Living Reconciled
Living Reconciled, hosted by Mission Mississippi, is a podcast dedicated to exploring reconciliation and the Gospel that enables us to live it out. Mission Mississippi has been leading the way in racial reconciliation in Mississippi for 31 years. Our model is to bring people together to build relationships across racial lines so they can work together to better their communities. Our mission is to encourage and demonstrate grace in the Body of Christ across racial lines so that communities throughout Mississippi can see practical evidence of the gospel message.
Living Reconciled
EP. 41: Dr. Dolphus Weary - A Mississippi Story of Poverty, Prejudice, Progress, and Perseverance
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Have you ever wondered how the seeds of hope can sprout from the soil of despair? Our latest episode features Dr. Dolphus Weary, whose life narrative is an inspiring testament to the power of the Gospel in perseverance and transformation. Raised in the grip of poverty and racism in Mississippi, Dr. Weary's vow to leave and never return evolved into a mission of profound change and leadership, touching lives through organizations like Mission Mississippi, Mendenhall Ministries, and the Real Christian Foundation. His story, a blend of personal battles and societal shifts, unfolds a captivating tale of identity, education, and the pursuit of equality.
This Black History Month, travel back with living Mississippi Legend to the heart of the civil rights era. Dr. Weary walks us through the tumultuous days as one of the first black students at an all-white Christian college—navigating the complexities of integration and drawing strength from the brave Christian advocates who dared to fight for civil rights. Our episode doesn't just recount history; it challenges us to confront ignorance and hate through the transformative power of Jesus Christ.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
Hopelessness and Racism in Mississippi
Speaker 1Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Living Wrecking South, episode 41. I'm your host, Brian Crawford, with my incredible friends.
Speaker 2Austin, you don't even have a word to describe how good a friend is With my incredible friends.
Speaker 3I think last time with Pridigious he, just, he, just, he's giving up.
Speaker 1Yeah, with my phenomenal friends.
Speaker 3Yeah, phenomenal. Yeah, you know, my wife's nickname for me is Mr Incredible, so I'm I like it Incredible, your wife's name knew that.
Speaker 1Well, we're going to need verification, maybe absolutely Maybe we're going to need verification.
Speaker 3What's.
Speaker 2Beth and all about.
Speaker 3Maybe she was being sarcastic, but she still she still called me Mr Incredible at least once in my life.
Speaker 1Episode 41 is sponsored by good, good friends, folks like Nissan and folks like St Dominic hospital at Miss Energy Regions Foundation, brown Missionary Baptist Church, christian Life Church, miss Doris Powell, mr Robert Ward, miss Ann Winters. Thank you so much for everything that you do. It's because of what you do that we're able to do what we do, and me and my incredible friends today are able to do something groundbreaking. We, in light of Black History Month, have invited a living legend Living Well to join us on episode 41 of living reconciled Dolphys Weary. Dr Dolphys Weary.
Speaker 1Dr Dolphys Weary is a former president of this organization, mission Mississippi. Dr Dolphys Weary is a graduate of Los Angeles Baptist College. He is a graduate of reform theological seminary. He is a national speaker, author, minister, preacher. He is a strategic thinker and leader. He has led organizations like Mendenhall Ministries, mission Mississippi, of course, as we mentioned, and also Real Christian Foundation. Dolphys Weary is a proud husband and father and we will give him time to share details about that, but he is obviously an incredible friend of Mission Mississippi and we can be more delighted to have Dr Dolphys Weary join us here on episode 41. Dr. How you doing, sir?
Speaker 2I'm doing good, so I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I have a question. Can we ask a question? Go ahead. I want to know what's your middle name, these things. If he's put the name on a phone, will he put Dolphys in IM, in MI, in MI, weary, no middle initials. I went to junior college at Piney Woods and everybody around me had a middle name. I didn't have a middle name. Did they give you one? No, I decided to give myself a middle name and so I wanted to be. I started thinking about one day I want to be Dr DD Weary, really DD, double D, double D. So it's Dr Dolphys Weary, douglas, douglas.
Speaker 2So you gave yourself a middle name.
Speaker 3I gave myself a middle name.
Speaker 2It's not necessarily official, but I gave myself a middle name. Okay, do anybody ever call you Douglas? No, anybody call you Doug.
Speaker 3No, well, we can start that.
Speaker 2Yeah, we can start today On the 41st podcast of Living Reconciled. We have with us today never presented this way before Dr Douglas Weary or affectionately known as Doug. Affectionately known. Oh, we'll work this out.
Speaker 1Y'all working that big time, dr Weary, we were kicking around before the, before the podcast this morning, talking a little bit about your own story and history. You again, you're an author, your thinker, writer, preacher. You wrote a book called I Ain't Coming Back and it describes your story growing up in Mississippi and it describes your story crossing over the Mississippi River Bridge on Interstate 20, heading over to the great lands of California and saying to yourself I ain't coming back to this state that we call Mississippi. Talk to us a little bit about the fifties and sixties, as Dolph is weary and why would a young Dolph is weary, excuse me.
Speaker 2It's Dolph is Douglas Dolph is.
