Reverend Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III |
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FROM SUNRISE
TO SUNSET
In Memory of Our Servant Leader Reverend Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III (1949-2022)
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Abyssinian Baptist Church |
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Last Friday, the news of the passing of Reverend Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III, rocked our world here at The HistoryMakers. The news came amidst the ongoing news of the day: the war in Ukraine, continuing political acrimony, rising interest rates, the threat of a recession and this week’s upcoming midterm elections and their impact on our future…our democracy. Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, who also served previously as Abyssinian Development Corporation’s Chief Operating Officer, spoke of Reverend Butts’s significance: “Reverend Butts worked more effectively than any other leader at the intersection of power, politics and faith in New York. He understood the role of faith in our lives, especially in the Black community. But he also understood power and how to wield it and how to demand power from those who often sought to hoard it. And so he was a pragmatist, he was a realist, but he was also a dreamer.” [1]
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Reverend Butts had been an active member of our ReligionMakers Advisory Committee, helping us fill in the missing pieces of our nation’s African American religious history. He did so, taking time out of an already overcrowded calendar. His expansive knowledge and thoughtful approach lent credibility and substance to our work. The work of the committee resulted in a 150 page chronological outline of African American religious history, a list of those we still need to interview as well as a call to action to preserve the history of the black church before it is too late. In fact, this preservation work had begun in the 1980s at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture under the tutelage of director emeritus Howard Dodson. During the COVID pandemic, we hosted a symposium entitled Are You Saved: The History of Blacks in Religion:
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Reverend Dr. Marvin A. McMickle |
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Hosted by the Dean of the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University Jonathan Lee Walton, this panel featured Assistant Professor at Yale University Divinity School The Reverend Dr. Eboni Marshall-Turman as well as Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School’s Reverend Dr. Marvin A. McMickle who so effectively eulogized Reverend Butts on Friday in front of a standing room only crowd at Abyssinian Baptist Church. He told of their young days as young divinity students in their twenties at Union Theological Seminary under the tutelage of Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor. He also spoke of the untimeliness of Butts’ death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 73: “This is a bad time to lose a prophet.”
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Butts’ memorial service drew thousands that included his family, supporters, church members, religious, political, civic and business leaders and friends. His life’s work had been spent ministering to the poor and those in need, calling out the injustices in society, climbing poles to paint over billboards, serving as an university president for twenty years of SUNY Old Westbury, mentoring other young religious and civic leaders like Senator Raphael Warnock, Senior Pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and leading the Abyssinian congregation for decades.
Calvin Otis Butts, III was born on July 19, 1949, the son of Eloise (Edwards) Butts and Calvin O. Butts, II. In his 2005 interview with The HistoryMakers, Reverend Butts spoke very highly of his parents: “Both were very industrious people, I watched them work very hard--this is etched in my memory, in my heart--to build a life, to buy a home, to buy a second home, to take great pride in accumulating, not opulent things, but things that would provide for their comfort and for the comfort of their child, and for their child's education, and providing the right kind of atmosphere in the home, helping to make sure that I could meet the challenges of the world.” [2]
Of his mother, he said “I like to think that my mother is a reflection of black women…they cared for their father, their mother, their sibling in the face of great odds. They had to work and then come home and work again…” [3] He similarly praised his father, calling him “one of those black men who… would have made great progress intellectually and otherwise if it had not been for the racial situation at the time in this country…” [4]
When asked about the sounds, sights and smells of his childhood, he responded by saying: “Well, sounds, of course, would be the sounds of New York, the subway, sirens, and the African rhythms that accompany salsa music…the different languages, Yiddish, Spanish, and the various dialects of America, English…For sights…it would be the East River and the gorgeous view we had from our apartment in the projects, the Domino Sugar plant and the boats going up and down the river at night, the view of the 59th Street bridge, the Queensboro Bridge; looking out of the window of the car and seeing Manhattan Island, a wonderful view as you approach the Midtown Tunnel--probably one of the most gorgeous sights on earth…for smells… food smells that would hit you when you came home from school or during holidays when the families would gather.” [5]
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After attending Flushing High School in New York, Reverend Butts attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he was, like other Morehouse men of his generation, greatly influenced by the legendary Morehouse President Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. HistoryMaker and businessman Donald L. Hense who was Butts’ classmate noted: “Calvin was really smart. He had a 4.0 average, and he was really being sought after by all the fraternities to join. And Calvin challenged me to a debate. And my agreement was, if he lost the debate, he would pledge Kappa [Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity]. He's a Kappa…” [6]
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Donald L. Hense, former classmate of Rev. Butts at Morehouse College |
