Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer

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Daddy Grace

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Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer

Marie W. Dallam

Daddy Grace

A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer

Marie W. Dallam

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York and London

www.nyupress.org

© 2007 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dallam, Marie W.

Daddy Grace : a celebrity preacher and his house of prayer/

Marie W. Dallam.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-2010-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8147-2010-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. United House of Prayer for All People. 2. Grace, Daddy,

1882?–1960. I. Title.

BX8777.6.A4D35 2007

289.9’4—dc22 2007023496

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  The Call of God Brought Him

2  The Usual Miracles

3  Led by a Convicted Man

4  He Ousted God from Heaven

5  My Joy Is Completed in Charlotte

6  Chaotic Confusion

Conclusion

An Essay on Sources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

In the spring of 1998, my friend Sharron Jackson asked me what I was studying in graduate school. I told her about a course called The Black Church and the Urban Challenge, and about the book I was then reading: Jill Watts’s text on Father Divine. Yes, Sharron said, I remember him from when I was a little girl. Father Divine, Daddy Grace, all of them. We used to see them up in Harlem. I did not admit it at the time, but I had never heard of Daddy Grace. My friend’s name-dropping propelled me to the library in search of an answer about who this religious leader was, and the lack of any satisfactory information is what caused me to begin this project. My research on Grace became not only a term paper for that class, but also the axis around which the rest of my graduate education revolved. Foremost, then, I thank Sharron for opening an important new door in my life.

Second, I must thank Lenwood Davis, whose annotated bibliography on Daddy Grace provided my initial starting point. Without his book I would never have known where to begin with the work.

Numerous professors guided and encouraged my research and writing, and for this I thank them immensely. Primary among them is Rebecca Alpert, my dissertation advisor, whose patience and careful attention was greater than I could possibly thank her for. I am also indebted to John Raines, David H. Watt, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Robert Schneider, Katie Geneva Cannon, Wilbert Jenkins, Herbert Ershkowitz, and Bettye Collier-Thomas, each of whom worked with me on some part of the project.

Many thanks go to New York University Press, especially editor Jennifer Hammer, who believed in the value of my project long before most of the words made it onto the page, and to series editor Peter Paris for his careful reading and thoughtful suggestions for improvement. I also thank Despina Papazoglou Gimbel and Emily Park for their work on the manuscript.

I offer my gratitude to librarians who took time to help me with pieces of the puzzle. Among those who were especially helpful were Andre Elizee of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Randall K. Burkett, curator of the African American Collections at Woodruff Library, Emory University; the staff of the New Bedford Free Public Library, especially Paul Cyr of the Special Collections Department; Marion Paynter and the library staff at the Charlotte Observer; the library of the New Bedford Standard-Times, especially Gail Couture; Cathy Meaney, formerly of Paley Library at Temple University; Gloria Korsman at Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School; and the staff in numerous departments of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

I am thankful for those who generously assisted me with photographs for this work: the Sargeant Memorial Room of Kirn Library in Norfolk, Virginia, and Robert Hitchings in particular; historian Milledge Murray, who donated photographs from his private collection; and the Charlotte Observer.

Along the way, I have appreciated both input and moral support offered by many colleagues and friends whom I met at Temple University, including Simon Wood, Randall Pabich, Pam Detrixhe, Darren Trippell, Rebekah Buchanan, and Janice Anthony. My gratitude especially extends to Dan Gallagher for his heroic readings and re-readings of portions of this text, and to Rachael Swierzewski for her research assistance. Each of the following colleagues discussed sections of this work with me and provided pivotal advice, and so I offer particularly special thanks to Julie Sheetz-Willard, Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin, Joseph Fitzgerald, Kevin J. Christiano, David Hollenberg, and Lori Salem.

I am grateful to the associations that funded segments of my research and writing: the Temple University Society of Fellows in the Humanities, and the Temple University Graduate Board/University Fellowship Committee.

Finally, though it is barely enough in the way of gratitude, I thank my sister Rebecca Dallam for the twenty years’ worth of encouragement that helped get me to this place. I thank Richard Gore for always being the captain of my personal cheerleading team. And most of all, I thank Jean Longo for love, support, food, and shelter, and for patiently listening to me drone on about Daddy Grace day after day, year after year. Everything is sweeter because of you.