Speaker 1Douglas, douglas, weary. Why would a young Dolph is Douglas weary? Say to himself I ain't ever coming back to this state?
Speaker 2Well, you know, grown up in Mississippi, grown up in a large family, grown up in poverty, so I had to. I had to deal with poverty and racism all at the same time. Where I saw poverty most was was in the black community. I didn't see very much poverty, you know, in the in the dominant white community. I grew up in Mendenhall. So you drive in the Mendenhall and when you go to the right you cross the railroad tracks and you go into the black community. The black community had no paved streets, no street lights, no businesses, dilapidated houses right across the railroad tracks. Then you were going to other side of railroad tracks. There were paved streets, street lights, businesses, nice homes, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2So, grown up in the black community, there was that sense of hopelessness, there was that sense of, you know, I'm trapped in this because I'm not white, you know. And so so why? Why is all of this? Why is all of this? And so when you, you know, when you look across the railroad tracks, you have all these other things. When you look across in our community, those things are not there.
Speaker 2So I began to think about that and look at it, and so one of the things that came to my mind was the fact that that, that that maybe you know, god has put a curse on black folk and we, we are this way because of a curse. And then, and studying the scriptures, I began to find out that, hey, wait a minute, there's nothing wrong with God and this whole process. And then the other one was I thought that that we would, that we would just, you know, supposed to be, we couldn't rise up and do anything else but just live in this situation. And then I looked at it and said, well, maybe that's not the problem. What came to my spirit was maybe the problem is Mississippi. I just need to get out of Mississippi.
Speaker 2And so that was that driving force in me. There was that toll. Why is it that black people living over in this community and white people leaving over in this community, and I can't go in that community? So it must be something wrong with us. No, it's not anything wrong with us, but there's something wrong with Mississippi. So one day I'm going to leave Mississippi and I'm never coming back.
Speaker 1Dr Weary, when you talk about Mississippi and you talk about that sense of hopelessness, was that a a hopelessness that was pronounced, was it discussed, was it, was there conversations around that, or was that just something that you just internally experienced and said, looked around, saw what was visible in front of you and just said, man, this feels hopeless.
Speaker 2You know, when I went to the school, the school I went to was all black. The bus I rode on was a dilapidated bus. You could hear it coming two or three miles down the road. The bus that white students rode passed my house A nice new bus, newer bus and I can hear my bus coming, you know, miles down the road. And so that was that told me something. You mean you mean the children was cheering and excited about being on the bus. No, it was the fact that the bus was a wreck.
Speaker 3It was the engine, it was the engine.
Speaker 2The engine.
Speaker 1You can hear the excitement from the kids, yeah, miles down the road. No, no, no, no, no that was not the case.
Speaker 2That was not the case.
Speaker 1I got to school, got to textbook, looked at the buildings.
Speaker 2The buildings were a little dilapidated. Looked at the textbooks and there are five or six names in the textbook. You know they put the names of people in the textbook back in that day and I'm reading these names and I don't know any of these people, none of these people. So I had to learn that these will hand me down textbooks. Once the white people that used the textbooks for five or six years. They would hand the textbooks down to us and we use those textbooks. So all of that went against me. You know, growing up in Mississippi during those times.
Speaker 1I'm man, the experience, like you said, the combination of poverty and racism, right, as I hear you, what I hear you describing as racism in terms of inequities and discrepancies, and the discrepancies between the haves and the have nots, right, right, and how racism manifested itself in that way. When you were coming up during this age in Mendenhall, mississippi, did you see racism express itself even in more overt ways, in terms of the kind of animosity that you know that my mother shares her story. When she shares her stories, she talks about not only the racism in terms of what you're experiencing, which is the inequities and the discrepancies, but she talks about racism as the animosity manifesting itself, just people just saying harmful things, doing harmful things to her, her parents, her siblings, herself. Did you experience that in the, in the Mississippi that you grew up in, that would lead you to drive, I mean ride that bus and say I'm not coming back?
Speaker 2Not so much of that. You know, I saw it. I saw it in my my mother. My mother was a work, did domestic work in people's homes, those kind of things, and one time she went to the dentist down in Mendenhall and at the end of the day the sheriff came to our house and picked her up and said Lucille, are you stole a ring from this person? Down there? This lady got a ring missing. She said you stole a ring and my mom said no, I didn't steal the ring. But they said yes, you were there, you stole a ring. So they took her, arrested her, took her to jail.
Speaker 2Now here we were. It was like seven of us children and my mom and and the oldest one of us probably was like 14, 15. And here she was being taken to prison saying I did not do it, um, because she worked for this white guy doing the cleaning and all those kind of things. He went and told them that Lucille wouldn't do that. Lucille wouldn't do that, but they don't know how to what they steal, kept her overnight. The next day they found the ring, they released her, but nobody came back and said I'm sorry. Nobody came back and said we were wrong. It was just done that way because she was black. That was inside of me.
Speaker 2Then, as I grew up, I began to see some little doors opening up because they, in Mendenhall, they put their first black person on the police force. I learned that he can only stop and deal with black folk. He could not stop white people, he could not stop anybody else, but he can only arrest black people. Do you arrest any of y'all? Do you arrest you? Or it didn't arrest me? But the fact is you know he was brought on to police.