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The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as a turning point in Butts’ thoughts about student activism: “I remember going across to Canterbury House and meeting with some fellows that I had been working within an organization called PRIDE, People Ready In Defense of Ebony…We dug up all of our preplans and we went to another location and made a bunch of Molotov cocktails….I started out with about seven of these Molotov cocktails, and I had about two left…I looked down at one of these Molotov cocktails, and I remember as we were walking, we heard this whir, and we looked around and it was an armored car, like, an Atlanta police, like a half-track truck or something….and this big shotgun and his very red neck. And all of a sudden I understood that violence was not the way (laughter); nonviolence was the way. So I remember casting off the bag with the cocktails in it and running and just running, running, running, running, running and my friend doing the same thing.” [7]
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Rev. Calvin Butts in front of a portrait of Adam Clayton Powell, his predecessor at Abyssinian Baptist Church |
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After earning his degree in philosophy from Morehouse College in 1972, Butts entered Union Theological Seminary in New York: “All of a sudden all of that talk about religion, you know, and all of their faith, and all that clicks in.’” [8] He added: My theology is shaped largely by three people in terms of reading and understanding: Howard Thurman, Benjamin Mays, James Cone. Howard Thurman's writing-- Jesus and the disinherited, the relationship of this young rabbi from a Palestinian ghetto to his people and his understanding of God as representing the power and the force that would free them from the oppression of Rome but also from the oppression of Rome's puppet leaders like Herod.
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"Benjamin E. Mays, in "The Negro's God” talked about how our religion was once a religion of compensation. And now it was evolving into something that was pressing us forward in terms of our own struggle for freedom, and liberty, and justice--and James Cone in "Black Theology & Black Power” that sort of propelled me into ministry and helped me to be about the struggles that I'm involved in against police brutality, in community development, fighting racism, and encouraging young black men and women to a sense of excellence in their studies and in their work, because God is on the side of black people in their struggle, because we have the conscience of America. We are the ones who continue to save America all the time. And, and those who agree with us are black. That's ontological blackness.”
And that would be his focus for the next fifty years. He had already succeeded the legendary U.S. Congressman and Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972) who had assumed the role of senior pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1938 after his father Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. (1865-1953) The church, particularly Abyssinian [Baptist Church], needed to…rebuild the community, protect the poor, and not allow this very historic place to just be overrun with developers who have no interest in it other than making a dollar. We have resources in the church. We have political connections and…we have human and financial resources…So we gathered some of our more active members around the table, told them what we were witnessing, and said how do we deal with this? And out of those early efforts came the Abyssinian Development Corporation.” [9]
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The Abyssinian Development Corporation was designed, according to Reverend Butts, to foster “residential, commercial, educational, and cultural development.” [10] Reverend Butts used his pulpit to address the myriad of issues facing the black community, and despite never holding public office, he became a political leader and change agent. When we interviewed him in the early mid-2000s, he spoke of his work to end police brutality. “Our movement had helped to get--Ben Ward made the first African-American police commissioner in the city. We saw the rates of incidents drop. We expanded the Police--Civilian Complaint Review Board so more civilians could be on it. And we actually saw the number of complaints go down and the number of incidents go down.” [11]
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Fifth Avenue at 110th Street, East Harlem, 1970 (Library of Congress) |
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Reverend Butts was particularly vocal after the police killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, and the subsequent acquittal of the four white officers involved. “The city was racially divided. [Former New York Mayor Rudy] Giuliani was responsible for it…I watched how he baited black people. I watched how he used race…as a wedge between New Yorkers. I watched his policies and how he responded to black people. I met with him early on in his administration. He was mean-spirited. I was certainly angry with him 'cause he hadn't done a thing…to try to help improve race relations.” [12]
In reflections during his interview, he shared how he hoped to be remembered: “Two things…one, in the true sense of the spirit of Christ, that I'm a Christian; and two, somebody said he was a good brother, that he was a good brother, and we could talk to him, he was all right, you know, a good father, good husband, good son.” [13]
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Butts had joined our ReligionMakers Advisory Board in 2020 because he had become painfully aware of the lack of documentation of black religious life and contributions and the need to protect and digitize the collection of Abyssinian Baptist Church. In fact, he noted the disappearance of a trunk that contained the irreplaceable collection of Adam Clayton Powell: “Adam Clayton Powell Jr, when he died they said they were shipping a box of material or a couple of boxes or a trunk from Washington D.C. back to New York. We never found it and it was to have contained his papers, his notes… we've never found it. We don't know what happened to those materials that he collected.” He added: I have a library that was set up by the church for me and in it are just tons and tons of boxes and papers and books. Fortunately there’s one student who is going to be working with me to try to organize them and I have never thought they were important, you know, I'm just a servant of God struggling out here trying to make it the best way I can.
