CHAPTER 13
Brightly Beams Our Father ’s Mercy
Bernice was seventeen when she heard the Call. My grandfather had always looked for it to first reach Martin III, Isaac, Derek, Al, Vernon, one of his grandsons, the Call that for various reasons he and then both his sons, my father and Uncle A.D., had received, in their different personal circumstances and lifetimes.
I never got it. Isaac never got it. Martin never got it. Derek got it, and Vernon got it. Meanwhile, Bernice got the Call clear and strong. She says an inner voice told her she was going to preach like my father. For years she resisted it—for eight years, from when she first got the Call before age eighteen until she was twenty-five years old. When she was a younger woman she saw and felt and thought that preaching was something for men, mature men at that. No wonder she would get that impression, since she was in the South, since she was in Atlanta, since she was in the Baptist Church, and since she was in Ebenezer Baptist Church. Quadruple whammy.
I wouldn’t call it sexism so much as obliviousness; the same factors that might have helped cause my grandfather and his sons to take up the calling were impacting her, as a woman, a black woman in the South. Many mothers and grandfathers of earlier in the century in the South wanted their sons and grandsons to “hear the Call,” to take up the Bible and the way, because, first, it was one of the few ways a man could speak his mind and then still be held safe against powers that would kill or otherwise mute a “Negro” who was outspoken about the heinous crimes being committed against those of his flock, and, second, it was a way to make a living, a way out of no way, before segregation ended. Some of the same factors held true for women nearer the close of the century. But Bernice was, as my grandfather would’ve said, a woman who was “God-troubled.” He died aware of her calling. Wish I’d been there when Bernice told him, to see the happy look on his face.
For whatever reason, it was Bernice who got the Call; not only that, it was the right Call, according to her talents and gifts. She had an ability to reach her zenith through preaching, to move an audience via spoken word, to minister, even though she claims to have no memories of our father. Granddaddy was dead. He’d found no successors among his grandsons.
I was in the congregation for Bernice’s first sermon. She gave it at Ebenezer, on March 27, 1988. She called it “Getting above the Crowd,” and based it on the story from the Book of Luke, about Zacchaeus, a short man who climbed a sycamore tree, the better to see Jesus. Fittingly, she gave this message in the sanctuary at Ebenezer, where I had seen my father and grandfather speak so many times. Bernice had fasted for seven days before she gave the sermon. She seemed to me to be in another realm that Sunday. She is unique. Bernice is singular, unto herself; her individualism would be a strike against her later on.
We all were there that Sunday—Mother, Yolanda, Martin, me. A light shined in Mother’s eyes, a light I had not seen in a long time, as it did in the eyes of many of our cousins and extended family. When Bernice spoke that day, I could see she’d inherited much from our father—certain hand gestures that startled me in their familiarity. I’d not seen them in so long—a certain tilt of her head, a lilt in her voice, strategic pauses, drawing out words— seeeen—or making multisyllabic certain words, the opening twist of humor, even the looks on her face that were exactly the kinds of looks that my father had. It was eerie. I think Bernice was oblivious to these similarities.
Bernice came in knowing how to preach, but she needed to learn how to pastor. Rev. Roberts advised her to take her apprenticeship elsewhere, because she had grown up in Ebenezer and might benefit from outside experience. She took his advice and went to minister at the Love Center at Greater Rising Star Baptist Church in southwest Atlanta. She became an assistant to Pastor Byron L. Broussard, and she dealt primarily with youth and women’s ministries. It seemed strange not to have a King somewhere in the pulpit in Ebenezer.
My spiritual crisis had begun with my father’s death, and continued with my uncle’s death and my grandmother being gunned down. Ever since, whenever I have had a question of faith, Bernice has helped show me the way.
What about my other siblings? Were they proud of Bernice, yet disappointed in me? I’m sure they were caught in a difficult position. I think they never understood why I had to leave the King Center. Mother didn’t really understand it, and they seemed to follow her lead. There may have been a feeling that maybe I walked away from it because I wasn’t mature enough to handle the pressure, didn’t have the stuff of Kings. I didn’t ask and they didn’t say. Later, once they saw subsequent events and we’d talked about it, they understood. We couldn’t always talk about it initially, it was just so heated that it became more of a divisive conversation than a productive one. So we just kind of steered clear of it as a family. I think there was this feeling that maybe I brought some of this on myself, but I never felt that way.
Bernice confided in me that she had also had dreams. She dreamed of our father, back when we had that retreat in the north Georgia mountains in 1988 and Mother asked if any of the four of us would volunteer to succeed her at the King Center. Bernice dreamed that Daddy appeared and expressed concern about Mother and the King Center; that she needed time for herself. Suddenly Bernice saw me appear in the dream and at that point she awakened from her sleep. She later concluded I was the one to succeed mother.
Bernice told me she’d had another dream since our retreat. In her dream, Daddy was sitting at his desk. Bernice was sitting across from him. He reached across and held her hands. Then she said I came in, and our father smiled and looked at me and said, “Dexter,” and put Bunny’s hands in mine. Bernice said in her previous dreams about our father, he was chasing her, gliding after her. But now she had no fear. When she told me that, it humbled me. Scared me a little too.
Bernice asked me to trust the Bible. I told her I didn’t know it as well as she did. Now I had an opportunity to learn more about it, through my eyes and hers.
I came back into the King fold around ’92. I told Mother I still wanted to have involvement with the family, with the legacy, but from another perspective. Consulting with my best friend Phil, I began to focus not on the King Center but the King Estate, the business and cultural side of the legacy. They were separate— licensing, intellectual property, creative projects—an open book. Bernice left the Ebenezer fold. I knew I must work with the King Estate, must not give up on the legacy, must be true to it. The question was, how?