The great-granddaughter of South Carolina slaves called for African-Americans and others to return to the Christian church roots of the civil rights movement that formed the foundation of the fight for racial justice in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Rev. Jane Sims, co-founder and co-pastor of the local Calvary Community Church, made her plea at the rescheduled 25th Annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast Saturday morning at The Commons in downtown Columbus before about 120 people in person plus a livestream audience.
Sims’ remarks were part of a two-hour-plus program that unfolded as part revival, part social justice rally — fitting because the organizing and local African American Pastors Alliance has been a big part of both in the community. Civil rights leader King, killed in 1968, was a pastor who also leveraged the impact of groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the push for equality for African Americans and others.
Sims, a well-known, outspoken, keynote orator at such events over the past 30 years or more, remembered that, when she was 5, her family drove to Woodruff, South Carolina, to meet her blind, 100-year-old great grandmother, born into slavery.
They stayed at her house with no plumbing. And it was a given that everyone would attend a sawdust-floor church service on Sunday morning after an old-fashioned, washtub bath.
“Singing, rejoicing — this is our heritage,” Sims said to crowd applause. “This where we’ve come from. We’ve come this far leaning on the Lord.
“It gave people (years ago) the strength to go through everything they went through. And it will give us the strength to go through things today.”
Singing and rejoicing formed a large part of the gathering that was rescheduled because omicron variant levels reached their peak locally around Jan. 17 on the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. national holiday. So organizers wove the rescheduling into being a part of February’s Black History Month.
A live musical ensemble formed from several churches joined a seven-member choir for rousing selections such as “This Is the Day That The Lord Has Made.”
Some numbers drew a standing ovation.
Sims focused with sadness on one other concern: that racial progress she witnessed over decades seems to have regressed in a society where young Black men especially are targets of police shootings.
For the complete story and more photos, see Sunday’s Republic.