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Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. |
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"We petitioned several major foundations to help us with money to digitize the 212-year history that we know of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The reverend Dr. Marvin A. McMickle served as an assistant minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. He doesn't even remember the things he left there… James Cone lectured here many times. I have a box of tapes from John Henrick Clarke.” Then he forewarned: “People will try to take our history and change it. As they told us we had no history coming from Africa and the black church is the cultural barrier, is the repository, and we must…make sure and contribute to these organizations so that they can tell the truth about us.”
Truth telling was at the core of Dr. Butts’ theology. We will continue the work that he started to ensure the documentation and preservation of Abyssinian Baptist Church’s rich history. The black church has served as the cornerstone of black life, its contributions and accomplishments and the loss of its history is essentially the loss of black life in America.
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The Reverend Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III, at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York |
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Butts’ life was spent advocating for “the least of these” as a preacher, teacher and administrator. He will be sorely missed. But let’s commit to carrying on his legacy at a time when his work is so very needed. Thank you, Reverend Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III for your welcoming smile, your furrowed brow and your tireless dedication. You were a good father, a good husband, a good son, and a passionate advocate for black people. You labored in the vineyards and it is time for us to take up the plow. |
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Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Election Day: Duty Calls
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This Tuesday, November 8, 2022 is election day. A lot is resting on the power of our vote. As African Americans, young and old, we cannot take our voting rights for granted. Too much blood was shed to grant these rights to us. The following stories are from our archives in memory of times past, but also as a warning of what could return if we do not exercise our right to vote. |
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An elderly Black man registers to vote in Batesville, Mississippi, 1966 (Stanford University Library) |
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Banker Sidney Rushing (1930-2019) explained the experiences of black people in the 1950s and 1960s who wanted to vote in Gulfport, Mississippi: “If you wanted to vote, you had to pay $2 per year tax. Every year you had to go down there and pay your poll tax…the poll tax was put there to disenfranchise people from voting, because a lot of people could not afford to pay that $2 per year…it was aimed at blacks, but they didn't know that they were at the same time disenfranchising a lot of poor whites. They couldn't pay afford--the, the $2 either…One of the requirements was to be able to read the Constitution of the State of Mississippi and interpret what you read. And, and 'course my wife and I were given pieces of paper with the Constitution on that to read and, and interpret. And of course the, the, the circuit clerk was the, the person to make a decision, and he, he said we passed (laughter).” [1]
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Similarly, Senior Advisor for the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) Shirley Malcom shared, in her interview for The HistoryMakers, her experiences helping her grandmother pass a voting literacy test: “My grandmother…decided she…wanted to try to pass the literacy test…At the church and all they would hand out these, this material for you to study and so again I became the person holding the sheet when my grandmother--I'd ask the questions and she'd give me the answers. And I think back on that and I think back on the amount of time she spent studying so that she could pass this. You know she was like almost seventy years old when she voted for the first time and when she was able to pass her literacy test.” [2]
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Man takes oath registering to vote; undated |
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Former Deputy Director of the National Urban League Mahlon T. Puryear (1915-2007) described how his father registered him to vote on his 21st birthday: " The first time I registered in North Carolina, Papa carried, he carried us to register on our twenty-first birthday. The day I went, professor of history from Winston-Salem State [as ahead of me and the man asked him to spell religion. And, he said "R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N," and the man said, "You can't register 'cause you can't spell it. It's a capital "R." When I walked up, I--and the man said, "What's your name?" I said, "Puryear." He looked at me and he said, "Is your daddy the painter?" I said, "Yes sir, and he's standing right over there." He said, "Sign here." That's the way I registered, didn't ask me any questions." [3]
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In Atlanta, Black residents learned how to fill out voter-registration forms, beneath signs that read, “Register to Vote! It’s Easy Now!!”Credit...Associated Press |
