ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the lynching and dismemberment of Elbert Williams, which shaped my early family life in the terroristic, white supremacist, Jim Crow South of the U.S. My family became part of the “Great Migration” of Black people from the South to the North, East, and West, my family migrating to Chicago initially before settling in “The D,” as Black folks dubbed Detroit. The death of Benjamin Whitehurst results in the disinheritance and eventual Northward migration of my “mixed blood” grandfather. The historical significance and role of the Black Church in America is discussed and its role as a place of refuge for African descendants of enslavement. The chapter concludes with my father’s call to preach and his founding of the Tennessee Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit.
