Nicholas Hood III

NICHOLAS HOOD III

USE TEXT IN BOLD

 

00:47:49:20

HOOD:

Nicholas Hood is my name

Nicholas Hood the Third. Pastor and senior minister

of the Plymouth United Church of Christ.

 

00:48:37:09

FOXWORTH:

Christianity was used to control, to

punish slaves at one point or another.

What's your take on

the way that Christianity was used as

part of the slave trade?

 

00:49:04:00

HOOD:

Well we have to remember

that the slaves for the most part who

came to America were brought to America

were brought from the west side of

Africa and there they already believed

in God. Many of the slaves had an animist

form of religion where you would worship

these inanimate objects but they already

believed in God and so it wasn't that

big a jump for many of the slaves when

their slave owners exposed them to

Christianity to just have a continuum

from what faith of what they had already

in Africa and

[00:49:45:15

it's funny the slave

owners wanted Christianity to be

given to the slaves to really enforce

slavery. So there's several places in the

New Testament where it says slaves be

obedient to your masters when you read

throughout the Old Testament you'll see

that they're places where some people

had slaves. Abraham had a slave girl

named Hagar who later – in Jewish thought

becomes his wife after his wife Sarah

dies well the slave owners aren't

talking about that but what they were

talking about was be obedient to your

masters but by the same token the same

person who talked about slaves be

obedient to your masters in the New

Testament the Apostle Paul also says

that in Christ there's neither male nor

female, Jew nor Gentile slave nor free

and so the, the African-Americans the

Africans in America gravitated naturally

to those parts of the Bible

00:50:52:00 - end]

I think this

is part of the reason why many of the

slave owners really forbid or forbade

their slaves from learning how to read

because once they began to learn how to

read they're not just reading one part

of the Bible but they're reading the

whole Bible and what they found in the

Bible was not slavery and oppression

but what they found was liberation.

00:51:15:05

FOXWORTH:

So was there a component of Ephesians 6 and 5

that slaveowners got wrong, or did those who were enslaved

see it in a perspective that they shouldn’t have?

 

00:51:28:05

HOOD:

 
They're just like modern-day people

they're modern-day people today who take

parts of the Bible that they like and

they ignore other parts and so the

slaves did that too and the slave owners

did it you know and thank God that our

forefathers our foremothers

had the foresight they had the

intelligence to read between the lines

in the Bible and they interpreted it in

a way that was relevant for their time

and really set the stage for modern day

life in America.

 

00:52:00:00

FOXWORTH:

And they did that so much so that they left parts

out of the Bible.

There were components that people say

were not in -- not shared or torn out of

the Bible in some way were not--

 

00:52:11:07

HOOD:

Well but the same is true with men; male and

female issues in the Bible - the same

mindsets that would say slaves be

obedient to your masters would also

gravitate to those parts of the New

Testament where the Apostle Paul says

it's not right for a woman to teach a

man.

You know and so it depends on your

perspective and even today of the modern

person white or black it is not just the

African-American all of us if we're

going to be true to our faith we have to

be theological in the sense that we're

not just Biblical we're not just reading

the words of the Bible but we're

theological in that we're trying to

interpret what those words of the Bible

mean in a relevant way for today.

 

00:53:03:16

FOXWORTH:

Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and a number of

people have had to rely on the North Star

but they also used religion as a main way

of enduring slavery and being able to get out

--Old Negro Spirituals and so forth. What’s your take

or your perspective on the need for that in

their lives at that time?

 

00:53:28:09

HOOD:

Well they found the need for that

in their lives at that time just as we

today have a real need for that—

 

FOXWORTH:

And if I could I’m sorry, if you could

Repeat part of what I just said, that the

Need for Negro Spirituals, or the North Star

Or those kind of things in your answer, because

People won’t know that I asked you. So yeah,

what was the need for those types of

methods, in order to get through?

