was prompted to plan that celebration and write my memoirs of the period concentrating on the ministry and scholarly religious endeavors.

So I have Bishop Seth O. Lartey to thank for the motivation of this ambitious undertaking, from which I have derived many pleasures, though not without some sadness and regrets over certain unpleasant occurrences on the long journey. I have others to thank for inspiration, encouragement, advice, and assistance along the way. I want to express sincere appreciation to my niece Josephine White, my former student from Norfolk State University and longtime friend Cynthia Cook Forman, and my colleague and former office mate in the English Department at Norfolk State University Virginia Daugherty, all three of whom read portions of the manuscript and gave advice, corrections, and encouragement. My two daughters Cynthia L. Woodson and Marcia D. Miller were also very helpful in these capacities and in being around listening to my pining about all I was going through in getting the writing done and gathering sources etc., as well as finding materials to assist me in recovering past sources, to them I am very grateful. I am also grateful to my granddaughters Jamila Woodson and Zahra Brown for sharing with me during the writing period and offering encouragement. I want to thank Rev. Dr. Daran Mitchell for his enthusiasm, inspiration, advice, encouragement, and his faith in me as well. I would like to express sincere gratitude to the administrators and staff at Xlibris Publishing Co., especially Fel Garcia, who spent time from the beginning process of the writing and on up to the very end in helping and encouraging me, giving advice, etc. I am also very grateful to the late Rev. Jimmy Caldwell, his widow Rev. Velvet Caldwell, and Rev. Valerie Polnitz for their encouragement and assistance with the process of planning the fiftieth year ministry anniversary celebration of which this book is a product.

PREFACE

This is a searching perceptive examination of the fifty years of my service as preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church ministry and a scholar in the church and university, how I was led into this dual profession, how I survived in it as a Black woman, how social movements and changes in the society impacted my life and ambitions, and most of all how God was always working in my life over more than eight decades, guiding, directing, sustaining me and enabling me to achieve His purposes for my life, thereby getting the glory out of my life for the good of my family, others, friends, and the church and society. I accepted my role as a divine instrument, and only God could have enabled me to adjust and readjust to the rapid changes taking place from one decade to another in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, the Black Womanist Movement, and the changes brought on by generation x, the me generation, the millennials. I think it can be of inspiration and help to many of our young people to see all that God brought me through and how I survived and thrived and even succeeded in such changing circumstances and remain alive today at age 85 years, still pastoring, doing professional writing, and continuing to inspire younger generations of today.

The book consists of seven chapters and a conclusion.

Chapter One is titled God Plants Seeds, and covers the years I spent in the later Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 while at the same time continuing to teach and serve as Advisor to the Black Student Union at Norfolk State University. It covers the community and university uprisings, marches and demonstrations, student take-over at Norfolk State University, my extensive involvement with the students and the community as well as involvement with William P. Robinson’s campaign for the Virginia State House of Delegates, and Co-Director of the East Ghent VISTA Project, and other things. Finally, the chapter covers my two-year leave of absence from Norfolk State to study as a minister for the M.A. degree in Religious Studies and in process meeting with Howard Thurman, who impacted the rest of my life in profound ways. Subtitles in the chapter include Seeking to ‘Make Something of Myself,’ Seeking Justice, and Seeking Wisdom and Understanding.

Chapter Two is titled God Cultivates a Garden, and covers the next four years of my life as a minister trying to develop my career as both a minister and a scholar, but mainly as a minister trying to gain a foothold in this predominantly male profession.

Chapter Three is titled God Gives the Increase, and covers the three years I spent as Ph.D student in the Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) at Emory University. I was on leave of absence from Norfolk State University again, with partial pay. The Mecca of Black religious and educational heritage of Atlanta, GA, provided me with rich historical and contemporary resources with which to expand my development, including those of the Martin Luther King, Jr., and Howard Thurman, who spent many years here in the area and left, rich, inspiring and enduring legacies.

Chapter Four is titled God Reaps the Harvest, and covers my return to Norfolk State University for one more year and serving for one year as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in the Religious Studies Department, but the following year applying for and being hired in the tenure track position as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. Here I remained for 33 years and was able to really develop extensively as a minister and a scholar, teaching full time, pastoring full time, doing research and traveling to 6 continents gathering resource materials, writing numerous articles published in refereed journals and publishing four books, among many other achievement, including chairing the Religious Studies Department for six years and serving as Pastor of Mt. Sinai A.M.E. Zion Church for seven and a half years, and Presiding Elder of the Tampa District of the A.M.E. Zion Church for seventeen years. Having retired as Professor Emeritus in 2014, I still serve as Pastor of Love of Christ A.M.E. Zion Tabernacle, Inc., in Brandon, FL, which I and my family founded, and I have pastored 25 years.

