April 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Dr. Tellis Chapman takes us on a remarkable journey through American history as seen through the eyes of a sharecropper's son who became one of the most influential voices in Black preaching. Growing up in segregated Pascagoula, Mississippi during the turbulent 1960s and 70s, Chapman's story illuminates both personal resilience and our nation's struggle toward racial justice.
From a modest three-bedroom home shared by ten family members (and frequently extended to community members in need), Chapman witnessed the painful transition from segregation to integration. As one of the children chosen to desegregate the local school system in third grade, he navigated racial tensions daily while watching how sports sometimes bridged divides between Black and white youth. His recollections of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination—and the "eerie quietness" that followed—provide a powerful window into that pivotal moment in American history.
Most striking is Chapman's revelation about the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of civil rights workers. Contrary to Hollywood portrayals, Chapman explains that Native American hunters witnessed the killings and informed local pastors, including his mentor Dr. Richard Sylvester Porter, who then told federal authorities where to find the bodies. This untold perspective highlights how much of our civil rights history remains misrepresented or completely unknown.
Chapman's spiritual journey proves equally compelling. Though basketball talent might have led him to college athletics, a persistent calling interrupted those plans. The story of accepting this calling from a phone booth with his last coin—and his father's initial dismissal followed by acceptance—marks the beginning of what would become nearly 45 years in ministry and social justice work.
Listen as Chapman traces his family lineage back to slavery, shares stories of remarkable ancestors, and reveals how his experiences shaped his commitment to overcoming injustice. Whether you're interested in American history, civil rights, spiritual journeys, or simply compelling human stories, this conversation offers profound insights that will stay with you long after the episode ends.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Nuance Conversations, a podcast where
depth meets dialogue.
Hosted by Dr George E Hurt,this show explores the great
areas of life where faith,wisdom and real-world
complexities intersect.
No easy answers, just honestconversations that challenge,
inspire and inform.
Get ready to lean in, listenclosely and explore the nuance.
(00:26):
This is Nuance Conversations.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Greetings and thank you for tuning in to another
episode of the NuanceConversation podcast.
I am your curator and your host.
Creator and curator of thissafe space.
We call this NuanceConversations because we are
safe and comfortable operatingin the gray, not just in the
(00:49):
black and white, which mostrealities lie in.
My name is George Hurt and wehave special guests here.
We say that every week, butthis week I want to stress that
a little bit more and be fair.
That you would understand.
But this is a man that,unbeknownst to him at the time,
(01:13):
introduced and craved my passionfor preaching.
In my teenage years I wouldwake up, I would set my alarm
clock and manipulate that tapedeck to wake up to his sermons,
and it was his passion that I,it was his preaching that gave
me a passion for what I laterlearned to know as expository
preaching and gifted in the areaof not just communication but
(01:39):
what we'll talk about a littlebit here in this episode
celebration and the uniquenessof in the black preaching
culture, which we would label ashooping, and then the
connection and ties that ourfamilies have my mom with his
down through the years in thesouthern region and that being
(02:02):
developed all the way fromDetroit to even now in Los
Angeles, tremendously,tremendously busy preacher,
pastor, leader, advocate forsocial justice, and so for him
to make time to be with us today, we are grateful we speak of
(02:23):
none other than the newly mintedDr Tellus Chapman.
Doc, how are you feeling today?
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on yourshow.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
No, thank you for being here.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground, something maybe
people didn't know about, notjust where you're from, but
growing up.
I know you grew up in apreacher's household.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Kind of walk us through those early days of your
life.
Well, mississippi born andMississippi bred, started
preaching at the age of 19 andgrew up deep south, segregated
southern United States, whichperhaps instilled in me a
passion to overcome injusticeand inequality in the world.
(03:10):
Other than that grew up deepsouth with Jackson State,
graduated, married, moved tocentral Mississippi and from
there to Detroit, mississippi,and from there to Detroit.
I've been pastoring the GalileeBaptist Church now nearly 40
(03:30):
years in the next few months.
Other than that, it is mypassion to affect social
injustice, the white-balling ofblack America in my circle and
among my preaching colleagues.
So it has made community andsociety a little bit better.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Wow, I can't wait to get into more of that.
Well, maybe let's back up alittle bit.
Only child siblings growing up.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I am the seventh of eight children.
Seventh of eight Six boys, twogirls, son of a preacher and the
most wonderful homemaker in theworld, who just turned 94 on
November 16th.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Wow.
By the way, god be praised yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And close-knit family .
Just, I mean, if anyone wouldhave a brother or any sister, I
would recommend they would haveone like mine.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Wow, wow.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
What was the context of the home growing up, as it
relates to just the dynamics?
Was it like a 16-bedroom housewith 20 toilets?
No, no, no, no, no, yeah.
What is it like growing up witheight, seven, we grew up in a
three-bedroom home.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Of course, master bedroom, if we could call it
that, it was for my mother andmy father, the brothers, I mean.
We slept in the two other roomsalong with my grandfather, who
moved into our home in hislatter days.
We slept two to a bed, four toa room, and sometimes on the
(05:01):
floor or on a couch someplace,because it was always some
cousin, uncle, aunt and theirfamilies who was always at our
home and sometimes somebody inthe community who didn't have
any place to go.
Wow, also stayed in our homeand we gave up our beds for
(05:23):
people who were in need, notjust one time, two or three, but
several times.
I recall sleeping in a chair ona couch because mama said we
got to take in so-and-so.
Wow, and that's the kind ofhome loving home.
My dad was a pastor, itinerantpreacher as well.
(05:46):
He was also a sharecropperwhose pay wasn't very well.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What is a sharecropper A?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
sharecropper is a person who farms land that
belongs to someone else anddivides the crop with the
landowner at harvest time, andit was sort of like an even
exchange and the person who wasthe sharecropper would sell
their wares or their goods forprofit, so to speak.