Speaker 2He was brought on to go into the black community and howl these black folk, but you can't wipe your person. They be doing anything they wanna do, but he couldn't deal with them. He couldn't arrest or arrest them or talk to them. He could only deal with black people. So that was a thing that got in my mind. So it began to get more and more in my mind. Listen, if I would go to school to become a doctor, I can only doctor on black people and I can't have access to some of the things. Because even in our ministry in Mendenhall we started a Christian health clinic. First few doctors were white. Doctors came as volunteers from churches, they came down. They were the first few doctors. In 1976, when we got our first black doctor, he came to Mendenhall, started working but he could not use the hospital. He could not put patients in the hospital, he could not go and visit them in the hospital. So he didn't have access 1976. 1976, he didn't have access.
Speaker 3Were you born in To the hospital Were you born in?
Speaker 2I wasn't born in 1976.
Speaker 1And that's the piece that's important sometimes for our listeners to hear, Because when we think about the civil rights movement, we think about it as a movement 40s, 50s, 60s.
Speaker 3And then people begin to say, oh, but you know, I mean it's all perfect in the late 60s. Yeah, by the time you get past the 60s we get a few bills moved through Congress and hey, everything's okay.
Speaker 1We're talking about 1976. And there's still no access to the hospitals.
Speaker 3Was that the law? Was that the law? Or was that just regulation? Or was that really just kind of corruption on the persons who were supposed to oversee the regulation? Does that make sense as?
Speaker 2per my question. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And we had at the same time we had a white doctor there that stuck his neck out well, I'll tell you and really worked hard to whatever that barrier was to get that barrier moved Because they had in their written regulations that no black doctor could put patients in the hospital or whatever. But he worked hard to get that removed.
Speaker 3So it was like 1977, before our doctor, the black doctor who came and gave his life to Mendenhall and to be there in the community he had began to have access to the hospital, and that just goes to show that state laws on the books they did take some significant time, even after Supreme Court cases, and other areas because it takes time for laws to be fixed. But I also think this is showing an important point it's taking times for hearts to be fixed as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, right. And the incredible point about advocates, because it took a faithful white doctor to advocate for this opportunity for black doctors and black patients as well. Absolutely, and so yeah, absolutely.
Integration and the Impact of MLK
Speaker 2Now, that was in 1976. Now, when MLK, my Luther King junior, was in jail in the Birmingham jail, what year?
Speaker 1So we're talking about late 50s. Right.
Speaker 2Didn't he? And the clergy guy that wrote him the letter. How many were there? Seven?
Speaker 3Seven.
Speaker 2He wrote him that letter. Wasn't that one of the points he made about weight? It takes time.
Speaker 3Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 2Mm-hmm, you know the law for integration and all that passed in what in mid 50s, and it was eight clergymen sorry, nettie eight clergymen.
Speaker 1I thought it was. It was had to look that up because my head.
Speaker 2It wouldn't settle. It wouldn't settle right. Seven, eight is the same thing, so one, two same thing, Three, four same thing.
Speaker 3The point I want to make is that that's the real facts.
Speaker 2Yeah, the point I want to make, and I'll just tell you a little bit. He said it took time for the hearts to change. Well, the hearts hadn't changed. Right, right, you know even though the law was passed in 50 some to integrate the schools and in equal schools and equal books. And in the offices talking about hand-me-downs and headed raggedly, bus clicking and clanking miles away. Right, Right, right. Not because the children were cheering or whatever else, they were probably like praying to make sure he was gonna make it to school.
Speaker 2So when you look at it, and here I was, a young kid running around and my mother was arrested and taken, that's just one example of what the system saw. To say it White people. From your perspective the Mississippi system. It was a Mississippi system.
Speaker 3Right, yeah, at that point and nowhere else. Yeah, nowhere else.
Speaker 2I can't wait for you to get across that bridge. Yeah, so going across that bridge in Louisiana, going into Louisiana from Mississippi, looking back at that sign that says welcome to Mississippi, the only thing I could think about was by Mississippi, right.
Speaker 1I'm gone and I ain't Right. Never, Never, ever. And this is 67. 67 when you cross. Okay, okay, okay. So, 67 when you cross, and as you cross, you're heading to California Right. And why are you?
Speaker 3going the land of the free, fromisland, fromisland, kalinland, kalinland. So why?
Speaker 1are you?
Speaker 2heading to Kalinland, dr Weir. Well, number one there was this Belkin honey. There was this college group that came down to visit Dr Perkins in 1960s six, six to seven and they came to the school I was going to.
Speaker 1Dr John Perkins.
Speaker 2Dr John Perkins. They came to the school I was going to and on that team was the director of admissions of LA Baptist College. On that team was John MacArthur Jr, who's a prominent pastor in Southern California. Now he was on that team. He was a, he was a college, he was a seminary student at that tablet at the time. He was on that team and they went around and so forth and came to the school I went to found out that I was a Christian, found out I played basketball and they began to talk about how to get a big impact.
Speaker 2Which one were they impressed with first? Your, chris, senator, your basketball skills. That's a good question.
