Let the Trumpet Sound: A White Cleric's Tribute to the Drum Major

by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague

Prologue

(Published Winter 2008) More than a year ago, Dr. Everett Tilson extended your MLK Committee’s gracious invitation for me to speak today. Despite vexing questions in my mind about the appropriateness of a white person fulfilling this role, I readily accepted. I did so out of forty-five years of profound respect for Everett. After all, he remained the teacher and I was still the student. And, I quickly agreed to be here, as well, because the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at a generational distance, and a number of his colleagues in the Movement, up close and personal, particularly the Revs. Otis Moss, Fred Shuttlesworth, James Lawson, E. O. Thomas, and Jesse Jackson helped to shape the contours of my lifetime of ministry. Little did we know, when Everett placed that call in customary, well-in-advance Everett fashion, that his death would preclude his physical presence here today. But, as his spirit pervades this event, what follows is offered in memory of Dr. Everett Tilson, teacher and cajoler, friend and irascible troubler of conscience and practice. Everett, this one is for you with deep gratitude and abiding respect.

Following Dr. King’s assassination on April 4th, and two subsequent urban upheavals in Cincinnati, late in the Spring of 1968, the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss and I were eating breakfast together at the Vernon Manor Hotel in the Queen city. The topic of conversation was what the churches - black and white, Protestant and Roman Catholic - and the synagogues - Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed - could do together to address the systemic causes of the so–called riots and, hence, help to quell the violence on Cincinnati’s streets. Dr. Joseph Link, prominent Cincinnati physician of that era and the then relatively new owner of the Vernon Manor Hotel, was pouring coffee in the hotel’s dining room, as had become is custom. “Would you boys like more coffee,” Dr. Link graciously inquired as he approached our table. We blinked and nodded affirmatively. Dr. Link then moved a few feet to the next table. With coffee pot in tow, he asked the four, white, male customers seated there, “Would you gentlemen like more coffee?” I do not recall their response, but I shall never forget that of Dr. Moss. With a grimace of perception and without a word, he summoned Dr. Link to our table. “Sir,” Dr. Moss asked courteously, “I would like to inquire as to what intervened in your history between our table and theirs that made them “gentlemen” and rendered us “boys?” Shaken, incredulous even, Dr. Link was silent for a time. Then, regaining equilibrium, he said, “That was rude and insensitive if me.  I apologize and promise you that never again shall I call any man, “boy.” Something had indeed intervened in the life and history of Dr. Joseph Link. But, he was not the only white person as that table, or of that era, who was confronted and changed dramatically by the disconcerting, reorienting spirit of the Lord mediated through that tough, yet tender, witness of the Drum Major for Justice, his minion of lead trumpeters like Revs. Moss, Shuttlesworth, Lawson, Jackson, Young, Abernathy, Lewis, and a host of other black clergy and the heroic laity, especially the quite old and very young of the historic black church, who marched with the Movement to Freedom’s undeniable and relentless beat.

My life and ministry, like those of other white clergy privileged to have been there in Selma, Jackson, and hosts of other places, South and North, were changed forever by the witness of the Drum Major, his lead trumpeters in the Movement Band, and a few white band members, like Everett Tilson, who implored us to hear, believe and eventually integrate into the very fabric of our beings the intervening Word of the Lord, which forever turned the tables of our lives, as we gained equilibrium and realized that, “The Spirit of the lord has anointed (us); . . . has sent (us) to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoner.” (Isaiah 61: 1b-2)

On this occasion, it would not be appropriate for this white cleric to presume to detail what Dr. King and his trumpeters of justice in the Movement Band did for and mean to black people. That story must be told from the black experience. But, what is appropriate this afternoon is for me to “Let the Trumpet Sound,” as I express, explicitly and implicitly, “A White Cleric’s Gratitude for the Drum Major “- -his lead trumpeters and at least one white fellow traveler, who marching stride for stride, side by side, proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.  

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