(06:14):
So that's we, my parents.
Well, my dad was a sharecropper.
My mother was always ahomemaker and his pay was
basically food, you know, inwhat they call the form of what
they call pounding the preacher.
So it wasn't much money.
It was like, you know, peas,greens, you know corn, rabbits,
(06:37):
squirrels, sugar cane cakes andwhat have you.
So our freezer was always fullof food and we generally fed the
community because we didn'thave any room to put those kinds
of goods at the end of revivalweeks and things like that.
And our family, you know, waspretty much received among you
(07:05):
know neighborhood, because wewere in a segregated area and,
as time would progress, wedidn't know it.
But my father, you know, hadseveral friends who happened to
have been white, who were inseats of power, with whom he
worked to help transform ourcity into a more amalgamated and
(07:27):
diversified black and whitecommunity.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
What's the name of that exact city?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Pascagoula, mississippi.
That's 30 miles east of Biloxi,mississippi, 30 miles west of
Mobile Alabama, of MobileAlabama, this area was.
It was not severely and harshlysegregated, but a place where
Ku Klux Klan marches were oh wow, bonfires, ku Klux Klan rallies
(07:56):
white only, black only, orcolored only, then colored only,
signs posted and the like, butalso witnessed desegregation.
In fact, our family was one ofthe few families who
desegregated the public schoolsystem.
We were bused like a couple ofmiles one way to the white
(08:17):
schools to help affect a bettercommunity in the place where I
grew up.
Help affect a better communityin the place where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
How was schooling?
What grade did you start beingbused to?
Third grade, the white schools,third grade, and how was that
experience?
Third grade.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It was eye-opening and surprising, and I would say
surprising because the olderwhite community was impervious
and somewhat disingenuoustowards receiving black people
(08:56):
moving into their neighborhoods,coming into their school
systems, getting into the publicpolitical arena.
But the younger generation kids, you know, we played, played
ball together and sat and atetogether in some cases, and got
to know their parents.
They got to know our parentsand sometimes we would visit
(09:20):
each other.
If you would remember the movie, remember the Titans?
Same case scenario in the areawhere I grew up, the younger
generation who played sports andvenues of the sort was the
means by which our communitiescame together.
More so, and in fact the CAA,what we call the Christian
(09:43):
Athletic League, encouraged theballplayers to visit each
other's churches, and thathelped to a certain degree.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So that's the kind of environment that I grew up in,
as a part of yeah, were yoursiblings bused there as well, or
were you there like almost byyourself as you went to those
schools?
My older.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
My three oldest siblings graduated from all
black school and the fourtholdest, along with the remainder
of us, went to the segregatedschools when I was in the third
grade and of course they didn'texperience the diversified
(10:36):
student body as we did.
We had got in a lot of fights.
You know, and I have nothingagainst you know, the white
demographic and I have nothingagainst the white demographic.
But growing up and trying toget along, and in some cases you
hear a word that's offensive,you see a gesture, I saw a
gesture that was offensive.
Those were fighting words andfighting gestures.
(11:01):
So we fought and kids fight andkids are mean in general.
Yeah, but it was a racial thing.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Now it's like you're cracking on kids.
Crack on each other, they laughat each other because there's
so much more that comes into thecontext of public schools.
Now you have kids who mimicother kids because they're gay
or because they are, you know,awkward looking, so to speak,
(11:31):
are relatively different, butthen it was a black and white
thing.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Really so.
This is all the way to highschool.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
This continued.
I would, yeah, I meandesegregated school system, oh
yes, all the way through highschool.
But I mean the friction andtension between black and white.
I would say it sort of eased bythe time I got to high school.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And you talked about playing together and being
friends and meeting each other'sfamilies as well.
Was that just mixture?
Throughout the whole process,there's some people you got
along with, you play with, andthen other people.
It was sort of that cruelracial treatment.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Both and those who were staunch antagonists to
racial harmony never changed.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Never stopped, even through high school.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Even through high school.
In particular, those who tookthe hoods off and put on suit
and tie sat on city councils,county commissions, etc.
So theirs was a covert kind ofoperation, whereas those who
were blatant, they were just rawand blatant with their
(12:52):
expressions of anti-colored,anti-black, and of course now
we're identified asAfrican-Americans, but
nevertheless it subsided, youknow, as time progressed.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And this is the 60s 1960s, 1970s 1960s, 1970s, 68
King is assassinated.
Do you remember that moment?
Do you remember how the areareacted to it, how your family
reacted to it?
Can you take us there?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I recall in our home we had a space where the TV was
and everybody gathered in thatroom and little did I know.
My father and King knew eachother well, in fact they called
each other on their birthdays.
He was not a marcher or apublic protester.
(13:48):
He would always take adiplomatic approach to a racial
disharmony or any type ofinjustice in our city or in our
town.
He would go sit in a boardroomand talk with these people, with
the superintendent, with thecity council, et cetera, to make
sure that the black voice washeard in our community and made
(14:09):
a lot of difference.
But to your question, that was aquiet, still angry, nervous
kind of day and I recall myfather saying, when the silence
was broken, he said I knew thatboy was going to get killed.
(14:30):
Those were his words.
Now he was a grown man, theywere both the same age and they
just called each other, but theyweren't boys.
You know what I mean.
So he said I knew that boy wasgoing to get killed.
So he said I knew that boy wasgoing to get killed.
And that was a I guess the best.
(14:52):
I could describe it as being astate of shock and a welcome to
reality kind of situation,because the white community, who
knew better, knew that it wasan injustice to the
African-American community andcertainly a smear on the faces
(15:14):
of those who had any integrityabout humanity, whereas those
who were, you know, enthusedabout King being assassinated.
You know they could have caredless, but it was quiet around
our town for a good while whenMartin Luther King was
(15:36):
assassinated.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Eerie, quietness, eerie yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Because we didn't know what else that would
precipitate, or what that wouldprecipitate among those who were
anti-desegregation.