 

 

 

 

00:53:57:22

HOOD:

Well the Negro

spiritual is really what we call slave

songs and you know the African-American

figured out how to even transpose the

slave songs into melodies -- same words but

the melodies that

people in their generation and in

particular white Americans and Europeans

could understand. So for example there is

a period in the history of Fisk

University where they fell on financial

hard times the university almost closed

and they had a choir called the Jubilee

singers and these young people with the

director took off for two years they

traveled through Europe and they sang

slave songs but what they did was they

were crafty enough to transpose the

slave songs into a classicized model so

for instance the slave song might go

like this (slave dialect) “Lord I know I've been changed,

Lord I know I've been changed, Lord I

know I've been changed, The angels in

heaven done signed my name…” but when they

went to Europe they sang it like this

(Queen’s English dialect)

“Lord I know I've been changed, Lord

I know I’ve been changed”--

and they're smiling the

whole time “Lord I know I've been changed”--

you notice we go from the minor key to

the major key – “The angels in the heaven

done signed my name!” and they’d end with a

big smile and the Europeans were just

throwing money at their feet and those

young people saved Fisk University. It's

an amazing history but that's part of it

you know we take the same songs, same

melodies but we turn around for the

culture and the time but those same

songs “Lord I've been know I've been

changed/the angels in heaven done signed

my name” - that's the kind of song that was

sung down by the river you know on a

Sunday night when master’s not looking

and master thinks is okay because he

hears these words of faith but very

often those words of faith were really

words of encouragement to run away from

slavery. 00:56:26:00 – end]

 

You have you know Sojourner

Truth and Harriet Tubman

and their role in anti-slavery but I

tell you in my own family my grandfather

my great-grandfather was a runaway slave

he and his brother ran away from slavery

according to family legend they were on

a farm owned by a relative of General

John Bell Hood he's the youngest

Confederate General in the Confederate

Army there in outside of Louisville

Kentucky and according to my eldest

uncle I said why did my

great-grandfather run away from slavery

he said because simply he was tired of

being beat and every time the Bears the

Bears in the area like corn and they

were growing corn he said as the Bears

would take the corn they would get

beaten for this but by the same token he

said you know your great-grandfather

told me he said that they made friends

with the Bears

I said really he said yeah they made

friends with the Bears and when they got

ready to run away from slavery they

stocked up on sweet potato pies they

gave them to the Bears and the Bears

provided them safe coverage and I said

uncle that's the most fantastic story

I've ever heard in my life I said I

don't know if it's truth I said that's

what your great-grandfather told me but

the point that I'm making is that for

most of us who are African-American we

have some point in our history our

family history where we can go right

back to slavery and frankly for me it

wasn't that long ago.

 

00:58:06:00

FOXWORTH:

When we jump forward to the civil

Rights movement, Nicholas Hood, Sr.,

And his role

 

00:58:15:15

HOOD:

Well several things --

one my father graduated from Yale

Divinity School in 1949. He was called to

a church in New Orleans the Central

Congregational Church on Bienville

Street my father and mother married and

they had me two years later so 1951. The

civil rights movement was taking off and

my father was the secretary for the New

Orleans Improvement Association just

like you remember

Dr. King in Montgomery Alabama had the

Montgomery Improvement Association so

there was a New Orleans component to

that and my father was the secretary.

 

