Won't He Do It!: Trusting God in the midst of... A Memoir of Relationships, Racism, and Redemption

By Joe Maddox

This memoir exposes my short falls and opens my fickle life for the world to take a peek behind the curtains of the stoic Pastor Joe B. Maddox. It reflects how the hand of God has been upon me to direct my path in spite of me, systemic racism, and some dark days in my life. Without a doubt, those who know me will not believe my unscrupulous lifestyle, except for the fact that I make admissions in writing. Although the details are by no means flattering, it is my prayer that the reader who may be in what he or she believes to be the gutter-most of life, will trust in the God who protects me and brings me through difficult times. Won't He Do It!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Maddox
• Release date: Mar 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987756201

Book preview

Won't He Do It!

Joe B. Maddox

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Copyright © 2023 by Joe B. Maddox

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, scanning, uploading, or other electronic or mechanical methods without permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. If you would like permission to use material from this book, please contact [e-mail].

Scriptures are taken from the New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked KJV are taken from the King James Version (KJV): King James version, public domain.

The Reality and Resolution of Racism, Copyright ©2020 by Timothy L. Maddox, Sr. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN 13 Trade Paperback: 979-8-9877562-1-8

ISBN 13 Ebook: 979-8-9877562-0-1

For Worldwide Distribution. Printed in the U.S.A.

Cover design by Terry Did’Um Designs

Cover photography by Carlos Jones

Interior photo designs by Terry Did’Um Designs

To Vivian (my wife), my family, and my church family, the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared. ― Barack Obama

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ― Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Contents

Introduction

1. Early Childhood

2. My Siblings

Eugene (Gene)

Earlie Jr.

Geneva

Purnell

Jesse

Aaron

Arch

Florida Mae

Others Like Brothers

3. Church Life as a Child

Big Meeting Sundays

My Salvific Experience

4. Primary and Secondary Education

5. Undergraduate Education

Pledging Omega Psi Phi

Surviving the Car Crash

Marriage as a Student

Back to School

Job-Related Issues

6. Graduate Education

Two Long Letters

Finishing my Graduate Research

7. Secular Career

Revegetation Specialist

Chief, Branch of Biological Sciences

Supervisory Biological Scientist

Chief, Division of Tennessee Permitting

Deputy Field Office Director

8. Ministerial Journey

My Winding-Road Epiphany

Familiar Relations in Pennsylvania

Theological Persuasion

1. Total Depravity

2. Unconditional Election

3. Limited Atonement

4. Irresistible Grace

5. Perseverance of the Saints

Giving to the Christian Ministry

Ministry Development

Building Projects

Personal Ministry to William R. Thomas

My Missionary Journeys

1. The Caribbean Islands

2. Africa

9. Christian Education and TBMEC, Inc.

10. Civic Involvement

11. Some Dark Days in My Life

My Wife

My First Born

12. Social Injustice Experiences

When White Men Came After My Brother

The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Church Involvement in Social Justice

The Big Lie

My Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration Speech

13. Plans for Retirement

14. Concluding Words

Appendix

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Perspectives

. Chapter

Introduction

In this writing, I have tried to be transparent with the information that I share. However, I have not shared everything. To do so would prove too hurtful and humiliating for some of us. Further, the things that I have shared are true, but with obvious embellishments. Those areas will be clear by the sarcastic language and my references to verbal gestures. While some events may not be in the exact order, I made sure they were close to the actual timeline.

From as far back as I can remember, my daddy worked the farm and another job. I remember hearing him talk about receiving a pay raise to $1.25 per day. In the 1940s, he worked on the Calloway farm. Later, he took a job at a fiber mill in Columbus, Georgia. After that, he became a school bus driver for the Harris County, Georgia school system. While in high school in the 1960s, I saw one of his monthly paychecks. It was $118.00. He left home at six o’clock in the morning five days a week to drive the bus to two different schools. He also worked as a school maintenance man during the day. He drove students home in the afternoon and rarely returned home before five o’clock in the evening. All for a mere $118 per month. Offended may be what I felt. Maybe it was something else. Pride? Empathy? Shame?

In 1960, according to the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, White men made an average of $5,137.00 per year ($2.46 per hour for two thousand eighty hours); nonwhite men made an average of $3,075.00 per year ($1.48 per hour for two thousand eighty hours). After calculations based on the 1960 census, my father earned less than half of what most Black men earned, and about a fourth of what most White men earned. One might argue that he agreed to work for that salary. Yes, he did. But that does not justify the school system preying on him because of his lack of knowledge. They took advantage of my daddy.