Introduction

The reporter on assignment for the Associated Negro Press described the scene he witnessed in Philadelphia:

A week-long shouting meeting was climaxed Sunday by the United House of Prayer as Daddy (He’s So Sweet) Grace baptized thirty white-clad converts with a fire hose at 16th and Christian Streets. With three bands on hand to assure jumping dance music, Grace first made a 20-minute speech. He reminded them that he flew to the South Pacific, stopped the Japanese-American war in 1945, and flew right back. This he did overnight. And his followers, who were spotted throughout the huge crowd, said, Yes he did. As Grace raised his hands, with fingernails from one to three inches, and fingers graced with diamonds and sapphires, local firemen turned on the hose. . . . As soon as the water struck them, the converts began dancing, shivering, twisting, prancing. . . . They screamed into the water, praising the sweet name of Daddy while Daddy stood safely under an umbrella and said, Ain’t I pretty?¹

Decades after it was written, this record of a United House of Prayer baptismal event stands as a timeless description of Bishop Grace, the founder of the United House of Prayer for All People who became a minor American celebrity. It is timeless because it captures so many of the pervasive mythological themes about both Grace and his church members: the leader’s extravagance, his claims to fantastic power, his constant focus on himself, and the worshippers who were not afraid of being a public spectacle with their vibrant praise of Sweet Daddy. The word mythological refers not to the truth value in these themes, but to their dominance of public perceptions about Grace and his church both during his lifetime and in the collective memory of American religious history.²

During the four decades of Grace’s religious leadership, the United House of Prayer frequently attracted mockery from those outside of its ranks. Observers ridiculed distinctive features of the church including the exuberant style of worship, the extensive line of goods for sale named after Daddy Grace, the pomp of annual convocation ceremonies, members’ passionate devotion to the church and to the bishop, and the intricate network of church clubs, each with its own uniform. Grace himself received national exposure in both academic and tabloid form. At times he courted this publicity, while on other occasions it was unwelcome. In addition to attention-getting maneuvers such as wearing flamboyant clothing and jewelry, purchasing high profile real estate, and conducting baptisms in city streets with a fire hose, Grace reputedly accepted massive donations from poverty-stricken followers and used the money to live lavishly. From scholars to newspaper reporters, few hesitated to judge both Grace and his followers negatively. In an early academic example, anthropologist Arthur Huff Fauset characterized House of Prayer members as gullible and suggested outsiders should take pity on them and smile at these manifestations and ascribe them to the child-like nature of the Negro which is attracted to these uniforms, and other baubles.³ Popular writers crafted descriptions of Grace as a brown-skinned P. T. Barnum who cracked the whip in a circus of gaudy costumes, wildly gyrating acrobats and brass bands that played as if God were a Cosmic Hipster.⁴ More recently, in his study of messianic myth among African Americans Wilson Jeremiah Jones compared Grace with Father Divine and Prophet Jones, saying they were all opportunistic, egotistical charlatans, who elevated themselves for purposes of self-aggrandizement.⁵ Even a former member, in his apostate text, declared: The House of Prayer still stands as a constant reminder of the gullible nature of mankind.⁶ These examples demonstrate that the House of Prayer was often perceived as an illegitimate religious institution, and this mischaracterization was not without consequence. Grace was rebuffed by other pastors when he made ecumenical overtures, he and his followers were sometimes hounded by news reporters who wanted to substantiate outrageous headlines, and the church was usually designated a cult in the most pejorative sense of the word.

It was assumed by many that Grace was the charismatic glue that held his church together, and that once he was gone it would disintegrate. After his death in early 1960, some predicted that followers would be lured away by any new leader who came along. Never having taken the church seriously to begin with, outside observers underestimated its structural integrity and the commitment of its members to the faith, and they also overestimated the importance of Daddy Grace’s role.⁷ Church members ignored these predictions and were optimistic about their future despite sadness over the bishop’s death. As Melvin Adams, a Charlotte pastor, told congregants: Satan is just waiting for us to stop working, then he will say the House of Prayer is going down. . . . The House of Prayer is not going down. It’s going higher and higher than ever before.⁸ Adams proved correct. Though there were many legal and organizational hurdles in the years following Grace’s death, the church restructured, streamlined, and continued to expand. Today the House of Prayer remains an active church with a national membership in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.

To date, neither the United House of Prayer nor its founding bishop have received sufficient scholarly attention. Because nonmembers tended to view Daddy Grace as a caricature, few scholars have bothered to examine the intentionality of his actions, the things that influenced his decisions, or the integrity of his religious leadership. This book is the first to make a serious examination of the religious nature of the House of Prayer, the dimensions of Grace’s leadership strategies, and the connections between his often-ostentatious acts and the intentional infrastructure of the House of Prayer. This book is both a religious history of the first forty years of the institution (1920–60) and an intellectual history of its founder. I am particularly interested in some of the unique and unexpected directions Grace took in his leadership, and herein I attempt to discern what inspired him to make some of these decisions as well as how they affected the institution in the long term. Ultimately, this book helps to fill in the gaps of our knowledge about a man who was well known in African-American communities from the 1930s through the 1960s, but who is now noticeably absent from scholarly literature. Grace’s leadership was exceptionally innovative, and there is much to be gained from reexamining his unique style of decision making. An understanding of each aspect of the church must begin with Daddy Grace but must also include the people, their beliefs, and their practices. In other words, I tell the story of Grace in order to tell also the story of the people who co-created a new American church with him. In the end, the details of this story demonstrate that Grace should be considered among the most distinctive religious leaders of twentieth-century America.