00:58:58:00

A lot of people may not know this but the

SCLC Southern Christian Leadership

Council was not founded in Atlanta it

was actually founded in New Orleans and

so guess who was one of the original

signers for the SCLC -- it's my father he

is actually one of a handful of people

who helped to incorporate the SCLC but

he did that because he was active in the

movement and I asked my dad once I said,

“Dad what got you involved in the

movement, he said, “Any minister who really

had a social consciousness was involved

in the movement.” and he talked to me

about how they had the Voting Rights

efforts in New Orleans he said they were

very difficult with the you know all the

restrictions that were put on people the

high tests to even just be given a voter

ID but he said in the outlying parishes

of Louisiana outside of New Orleans

people just disappeared so it was very

dangerous it was very violent and as it

turned out in somewhere during that

period 1949 to 1950, ‘51 Andrew young

who's today one of the last of the

living close associates of Dr. Martin

Luther King the inner working team--

Andrew Young and my father got together

and the way they got together was that

my dad was called to Andrews Church

Andrew was not a great churchman himself--

he's just a boy he was at Howard

University--

but his mother and father who were

pillars of the church and the parsonage

of the church the residence for the

pastor was not ready

so they volunteered to let the new

young pastor who was 27 years old and

his 19 year old bride to come and live

in their house. Andrew comes home from

Howard University and the new

preacher is

in his bedroom and he didn't like that

and but they got together and they

became friends and as it turned out a

couple years later Andrew went to the

Hartford seminary which is also in

Connecticut he wanted to go to Yale

but he got his application in late

and so they didn't admit him but he went

to Hartford and at Hartford he had a

great opportunity to study missions and

also along the way he and my dad, my dad

took him with him to Texas for a

spiritual retreat and the way my dad got

him to go was he said Andrew I've been

invited to go speak at this conference

for young people in Texas will you drive

me? Andrew thought that wherever they

were going in Texas was near where he

had a roommate from Howard -- as it turned

out his roommate was 400 miles away and

he was stuck in a camp with my dad with

nothing to read but a Bible but it's

very funny how life turns around at the

during that conference one of the young

white men who was in the cabin with

Andrew grew up to be after that

experience the head of the National

Council of Churches and when the civil

rights movement kicked off it was Andrew

Young who's one of the few black people

that he knew and Andrew said he's one of

the white few white people that he knew

he called Andrew to literally be what

they call our man in the South our man

in the civil rights movement and so

they paid his salary for him to work

with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So it's

an interesting continuum and then the

church -- Plymouth United Church of Christ

where we're filming this was actually

one of the northern fundraising sites

for the SCLC and the reason why we were

one of the northern fundraising sites is

guess what -- my father who was the pastor

already had a history with Dr. King -- he

knew Coretta Scott King before Coretta

and Martin got married I'm still trying

to figure that one out…

but there was a lot of inner related

relationships and so the SCLC was very

comfortable coming to Detroit when they

finally started coming to North to raise

money I was part of it as a child I saw

it and it's one of the most fascinating

experiences I've ever had but all right

here in the church. 01:03:32:00 end}

 

 

01:03:32:16

FOXWORTH:

You mentioned National Council of

Churches. How has the African American

Community, from your perspective been able

To continue to move forward with so many diverse

Factions that were a part of the civil rights

Movement? AME church—the black church in

General, just so many different perspectives on

Religion?

 

01:04:00:00

HOOD:

Well even today there

are different denominations but during

the civil rights movement all those

churches that you're talking about are

really Protestant the truth of the

matter is that there were also

Catholic there were Jewish congregations

and rabbis who all participated in the

movement but at the end of the day and

again this is part of the history my

father told me he said even on the big

march on Detroit I think was in 1963

even in that March he said there was my

father,

CL Franklin and a couple of other

ministers he said most of the ministers

in Detroit did not participate in the

organizing of the March but once they

realized that their people wanted to be

a part of it and plan to be a part

of it then the preachers got in line and

so even today it's pretty much like that

every church is autonomous even if

you're in a church where you're in a

heavily governed by the denominational

structure but at the end of the day the

preacher -- the minister has tremendous

sway over the congregation and some

churches are with it some are not.

01:05:16:09

FOXWORTH:

How should African-Americans see

Religion in general today? As a way of getting

Through—they saw it to get through slavery

Now how should they see religion?

