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Reverend: Use what God gave you
By jeanne starmack
youngstown
The Rev. Henry McNeil remembers the freedom marches during the Civil Rights movement in the South in the 1960s.
There would be mass meetings before each one, he told a group of people gathered Sunday afternoon in Beulah Baptist Church for a service to observe Black History Month.
If you couldn’t be spit on, or have a baton hit your head, or stand being bitten by a dog, step out, people would be told.
“Hundreds would,” said the Rev. Mr. McNeil, adding that he didn’t blame them. “And those who thought we could make it would go on.”
Rev. McNeil, associate minister of Elizabeth Baptist Church in Youngstown, did go on.
As a young man from Camden, Ala., he was in the thick of the disenfranchisement that white government in the South had inflicted upon black people living there. Segregation was commonplace, and violence was rampant — Rev. McNeil once saw a black man gunned down for dating a white woman.
From 1954 to 1968, the civil-rights movement would plunge that region of the country into turmoil as people, mostly young, came from the North to help stop the violence and gain equality for blacks.
“That was a vital part of modern black history,” he said. “We were marching at the time. We didn’t know it would be such an historical event.”
“I must tell you the movement had youth in its essence, and they propelled the movement forward,” he continued.
His parents didn’t want him to march, he said. They believed in what Rev. King was doing, but they were afraid.
“My mother and father had seen too many people get killed. The young ones were dumb enough not to care.”
Rev. McNeil said he marched, not for all the right reasons, but really just to meet girls.
“Wilcox County was one of the most brutal in the state,” he said. “Nobody my whole adult life ever went to the polls — unless they wanted to commit suicide.”
He said that when black people graduated high school in his town, they left school, got on a bus that was waiting outside and went north. They couldn’t wait to get out of there.
“No white men ever got [traffic] tickets when I was a child — they boasted about it,” he said.
“People didn’t know what we went through — the fact that we weren’t humans until 1964,” he said. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act passed.
Rev. McNeil talked about dreams — in Genesis 37-40, when Joseph dreams he’s going to rise to power in Egypt, his brothers get jealous and try to kill him. Other misfortunes befall him, but he holds on to his dream.
King held on to his dream, he said, despite verbal and physical attacks.
“Dr. King’s dream is in the process of being realized,” he said. “In one of the freedom marches, he said ... ‘It won’t be long. No lie can last forever.’”
Rev. McNeil urged the congregation to look after children, paying attention to their academic issues and the school district. He said it is important to send them to college.
He also said the loss of black wealth is a huge issue now — $650 billion is lost in the black community a year because people don’t designate a will.
He said the most important message to remember is that God has a plan for everyone, so whatever your dream is, hold on to it and don’t let jealous people sway you.
“Take responsibility for what you have and how to use it,” he said.