Chapter Five is titled God Prunes the Branches, which covers the various ways in which God has dealt with me from both respects in educational, scholarly, community, social, and spiritual development in order to keep me on the righteous path in which He placed me and enriched my life to His glory.

Chapter Six is titled God Enlarges the Garden, and contains the many travels national and international both for scholarly and ministry purposes, including those in campaigning for Bishop in the A.M.E. Zion Church.

Chapter Seven is titled Garden Graces, and includes other travels national and international, my role as Chair of the Religious Studies Department and its challenges, as well as other challenges in the ministry, and ultimately my retirement from the University after 33 years, Retirement Celebrations, Award of Professor Emeritus by the University, taking on of greater responsibility as Chair of the Committee on Uniform Series of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA.

Conclusion: This section gives a wrap-up and short review of the 50-year span of my ministry, scholarship, and teaching, and introduces the planning of the 50th Year Anniversary Celebration Dinner for April 2020.

Yeah, Lord! Moving with the Spirit

Fifty Years a Minister and a Scholar to the Glory of God

(Memoirs of a Lifelong Quest)

CHAPTER ONE

God Plants Seeds

Where did it all begin? Psalm 139 attests:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and

Wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

That I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

When I was being made in secret,

Intricately woven in the depths

Of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed

Substance.

In your book were written

All the days that were formed

For me,

When none of them as yet

Existed. (Ps. 139:13–16 NRSV)

I have lived for the Lord. I am living for the Lord. For You, O Lord, have accomplished your will and purposes in my life. I am consciously awaiting You and the movement of Your Spirit. Even though I have consciously pursued what was in my heart and in my mind at given times, I have never been beyond your direct hand of influence. Your mercies have been new every morning all these many decades!

Seeking to Make Something of Myself

This is a quest. It has always been a quest, sometimes led and sometimes driven. I do not believe that I shall leave this life before this quest is realized or fulfilled. What was and is it all about? How did it get started? I begin at a memorable spot, and perhaps the rest shall fall in its place.

When I first enrolled in the PhD program at Emory University in Atlanta in 1977, I had come a long way on this journey that had had many twists and turns, detours, highs and lows and yet would have many, many more. This was a turning point, a crossroad, if you will. The journey had two parallel paths that did not much conflict but would merge at times. I was then a minister of the gospel, which I had become seven years earlier after ten years of teaching English and literature at three institutions: Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi; Owen Junior College in Memphis, Tennessee; and Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. Becoming a minister of the gospel had led me to take a two-year leave of absence from Norfolk State University and attend Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New York (1971–1973) to study religion and theology, during which I acquired the MA degree in religious studies. I was ordained a deacon in the AME Zion Church by the Right Rev. Herbert Bell Shaw in 1973 in Rochester at the Memorial AME Zion Church that memorialized underground railroad leader Harriett Tubman, as well as Susan B. Anthony, and others involved in the women’s freedom struggles of the nineteenth century; and I was ordained an elder by The Right Reverend Charles Herbert Foggie in 1975 in Norfolk, Virginia, at the Metropolitan AME Zion Church. One of my main areas of focus at Colgate Rochester was the black church, including black religion and the life of Martin Luther King Jr. I was then what they called bi-vocational; I was both a minister and a scholar. How did this all come about? one might ask.

I should explain. I had pretty much solidified my position in college and university teaching, scholarship, and community service in the mid-1960s when already existing movements in the society began escalating and steadily mounting to the point of serious disruptions and upheavals, which affected every area and institution of life, causing me and other socially conscious individuals to become more politically, religiously, and socially involved. This involvement had a profound effect on my sense of self and personal identity, goals, and commitments. I began to question and reexamine more deeply my purpose for being in light of family, friends, social status and position, and the contributions I might be able to make in light of the societal situation and needs. I should be more specific. What had happened in the 1960s that affected me so deeply and caused me to undergo significant self-realization and personal and professional transformation?