Speaker 1That's a good question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question. He's poking down, he's meddling.
Speaker 2So they said hey, we give you an opportunity to go to school in California on a basketball scholarship. So that was impressed with your basketball skills.
Speaker 3And you just happened to be a Christian, which made it better, right? I think so.
Speaker 2And I think they were looking to find some token blacks to come to a school that was all white.
Speaker 3Explain that we're a token man. That ain't a coin in your pocket.
Speaker 2That's right. It's like we need to find somebody that would be willing to come in and help us, because we didn't discover just in dawn on me at that time I'm a young college student. I didn't know that I was getting ready to go to an all white Christian college. In my mind I thought that every place in America was integrated going on forth. This, mississippi is the problem.
Speaker 3Absolutely so. When you left Mississippi, did you actually leave Mississippi? That's right, that's the question. That's the question, that's right.
Speaker 2In some ways I left Mississippi, in other ways Mississippi was where I went.
Speaker 3Wow See what happened.
Speaker 2They heard you were going to California, so they shipped some Mississippi folks out there to meet you out there.
Speaker 2They wanted you to have a reception out there in California. So a friend of mine was going to another junior college and we ended up out there together, so it was two of us. We got on campus, we discovered that we were the first two black students ever to live on campus and go to school. Another black person that went there but he drove in every day, but we were the first two. 1967. 1967. We were the first two to be on campus and to go to LA Baptist College.
Speaker 2Did they put you in the room? One of them greet us from Mississippi. No, they were wise enough to seek out. We found out about this later. They were wise enough to talk to different students and find out who would be willing to room with a black person, because they thought if we were in our cells, if we were both roommates, then we would isolate ourselves and get completely isolated. So they decided to try to find a white male that would be a roommate for me and a white male would be a roommate for others, because they had two people in each room.
Speaker 1Were they successful? They were successful. Yeah, and these two white brothers. What was life like? Of course, you only experienced rooming with one. What was life like rooming these two white gentlemen who had to step up to? The plate and say, yes, I'm willing to room with the first black students on campus here at Los Angeles.
Speaker 2Baptist Probably didn't think about it, because we didn't know that they were actually picked hand-picked Wow. When we got there. It was later on we found out that they were hand-picked people who didn't mind. They're both for great guys. We had great relationships and things of that nature as great a relationship as we could have had, because we never talked about some of the things. For example, a major thing that happened that year 67, 68, martin Luther King was shot and killed.
Speaker 1Yes, sir.
Speaker 2When he got shot, somebody ran and told Lorraine Wiltale right.
Speaker 2Memphis, Tennessee. So somebody ran and told me about the fact that Martin Luther King had been shot. So naturally, what I wanted to do is to go to my room, grab my radio and try to find out what happened to my hero. So I went to my room, turned the radio on, turned to find out what happened to my hero. Then I began to hear white Christian kids walking up and down the hallway talking about how glad they were that Martin Luther King was shot. I'm trapped now. I'm trapped. I'm here. My hero is something. My hero is Keele and I got white Christian kids laughing and joking about how glad they were that he was Keele. You thought he were leaving.
Speaker 1I thought I had left that.
Speaker 2And now I'm caught with it again. So now I'm going through the same three questions, and that's just incredible.
Speaker 1Dr Wiltale, because this is your first year, april 1968,. We're still in the spring of your first year on campus, right, right.
Christian Advocates in Civil Rights Challenges
Speaker 2And so I had to go through this thing again. The questions Number one what am I going to do? Should I leave this campus and go up to San Francisco and join H Watt Brown and Stokeland Carmichael and the Black Power Movement? Should I do that, leave the school, go join them and get a part of the Black Power Movement? That was number one. Number two should I stay here and ignore white people, start hating white people, ignoring them, and so forth? That was in my mind. The third thing that came to my mind was maybe I need to use this as an opportunity to educate my brothers and sisters. And God gave that last one to me Stay here, do everything you can to educate people. Every time I wrote a paper it was a paper talking about a black person Every time I had a chance to get my testimony, I would share about black people, and every time I had a chance to every time that nine. Then there was other opportunities I would write papers, I would do all those kind of things to try to educate people. So I need to be an educator of these folks rather than ignoring it and not doing anything about it. You know, I'm gonna jump right in the middle of this, poke just a little bit.
Speaker 2What were your roommate doing at that time? How did that work? Was he supportive or he's just neutral? You don't have to be personal about it. Yeah, he was very supportive.
Speaker 2Okay, good, he was very supportive, aren't you? You know, it's something that we can learn from that, even though we talk about how they handle this situation. I was impressed, first of all, that the people that recruited you looked at your Christianity, even though I poked at it a little bit, and also they went out of their way to do what they could to make this first time experience for them and for you to be successful. You call them handpicked. I was impressed the fact that they would find someone that would be supportive in that role and be willing to go against whatever was taking place on campus. You know, I'm sure and just my perception, I'm sure that the guy that was living with you was probably getting heckled with his buddies and things about you living with that, where you just take it from there and make it whatever, and you know, I remember my brother being in the Fastone store as a manager in Memphis Southgate Shopping Center.