Did that mean that now we'regoing to see more of white
(16:00):
supremacy?
Does this mean our people arenow, all other people are now
willing to change, in that theysaw this level of violence which
followed four little girlsbeing killed in a church,
followed by, along with that,medgar Evers shot in the back,
(16:23):
and the list goes on and on andon.
Will this account for people orinstigate people to do better
towards each other and, I think,for the most part, outside of
the covert activities of thosewho express their racism through
the stroke of a pen and publicpolicy, publicly?
(16:46):
It got better.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It shifts things.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, you talked about yourgrandfather staying with you all
.
This is your maternalgrandfather or paternal, my
father's father, father's father.
Yes, how far back can you traceyour family?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I went as far back as slavery, really.
Yes, I did our family history,did a documentary on it, oh
really.
And eventually I found thewhite family who owned our
family and I mean they receivedme.
Well, I did a bit of videorecording, documented it as such
(17:26):
.
Yes, I went as far back as mygrandfather's grandfather.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Is that on public?
We can watch that somewhere.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
It is not in a public documentary per se, but it is
recorded and written preparedfor documentary.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Well, our media company might want to jump on
that.
Yes, yes, I think I see whereyou're going with this.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And I would welcome that with open arms because our
stories need to really be toldas of how we fared.
And I'll just give you onestory.
My grandfather's grandfatherwas a slave and his slave owner
(18:14):
and his slave owner's brother,you know, had neighboring
properties, counties ChasperCounty, newton County and my
father's grandfather met a girlon the other plantation so he
would slip off right and go seeher.
So they noticed he was missingon one occasion.
(18:36):
So they sick what they calledthe nigger dogs on him and they
found him in what they call amuscadine harbor.
Like you're familiar with grapevines, etc.
Call a muscadine harbor.
Like are you familiar withgrape vines, et cetera?
Well, muscadine, they grow on amuch stronger vine.
And he would hide out in thismuscadine harbor.
(18:57):
And they found him.
And so this master says to himhis name was Moses.
Moses, if you can come down andbeat the dogs, we'll let you go
free, we won't whip you.
And he leaped out I'd forgottenhow many were in the pack of
dogs, but he found a vine.
(19:18):
He began to swing on the vinecoming out of that Muscadine
Harbor and swung out.
He spotted what is called afeist.
It was a small yap yap yap dogand landed right on top of the
dog, caught the dog by the tailand began beating the other dogs
with that dog, beat the pack ofdogs and threw the feist down.
(19:41):
By the time he was done, feistdead and bloody and dead.
And so the owner says, okay,moses, damn, you, go on, go on.
Yeah, so that's the kind of sohe got his freedom.
(20:02):
They didn't whip him.
He was still a slave.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I got you.
He would get a chance to goback to his slave quarters
without being beaten, and mypoint is it was that kind of
resilience that kept him and hispeople alive.
Yeah, that's amazing.
So, yes, as far back as thosetimes, late 1800s, and even at
(20:31):
the gravesite, so many different.
You know names that came up inour oral tradition and converse
about what my great-grandfatherwas like.
You know no education and ownedseveral acres of land,
dispersed it among his children,you know, et cetera.
(20:52):
That's the kind of history andheritage that I have because of
people like that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, so much rich history that's lost in our blood
is, like you said, resilience,and our blood is fortitude.
It's always confusing to mewhen I see, you know movements
like hebrew, israel, like sparkup.
Not that I don't understand whythey want to maybe want to make
that connection or theirpassion and things but our
(21:21):
history is so rich, like justafric-American history, african
descendants of slaves, if wewant to be more technical about
it but not all of that isaccessible to us.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So many stories.
There is a documentary now andI don't know what the licensing
here conveys and restricts, butHenry Louis Gates is doing this
Tracing your Roots documentaryseries of celebrities, so to
speak, and to hear their storiesand the contributions that
(21:52):
their forefathers and mothers,patriarchs and matriarchs, made
to American history, and howthey survived through the
centuries, and to see their sonsand daughters become, you know,
outstanding politicians, actors, ballplayers, journalists etc.
(22:14):
There are hundreds of thousandsof stories untold, just like my
story that you know.
That's where they're beingheard and observed.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Your spiritual consciousness.
Where is that?
I know your dad's a pastor.
Are you the kid that was justpristine clean, going to Sunday
school teaching.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Sunday school.
I was not.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I was not.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What is the spiritual consciousness awakening for you
?
I?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
would have to attribute that to my mother.
My father was such a dominantpastor in the town, I mean, so
that's a given and hisexpectations and standards that
was required of me and mysiblings, that was a given.
But in terms of my spiritualdevelopment, no, and I would
(23:10):
have to attribute that to mymother.
Watching her charisma, how shehandled herself, how she handled
herself around other people,how she dealt with other people
and the principles upon whichshe stood and the teachings that
she instilled in us.
So my formation is largelyattributed to her, and this is
(23:36):
not to exclude the other.
You know elders within ourcommunity, because everybody in
my childhood held every childaccountable.
I mean you had old ladiessitting on the porches and you
know getting in everybody'sbusiness and calling home and
telling your parents what youdid.
So I was not that pristine, youknow, innocent little child.
(23:58):
I got in trouble quite a bit, Igot in fights and you know any
little other thing that I couldget away with.
You know I did it.
But the discipline of my motherand father and others in the
community, you know, they sortof like a person who's gotten
(24:19):
out of drowning waters and thenyou get the drowning waters out
of the person who's gotten outof drowning waters.
So they had to get thatdrowning stuff out of me and I
eventuated.
I guess I came into my socialjustice consciousness in my
earliest years of pastoring,under the tutelage of the late
Richard Sylvester Porter.