First of all, the decade of the 1960s was a phenomenal period in American history, as we all so well know. A pivotal point in that decade was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights movement under the leadership of King and others of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), including Mrs. Rosa Parks and other notable women activists, had grown to have a profound effect on the social, religious, cultural, economic, and political fabric of the country. That movement, beginning in 1955 with the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, had grown considerably from a mostly Southern sociopolitical and religious struggle to a nationwide battle for rights and liberties. Its nonviolent methods and means of marches and demonstrations, sit-ins, economic boycotts, and the like were generating much enthusiasm and causing much debate and sharp confrontations among numerous groups and intellects in the society. Between the years 1954 and 1960, this struggle in the society coincided with my educational pursuits at LeMoyne College in Memphis, Tennessee (from which I graduated in 1959 with an AB degree in English) and graduate studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (from which I graduated in 1963 with an MA degree in English language and literature). Preceding this period, I had also met and married my husband, Edrick Woodson in 1950, and to our union were born two lovely daughters, Cynthia LaVerne (1951) and Marcia Delores (1956). This is to say that I was busy living my young life and trying to succeed in as my mother, Mrs. Odena Gordon, used to say making something of myself (M. G. Mitchell, New Africa in America: The Blending of African and American Religious and Social Traditions Among Black People in Meridian, Mississippi, and Surrounding Counties 1994, 126-29). While I was definitely much concerned with the civil rights struggle and its effects on my personal life and development, I was not directly involved in any of its activities. The closest I had come to being involved was when I was attending the University of Michigan, and the movement was in the process of boycotting stores where segregation and discrimination was promoted or embraced. And at one point, I went to purchase school supplies from the five-and-dime store Woolworth (which is now no longer in business, I believe); and the store was surrounded by demonstrators with placards denoting the boycott of this particular establishment and its segregated and discriminatory branches in the South. Though I was a little annoyed because I didn’t know where I was going to be able purchase these supplies I needed, I certainly was not going to cross the picket lines and disobey the rules of the group by purchasing goods at the store anyway. Here I was stricken with mixed feelings, annoyed that I was annoyed, and gripped with a sense of helplessness and embarrassment that I was not one of the demonstrators.

Racial discrimination and segregation had certainly deeply affected me and my family throughout our lives in the South, including the state of Mississippi, where I was born and lived until the age of puberty, and Memphis, Tennessee, where I grew up mostly and was educated. In a blended working-class family of thirteen children, six boys and seven girls, I was next to the youngest. We were poor but proud, and we stuck together and helped one another and never had to be on public welfare. Yet with the older ones having to drop out of school and work to help support the rest, our father having passed away when I was a child of nine years old, I was the first in this large family to finish high school, not to mention completing college and going on to obtain the highest graduate degree. I was driven and determined to be somebody, as my mother used to always say. And getting an education we strongly believed was the way to achieve that goal. We felt that overcoming the shackles of inequality and discrimination in the society could be achieved through education, and I pushed on to that end. Yet I always felt a twinge of guilt for not being directly involved in the movement that was fighting for my civil rights and equality and justice throughout the society.

However, my social consciousness was in process of developing and steadily grew as I began to teach English at the college level. My first teaching position was at Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi, in 1960, where I spent one year; and my experiences of hard-core racism and discrimination in the state of my birth as an educated and professional woman showed me that I would have to get involved in working for change. As an example of the degrading and debilitating experiences I had in Mississippi that year, I cite the awful accident a female colleague (Betty) and I had on our drive from Alcorn to Memphis a few days before Easter. I had purchased my two daughters’ Easter clothes and packed them in the trunk of my new Ford Fairlane. It was around 9:00 p.m., dark and very rainy on a two-lane highway. Anyone who knows of the legend of the Mississippi mud will catch this right away. Somehow or another, a huge truck passed me; and the impact blew me off the road onto the muddy shoulder. Frightened, I thoughtlessly hit my brakes and tried to come back on the road; but the car skidded to the other side of the road heading toward the oncoming traffic, where, in order to avoid a head-on collision, I veered off to the left and sideswiped a beautiful Cadillac. My car landed in the ravine or ditch and was stuck there. When the Mississippi Highway Patrol came, we felt relieved: drenched by the rain and water-filled car, chilled to the bone but relieved. The patrol radioed for a tow truck to get our car out of the ditch and had us get in the back of their patrol car, where they questioned us extensively and sometimes unnecessarily. I answered as best I could as driver of the vehicle; but I kept being interrupted by one of the patrolmen who shouted angrily at me, saying, "You say sir to him, n——"

Trembling, I replied, Sir.

But I would often forget to say that all-important word in my replies and would be hollered at to say it again and again. And finally after verbally abusing us in so many ways, he asked where we worked; and when we said at Alcorn College, he lightened up a bit and let us go when our car had been retrieved from the ditch and we were able to drive it. It was around midnight then, and we just wanted to find the nearest motel that wasn’t For white only and get cleaned up and get some sleep. The patrolmen did not offer to help with that. When we got to the motel, Betty had had an ugly accident in her clothes and had to really get cleaned. We felt we were lucky to be alive, thinking what those mean patrolmen could have done to us. But thank god, they let us go.