Speaker 2We lived in Tunnelton. He'd go back and forth there every day, and so some of the people that lived in Tunnelton could work for him in Memphis at the Fastone store. I remember the bank president when one of his employees came in. I remember the bank president asking how does it feel to work for the end? My, my, and so I'm thinking those guys was like you know, they wasn't pure and clear and no problems either. I'm thinking they were getting some push back, I would think. But that's just my thought.
Speaker 1And you can, you can and there's advocates.
Speaker 1What I love about this story is that, even in the midst of all of this chaos and division and disparities and inequities and pain, there's these small glimmers and glimpses of hope and advocacy and people that are willing to step into the tension with you, the white the white doctor in Mendenhall in the 70s, the young, the young college students who say yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll room together, no matter if we catch some heat for doing it.
Speaker 1But you see these moments here and then, even in your moment, dr Weary, because, because I and you can please step in it and share your thoughts on this. But it seems, for a lot of young college men, dr King's death also represented a moment of crisis, because Dr King was advocating for nonviolence, advocating for love being a greater force than hatred, and so when Dr King gets murdered, there's an opportunity for that dream and that philosophy to die as well, especially for a lot of young men, which is why you highlighted hey, I was thinking about heading towards, heading towards other movements, looking at some other movements that maybe didn't, maybe weren't so gentle towards hatred, right, except, in God's grace, the word forgiveness, forgiving, in that Right right.
Speaker 1Except in God's grace, he led you to say no. This is also a fight against ignorance, and so I'm going to fight ignorance not with hatred, but with education, with love, with forgiveness, and so was it also a time of crisis for young men like yourself, in that moment after King's death.
Speaker 2Yeah, it certainly was a tough moment for those guys who wanted to do what was right, because we had a basketball team and there were two of us that were black on the basketball team with 12 people. I remember that those guys on that basketball team a number of them came to our rescue too in terms of being able to say some positive things about Dr King, but we were living at a time that the conservative white Christian movement in this country had labeled Martin Luther King as a troublemaker. We'll eventually get over all this stuff. You're just a troublemaker. So you had so many people who labeled, no matter how well he came forth, as non-violence, he was still troublemaking for the problem, for the racism Upset in status quo.
Speaker 1Upset in status quo, that's right I love it.
Journey of Education and Integration
Speaker 2Yeah, you can read more about that in the letter from the Burm Ham jail and also in the agribyocrophy and the whole thing. Now, all it was the. What do you call the conservative Conservative Christians? Conservative Christian who loved Jesus and loved the Bible? Yeah, but you used another word, a big E word Evangelical. Oh, that big word, but it was more than that. The government was in on the. What do you say when you set people up for bad publicity and make a smear campaign.
Speaker 2Yeah, the government FBI and J L Hooper was in on this smear campaign of King revealing his personal life, true or false, they didn't care. They just had all kinds of stuff out there to make him out to be something that he was. You know something, ed, that came to me even later Even later is because the kids at the school were only, you know, bringing out that which they were taught, right. So the if they were to. The evangelical. This is an evangelical school right, that's right.
Speaker 3Evangelical school.
Speaker 2And then you got the government, the FBI, which people trusted, especially white folks. Black folks didn't trust them, but anyway they trusted. And so when they say it's something it's like gospel, whether it came from the evangelical crowd or it came from the FBI or the government, it was gospel, that's right.
Speaker 1And so ignorance.
Speaker 3So that Christian right.
Speaker 2So the Christian faith was intimately with bad stuff against us.
Speaker 1Wow, wow. So that, so that ignorance at the root drew your heart to say I'm going to educate, I'm going to, I'm going to move past. I'm going to move past the mud, that's right. I'm going to move past all of the all of the lies, the disinformation, the smears, and I'm going to educate and I'm going to show a different side. And so what did that journey look like for Dr Dolphus Douglas?
Speaker 3weary in California, I would have said in 68, 69, 70,.
Speaker 1What did that journey of education?
Speaker 2You would think, as long as we've been in this room together and this podcast, we could say we wouldn't have to say Dr Dolphus Douglas, we could just all right, Doug, let us have it. Let me throw one of the, I have to throw another negative in. Yes, sir. Not long after we were there, the president of the school called us into his office and said that the quickest way to get a ticket back to Mississippi is to try to date one of the white students.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, I was about to ask that that and so you would, actually I would. Yeah, he educated us.
Speaker 2He educated us in that short visit that you own this campus. You're here, you can be accepted as a student, but if you try to date an American student white girls we're going to give you a ticket and send you back to Mississippi.
Speaker 3Yeah, what am I not so much as we're going to do that, but the but the people just had to say so in a power and authority.
Speaker 2That's right yeah he may even got a ticket with you, that's right.
Speaker 3What am I? One of my professors in seminary, rick Gray. I took him for two classes. He integrated in Arizona on evangelical school. I know, I assume, because you're not telling us that you didn't try to date any of the young girls on campus. He did and he, he in a lot of his stuff, and this is beneath the load of the cross, is the book that he writes this about and he writes about his experience. Uh, date like he's, like I fell in love with her, she fell in love with me. Obviously, it didn't work out because we're not married now. He married, he actually ended up marrying another white woman, but, um, but he, just he, he, he accounts the um, you know his. He didn't graduate from that school, first of all because that was, that was a defining factor.