The unique story behind him andin all actuality he was the
(24:45):
civil rights leader in EastMississippi Medgar Evers gets
the press and that Medgar Everssays this is not to demean the
works of Medgar Evers, but hisassassination and him becoming a
martyr is what really put himon the map.
And I don't mean to, you know,inject some, you know,
(25:06):
trump-like analysis by demeaningor belittling the contribution
that he made to social justiceand voting rights et cetera.
But Richard Sylvester Porterliterally was my inspiration
towards social justice.
Daddy wasn't in, my father wasa great influence my mother gets
(25:31):
most of the credit for myspiritual formation.
But when it comes to myconsciousness, because I'll give
you a story Sure, the movieMississippi Burning reveals that
when those civil rights workerswere killed, that the sheriff
deputy's wife told the fedswhere those young men were
(25:54):
buried.
Now, that's the Hollywoodversion, right?
So these young men met atReverend Porter's church.
His church was the headquartersin Meridian Mississippi, which
is where they met before theyleft to go from Meridian to
Philadelphia.
It's like, oh, maybe a90-minute ride, something like
(26:16):
that.
Nevertheless, the deal was thatthey weren't—the agreement was,
if they weren't back by acertain time, then they knew
that something was wrong.
Right?
So they go from MeridianMississippi to Philadelphia,
mississippi, to register voters.
They are intercepted by theseKlansmen, they are killed and
(26:37):
they're buried in a dam.
Here is what happened.
There were some Native Indianshunting in the woods that night.
They saw these men kill thoseyoung brothers and bury them in
that dam.
They told Dr Killingsworth—Ican't remember Dr
Killingsworth's name now DrBlankenship these were men who
(26:58):
were from Columbia, mississippi,along with Dr RS, richard
Sylvester Porter.
And when they told them wherethese young men were buried, dr
Porter and those two otherpastors told the feds where
those men were buried and that'show they found them.
Wow, that's a unique story.
(27:19):
This is the kind of presence Ihad in my life growing up as a
young pastor, seeing himinteract, you know, with the,
with the public, from a socialjustice vantage point, and he
just instilled that in me.
So I'm a confluence and aproduct of a lot of individuals
(27:41):
who affected my life in thiskind of way.
To your question, my formationwas spent hanging around my
mother, you know praying andwatching her cook and you know
being around the house a lot,helping, listening, learning,
watching and this is how Ibecome who I am spiritually.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Preaching.
When does the preaching poolhappen?
When does the preaching poolhappen?
When?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
does the preaching pool happen?
I, I, I, when I was maybe 10, 9, 10,.
In retrospect I could see nowthat the calling was on my life
then.
But you know, you know, 10 yearold, you know, becoming
interested in little girls andplaying barefooted in the
(28:35):
streets, in the yard, playingball.
I became an outstanding ballplayer in high school, Will have
played in college, but Istarted preaching, like what,
three days before springtraining Baseball, basketball,
basketball, Basketball.
So yeah, three days beforespring training at Jackson State
(28:56):
, I started preaching and I'vebeen doing it now almost 45
years.
So I sensed that around age 9,10, and I didn't understand it,
nine, 10, and I didn'tunderstand it.
(29:17):
And at that time, whenpreachers would come to do
revivals at our church, uh,where they would stay in a home,
preachers in those days stayedin the home of their hosts.
Um, and I just fell in lovewith, I guess, the preaching
vibe and the way they carriedthemselves.
I had a great admirationbecause my other brothers did as
well.
But I was in choirs like two orthree at our church Masonic
(29:39):
Choir, along with one of myolder brothers, will have sung
quartet, but my father wouldn'tallow it because he didn't think
I would be available to thechurch.
I'll give you a story.
Once I was in the tournamentGulf Coast tournament, I can't
(30:00):
remember the title of it rightnow and our revival was going on
right and we're playingGulfport, the team on the Gulf
Coast right and was beatingthese guys, and my older brother
, two years older than me, inthe stands, said Daddy said you
(30:26):
got to come to church, you allgot to sing.
Tonight I'm on the court, man,and I'm balling.
Daddy said you got it and hesent him over there to get me.
So my brother, that one, now,that brother could come up.
He could sell a box of matchesto a man in a burning house,
which means he could lie with astraight face and I declare he'd
(30:49):
make God believe him and Godknow he's a liar.
So he, let me finish the gameand went back and we got there
in time.
But I told my father he had aflat.
Now I told my father wouldn'thave, you know, wisdom enough to
check to see if the spare inthe trunk you know had been
(31:11):
damaged off the tire on the carwas removed.
But nevertheless, you know, myfather said for him to take me
off the basketball court.
So I could sing with the juniorchoir at the church.
So he could care less what I wasdoing.
You get into this church,that's what I was doing, you get
(31:33):
into this church, so.
But his preaching style wassuch, so unique.
He was a narrative type ofpreacher.
He became the character in thestory and I was always admiring
of his style as a preacher.
And then, when I went off tocollege 1979, stayed with one of
(31:54):
my older brothers.
I became a watch care member, amember on the watch care at the
Shady Grove Baptist Churchunder Dr James C Matthews, who
was a powerful, powerfulpreacher, and in converse with
him, spending time around him, Icame to understand more about
(32:15):
God's mysterious ways of callingand that he does not affect
every individual the same way.
In the event of theirunderstanding or coming into
fruition of their calling.
In my freshman year I rememberafter church one Sunday, it just
seemed like it was like dusk,but this is like early afternoon
(32:40):
.
Freshman year of high school,college, college.
Yeah, I got out of church oneSunday after eating and I found
myself walking up to the collegecampus from my brother's home.
It was like a block away and itgot dark, but it was like early
afternoon.
So something is not right here.
(33:02):
So on my way back I get to aphone booth and this calling,
calling, calling.
You know, yield, yield, yieldto this burning, this urge, this
, whatever that was, that wasprompting me to surrender my
(33:23):
call to preach.
