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AME Churches Welcomed Distinguished Visitor

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By IMANI ASUKILE, Tribune correspondent

Published: October 26, 2007

In 1909, the same year the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People organized to combat lynching and racial discrimination, a national church magazine profiled three area churches.

The AME Church Review was a simple publication in comparison to what is available today. The quarterly cost $1 for a yearly subscription, or 25 cents a copy. The April 1909 edition that featured stories from Trilby, Dade City and the Hernando County community of Croom basically consisted of reports from editor Hightower T. Kealing's tour of AME churches the previous year. Running from February to June 1908, his tour stretched from New Orleans to the Florida Panhandle, through parts of Alabama, down to Pasco and Hillsborough counties, up the Atlantic coast and ended at the mother church in Philadelphia.

Beyond the individual stories, the magazine is full of pertinent dates and the names and locations of churches and church officials that bridge the past to the present.

That was a time of mixed fortunes for many people in the South, especially blacks. Segregation, lynching and racial discrimination would have been commonplace for the nearly 2,500 blacks the 1910 census counted as Pasco County residents.

Yet local black communities were dynamic in those days.

According to Scott Black, a Trilby native and local historian, the idyllic community north of Dade City was a bustling railroad community where more than five train companies had connections. It burned in 1925 and never recovered its economic prosperity.

Like most Southern communities, you did not have to travel far from the center of town to find blacks. Kealing found them within a mile of the Atlantic Coastline's depots. He found real communities with churches, homes, schools and burial grounds. Even though commercial lodging was rare in small communities at the turn of the century, the report describes how generous people were.

Conditions Bad In Some Towns

He arrived in Croom, another railroad community north of Trilby along the Withlacoochee River, on Feb. 27, 1908. There is little to suggest there was ever a town or village there, but Kealing reported meeting with Rev. S.H. Bell and spending the night with Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Williams. He was the first church official to visit Croom.

He found the Jim Crow conditions at the train station deplorable: 'As usual, little or no attention is given to the waiting room for colored people in these villages. Not a heater at Croom, not even a light. Mr. Williams and Reverend Berrian had to furnish a lamp, and on this cold morning, Friday Feb. 28th, made a bonfire, and before the fire the representative of the Review waited for the train.'

I'm sure the fire was the small outdoor type that was common in small towns until code enforcement practically eliminated them.
Kealing did not mention the name of the church or a school, but there was a school for blacks there as early as 1890, open until the late 1930s.

The situation got better when Kealing arrived in Trilby, where Mr. and Mrs. Burt Foster welcomed him into in their comfortable home. He described Mrs. Burt as a genuine entertainer who took special delight in making it pleasant for those stopping over in Trilby. More than likely, Mrs. Foster Burt was teacher Etta Burt.

'On Friday night, February 28, I addressed a most excellent audience in St. John A. M. E. Church. Rev. E. D. Dempsey was the pastor. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Witherspoon assisted in making my stay pleasant.'

St. John disappeared years ago. Mount Olive is the AME church in Trilby today.
Kealing would be disappointed if he saw the condition of the Trilby cemetery for blacks today. I'm certain he would find the conditions in Croom to be far more acceptable than the disregard shown for the dead today.

On March 1, he spoke to the Mount Zion AME Church in Dade City's Sunday school class and at the 11 a.m. service. Kealing described Mount Zion as beautiful and said he was pleased they were building a parsonage. The superintendent and pastor each purchased a year's subscription to the Review.

From there, he went on to Plant City.

Visitor Had Quite A Resume

In the small, rural communities where he stopped, Kealing would have seemed like no ordinary visitor. He wasn't.

He was born in Texas before the start of the Civil War to slave parents who were early adherents to African Methodism and missionary work. They aided many blacks during the difficult adjustment from slavery to freedom and made sure Kealing learned to read and write at an early age.

As a teenager, he was made an unofficial church administrator because he could read and write. That involved traveling with the presiding elder, reading the bishops' sermons aloud and filling out all sorts of official papers. Most of the early Texas licenses to preach and exhort bore Kealing's handwriting. He was jokingly called the 'junior presiding elder.'

You could call those years 'the making of an editor.'
Kealing earned degrees from Dillard University, Tabor College and Morris Brown College and was the first black student and alumnus of Tabor College.

He served as president of Western University in Kansas and Paul Quinn College in Texas. He was principal of the Prairie View State Normal School in Texas and supervisor of the colored schools in Austin, Texas. He twice was elected president of the State Teachers' Association in Texas and addressed the National Educational Association in Topeka, Kan.
Kealing was the first layman to edit the Review, where he stayed 16 years.

Looking through 21st century eyes, Kealing's visit may seem insignificant. But, in actuality, many small churches today would roll out the red carpet for a visit from a high-ranking church official. Dade City and Trilby had it in 1909.

I have always taken issue with Tom Brokaw's assessment that the men and women who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II were 'the greatest generation.' I would make a case for Kealing's generation, which mended the spirit of a people that was broken by bondage but, nevertheless, laid the foundation for the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King Jr. and T.D. Jakes.

Imani Asukile, a Hernando County native, is a longtime Dade City resident and one of the founders of the African American Heritage Society of East Pasco County. His column appears every other Friday. To suggest a future column, e-mail him at idasukile@yah

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