 

 

01:05:34:03

HOOD:

Well I think that those of us

who are people of faith see it this way

what I'm getting to say and I think the

way I would hope people would look at

religion regardless of you’re black or

white

you know religion and faith in God is

really our foundation for building

healthy lives healthy emotional lives,

healthy spiritual lives,

Healthy financial lives, healthy relational lives

and the person who tries to make it

through life without religion is really

having a tough time we see in modern-day

polls the pew organization and the

Gallup Organization have found that over

65% of every community in America today

is unchurched and so on the one hand we

can bemoan that but on the other hand I

would say it's a tremendous opportunity

for the church. Last Sunday I preached a

sermon called “Crises of Faith” and that

was based on what I'm hearing from young

people they're upset and devastated

because some of their contemporaries

died people who were their age and

they're not used to that and the more I

talk with these younger people the more

I realize that we really do have a

crises of faith and it is the

responsibility of the church in my

perspective to help to make religion

relevant for people today if there's 65

percent of the people in America in

every community in America who are

unchurched that is a great indictment on

the church it means that the church has

got to do more and the church has got to

not only program more but the church has

got to find a way to take the message of

Jesus Christ and make it relevant for

today. 01:07:24:00 end]

 

I hear Jesus saying in John 10:10 I come

that you might have life that you might

have life more abundantly to me what

that means is an abundant

life is not just a happy-go-lucky life

but it's a life where you have enough

money to buy your groceries enough money

to clothe your children a life where

you're secure and the church has an

obligation it has a responsibility I

think that’s God-given for us to provide

that kind of abundant life

to lay the platform for an abundant life

for the people today.

 

01:08:04:00

FOXWORTH:

Rev. Nicholas Hood, III has a vision for

The community in which you serve and

The people who participate in your

Congregation. What message out of those

Two visions can you share that can be beneficial

To a larger audience even outside of this market?

 

01:08:27:00

HOOD:

Well I would just

say that every church has to strive to

be relevant where it is whether or not

you're in California, New Mexico, Miami or

even Detroit we all have to struggle to

be relevant and relevant sometimes is

relative you know which means that the

things that are the struggle right here

in Detroit may be a little different. I

have a son who lives in Berkeley

California you know that's a different

population much more diverse than

Detroit but you know the people in

Berkeley, California the people in Miami

the people in Detroit in New York

Washington D.C. they all want to be fed

they all want to feel good about life

they all want to try to understand life

with its complexities its issues and it

is the obligation I think really the

onus of responsibility of the clergy to

help break the faith down on a level

where people can digest it and run

with it take the ball and run with it I

heard your -- one of your earlier

interviews and I would just say that I

just want to add this that

 

01:09:39:00

we're living

in a different world today than 1956 and

the civil rights movement

and one of the challenges of today is

that Dr. King and all the people around

him were so successful and making sure

that of any person regardless of the

color of your skin would have an

opportunity to eat at the lunch counter

to have the opportunity to have our

children educated in schools just like

everybody else that we would all be

afforded the opportunity to lead safe

and productive lives and so the question

now is and it's a little different

challenge it's a-- it's a much much more

different challenge than what the civil

rights movement had to deal with which

is what do we do in a society where on

face value everybody has the same

opportunity we have the same opportunity

but we see that black people are not

keeping up with everybody else matter of

fact the law case with the Asians versus

Harvard University is really making a

case that if you just accepted people

into Harvard based on test scores Asians

would come away with 47% of the

spots and so it raises -- that there are all

these different very complex issues that

are happening now and I think the role

of the church is we have to challenge

our young people, we have to challenge

our middle-aged people, we have to

challenge people at every level within

our congregations to hope for the best,

strive for the best, work for the best

and stop feeling sorry for yourself - 01:11:18:00 end]

and so to me that is a different

challenge than what Dr. King and Andrew

Young had -- the challenge today is

nobody's gonna wait for you, nobody's

gonna feel sorry for you and so we as a

people and churches within a people

we've got to encourage our own so at

this church at Plymouth United Church of

Christ you know I'm in my on June 13th I

will be in my 34th year no 44th year as

a minister but my 34th year as pastor

and one of the things I try to do is we

started in 1985 with $0

but today we're giving out $2,000 a year

to 30-plus students who are in college

now

you can't finance a college education on

$2,000 but we figured out how to endow

a lot of money we only give the

scholarships from the awards but that's

one little way that one little church in

this big nation of America is trying to

encourage the children and to say look

you know you cannot wait for anybody

else

don't feel sorry for yourself don't fall

down on your knees in front of anybody

else and beg for help but rather stand

up like a man

stand up like a woman and go for it and

you have a church which is supporting

you in that effort and we're not the

only Church there are other churches

that are doing their parts as well but I

just the point I'm trying to make is the

issues today in some respects are more

complex than they were in 1955.