Even then, without a better understanding of systemic injustice, something was wrong with that picture. A new slavery was rampant three generations to my father, all under the cloak of a monthly paycheck, $118.00 per month.

At that point, Mamma worked as a housekeeper in Columbus for $3.00 per day. Being twenty-two miles from our home, my mother often caught a ride to get to the carpool that drove her to Columbus. She left home in the wee hours of the morning to arrive at her job by eight o’clock, and those who she carpooled with had to be paid out of her daily wage.

I thought I was four generations from slavery. But reminiscing, I see I am only one generation from bondage. Daddy was born in 1905 and Mamma in 1907, decades after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation announcing, all persons held as slaves… shall be free. Therefore, they lived a different form of slavery.

Things were difficult back then, but the Lord continued to provide for us. Mamma and Daddy depended on the Lord seemingly for everything. Now I understand why. I know the Lord will make a way somehow. Won’t He do it!

Daddy’s father was a farmer who was just one generation from slavery. So, while Daddy finished the second grade, he likely missed quite a bit of school because of farming. Obviously, his parents, Pa Jerry, and Ma Ida, placed little emphasis on school. All they knew was farm work. To them, they couldn’t count enough to keep up with their account at the local store where they charged everything they needed until they harvested the crops. They relied on the storekeeper to do it for them. It was a poor business decision; but that’s the way it was in those days.

Mamma would sometimes tell the story of how her parents were cheated one year. Pa Punnie, Mamma’s daddy, would often ask the store owner about his bill and how much he owed. The owner kept telling him not to worry about it, and they would just settle up after the harvest. Of course, there was little to nothing that he could do about it. After the crops were harvested, Pa Punnie came home downtrodden because he went in to settle with the store owner and was told that he had not quite broken even that year. He came out in the hole was the phrase.

Chapter one

Early Childhood

Born on a farm in west-central Georgia, twelve country miles from Hamilton, I was the last of nine children. Hamilton came into being on March 2, 1828. The place, now called Harris County, was formed by incorporating the northern part of Muscogee County and the southern part of Troup County. There were fifteen or twenty little towns in that area of western Harris County. The most prominent ones were Mountain Hill and Whitesville. My birthplace was about a half-mile north of Mountain Hill. My elementary school was another six miles north in Whitesville.

We raised a good deal of cotton and corn, but we were largely truck-crop farmers. I plowed mules named Mammie and Molly, but not as much as my six older brothers. Some of my many responsibilities included chopping and picking cotton, pulling corn and fodder, and picking peas, beans, and tomatoes.

Picking up white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, along with shucking and shelling corn, and loading watermelons were more of my assigned chores. Gathering and peeling fruit from the orchard, washing canning jars, drawing water for washing clothes and hog-killings, extends the list. But the list is not complete.

Chopping wood, slopping hogs, and feeding chickens concludes the chores list. But there was the unspoken rule that work was not over until the completion of other responsibilities as assigned.

My siblings claimed I didn’t do as much work as they. Probably not. I never liked farm work and looked forward to leaving it behind, even though it was part of my life. I thought, when I get off this farm, I’d never tell a mule gitup again unless it was sitting in my lap.

We were poor but didn’t know just how poor. For us, it was just the way things were. We didn’t have money to buy food from stores, but we had the produce and protein from what we grew and raised. Since we slaughtered most of our meat, I ate plenty of streak-of-lean and fatback. But believe it or not, I didn’t eat processed bacon until I was sixteen-years-old. I bought it the summer I worked for the Tom Houston Farm and Recreation Area. It cooked up quickly, which was important because I left for work by six o’clock in the morning. Whatever I ate in the morning, I had to prepare myself. I was the only child at home, and since Daddy didn’t drive the bus during the summer, Mamma didn’t get up to cook.

At the Tom Houston Farm, they paid us in cash weekly. My cash amount was about $25.00 per forty-hour week. One day, my cousin rode to headquarters with the farm manager who picked up the checks for the employees. He then took the checks to the bank to cash them. While the boss was in the bank, my cousin risked glancing at the record book, and discovered that headquarters paid us considerably more than we received in our envelopes. The manager took the money home, or somewhere, to put in the envelopes. To this day, I don’t know how much I made, nor do I know whether my cousin or anyone else ever raised the issue. But the manager was likely pocketing money from each of the ten to twenty men working on the farm. Who knows how long he had cheated the employees.