Behind Grace’s Façade

One question that remains to this day is who the real man was behind the façade of Daddy Grace. What was Marcelino Manuel da Graca, the human being, like? Was the existence of his church the result of hidden motives—perhaps desires for riches or fame—or was he a sincere, Godfearing man whose every action was a response to a religious call? Very little information is available to answer these kinds of questions, as Grace left almost no writings and even fewer of his spoken words were recorded. After Grace’s death, reporter Phil Casey summed up the way many people had experienced him, writing, It sometimes seemed it must be easier to strangle eels than to pin Daddy down on points of fact.⁹ Certainly, Casey’s words aptly describe the challenge of uncovering the real Marcelino Manuel da Graca who spent decades camouflaged by Daddy Grace, founder and bishop. Now, half a century after his death, only Grace’s church remains as a testament to his intellect, abilities, and achievement. Though the church was once a truly unusual piece of twentieth-century American religious history, today it is a much more mainstream form of Christianity, not readily identifiable with its ostentatious roots. To understand the developmental trajectory of this church, one must inevitably begin with a profile of its founder.

Marcelino Manuel da Graca, most probably the second of five children, was born in approximately 1881 and raised in the Cape Verdean archipelago, off the coast of northwestern Africa.¹⁰ His youngest sister, Louise, remembered that their mother always proudly said Marcelino was different from the other children.¹¹ The da Graca siblings were raised in the Catholic church, which was the only established religion on the islands at that time, but when Grace came to the United States as an adult he had the freedom to pursue different kinds of Christian belief and practice. However Catholicism always remained influential in his life, and even in the 1930s when his own church was well established, Grace admitted that technically he was still Catholic.¹²

Grace always preferred to keep his background cloaked in mystery, saying things such as, I came from the land beyond the sea.¹³ Occasionally he claimed his parents were from Lisbon, but in fact Gertrude and Manuel had been born and raised on the island of Brava, just as his grandparents, Augusto and Constantina on his maternal side and Louis and Rose on his paternal side, had been. It appears that Marcelino Manuel had great respect for his father, Manuel. As the eldest son, he was his father’s namesake, and though he toyed with his own name over the years he always kept the Manuel present in his experiments: Charles Manuel Grace; Charles Imanuel Grace; Emmanuel Grace. Grace also appears to have been close with his mother, expressing particular regret when she passed away in July 1933. As he wrote in a letter to one of his assistants later that summer, "I am feelling bad over Mother’s death besides other trobles [sic]."¹⁴

Grace’s native tongue was Crioulo, the language of the archipelago. Immigration records list him as literate in Portuguese and English, but various associates had conflicting opinions on how literate he actually was.¹⁵ In court on one occasion, he was handed a newspaper and forced to prove he could read English.¹⁶ His tidy, careful handwriting may suggest that he had to put great effort into the act of writing his name; on the other hand, it may suggest that he had a formal education. Such an education would most likely have been in a Catholic school where he was taught in Portuguese and which could have been located either in the archipelago or in Portugal. The da Graca family appears not to have been poor despite the fact that their father primarily worked as a mason, so it is possible that they would have found the money to educate their eldest son. Had they been poor, it also would have been out of the question for them to emigrate en masse to the United States, which was a very expensive venture undertaken only by families of means.¹⁷

Between the time Grace arrived in the United States, somewhere around 1900, and when he started his church in 1921, he was studying and working and traveling. I traveled almost all my days. . . . I studied on the train, in the street car, in the homes and in the classes.¹⁸ When asked how he earned a living during that time, he said, I worked on a farm, I worked in the restaurant, everywhere I had to, I did not want to be idle anywhere I am, and wanted to do something, and I got in anything I chose and worked.¹⁹ In addition to work and study, he married and fathered two children. His first wife, Jennie, was Cape Verdean. She claimed that she had met Grace at a social event at the South Harwich Methodist Church when she was 16 years old. At the time, Grace was employed at the Snow Inn. He used to ride a bike to Harwichport so that they could attend church together, and Jennie remembered that his favorite hymn was Shall We Gather By the River? Her father did not approve of their marriage, possibly because of the eleven-year age difference. Jennie said Grace had left her in approximately 1912 after they argued about the attention he was giving to another woman, although his niece always claimed the marriage had ended because Jennie didn’t want a spiritual life.²⁰ Grace was never vocal about the existence of his first wife, but he must not have had acrimonious feelings toward her, since her picture hung on the wall in his Charlotte home for decades.²¹

