“Don’t Be Angry, Let Me Stay”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the National Baptist Convention annual meeting of 1961, a meeting in which a riot broke out; one minister, a senior citizen, died falling from the platform; and the NBC went through a major schism leading to the establishment of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Many younger generation ministers saw Joseph H. Jackson as the establishment candidate who needed to step aside so that leaders like Gardner C. Taylor and Martin Luther King Jr. could emerge. When they and others tried to unseat Jackson, not only did they lose the battle; they also lost their influence in the NBC. They believed Jackson was a dictatorial autocrat who retaliated against anyone who challenged him. He believed they were betrayers who wanted to bring about schism. The discord revealed itself with surprising force at the prior annual meeting in September 1960. In 1961, it went from bad to worse.