I had one dime.
I had one dime in my pocket ora quarter, put it in the phone
and called my dad and I said Ibelieve something is on me to
(33:49):
preach.
He said that ain't good enoughand hung up on me.
He said said that ain't goodenough and hung up on me.
He said ain't good enough.
I called him back.
Um, I don't know how I gotanother quarter, whatever I
might have borrowed, I can'tremember, but I do remember
calling him back in that phonebooth and I said dad, I gotta
(34:13):
preach.
He said preach, he said whenyou're coming home, and the rest
is history, and I think itmight have been.
I had some tests and I had todo for some courses, and it was
like a week, two weeks later orsomething like that, and I went
(34:33):
home and I preached my firstsermon.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Thank you for joining us on Nuance Conversations.
We invite you to return nextweek as we continue this
dialogue.
Be sure to subscribe so younever miss an episode and share
this conversation with otherswho may find it valuable.
Until next time.
Welcome to Nuance Conversations, a podcast where
depth meets dialogue.
Hosted by Dr George E Hurt,this show explores the great
areas of life where faith,wisdom and real-world
complexities intersect.
No easy answers, just honestconversations that challenge,
inspire and inform.
Get ready to lean in, listenclosely and explore the nuance.
(00:26):
This is Nuance Conversations.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Greetings and thank you for tuning in to another
episode of the NuanceConversation podcast.
I am your curator and your host.
Creator and curator of thissafe space.
We call this NuanceConversations because we are
safe and comfortable operatingin the gray, not just in the
(00:49):
black and white, which mostrealities lie in.
My name is George Hurt and wehave special guests here.
We say that every week, butthis week I want to stress that
a little bit more and be fair.
That you would understand.
But this is a man that,unbeknownst to him at the time,
(01:13):
introduced and craved my passionfor preaching.
In my teenage years I wouldwake up, I would set my alarm
clock and manipulate that tapedeck to wake up to his sermons,
and it was his passion that I,it was his preaching that gave
me a passion for what I laterlearned to know as expository
preaching and gifted in the areaof not just communication but
(01:39):
what we'll talk about a littlebit here in this episode
celebration and the uniquenessof in the black preaching
culture, which we would label ashooping, and then the
connection and ties that ourfamilies have my mom with his
down through the years in thesouthern region and that being
(02:02):
developed all the way fromDetroit to even now in Los
Angeles, tremendously,tremendously busy preacher,
pastor, leader, advocate forsocial justice, and so for him
to make time to be with us today, we are grateful we speak of
(02:23):
none other than the newly mintedDr Tellus Chapman.
Doc, how are you feeling today?
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on yourshow.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
No, thank you for being here.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground, something maybe
people didn't know about, notjust where you're from, but
growing up.
I know you grew up in apreacher's household.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Kind of walk us through those early days of your
life.
Well, mississippi born andMississippi bred, started
preaching at the age of 19 andgrew up deep south, segregated
southern United States, whichperhaps instilled in me a
passion to overcome injusticeand inequality in the world.
(03:10):
Other than that grew up deepsouth with Jackson State,
graduated, married, moved tocentral Mississippi and from
there to Detroit, mississippi,and from there to Detroit.
I've been pastoring the GalileeBaptist Church now nearly 40
(03:30):
years in the next few months.
Other than that, it is mypassion to affect social
injustice, the white-balling ofblack America in my circle and
among my preaching colleagues.
So it has made community andsociety a little bit better.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Wow, I can't wait to get into more of that.
Well, maybe let's back up alittle bit.
Only child siblings growing up.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I am the seventh of eight children.
Seventh of eight Six boys, twogirls, son of a preacher and the
most wonderful homemaker in theworld, who just turned 94 on
November 16th.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Wow.
By the way, god be praised yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And close-knit family .
Just, I mean, if anyone wouldhave a brother or any sister, I
would recommend they would haveone like mine.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Wow, wow.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
What was the context of the home growing up, as it
relates to just the dynamics?
Was it like a 16-bedroom housewith 20 toilets?
No, no, no, no, no, yeah.
What is it like growing up witheight, seven, we grew up in a
three-bedroom home.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Of course, master bedroom, if we could call it
that, it was for my mother andmy father, the brothers, I mean.
We slept in the two other roomsalong with my grandfather, who
moved into our home in hislatter days.
We slept two to a bed, four toa room, and sometimes on the
(05:01):
floor or on a couch someplace,because it was always some
cousin, uncle, aunt and theirfamilies who was always at our
home and sometimes somebody inthe community who didn't have
any place to go.
Wow, also stayed in our homeand we gave up our beds for
(05:23):
people who were in need, notjust one time, two or three, but
several times.
I recall sleeping in a chair ona couch because mama said we
got to take in so-and-so.
Wow, and that's the kind ofhome loving home.
My dad was a pastor, itinerantpreacher as well.
(05:46):
He was also a sharecropperwhose pay wasn't very well.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What is a sharecropper A?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
sharecropper is a person who farms land that
belongs to someone else anddivides the crop with the
landowner at harvest time, andit was sort of like an even
exchange and the person who wasthe sharecropper would sell
their wares or their goods forprofit, so to speak.
(06:14):
So that's we, my parents.
Well, my dad was a sharecropper.
My mother was always ahomemaker and his pay was
basically food, you know, inwhat they call the form of what
they call pounding the preacher.
So it wasn't much money.
It was like, you know, peas,greens, you know corn, rabbits,
(06:37):
squirrels, sugar cane cakes andwhat have you.
So our freezer was always fullof food and we generally fed the
community because we didn'thave any room to put those kinds
of goods at the end of revivalweeks and things like that.
And our family, you know, waspretty much received among you
(07:05):
know neighborhood, because wewere in a segregated area and,
as time would progress, wedidn't know it.