It amazes me how many people in power have plotted to harm us by taking what is rightfully ours. Yet, we keep finding ways to survive and thrive against all odds, and the Sovereign Lord keeps on making a way.

My family worked hard, did our jobs, and stayed out of trouble, for the most part. Yet, we were struggling poor people. When I speak of poor, it is regarding our finances. For example, I don’t remember a time when our house was not wired for electricity. But I remember sometimes studying by kerosene lamps, candles, or light from the fireplace. I don’t know if Daddy didn’t have money to pay the bill or if there were other reasons the lights were out.

Often, I would lie on my belly near the hearth in front of the fireplace. Then, it was inconvenient. Now, as I look back on the situation, it was cozy. Mamma, Daddy, Aaron, Arch, Flo, and I were just there, sometimes playing games or talking. Other times there was silence with just the smell of the burning wood, the flickering of the fire, and the crackling and popping that came from the logs. What we lacked in money, we made up for in love. There was never a doubt that my mamma, my daddy, and my siblings loved me.

Mamma and Daddy had their spats that were sometimes ugly and frightening. But their love for their children never diminished. Frankly, I don’t believe their love for each other ever diminished, either. Back then, men often treated their wives insensitively, but Mamma would not endure that kind of treatment without an argument, and even a fight if it came to it. She was a feisty woman and would not put up with Daddy’s or anybody’s crapola without protest. However, no matter what went on between Mamma and Daddy, she demanded the children always respect him.

One good thing about living on a farm was learning survival skills. We couldn’t go to the shop to get things fixed or hire a contractor. Daddy and the boys had to fix it. He was a jack of all trades and master of none. However, he was a pretty good blacksmith because he shod mules and horses and sharpened tools for people far and near. My daddy knew enough to teach the boys how to become skilled at handling what needed fixing. Most of us developed skills that exceeded his.

Chapter two

My Siblings

This section helps define me and my attention to details on how to survive. Growing up around my siblings and receiving their tutelage in ways that they didn’t realize taught me to pay attention to my environment. I learned to figure out how to deal with life in a system designed to oppress people like me. My siblings and their spouses did what was necessary to survive society’s oppressive system and make life better for their children.

Eugene (Gene)

Being the last of nine children and seven years younger than the eighth, some of the older siblings had children with whom I grew up. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that my oldest brother, Eugene (Gene) was my brother until his son, Eugene Jr. (five months my junior) and I had an argument about which one of us had ownership of Gene.

I don’t remember how the argument started, but we got into a back-and-forth heat. I told Junior that he was my Gene. In turn, Junior told me he was his Gene. We took the matter to a higher authority—Mamma. She said, he belongs to both of y’all. Junior, he’s your daddy, Gene, and Joe, he’s your brother, Gene.

Mamma’s explanation did two things: It settled the argument once and for all, and I learned that the man I adored so much was my big brother. He really was my Gene. What a proud moment for a five or six-year-old boy.

I loved my nephew Junior and his sister, Katherine. Junior and I grew up like siblings until we were in the second grade. Their sister Camelia came a little later in our lives.

While we had a close relationship, I was quick-tempered, and he was adventurous. I would get angry at the proverbial drop of a hat, and he was always getting into stuff. That combination of personalities often led to fights. He was a fighter. I was not. I was the one who was defeated in almost every fight. I loved him too much to hurt him. I would take the defeat so that I wouldn’t lose my best friend. Or I would just get angry and go home or stop playing.

When we were in the second grade, our Gene had become a migrant worker going from Florida to pick oranges to New York to pick apples, sometimes stopping along the way to pick up potatoes. One day, maybe a little before Christmas break, Gene was home from his job. He had probably left Florida and was on his way to New York, or vice versa, in a few weeks. Until that time, Junior and I had done everything together. When Gene came by the school to pick up his son, my best friend, I couldn’t go. I had to stay in school and watch them drive away with Junior holding a wind propelled toy out the window so I could see it. I didn’t understand the need for families to be together, so it genuinely hurt me when I was left at school.

Even more hurtful was when Gene took his family with him, and they became a migrant family. Not only was my heart wounded, but I was also envious. I later learned Gene was taking Junior way away to New York, and I had to stay at home on the farm. I wanted to see New York. I wanted to go to Florida. At the time, the only places I had been were about an hour’s drive in either direction from the farm.

