James Melvin Washington (April 24, 1948 – May 3, 1997) was an African-American historian, educator, and minister.
Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, with two sisters and three brothers, he was the child of a laborer and a housekeeper.[1]
A 1972 graduate of the University of Tennessee, he received a Master's degree at the Harvard Divinity School. His doctorate was from Yale Divinity School in 1979.[2] The title of his dissertation: "The Origins and Emergence of Black Baptist Separatism, 1863-1897."[3]
Further development of its themes resulted in his 1991 book Frustrated Fellowship. It starts in the 1780s. The divide in status between slave and free was a stumbling block to mixed-race congregations. This tense friction continually pitted faith against injustice. The book addresses the trend, following the civil war, toward self-sufficient autonomy in the Black church. The failure of Reconstruction dashed Black hopes of social parity and justice, which were met with violence and terror. Black resolve relied instead on inner resources, the spiritual power of prayer.[4]
Washington latter remarked on the extraordinary patience of the Black church, as he told a journalist, "Between 1889 and 1920 there were 3,900 black people lynched and burned in this country. That's almost one a week. That's terrorism."
His first book in 1986 was a well-research, 702-page collection of writings and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. Included were newspaper and magazine pieces from the midst of the struggle, various interviews, and articles from academic and religious journals. Selected passages from King's five books fill the last third of the volume. It was later reissued.
Starting in 1976 professor Washington taught church history at the Union Theological Seminary. He taught as well at neighboring Columbia University.[5] He became in demand as a visiting professor, teaching at Haverford College, Oberlin College, and Princeton University. As a minister he served on the board of the American Baptist Church, and also of the National Council of Churches.[6] He was active at the Riverside Church in New York City, under the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. Forbes called his 1994 book "a source of inspiration to many" as it reflected "the dignity and power of the African-American religious heritage."[7]
Conversations with God (1994) surprisingly became a bestseller.[8] The book presented passages from the prayers of 190 Blacks. Among them were Frederick Douglass and poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Sojourner Truth, professor Howard Thurman, poet Esther Popel, Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin, writer Alice Walker and James Alexander Forbes Jr.[9] Many of the quotations given were by relatively unknown Christians, from various points along the difficult and painful, yet blessed history of the Black American church.[10]
At the Riverside Church, Washington would join Cornel West for a daily lunch 'seminar'. "Jim was my best friend for twenty years," wrote West following his friend's death. Often James Forbes joined them for the lunch and table talk.[11]
"We intensely debated the meaning of the Cross-the whence and whither of evil, the sources of struggle against suffering, and the mysterious grounds of hope. We favored those existential thinkers of lived experience-those who thought and lived with compassion and concern about death, despair, and injustice without the crutches of dogma or doctrine... . And we always rooted our fierce exchanges in the concrete reality of everyday Black people dealing with the absurdities and indignities of American life."[12] [13]He died of a stroke suffered at home. Prof. Washington was survived by Patricia his wife of 26 years and Ayanna his daughter. His family had made their home in Morningside Heights.[14]
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