LITMIR.BIZ

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      Later, when I grew older and talked to C. C. and reminisced with some of those who had been involved in the dancing, I was told, “Boy, I wished Jesus Himself had come into that place, rather than your father. I was so embarrassed.”

      The next Sunday worship was very sobering. More than twenty-five persons came before the church at the time of the invitation to discipleship. All of them apologized and were restored. This was a time before television and very few people had radios. But this action spread throughout the city by word of mouth and established C. C. as a stern pastor.

      In September 1956, when coming home from Lincoln High School, I noticed my dad’s big dog wrestling with another dog. Being a lover of animals, I walked between them and was bitten on the knee. My mother saw it from the kitchen window. She was frantic. My dad came from his study into the kitchen. He was quite agitated. I had no idea how serious it was.

      There was an immediate search for the strange dog. Our dog had been vaccinated. The police looked throughout the city without any success in finding the dog. I began taking the regimen of fourteen shots at Green’s Clinic to prevent rabies.

      After the painful round of fourteen injections for fourteen consecutive days, I became very ill. I had no appetite and began losing weight. When my condition did not improve, I was admitted to Ruston General Hospital. I spent the next eight months in and out of the hospital. I missed the remainder of that school year. One evening, I heard C. C. and my doctor in a serious discussion.

      “Reverend, do you want to tell your son or would you like me to do it?” Dr. Bruce Everett asked.

      “No one is going to tell my boy he isn’t going to live,” Dad replied.

      Doctor Everett left the room. My mother was in tears. My father spent the nights with me, and my mother stayed home with my siblings and prepared to go to work at Lincoln Elementary School each day. On the night of the serious discussion with the doctor about whether I would live or not, C. C. came to my bed, and before going to sleep, he knelt and prayed a brief prayer.

      “Lord, I’ve been standing by your Son for these years. I just need you to stand by mine.”

      This was around the beginning of spring. I was released from the hospital a few days later.

      All the ministers included in this writing were introduced to me by my father. There are many others, but these are the ministers that greatly influenced me and my generation. I was influenced by John Bishop Huey, Clyde Lewis Oliver, David V. Martin, J. D. Jackson, David Matthews, and L. D. Scott, who said, “Son, you are standing on your father’s shoulders, so you are expected to go higher.”

      In 1957, while my parents were attending graduate schools in New York, my mother at Columbia University and C. C. at Union Theological Seminary, I met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. C. C. took my sister Patricia, brother John, and me to Brooklyn, New York, to worship at the Cornerstone Baptist Church; Dr. Sandy F. Ray was the pastor. We sat in the overflow section after walking several blocks looking for parking. I watched Dr. King mount the pulpit dressed in a dark gray jacket, matching gray slacks and tie with “spit” shined wing tip shoes. Even the youngest worshippers like me were on the edge of our seats as Dr. King told of the Montgomery bus boycott and combined his word power with the story of Calvary.

      After a standing ovation, C. C. said, “We’ll wait until the last person shakes his hand, and we’ll go speak to him and leave.” After Dr. King had given and received the last hug and handshake from the well-dressed worshippers, he looked in our direction.

      “MC,” he said, very surprised to see C. C. “What are you doing here in New York?”

      “My wife and I are attending grad school here. I want you to meet my children, and I want them to know you.” Beginning with my sister Patricia, then John, Dr. King shook our hands, asking our names and what grade we were in. When it came my turn, he asked “And what do you want to be when you grow up? A preacher like your daddy?”

      I replied very softly, “Yes.”

      I remember trying to preach at age seven, only to not receive encouragement from C. C., he didn’t encourage “boy preachers.”

      The next year, 1958, less than nine months later, my sister Claudette was traveling alone by train from Ruston, Louisiana, our hometown, to Atlanta, Georgia. She had been accepted as a freshman at Spelman College. Our house phone rang, and C. C. left the dinner table and answered. We knew something was wrong when we heard C. C. telling her, “Calm down. Don’t cry. Listen carefully, find a uniformed worker of the train, tell him what happened, and they’ll put you on a train back to Atlanta.” She had missed her stop. Next, C. C. reached in a nearby drawer and retrieved an address book; he gave information to the operator. Moments later, as all of us gathered around C. C., he said, “Mrs. King, this is C. C. McLain in Ruston, Louisiana. I know your husband and saw him last year in New York.” After exchanging pleasantries, C. C. explained the dilemma and then hung up the telephone.

      “What is it, Claude?” my mother asked.

      C. C. explained, and we returned to the dinner table. About three hours later, there was a call from Atlanta. Mrs. King and two other ladies from Ebenezer Baptist Church had gotten Claudette situated in a dormitory at Spelman.

      Later, C. C. explained how he first met MLK Jr. “The National Baptist Congress met in Denver, Colorado, in 1956. This was around the midway point of the Montgomery bus boycott. By this time, King had become a national figure. So the congress elected him as vice president. However, J. H. Jackson, the convention president, did not agree to King being vice president of the congress, and he arrived in Denver, Colorado, and removed King from the position. Martin was hurt. He was young, in his twenties. Because of Dr. Jackson’s decision, most ministers seemed to back away from Martin. I spent a half day consoling him,” C. C. said.

      “I said to Martin, the congress nor the convention will provide a platform large enough for you and your work. The Baptist denomination will not be big enough. God will provide a universal platform for you. Just wait and see,” C. C. said. “Martin was sad, hurt, and embarrassed. Jackson demonstrated envy and perhaps anger toward King in his publications. This may have been because at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, Jackson offered to provide buses for the boycott, but King refused.”

      “This would only hurt our cause. And the people we want to change will accuse us of being led by outside agitators,” King replied.

      C. C.’s advice and encouragement to King proved to be correct.

      C. C. and other preachers on my street were members of a group called the Nicodemus Club. They met at night to strategize on registering to vote and correct other social injustices. In 1945, C. C. was one of five African Americans to register and vote in Lincoln Parish. When Edwin Edwards became governor of Louisiana, he appointed my father chairman of the Lincoln Parish supervisor of elections. C. C. pastored at least six different churches before becoming pastor of the Little Union Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana.

      While pastoring the New Hope Baptist Church in Ruston, from 1948 to 1959, C. C. was elected the moderator of Liberty Hill Baptist Association in Grambling, Lincoln Parish, where he served twenty-two years. He was elected vice president at large of the Louisiana Baptist State Convention under Dr. T. J. Jemison and served until his death in 1991. After being encouraged to preach by C. A. W. Clark, C. C. was called by the church to fill the vacant pulpit at Little Union Baptist Church in December 1958. He became pastor in 1959. During the first year, C. C. had become actively involved in the civil rights movement. He met the buses of the freedom riders, helping them post bail. Little Union BC became the epicenter of the civil rights movement. C. C. had supported Dr. King during the Montgomery Movement by sending monthly financial contributions.

      Little Union, a church that began on the Brownlee Plantation (Bossier Parish) in 1892, after convincing a reluctant plantation owner who would not allow a large number of Blacks to meet. Organizers told him, “We are just a Little Union, boss.” With that, the church was organized.

      In early fall, 1959, in the hallway of the parsonage of the Looney Street location was the

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