But my father, you know, hadseveral friends who happened to
have been white, who were inseats of power, with whom he
worked to help transform ourcity into a more amalgamated and
(07:27):
diversified black and whitecommunity.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
What's the name of that exact city?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Pascagoula, mississippi.
That's 30 miles east of Biloxi,mississippi, 30 miles west of
Mobile Alabama, of MobileAlabama, this area was.
It was not severely and harshlysegregated, but a place where
Ku Klux Klan marches were oh wow, bonfires, ku Klux Klan rallies
(07:56):
white only, black only, orcolored only, then colored only,
signs posted and the like, butalso witnessed desegregation.
In fact, our family was one ofthe few families who
desegregated the public schoolsystem.
We were bused like a couple ofmiles one way to the white
(08:17):
schools to help affect a bettercommunity in the place where I
grew up.
Help affect a better communityin the place where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
How was schooling?
What grade did you start beingbused to?
Third grade, the white schools,third grade, and how was that
experience?
Third grade.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It was eye-opening and surprising, and I would say
surprising because the olderwhite community was impervious
and somewhat disingenuoustowards receiving black people
(08:56):
moving into their neighborhoods,coming into their school
systems, getting into the publicpolitical arena.
But the younger generation kids, you know, we played, played
ball together and sat and atetogether in some cases, and got
to know their parents.
They got to know our parentsand sometimes we would visit
(09:20):
each other.
If you would remember the movie, remember the Titans?
Same case scenario in the areawhere I grew up, the younger
generation who played sports andvenues of the sort was the
means by which our communitiescame together.
More so, and in fact the CAA,what we call the Christian
(09:43):
Athletic League, encouraged theballplayers to visit each
other's churches, and thathelped to a certain degree.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So that's the kind of environment that I grew up in,
as a part of yeah, were yoursiblings bused there as well, or
were you there like almost byyourself as you went to those
schools?
My older.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
My three oldest siblings graduated from all
black school and the fourtholdest, along with the remainder
of us, went to the segregatedschools when I was in the third
grade and of course they didn'texperience the diversified
(10:36):
student body as we did.
We had got in a lot of fights.
You know, and I have nothingagainst you know, the white
demographic and I have nothingagainst the white demographic.
But growing up and trying toget along, and in some cases you
hear a word that's offensive,you see a gesture, I saw a
gesture that was offensive.
Those were fighting words andfighting gestures.
(11:01):
So we fought and kids fight andkids are mean in general.
Yeah, but it was a racial thing.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Now it's like you're cracking on kids.
Crack on each other, they laughat each other because there's
so much more that comes into thecontext of public schools.
Now you have kids who mimicother kids because they're gay
or because they are, you know,awkward looking, so to speak,
(11:31):
are relatively different, butthen it was a black and white
thing.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Really so.
This is all the way to highschool.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
This continued.
I would, yeah, I meandesegregated school system, oh
yes, all the way through highschool.
But I mean the friction andtension between black and white.
I would say it sort of eased bythe time I got to high school.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And you talked about playing together and being
friends and meeting each other'sfamilies as well.
Was that just mixture?
Throughout the whole process,there's some people you got
along with, you play with, andthen other people.
It was sort of that cruelracial treatment.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Both and those who were staunch antagonists to
racial harmony never changed.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Never stopped, even through high school.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Even through high school.
In particular, those who tookthe hoods off and put on suit
and tie sat on city councils,county commissions, etc.
So theirs was a covert kind ofoperation, whereas those who
were blatant, they were just rawand blatant with their
(12:52):
expressions of anti-colored,anti-black, and of course now
we're identified asAfrican-Americans, but
nevertheless it subsided, youknow, as time progressed.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And this is the 60s 1960s, 1970s 1960s, 1970s, 68
King is assassinated.
Do you remember that moment?
Do you remember how the areareacted to it, how your family
reacted to it?
Can you take us there?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I recall in our home we had a space where the TV was
and everybody gathered in thatroom and little did I know.
My father and King knew eachother well, in fact they called
each other on their birthdays.
He was not a marcher or apublic protester.
(13:48):
He would always take adiplomatic approach to a racial
disharmony or any type ofinjustice in our city or in our
town.
He would go sit in a boardroomand talk with these people, with
the superintendent, with thecity council, et cetera, to make
sure that the black voice washeard in our community and made
(14:09):
a lot of difference.
But to your question, that was aquiet, still angry, nervous
kind of day and I recall myfather saying, when the silence
was broken, he said I knew thatboy was going to get killed.
(14:30):
Those were his words.
Now he was a grown man, theywere both the same age and they
just called each other, but theyweren't boys.
You know what I mean.
So he said I knew that boy wasgoing to get killed.
So he said I knew that boy wasgoing to get killed.
And that was a I guess the best.
(14:52):
I could describe it as being astate of shock and a welcome to
reality kind of situation,because the white community, who
knew better, knew that it wasan injustice to the
African-American community andcertainly a smear on the faces
(15:14):
of those who had any integrityabout humanity, whereas those
who were, you know, enthusedabout King being assassinated.
You know they could have caredless, but it was quiet around
our town for a good while whenMartin Luther King was
(15:36):
assassinated.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Eerie, quietness, eerie yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Because we didn't know what else that would
precipitate, or what that wouldprecipitate among those who were
anti-desegregation.
Did that mean that now we'regoing to see more of white
(16:00):
supremacy?
Does this mean our people arenow, all other people are now
willing to change, in that theysaw this level of violence which
followed four little girlsbeing killed in a church,
followed by, along with that,medgar Evers shot in the back,
(16:23):
and the list goes on and on andon.
Will this account for people orinstigate people to do better
towards each other and, I think,for the most part, outside of
the covert activities of thosewho express their racism through
the stroke of a pen and publicpolicy, publicly?
(16:46):
It got better.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It shifts things.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, you talked about yourgrandfather staying with you all
.
This is your maternalgrandfather or paternal, my
father's father, father's father.