We had no telephone. So, for a while, Junior and I wrote to each other. I guess our communication lasted three or four years. To a young boy, those years seemed to be a lifetime. But Gene came back and settled his family between Mountain Hill where I lived and Columbus. Junior and I continued our close relationship—but it was different. By then we were preteens and had developed somewhat separate lives.

The fights resumed, and I was once again yielding to defeat. But one day he caught me in my not-so-generous mood. It was about dusk dark, and they were leaving for home. Junior jumped me again, but for the last time. I grabbed him, threw him in the dirty furrows of the field down below the well, and held him there long enough to let him know I would no longer submit to defeat from him in a fight. When we got to the front of the house, his mamma, Dotha, knew right away that we had been fighting. We didn’t admit it, but they all knew. To this day, Junior has never ever started a fight with me.

Meanwhile, there was another schoolmate, Willie, who lived in the community. Willie was about five months older than I, and we were in the same class. We developed a somewhat close relationship. We would visit each other on our bikes and sometimes he would spend the night with me. We probably lived about two miles apart if we took the road, one mile if we took the path through the woods. It was not until I was fourteen years old that I learned Willie was my nephew. He was Gene’s son, born out of wedlock before his marriage.

A strange thing about the adults of that day, is that they kept things hidden that should have been revealed. Even after I learned that Willie and Junior were brothers, years passed before I dared to talk about it with anyone except Mamma, who finally told me the truth. Even when Gene would send clothes or money to our house for Willie, I never said a word. As I write today, I feel an emptiness. I have always loved family. However, Willie and I could never enjoy each other until we were adults. Shameful.

Earlie Jr.

Our daddy spelled his name E-a-r-l-y. But for some reason, his second child spelled his name E-a-r-l-i-e. While I am not sure how that happened, I remember Mamma telling me that Daddy didn’t learn to read and write until after they were married. She actually taught him. He finished the second grade and Mamma finished the fifth. But he had the correct spelling.

The second child, Earlie Jr. left my life when I was very young. I might have been three or four years old. I remember the ruckus. Earlie Jr. was at the house, and I heard a lot of shouting and thrashing around. Florida Mae was stooping on top of the back porch banister, crying. I saw Earlie Jr. rushing from the house going across the Hop Johnson field. The Hop Johnson field was a tract of land that Daddy and them had acquired and was mostly used as pastureland.

I was too young to know what was going on since the grown folks didn’t tell children much. But later I learned that Earlie Jr. and his wife Carrie had just engaged in a fight that led to separation and finally a divorce. But the indelible image etched in my mind that day was Earlie Jr. going across the field. I probably didn’t know he was my brother. That incident is my earliest remembrance of him. I learned later in life that he left Harris County that day and didn’t return until some years later.

My next recollection of him was Christmas morning before my seventh birthday. A strange man was standing in front of the fireplace when I awakened, and he was just talking and laughing. Mamma and Daddy were laughing and talking with him. During their discussions and laughter, he would say to me now and then, ain’t that right, Joe?

Of course, I didn’t even know what they were discussing, much less if what he said was right or wrong. I was just trying to figure out who he was and why he was so familiar with the family, including me. So, I finally got to Mamma and whispered, who is that man?

She replied, it’s your brother, Junior.

I knew of Junior, but I didn’t know him. So, I warmed up to him. But within a few days, he was gone again. Even though Junior didn’t finish elementary school, Mamma often remarked that Junior was the smartest of her children in schoolwork. He was the only one of us who advanced a grade ahead of his class. In other settings, I have heard Gene say learning came easy for Junior but was difficult for him.

I knew about Junior’s children that he and his estranged wife had together. But I don’t remember meeting them until we met at school. Carrie Bell, the oldest of three was about two or three years younger than I. When she started school at Johnson Elementary, we immediately met, and our acquaintance started. It wasn’t long, maybe the next week, that she started going home with me to spend the night with her paternal grandparents, her Aunt Florida Mae, and Uncles Arch and Joe. She didn’t call us uncle and aunt because we were so close in age. She was beautiful and smart, but shy. She would talk only if we started the conversation and would only respond in brief statements. That never changed, even when we were adults.

Then, the next year, her brother, Robert Earl, started school. We hit it off right away. We met one day and the next day he went home with me. He was not shy, but he was cautious. I feel certain that Daddy, knew them, and had probably provided support to them. Daddy was like that. Later, I met Gloria who was about five years behind me. We grew closer when we were in high school.

But I really didn’t get to know my brother, their daddy, until my senior year in high school. By then he