Speaker 3Yeah Well, the ticket home for him he experienced, uh, he experienced, uh, spiritual, emotional and physical abuse from that Um, even at the hands of the young girl's father. Uh, he allowed, because he was a large football player. Uh, he allowed himself to get beat. He could have. He's like. I knew at any moment I could have grabbed this man and and I could have overpowered him, but he said I didn't, because I believe that this was my, this was my cross to bear. That's, that's his, his understanding.
Speaker 3It's a great book and it should be read, but, uh, but I just remember that that that parallel of of a young man who's in a similar situation as you, who decided hey, I, I, I did fall in love and I do want to date this person. I do want to marry her. Uh, so it was very different, yeah.
Speaker 2So be clear that was an African-American.
Speaker 3Oh yeah. Yeah, rick was African-American, dr Gray was African-American, oh yeah.
Speaker 2So that limited way of handling this. This question was maybe we need to go back to Mississippi and, doing the summer, try to recruit other students to come? To LA Baptist College and so we ended up recruiting about five or six girls next year.
Speaker 3Oh, good, good, good, good, good, good, good Good.
Speaker 1Good, good, good, good Good.
Speaker 2So we got us on campus nine. So the two there are nine, right, good, you know, a couple more guys and five girls, and so forth.
Speaker 1Wow For that second year. Wow, wow Again, I think I think I'm sorry. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2come on I was going to say. I think you know the reason we have the legend here today that need to be highlighted. Rather than him taking this anti violent mentality, he did what God would have for him to do, not only did see I'm thinking through this, and maybe I'm over thinking about. I'm thinking through this is that the people that brought him there, uh, exercise good judgment in terms of making sure that they wanted this to be successful. It was not, in my opinion. I know you use the token thing, but I don't think it was totalistic, uh, totalistic in terms of. I think it was a genuine, uh, genuine desire on their part to integrate the school and do it in a way that it would be pleasing to God, and I think they took those steps to do that. And, in fact, the reason I say that, doff, is you thought about educating them, doing that, but also you allow Hmm, that's a word, you're allowed to go back and come back with more. You know, in my experience with being a toast to this is that the last thing they want you to do is to bring some more folks like you there. You know, so you got the privilege of helping educate the university or the college, help integrate it and that brought the balance of equality and all of those things to that particular school at that particular time. In my opinion, because those times were that's pretty rugged times about first African-American showing up and being welcomed back and doing that the crisis of Kings killing and a lot of other things were going on during that, because I was I can remember that I was a high school student. I think I was a senior in high school during that time and I can remember what went on just in the community and just within the African-American community of the fight was on.
Speaker 2Now, what do we do? That King is gone. You know, like you said, my hero is gone and so you know, people lost hope and joined all kinds of burning, crash movements or whatever you want to call it in terms of that. So I don't think we need to miss that. What you did with that. In terms of that, you can grow in your negative or you can ask God to give you a positive. What can we do? Here's the problem. What can we do? We got a problem. There are African-American men on this campus but they're not in the African-American females. What can we do? Let's go out and see. Can we recruit so that we can equalize this thing on?
Speaker 1the campus and moving forward. Now you got a few more African-American men, a few more African-American women. What's the temperature, what's the climate on campus as this population grows? Yeah.
Speaker 2It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell, I think, but what we had was Did they stink? Right? But what we had, what we really did have now, is now for the girls dealing with their issues, the white girls who've grown up in a community that says white, white, white. They now have an opportunity to interact with African-Americans. And Rosie had a. My wife had a tough time with her roommate because her roommate wanted to remain where she was and keep a label on Rosie, and Rosie worked hard that year to try to break that old stereotypical label that she had about white people. So it was like a. It was a opportunity to deal with it and not just walk around angry but to actually deal with it, so you have a problem coming with an opportunity.
Speaker 2That's right.
Speaker 1That's right yeah that's right.
Speaker 1When you talk about a lot, when you talk about your experience, of course you play ball. At Los Angeles Baptist, you begin to educate and that passion for education increases. And so talk to us as you're moving through Los Angeles Baptist and the Lord is beginning to impress upon you your path, or beginning to set in place your path and your journey. Going forward, what begins to take shape for you as it relates to your particular calling and the journey that God is about to send you on past Los Angeles Baptist?
Speaker 2There was a voice out here called John Perkins voice. This voice was saying we want you to come back to Mississippi. We want you to come back to Mississippi. That voice was there. This is 70. This is 70,. 77 to one. Okay, right at 70. And so?
Speaker 2another voice went in another voice out there with the other voice out there saying they ain't coming back. They ain't coming back. Look at it, look at it. And then in the midst of this, in 1970, I was selected to go with a Christian basketball team overseas called overseas Crusades Sports Ambassadors, and we was a six weeks tour and we played ball in Taiwan, philippines, hong Kong, ministry, all those kinds of things, and the coach began to challenge me about becoming a full time person with overseas Crusades Sports Ambassadors and come to Taiwan or Philippines or Hong Kong. And the more the coach challenged me, the more God began to speak to my heart. And the question was Dolphins, are you thinking about going to a mission field? Are you running away from a mission field?