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Civil Rights activist Gwendolyn Patton describes her family experience encouraging others in her community to vote: “We were organized in blocks in Montgomery [Alabama]…and Mommy [Juanita Foster Washington] would encourage people on her block to go downtown to attempt to register--fill out the literacy test, and to go to citizenship schools. Across town at my paternal grandparents' [Mary Patton and Samuel Patton, Sr.] home was one of the citizenship schools. So, as a child, I taught real school, I didn't play school, I did school--helping folks learn how to fill out the literacy test, helped them learn how to read and recite parts of the [U.S.] Constitution, the preamble, or whatever, 'cause all of that was part of the so called literacy test, the barrier. So, I had been primed, if you will, I was--first of all, I was born a freedom fighter, but I had also been primed to be a permanent freedom fighter--freedom organizer.” [4]
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As former Illinois State Senator James Clayborne explained: "One of the most important things that we have to teach in all communities is that people really control the power and it's not the state senator or the state rep [state representative] or the U.S. Congressman because people vote you in and you're there to represent their issues, not your own, but to do what's best for your constituents. So I think early on we've got to teach our children that being involved is one of the most important things that you can do. Work, yes, everybody has to work, school, everybody has to go to school, but your working environment, your school environment, is pretty much determined by those people who you have voted or didn't vote for to make decisions on how your daily life or the quality of life that you will have." [5]
Let’s heed these lessons and get out and vote on Tuesday. Maybe bringing back those Freedom Schools is not a bad idea!
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Voter Registration Drive at Black Expo, an annual exhibition of black talents, education, and products in Chicago, 1973. |
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REVEREND
GARDNER TAYLOR
Minister
Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Brooklyn, New York
Interviewed March 5, 2002
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Don't you know. Don't you see. |
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REFERENCES USED IN THIS ISSUE |
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From Sunrise to Sunset:
[1] Roberts, Sam. “The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, Dynamic Harlem Pastor, Dies at 73.” The New York Times. October 28, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/nyregion/calvin-o-butts-iii-dead.html.
[2] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 4, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about his father, Calvin Butts, Sr.
[3] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 3, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about his mother
[4] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 4, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about his father, Calvin Butts, Sr.
[5] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 1, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts describes the sights, sounds, and smells of his childhood in New York City
[6] Donald L. Hense (The HistoryMakers A2007.155), interviewed by Denise Gines, April 23, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 2, Donald L. Hense remembers his peers at Morehouse College
[7] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 2, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts remembers rioting after the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and choosing nonviolence
[8] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 7, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 6, story 2, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about the people who influenced his theology
[9] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 1, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts describes the founding of the Abyssinian Development Corporation in Harlem, New York
[10] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 1, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts describes the founding of the Abyssinian Development Corporation in Harlem, New York
[11] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 6, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about the racially motivated police brutality cases in New York City of Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo
[12] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, February 1, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 6, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about the racially motivated police brutality cases in New York City of Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo
[13] Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts (The HistoryMakers A2005.036), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 7, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 6, story 11, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts talks about how he would like to be remembered
Voting in the Digital Archive:
[1] Sidney L. Rushing (The HistoryMakers A2002.203), interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 12, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 6, Sidney Rushing talks about the poll tax in Gulfport, Mississippi
[2] Shirley Malcom (The HistoryMakers A2012.060), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 8, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 9, Shirley Malcom talks about her grandmother registering to vote
[3] Mahlon T. Puryear (The HistoryMakers A2003.268), interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 15, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 3, Mahlon T. Puryear describes his father's activities and registering to vote
[4] Gwendolyn Patton (The HistoryMakers A2007.098), interviewed by Denise Gines, March 19, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 7, Gwendolyn Patton describes her early activism in Montgomery, Alabama
[5] The Honorable James Clayborne, Jr. (The HistoryMakers A2000.046), interviewed by Adele Hodge, August 30, 2000, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 4, James Clayborne talks about the importance of teaching youth to use their voting power
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