The following year, 1961, I began what was to become a four-year teaching term at Owen Junior College in Memphis, Tennessee, where I succeeded well in developing my teaching skills. But my professional ambitions led me to desire to become engaged at the level of four-year liberal arts colleges and universities, which would allow for greater advancement. Thus, I applied for and succeeded in acquiring a position at what was then Norfolk State College, which later became Norfolk State University, in Norfolk, Virginia. This is where the levy broke, you might say; and the flood of emotions and formerly bottled-up feelings against being denied and discriminated against as an individual and as part of a group surfaced and began to affect my teaching, my interactions with students and other teachers, stimulated by the challenging essays and articles we read and discussed in English composition and literature classes on social, cultural, and political issues we were facing in the contemporary setting. After a few years of facing the issues we encountered came the explosive news of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., following, of course, the killings of so many other leaders in this and other movements, such as Medgar Evers much earlier, Malcolm X, and Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. Not to mention the assassination of John F. Kennedy earlier in the same decade.

As for my own life and experience, I was more deeply moved, and one might say devastated, by King’s assassination for many reasons, which mostly I cannot get into. I can say that it was definitely because it was in my hometown that it took place, and it thus seemed a personal affront to me; and of course, it seemed for that reason to arouse my sense of guilt for not having been directly and personally involved in the civil rights movement. Above all, of course, it seemed so unfair that this should have happened to a man like King, who was driven by the noblest of sentiments and intentions: the pursuit of love and harmony among all humankind in every area of life. And if it could happen to such a man as he, who promoted nothing but nonviolent means of effecting change, then it was my conclusion that not only I but everyone should be working diligently toward changing the society where such a cruel and unjust act could occur. So from that moment on, in my own way, I became immersed in the movement for social change. It became my personal quest to realize the dream of this our hero. I will for now simply give highlights of how I became immersed.

Seeking Justice

To start, I joined the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which organized and led the civil rights movement across the nation, assisted by other groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and others. It was significant that it had been a Christian organization that led this effective movement for social change, and I felt it was my duty to help promote this group and its work. But this was not enough. The mood of the times was suddenly shifting from the goals of civil rights organizations such as SCLC to those of black power and racial pride and control: black nationalism. I began traveling throughout the country attending black power group meetings, such as those promoting black cultural development, black educational development, black history, and black literature. I traveled to such places such as Washington DC, Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; New York City, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Newark, New Jersey; and other places. I even hosted a conference on black education in Norfolk, sponsored by a Norfolk branch of the National Conference of Afro-American Education that we had founded, namely, the Tidewater Association of Afro-American Education, which was devoted to the new black consciousness, awakening, analyzing, and presenting plans for developing black education for social change and development. Interestingly, in June of 1968, only two months after King’s assassination, we were traveling by automobile from Norfolk to Chicago to one of these meetings held to organize that group when we heard on the news that Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated in California. Certainly, this news affected the mood and tenor of the entire meeting, which lasted for several days. We were black faculty, administrators, and students from higher education institutions across the country as well as concerned intellectuals and activists seeking ways we could unite with one another from our local campuses and communities and achieve black control of the education of our people for dignity, respect, justice, and autonomy.

Back at Norfolk State, the students organized a black student union and asked for me to be their advisor. I accepted this call, and the university approved it. This was quite a task in these turbulent times when black power had become the rallying cry of students at colleges and universities across the country. They were marching and demonstrating, demanding change in the status quo that would include establishing black studies programs as a standard part of the curricula and granting black students equal rights and justice socially, economically, and culturally. Meetings and assemblies were being held where feelings were high and vigorous confrontations were taking place between student and teacher advocates for change and those seeking calm and composure to counter and soften disruptive demands. Black students advocating for a new African cultural identity were wearing their hair natural, including big wide Afros and bold and exotic African attire, and seeking to express newfound aspects of their African identity discovered through reading of African American and African history and literature, etc. These students and many of their professors, including me, were interacting with the community as never before; and the community, both black and white, were undergoing similar awakenings and showing interests in radical new views regarding education and developments and interests of students in schools and colleges. Black liberation and black consciousness groups were being formed in the community to help organize and work for political, economic, social, and educational change and development. Not to mention the anger and frustration sizzling in the communities over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and other political and social leaders such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, and Robert