Grace’s second wife, Angelina, was from Mexico.²² One church member described Angelina as a light skinned woman with light brown hair, and she had a mole on her face, a large mole, and she had curls.²³ After their 1932 marriage in Arizona, when Angelina was 19, she moved with Grace to Washington, DC. It seems that they did not really live together, however, because Grace’s primary residence in Washington was on Logan Circle and Angelina lived elsewhere in the city.²⁴ Nonetheless, she bore him a son in 1935. Like his marriage to Jennie, Grace’s marriage to Angelina lasted only a few years, and their divorce was finalized in 1937. Over the years, many other women claimed to have had sexual relationships or children or both with Grace, but none of these claims were ever confirmed by the courts.

Although Grace was only five feet eight inches tall, he made certain he stood apart from other men by adorning himself with nothing less than flamboyance.²⁵ His clothes were unpredictable, but usually flashy. He often wore tailor-made suits of lush fabrics, sometimes in vibrant colors and decorated with gold piping or shiny buttons. He paired the suits with brightly striped vests and hand-painted neckties. For less formal occasions Grace might wear a kimono or his red and silver cowboy shirt or his long, northern fur seal coat. His fingers and wrists invariably clanged with gold bracelets and rings containing precious stones. The fingernails of his left hand, which he allowed to grow several inches, were often painted in red, white, and blue. Grace kept his hair at shoulder length, and in early years he had a mustache and goatee, while later on he often simply drew his mustache on with an eye pencil. Though he mostly maintained a stoic countenance, when he was in the mood to have his picture taken he would smile broadly and stop to offer a variety of poses.²⁶ To the right of his nose Grace had a small scar or birthmark; this mark makes it possible to confirm the legitimacy of pictures of him, which is helpful because his facial appearance changed significantly as he aged.

Just as he dressed with great forethought, Grace also lived and traveled in style. He always had at least one luxury car for travel, such as a Packard, a Cadillac, or a Pierce-Arrow, and he sometimes had an entourage including a chauffeur, a body guard, invited guests, and any number of other assistants, such as elders, lawyers, or secretaries. His long-time chauffeur John Hero said that Grace usually kept the separation window in the car open, and when the two were alone they had friendly conversation. He added that Grace’s customary seat [was] the extreme right corner of the car.²⁷

Grace’s various homes, once he began collecting them, were often mansions much larger than anything needed by a single man, and he filled them with antiques and artwork. In his New Bedford home on County Street he had a collection of photographs that included one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he admired and for whom he had once campaigned. Another photo was of Dean Martin; Grace’s niece said he was unfamiliar with Martin but kept it because it had been a gift. Grace also seemed to collect bits of memorabilia: in a Charlotte safe opened after his death, for example, Grace had placed letters reportedly written to him by people asking for help, blessings, and to become members of his church.²⁸

Despite his extravagant taste in homes and clothing, for entertainment Grace enjoyed more simple pleasures. For example, at his County Street home he often sat on the lawn, just looking at the view. To relax in the evenings he played piano. He said he never watched television or listened to the radio, but he kept light fiction around the house that he sometimes asked others to read to him. Grace said he did not read the newspapers because he did not understand them. However, it is clear that he kept abreast of current events, particularly international ones, because occasionally he spoke about them to followers. Therefore, it seems likely that he either read the newspaper or listened to the radio, even if only irregularly.²⁹

Grace believed that travel was one of the best forms of education, and so during his lifetime he went to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, in addition to traveling all over the United States. He avoided airplanes, preferring trains and cars for cross-country travel, and ships to go abroad. In 1936 he bought a vacation home in Cuba, twelve miles outside Havana. It was a somewhat unusual choice because it was located in a beach town known only for its casinos, yet Grace eschewed gambling.³⁰ For entertainment, therefore, he probably spent time on the beach and kept company with his traveling companions. Returning home from Cuba he once said, I just returned from the land of sunshine and flowers. If I am able to take a trip for recreation, for a good time and to be among courteous people, I never miss the land of Cuba. I regret that I had to leave there so soon.³¹

Aside from lavish living, Grace had few identifiable vices. He neither smoked nor drank. His favorite foods were coffee, which he purportedly drank constantly, and various types of toast, including cheese toast, raisin toast, and cinnamon toast. As one visitor recalled, Of all the foods served during the hours-long breakfast, Daddy seemed to mostly eat cinnamon toast. The more toast Daddy downed, the more he was served. Grace then insisted his guest have some too, though she was not really interested.³² Grace preferred to sleep in the mid-morning hours, from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m., which put him on a slightly unusual schedule.³³ But in most other ways, Grace’s personal habits did not distinguish him from other men.