 

01:12:53:09

FOXWORTH:

You mentioned 34 years and 44 years, have you

Seen progression among African Americans in their

Lifestyle, in their way of living, and the way they

Treat each other?

 

01:13:08:00

HOOD:

Certainly

and particularly in Detroit, Michigan

One of the things we see in Detroit is I

think on a quantitative level we

probably have the greatest composition

of African-Americans--African Americans

of middle class and we have a lot of

African Americans I'm sure Atlanta and

New York and Chicago would want to

challenge me on this but if you look at

black enterprise on the list of the top

businesses for years since they've been

recording the top black businesses in

America many of them are right here from

Detroit and it's not by accident many of

our top businesses in Detroit

are connected to the auto industry as

suppliers and so they have an unusual

opportunity to do very well but there

are also a lot of African-Americans in

Detroit who are still working in the

auto industry when I was a boy in the

early 60s we had African

Americans were making $50,000 a year who

lived in my neighborhood now they had to

work double and triple shifts but people

in Detroit--black people in Detroit have been

used to living well brick houses good

salaries as long as they were willing to

work the metric that's changing now

is the auto industry is not employing

like it used to and it's not hiring it's

not compensating people in the same ways

that they once did but I talked to a

school teacher this week they told me

whose husband works in the auto industry

she said my husband makes three times

what I make and so you just think about

that and so they're great opportunities

today but they're also tremendous

challenges and the role of the church is

we have to rise to the challenge we had

to figure it out and then encourage our

people to keep pressing on to higher ground.

 

01:15:02:00

FOXWORTH:

Final question: As you’ve alluded to,

Or shared, rather, the fact that your

Father has paved the way for you in a lot

Of respects, what outside of the educational

endowment that you’ve given, what’s your hope,

at some future point, when you decide to

step aside, do you hope you have been able to do

for someone who’s come up behind you?

 

01:15:31:15

HOOD:

I hope that

I've laid the platform I hope I've laid

a foundation for the church my father

did not at least according to my knowledge

he didn't dictate that I would succeed

him matter of fact it was quite a fight

and you know he did advocate for me

quietly but more importantly was that he

laid the foundation and he laid the

expectation for the church to expect a

certain level of ministry an intelligent

informed ministry that is also socially

committed. My father is the he was the

second African American in the last

century to serve on the Detroit

City Council. The preceding century

in the late 1800s we believed there was

an African-American who served on the

City Council but I'm not sure if people

knew it but part of the reason why my

father could go in the City Council in

1965 was that his predecessor Reverend

Horace A. White served in the state

legislature and I really think that's

softened the congregation to that and so

the point that I'm making is none of us

get here by accident and so what I'm

trying to do is to create a platform for

the church where the church will accept

nothing less than what I brought to the

table matter of fact I hope that they

will really look for even much more than

what I brought and can I add one more

thing I'm trying to do my part I've got

you know one full-time associate

minister and two assistant ministers and

I incorporate them in a lot of what I do

because I want them to know I mean

tonight could be my last night and so I

just you know want the church to be in

good hands when my time is gone.

 

01:18:22:23

HOOD:

Hi this is Reverend Nick Hood

pastor the Plymouth United Church of

Christ and I want to thank NGP.

01:18:42:00

HOOD:

This is Pastor Nick Hood the Third

and we're on the set with NGP

 

01:19:48:00

HOOD:

This is Pastor Nick Hood the Third

and we're on the set with NGP creative

production that changes lives.