Yes, how far back can you traceyour family?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I went as far back as slavery, really.
Yes, I did our family history,did a documentary on it, oh
really.
And eventually I found thewhite family who owned our
family and I mean they receivedme.
Well, I did a bit of videorecording, documented it as such
(17:26):
.
Yes, I went as far back as mygrandfather's grandfather.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Is that on public?
We can watch that somewhere.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
It is not in a public documentary per se, but it is
recorded and written preparedfor documentary.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Well, our media company might want to jump on
that.
Yes, yes, I think I see whereyou're going with this.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And I would welcome that with open arms because our
stories need to really be toldas of how we fared.
And I'll just give you onestory.
My grandfather's grandfatherwas a slave and his slave owner
(18:14):
and his slave owner's brother,you know, had neighboring
properties, counties ChasperCounty, newton County and my
father's grandfather met a girlon the other plantation so he
would slip off right and go seeher.
So they noticed he was missingon one occasion.
(18:36):
So they sick what they calledthe nigger dogs on him and they
found him in what they call amuscadine harbor.
Like you're familiar with grapevines, etc.
Call a muscadine harbor.
Like are you familiar withgrape vines, et cetera?
Well, muscadine, they grow on amuch stronger vine.
And he would hide out in thismuscadine harbor.
(18:57):
And they found him.
And so this master says to himhis name was Moses.
Moses, if you can come down andbeat the dogs, we'll let you go
free, we won't whip you.
And he leaped out I'd forgottenhow many were in the pack of
dogs, but he found a vine.
(19:18):
He began to swing on the vinecoming out of that Muscadine
Harbor and swung out.
He spotted what is called afeist.
It was a small yap yap yap dogand landed right on top of the
dog, caught the dog by the tailand began beating the other dogs
with that dog, beat the pack ofdogs and threw the feist down.
(19:41):
By the time he was done, feistdead and bloody and dead.
And so the owner says, okay,moses, damn, you, go on, go on.
Yeah, so that's the kind of sohe got his freedom.
(20:02):
They didn't whip him.
He was still a slave.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I got you.
He would get a chance to goback to his slave quarters
without being beaten, and mypoint is it was that kind of
resilience that kept him and hispeople alive.
Yeah, that's amazing.
So, yes, as far back as thosetimes, late 1800s, and even at
(20:31):
the gravesite, so many different.
You know names that came up inour oral tradition and converse
about what my great-grandfatherwas like.
You know no education and ownedseveral acres of land,
dispersed it among his children,you know, et cetera.
(20:52):
That's the kind of history andheritage that I have because of
people like that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, so much rich history that's lost in our blood
is, like you said, resilience,and our blood is fortitude.
It's always confusing to mewhen I see, you know movements
like hebrew, israel, like sparkup.
Not that I don't understand whythey want to maybe want to make
that connection or theirpassion and things but our
(21:21):
history is so rich, like justafric-American history, african
descendants of slaves, if wewant to be more technical about
it but not all of that isaccessible to us.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So many stories.
There is a documentary now andI don't know what the licensing
here conveys and restricts, butHenry Louis Gates is doing this
Tracing your Roots documentaryseries of celebrities, so to
speak, and to hear their storiesand the contributions that
(21:52):
their forefathers and mothers,patriarchs and matriarchs, made
to American history, and howthey survived through the
centuries, and to see their sonsand daughters become, you know,
outstanding politicians, actors, ballplayers, journalists etc.
(22:14):
There are hundreds of thousandsof stories untold, just like my
story that you know.
That's where they're beingheard and observed.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Your spiritual consciousness.
Where is that?
I know your dad's a pastor.
Are you the kid that was justpristine clean, going to Sunday
school teaching.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Sunday school.
I was not.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I was not.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What is the spiritual consciousness awakening for you
?
I?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
would have to attribute that to my mother.
My father was such a dominantpastor in the town, I mean, so
that's a given and hisexpectations and standards that
was required of me and mysiblings, that was a given.
But in terms of my spiritualdevelopment, no, and I would
(23:10):
have to attribute that to mymother.
Watching her charisma, how shehandled herself, how she handled
herself around other people,how she dealt with other people
and the principles upon whichshe stood and the teachings that
she instilled in us.
So my formation is largelyattributed to her, and this is
(23:36):
not to exclude the other.
You know elders within ourcommunity, because everybody in
my childhood held every childaccountable.
I mean you had old ladiessitting on the porches and you
know getting in everybody'sbusiness and calling home and
telling your parents what youdid.
So I was not that pristine, youknow, innocent little child.
(23:58):
I got in trouble quite a bit, Igot in fights and you know any
little other thing that I couldget away with.
You know I did it.
But the discipline of my motherand father and others in the
community, you know, they sortof like a person who's gotten
(24:19):
out of drowning waters and thenyou get the drowning waters out
of the person who's gotten outof drowning waters.
So they had to get thatdrowning stuff out of me and I
eventuated.
I guess I came into my socialjustice consciousness in my
earliest years of pastoring,under the tutelage of the late
Richard Sylvester Porter.
The unique story behind him andin all actuality he was the
(24:45):
civil rights leader in EastMississippi Medgar Evers gets
the press and that Medgar Everssays this is not to demean the
works of Medgar Evers, but hisassassination and him becoming a
martyr is what really put himon the map.
And I don't mean to, you know,inject some, you know,
(25:06):
trump-like analysis by demeaningor belittling the contribution
that he made to social justiceand voting rights et cetera.
But Richard Sylvester Porterliterally was my inspiration
towards social justice.
Daddy wasn't in, my father wasa great influence my mother gets
(25:31):
most of the credit for myspiritual formation.
But when it comes to myconsciousness, because I'll give
you a story Sure, the movieMississippi Burning reveals that
when those civil rights workerswere killed, that the sheriff
deputy's wife told the fedswhere those young men were
(25:54):
buried.