Possibly because he was a target for accusations of impropriety, Grace’s lifestyle vacillated between complete privacy and intense publicity, and this fact contributes to the difficulty of reconstructing his life and work. Grace had hundreds of associates but very few close friends. Aside from several long-term House of Prayer assistants whom he counted as friends, such as Grace Magazine editor Ernest Mitchell, chauffeur John Hero, and assistant Melvin Spencer, his social circle was small. Notable friendships with people outside of the church that he maintained over several decades included those with Edward Rogall, a Jewish businessman in New York who assisted him with real estate; J. S. Nathaniel Tross, a Guyanese pastor of a Methodist church in Charlotte; Samuel Keets, a white real estate speculator from Washington, DC, whose nickname for Grace was bishops; and Ernesto Balla, a Catholic Portuguese doctor who lived in New Bedford and was named in Grace’s will as an executor of his estate. What is observable is that Grace liked educated people of all races. When he had the opportunity, he invited people for dinner in his home. He enjoyed just sitting and talking; friends attested that in addition to knowing a lot about the Bible, Grace spoke intelligently about history, and he had a sense of humor. Afterwards, Grace might sit down at the piano and tear it up to entertain his company, as Keets described.³⁴ Grace was also quite close with several of the females in his family, particularly his younger sisters Sylvia and Louise, and niece Marie Miller, the daughter of his sister Jennie. Curiously, he demonstrated only minimal interest in his two sons, Norman and Marcelino, and he had an on-again/off-again relationship with his daughter, Irene.

One on one, it seems that Grace used speech as much to say nothing as to say something. Reporters often noted that the bishop deflected any questions he did not want to answer by offering refreshments or talking at length on a completely different subject.³⁵ House of Prayer members who sought help from Daddy Grace found that when his response to a question was silence, it meant no or disapproval.³⁶ His friend Dr. Balla commented that despite his intelligence, when Grace spoke in parables he was difficult to understand.³⁷ Keets added that he was honest, but hard to pin down. His word was one hundred per cent, if you could ever get him to commit himself, he said after Grace’s death.³⁸

What remains most elusive about Daddy Grace is how he felt about his life. Did he experience a tension between his public persona and his real self? Or was the real Grace exactly what everyone saw, what he presented to the world? Most of his life was spent living as a celebrity. Even in the solitude of his own homes, where he was attended to by followers who worked as caretakers, he was on public display. This meant he was left little room for personal weakness. I suspect that in order to navigate that kind of complicated existence, deep down he must have been a truly private person, a loner. His intense privacy made it possible for him to appear as a captivating leader with his human needs and feelings always concealed from public view. The moments when a more personal Grace shone through were fleeting, and so in the end we do not really know who and what moved him. Who, for example, caught Grace’s attention one night during a service in New Bedford, prompting a reporter to note that a look of casual recognition came over his face as he sighted a familiar figure in the audience?³⁹ And who or what was it that provoked the rare, completely genuine smile captured by a photographer visiting with Grace in Norfolk?⁴⁰ All of these things are unknown, and what Grace thought about in his private time, what worried him, and what gave him the most pleasure will always remain his secrets.

Overall Themes of Investigation

In my interpretation of Grace’s leadership of the United House of Prayer I raise numerous questions about the relationship of action to belief, the relationship of followers to leader, the relationship of church to context, and the relationship of self-identity to institutional identity. My explorations of the answers has resulted in several themes’ being woven throughout the text, most of which are not limited to one section, but rather recur as pieces of the church story bring them to the fore.

One theme is the myriad influences on Grace’s leadership choices. Grace’s cultural heritage surely affected his understanding of race and class, his ideas about religious rituals and festival traditions, and his concepts about church hierarchy, as they all bear the marks of his Cape Verdean background. Other influences that were key in particular moments include both his friends and his rivals. Exploring each of these elements helps reveal both Grace the religious leader and Grace the man, and in turn helps us to learn about the followers and the institution.

In fact, an understanding of the people who followed Grace is a theme very closely tied with an understanding of Grace himself. We do not have the demographic data to know much about