Daughtry Urges More Racial Justice Effort

At age 75, The Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry can point to 46 years of service in his church and community and a worldwide reputation as a seeker of justice. Yet one thing that he chose to share with an audience of about 600 people Monday was a humiliation.

The largely African-American audience chuckled wryly as Daughtry recounted how his people used to make trips home to the South, armed with nothing more than shoeboxes full of fried chicken and pound cake against the perils of segregation. Stops had to be carefully calculated, but on his wedding trip home, he felt a craving for a frosty ice cream drink and pulled in at a dairy stand. As a grown man on his honeymoon, he was rebuffed with a racial epithet and told to go around back.

“That was the South of my youth,“ he said. “That’s why we love Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“

Daughtry, the national presiding minister of The House of the Lord Churches, was the featured speaker at the Frontiers International of Plainfield’s 30th Annual Memorial Breakfast at Plainfield High School in honor of the slain civil rights leader.

He traced the forces that led to enslavement of Africans and the struggles of subjugated blacks in America to assert their rights through King’s non-violent methods. But he exhorted young people to keep up the struggle today by making the most of their opportunities for education.

“If you don’t, guess what - they are already building jails for you,“ Daughtry said.

Daughtry commended both the Frontiers group and the five Plainfield High School students who received scholarships before he spoke. He also praised current Frontiers president BJ BrownJohnson, the mother of motivational speaker Nashad Warfield and Rhodes scholar Nima Warfield. BrownJohnson resumed her education as an adult and is now a principal in the Plainfield school district.

Speaking on “Creating the Beloved Community,” Daughtry asked, “If you have to create it, why was it fractured in the first place?”

Daughtry said early African civilizations excelled in the arts, sciences and philosophy and valued hospitality to outsiders. But he said Europeans usurped Africa’s knowledge and took advantage of its welcome to introduce colonialism and, along with Arabs, slavery. The effects of the divide-and-conquer incursions linger on today, he said.

“All you young brothers out there killing each other are just being programmed,” Daughtry said.

Under slavery, decades of insurrection were followed by a church-led effort at relief, where congregants sold untold numbers of chicken dinners and held fish-fries “to make sure our children went to school,” he said.

But segregation persisted, even though thousands of blacks served in the military through several wars.

It was the struggle as taken up by King and his followers that made the difference in civil rights, he said.

Citing the example of Rosa Parks, Daughtry said, “When she sat down, a people stood up.”

The lunch counter sit-ins, marches and strikes tipped the balance of racial justice.

But with more work to be done , Daughtry gave a humorous aside to the struggle.

Noting Bruce Springsteen is called “The Boss,“ Elvis Presley is “The King,“ Benny Goodman is “The King of Swing” and Frank Sinatra is “The Chairman of the Board, despite basing some of their music on African-American originals, Daughtry asked, “Can‘t we be something?”

Basing his comment on Frontiers member Roy Southerland’s maxim, “Do something to prevent nothing,” Daughtry said, “Let us not be in the category of not doing anything.”

--Bernice Paglia

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