Now, that's the Hollywoodversion, right?
So these young men met atReverend Porter's church.
His church was the headquartersin Meridian Mississippi, which
is where they met before theyleft to go from Meridian to
Philadelphia.
It's like, oh, maybe a90-minute ride, something like
(26:16):
that.
Nevertheless, the deal was thatthey weren't—the agreement was,
if they weren't back by acertain time, then they knew
that something was wrong.
Right?
So they go from MeridianMississippi to Philadelphia,
mississippi, to register voters.
They are intercepted by theseKlansmen, they are killed and
(26:37):
they're buried in a dam.
Here is what happened.
There were some Native Indianshunting in the woods that night.
They saw these men kill thoseyoung brothers and bury them in
that dam.
They told Dr Killingsworth—Ican't remember Dr
Killingsworth's name now DrBlankenship these were men who
(26:58):
were from Columbia, mississippi,along with Dr RS, richard
Sylvester Porter.
And when they told them wherethese young men were buried, dr
Porter and those two otherpastors told the feds where
those men were buried and that'show they found them.
Wow, that's a unique story.
(27:19):
This is the kind of presence Ihad in my life growing up as a
young pastor, seeing himinteract, you know, with the,
with the public, from a socialjustice vantage point, and he
just instilled that in me.
So I'm a confluence and aproduct of a lot of individuals
(27:41):
who affected my life in thiskind of way.
To your question, my formationwas spent hanging around my
mother, you know praying andwatching her cook and you know
being around the house a lot,helping, listening, learning,
watching and this is how Ibecome who I am spiritually.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Preaching.
When does the preaching poolhappen?
When does the preaching poolhappen?
When?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
does the preaching pool happen?
I, I, I, when I was maybe 10, 9, 10,.
In retrospect I could see nowthat the calling was on my life
then.
But you know, you know, 10 yearold, you know, becoming
interested in little girls andplaying barefooted in the
(28:35):
streets, in the yard, playingball.
I became an outstanding ballplayer in high school, Will have
played in college, but Istarted preaching, like what,
three days before springtraining Baseball, basketball,
basketball, Basketball.
So yeah, three days beforespring training at Jackson State
(28:56):
, I started preaching and I'vebeen doing it now almost 45
years.
So I sensed that around age 9,10, and I didn't understand it,
nine, 10, and I didn'tunderstand it.
(29:17):
And at that time, whenpreachers would come to do
revivals at our church, uh,where they would stay in a home,
preachers in those days stayedin the home of their hosts.
Um, and I just fell in lovewith, I guess, the preaching
vibe and the way they carriedthemselves.
I had a great admirationbecause my other brothers did as
well.
But I was in choirs like two orthree at our church Masonic
(29:39):
Choir, along with one of myolder brothers, will have sung
quartet, but my father wouldn'tallow it because he didn't think
I would be available to thechurch.
I'll give you a story.
Once I was in the tournamentGulf Coast tournament, I can't
(30:00):
remember the title of it rightnow and our revival was going on
right and we're playingGulfport, the team on the Gulf
Coast right and was beatingthese guys, and my older brother
, two years older than me, inthe stands, said Daddy said you
(30:26):
got to come to church, you allgot to sing.
Tonight I'm on the court, man,and I'm balling.
Daddy said you got it and hesent him over there to get me.
So my brother, that one, now,that brother could come up.
He could sell a box of matchesto a man in a burning house,
which means he could lie with astraight face and I declare he'd
(30:49):
make God believe him and Godknow he's a liar.
So he, let me finish the gameand went back and we got there
in time.
But I told my father he had aflat.
Now I told my father wouldn'thave, you know, wisdom enough to
check to see if the spare inthe trunk you know had been
(31:11):
damaged off the tire on the carwas removed.
But nevertheless, you know, myfather said for him to take me
off the basketball court.
So I could sing with the juniorchoir at the church.
So he could care less what I wasdoing.
You get into this church,that's what I was doing, you get
(31:33):
into this church, so.
But his preaching style wassuch, so unique.
He was a narrative type ofpreacher.
He became the character in thestory and I was always admiring
of his style as a preacher.
And then, when I went off tocollege 1979, stayed with one of
(31:54):
my older brothers.
I became a watch care member, amember on the watch care at the
Shady Grove Baptist Churchunder Dr James C Matthews, who
was a powerful, powerfulpreacher, and in converse with
him, spending time around him, Icame to understand more about
(32:15):
God's mysterious ways of callingand that he does not affect
every individual the same way.
In the event of theirunderstanding or coming into
fruition of their calling.
In my freshman year I rememberafter church one Sunday, it just
seemed like it was like dusk,but this is like early afternoon
(32:40):
.
Freshman year of high school,college, college.
Yeah, I got out of church oneSunday after eating and I found
myself walking up to the collegecampus from my brother's home.
It was like a block away and itgot dark, but it was like early
afternoon.
So something is not right here.
(33:02):
So on my way back I get to aphone booth and this calling,
calling, calling.
You know, yield, yield, yieldto this burning, this urge, this
, whatever that was, that wasprompting me to surrender my
(33:23):
call to preach.
I had one dime.
I had one dime in my pocket ora quarter, put it in the phone
and called my dad and I said Ibelieve something is on me to
(33:49):
preach.
He said that ain't good enoughand hung up on me.
He said said that ain't goodenough and hung up on me.
He said ain't good enough.
I called him back.
Um, I don't know how I gotanother quarter, whatever I
might have borrowed, I can'tremember, but I do remember
calling him back in that phonebooth and I said dad, I gotta
(34:13):
preach.
He said preach, he said whenyou're coming home, and the rest
is history, and I think itmight have been.
I had some tests and I had todo for some courses, and it was
like a week, two weeks later orsomething like that, and I went
(34:33):
home and I preached my firstsermon.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
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