Speaker 3Wow, Say that again, dolphins, that's deep.
Speaker 2And my think about going to a mission field. Am I running away from a mission field? And it became very clear to me that I was still running away from Mississippi, and God put in my spirit that we need to come back to Mississippi. And so I came home. I was engaged to my wife. I came home in June, late June, and I had to tell her. I said I don't think, believe that God is calling us back to Mississippi, because we were planning on getting married that August. And so we agreed that that was the thing that happened that we need to come back to Mississippi and not give up on the idea of Mississippi being a place that God could use, so Ms Rosie was open to coming back.
Speaker 2She was open to coming back. And now you said you was running away or going to, Was Rosie agreeable to come back as she was riddling her go wherever Dolphins was?
Speaker 3going. I mean, I'd like to feel you.
Speaker 2I would love for you to brought her today, so we could ask her that question.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2The end game was that she was. She was willing to go where I'd want to go because she had her own dream of not coming back to Mississippi either.
Speaker 2She loved the idea of being in California. She was tired of the poverty and injustice in Mississippi. So going to California was her was like wonderful, we're getting, I'm getting out of here, I'm getting out of here. So Riddick you coming back to Mississippi and Rosie coming back with you. It was like this is a sacrifice for you both for the service of the kingdom of God. It was an honor, because neither one of you was that excited about coming back. That's right. That's right, it was the great.
Speaker 2Even though John Perkins sent you to California of sorts, and he was, telling you to come back you really weren't interested in this in his voice and he took away everything. He took away everything because he said we want you to come back to Mississippi. Okay. Then he said but you got to raise your own support. No, no, no no. So it's like so, so what in the fact that he was, he was prepared for me to come back and you?
Speaker 3know he didn't have everything taken care of.
Speaker 2Everything taken care of? No, no, no, no, no. Now we want you to come back, and now we want you to raise your own support, and I'm going wait, a minute wait wait, wait, wait. I didn't go to college to get an education, to come out and go out and beg people. You didn't thank God for us.
Speaker 3That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2I did not, you said it right. I did not thank those guys. You thought God would say come on back we got your salary everything covered, right?
Speaker 2Going to school, getting an education. It meant getting a job and making a greater salary. That's what it meant, right. So now I'm going to school, got an education, got my degree. Now I want to go and get a job and make the money. And the end thing that was put in there you got to raise it, right, right. And so we started off going to a couple of churches in California. So you started out begging for a living. So I've been begging for a living.
Speaker 3Look at that. That's nonprofit world. That's right.
Speaker 2It went against a lot of stuff inside of me.
Speaker 1Oh, I had no idea?
Speaker 2Yeah, because I went to school to get an education, so somebody that paid me to do what I did.
Speaker 3That's interesting, Dolf is that.
Speaker 2Now you had to go fundraise and ask folks for money. How did you tell them Were?
Speaker 1you successful.
Speaker 2Yes, this one little church in Osborne it's called Osborne Neighborhood Church in California. We had a relationship with that church. They helped support me to go on that trip overseas and they started supporting us for $50 a month and they supported us for 40 years. That $50 a month Wow. But after we got that $50 one we were introduced to First Presbyterian Church of Glendale and the pastor said something to me very clearly Glendale is in where Glendale.
Mendenhall Ministry's Impact and Challenges
Speaker 2California. The pastor said something to me. He said, dolf, as you grew up in Mississippi, you came to school to California, you got your degree and you believe that God wants you to go back. And he said the only reason that's stopping you from going back is money. I said yeah, and he made. He said to me that this church would give you $500 a month. We had to raise $800. This church will give you $500 a month if that's, if that's what you believe God want you to do.
Speaker 2And that took all the things out of my sale, cause you know I was how I'm going to do how, how, how, how how you know, and and God opened up that door, and that was a major door for us, and that seal the fact that we could come back and they continue to support you. They send the conspirators about three or four years Right Right.
Speaker 1Again, another, another glimmer, another glimmer of light, another glimmer of hope. When you come back to Mendenhall, is it the same Mendenhall that you left?
Speaker 2It was basically the same Mendenhall that I left. John Perkins had been there a number of years and had started this, this, this church that was going on and living in the community and doing um, you get a church, a shout out man.
Speaker 2Tell them what the name of the church is. I ain't going to Mendenhall Bible church. Okay, Is the church there in Mendenhall? And they had started and they had outreach ministries that still going. But when we came back, God hooked us up with John Perkins, you know, and we worked together and so forth that Mendenhall became a model for so many other communities throughout this country, a model ministry of having the whole clinic, having a, a, a, a, a a a a a, a rough story farm, a law office, a housing ministry.
Speaker 2It had a holistic Christian community development ministry. And this is Mendenhall, Mendenhall, mendenhall, ministers. Yeah Well, used to be voice of the camera. Used to be voice of the camera.
