Claims about widespread fundamentalist proclivities within the black community emerged in the pages of black weeklies not only from sympathetic voices, but also from vehement opponents of the movement. Among the most notable and interesting in this regard was popular labor organizer and cultural commentator Ernest Rice McKinney. Though he was the grandson of a West Virginia Baptist minister—his grandfather, Lewis Rice, reportedly even baptized Booker T. Washington—McKinney nonetheless retained a sense of skepticism toward religion in general, and a particularly overt hostility toward the brand of theologically conservative fundamentalist Christianity that he observed in the black community.15 In a scathing 1925 article that cast Christian fundamentalism as “an obstacle to civilization to climb over and batter down,” McKinney lamented that “the Negro race is filled to overflowing with these ‘Fundamentalist’ gentlemen. They are everywhere and in everything. They keep us poor, ignorant, and weak.”16 Revisiting the subject in his newspaper column just months later, McKinney excoriated fundamentalists as backward-gazing “imbeciles” for their rigid commitment to biblical inerrancy and their “persecution of . . . Dr. Fosdick and Prof. Scopes.” His rhetorical bite went so far as to imply that the numerous blacks who embraced the fundamentalist perspective were not really fully or authentically part of the race at all; they were “white southerners with Negro mothers [and] Negroes with white fathers.”17 Aside from the startling depiction of black fundamentalists as enemies of “the Negro race”—a topic that will warrant further discussion later—McKinney’s characterization of the race as “filled to overflowing” with fundamentalists is a striking image in its own right. Such a characterization seems to echo, albeit from a polar opposite viewpoint, the Norfolk editorialist’s grandiose claim that “Our Group Are Fundamentalists in Religion.”
Such a sense of extensive theological fundamentalism within the black community, even if perhaps exaggerated at times for dramatic effect, was nevertheless borne out by the presence of individual black churches and individual black leaders, both clerical and otherwise, who were identified in the black press by the express use of the term “fundamentalist” or “fundamentalism.” Walker’s Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atlanta publicly embraced such an identity. The public announcement of their cornerstone-laying celebration in late 1932 unabashedly publicized that the principal address at this defining ceremony “will emphasize the importance of Fundamentalism in the church.”18 Significantly, the ceremony celebrating the laying of this church building’s literal foundation included exposition highlighting the similarly foundational role of fundamentalist convictions in the church at large, thereby indicating the gravity and import of the topic for the clergy and laymen of Walker’s Tabernacle Baptist. It is difficult not to see here a symbolic association of fundamentalism with the very bedrock of the church’s foundation; just as the brick-and-mortar church building could not stand apart from its architectural foundation, so the church as a spiritual entity could not stand apart from the affirmation of the essential truths of fundamentalism.
Major leaders in the wider African American community likewise identified themselves in this manner. In one of the more intriguing self-identifications in this vein, AME pastor William David Miller termed himself a “progressive Fundamentalist” in an interview reported by the Topeka Plaindealer, though unfortunately he offered no further explication of that tantalizing phrase aside from his conviction of the centrality of evangelism for the church.19 But regardless of what Miller might have intended the qualifying adjective “progressive” to signify, his forthright use of “fundamentalist” bespoke an apparent willingness to identify with the theologically conservative tradition widely connoted by that terminology during this era of turbulent religious conflict. Miller’s career through the 1930s, pieced together through various publications, suggests that this particular fundamentalist, at least, possessed a high degree of charisma and influence. Arriving in 1908 at Wesley Chapel AME Church in Houston, Miller helped the church take on “new strength and growth,” swelling membership to more than 800 during his six-year tenure.20 In each of four assignments after Wesley Chapel, Miller was able to either oversee the completion of church buildings or substantially pay down the church’s debt while also increasing congregational giving, apparently through increased attendance. His arrival at Oklahoma City’s Avery Chapel AME Church in 1929 presaged rapid growth: in his eleven years at the church, Miller was able to rebuild and expand the church building, establish an old folks’ home, and increase membership from 364 to 1,545—all in the midst of the Great Depression. He also held the distinction of being the only black clergyman in the state whose sermons were broadcast over the radio.21 Clearly Miller must have exhibited significant personal charisma and magnetism in order to achieve such success in so many venues, but his avowed position as a “progressive Fundamentalist” also indicates that a great many people in the black communities in Houston, Waco, Los Angeles, and Oklahoma City were ready and willing to lend their ears (and their money) to a man overtly claiming to preach some brand of fundamentalist Christianity.
Some members of the black press found their thoughts turning to the topic of fundamentalism even apart from the exclusively ecclesiastical realm. A correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier found this to be the case as he covered a graduation event at Howard University in June of 1928. He reported that the school’s president, Dr. Mordecai Johnson, proudly “proclaimed his beliefs in fundamentalism” to Howard’s graduating class, warning them that “religion . . . is the only thing that can give morale” and, in the reporter’s words, commending “‘the old-time religion’ as a cure for broken morale and a panacea for present day evils.”22 The interpretive spin injected by the reporter is in this instance perhaps more revealing than the speech itself. It is unclear whether Dr. Johnson himself used the term “fundamentalism” to describe his beliefs or whether this constituted an editorial addition from the reporter; considering Johnson’s educational pedigree, his connection to social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, and Harlem minister Adam Clayton Powell’s characterization of Johnson as a “modern . . . and emphatically not fundamentalist” minister, in addition to the lack of explicitly quoted material in this portion of the article, the much more likely explanation is that this was an editorial insertion.23 What is clear, however, is that while Johnson in all likelihood failed to use the term himself, the Courier’s reporter found the idea of “fundamentalism” sufficiently pressing on his own mind that he apparently erroneously associated Dr. Johnson’s appeals to religion’s utility and immediate moral significance with the fundamentalism that Ernest Rice McKinney had previously decried as “everywhere and in everything.” The influence of this religious perspective, it seems, was felt beyond the pews and the pulpit.
Among the ranks of self-proclaimed black fundamentalists, few were more widely recognized and regularly heard in their day than the Henry Brothers, a nationally renowned traveling revivalist troupe. The ensemble was prominent in the early to mid-1930s, headed by the family patriarch, J. I. Henry, who was accompanied by his sons, J. L. Henry, O. D. Henry, N. G. Henry, and W. W. Henry.24 Best known in the print media for employing a showman’s flair to “put over their fundamentalism,” the Henrys attracted both enormous crowds and nearly constant controversy wherever