Speaker 1Ministers, wow, wow. And so the work begins for you. Early seventies, and what does that work look like for doffus and now rosy weary? What does that work look like in Mendenhall and what are some of the the greater, more memorable impacts that you, that, that you believe that God was making during that time through that work?
Speaker 2I think that we didn't know that, that God was using this as a prototype of what can be done in poor communities throughout this country. We just knew that, that, that there was no place for recreation. But we built a gym. So we wanted to have a place, a safe place for kids to come to to be able to be loved, cared for, disciplined and taught about Jesus. So we built a gym, we built a health clinic, because we you know what we?
Speaker 2My day was that, yes, you could go to a doctor's office, but the doctor office had a, a back room for black patients and the front room for white patients, and white patients would come in and see the doctor and at the end of the day, the doctor would see the black patients. So you could sit in the doctor's office all day and die while he was on the white folks, or you could say that. And then, you know, the good news for us was that later on we started the clinic across the river tracks in the black community and it flooded in that area so much we bought a new X-ray machine, put it in an X-ray machine. They tested it on me. While they were testing on me, it was raining on outside and that it flooded that community and flooded that We'd never got a chance to use this new X-ray machine that we had, and so God put in our spirit that we need to move out of this community. The clinic needs to be out of this community, and so we were able to buy a clinic that used to be owned by a white doctor, and this wife wanted the building to continue to be used. He had died as a clinic, and that's the only reason why we were able to get that building, because they wouldn't have so. The white community wouldn't have allowed anybody to sell property to people from the black community. But because she was independent, they couldn't threaten to cut off the bank, they couldn't threaten to do anything to her Because she was independent. She won against the culture at that time. And so that building to us Wow.
Speaker 2Now, at the time we had a white doctor, but he was still tied with Menendal Ministries, which is technically a black-led ministry, and so we were able to get that building and to have the health clinic up there, that kind of model of having a health clinic with a Christian doctor worked in. Not only does it cause people to get, patients can come in and get served. But what kind of model does it serve for young people in the community? And we've had a couple of doctors that came out of young people who've become doctors and nurses and different people because they had a chance to see those models. Yeah, you knew that's great, the model and all of that looks good. But now you talked about that you had to raise your salary. I want to know how did you get all these gyms built in the school to establish and all that model you talking about? How did that happen? That's grace. I mean we dealt with churches and communities around the country.
Speaker 3In other words, you had to go out and raise that too.
Speaker 2I had to go out, and raise the money I had to go out.
Speaker 3Get that done.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was shocked. In the early 90s I got a letter from Delta Airlines. Delta Airlines said Dolphins, you've become a million-miler. And I went what, what is a million-miler? Wow, what is a million-miler. And I had to call people to try to figure out what that was, what that meant to us.
Speaker 3I thought you got a degree from that school.
Speaker 2So I had to become a million-miler because we were traveling. So please, we identified 10 cities around the country that we wanted to go to. We started with one church in that city.
Speaker 1Why you didn't?
Speaker 2go to the cities in Mississippi why you had to go around the country. They weren't ready. They weren't ready in Mississippi. So the money you were raising was outside of Mississippi, before Mississippi. Absolutely, Absolutely. I didn't want that to be missed. Dolphins.
Speaker 3That is important.
Speaker 2In 1986, I came to my first church in Jackson that's all I'm going to leave and I talked to them about supporting us. And this is in 1986. 1986. And you started. How many of you went? I came back in 1971. Okay, so in 1986, I got enough nerve to go to this church and this church said to me Dolphins, you might be doing good work, but we're supporting the black ministry in Canton. So you want us to stop serving that black ministry in Canton and start supporting Mendenhall? And I said no.
Speaker 1Because we can only support one. What a y'all. We can only support one.
Speaker 2God gave me a wisdom to say no, keep on supporting that ministry. But at least they gave you the option they gave you the option.
Speaker 1They gave you the option. They gave you the option. This is 1986.
Speaker 2And he been in Mendenhall since 1971. And they heard about his good work and it allows you to come and make the presentation. That's right.
Building Relationships and Addressing Inequity
Speaker 1That's so kind of them, right, that's right, right, yeah, dolphins, what changes do you see in a real time, as you are doing the work in Mendenhall ministries? Gems are being constructed, healthcare is being provided, education is being provided All of this in the early 70s, in a Mississippi that you acknowledged wasn't quite ready for it. What kind of changes do you see as that's happening, as we're talking, as you're going through this in the 70s, with you and your wife, rosie? So what kind of real changes are happening in this moment? And then, what kind of real challenges are you guys faced with in this moment as well?
Speaker 2Real changes is that other people outside of Mississippi saw what we were doing as valuable. We had a lady to come over from Dallas that was looking at West Dallas and kept coming over to learn from us so they can go back and do it in West Dallas. A person in Chicago saw what we were doing. They came and looked at us and saw what we were doing. We still had the challenge, though, was how do you get people on the other side of the track to see what we were doing?
Speaker 2In Mendenhall In 1984, we had 100 and some people coming down from Illinois to help us remodel this building for Genesis 1 Christian School, 100 and some young people working on the building, and the president of the bank the local bank found out about it, and he came down there and he saw all of these people doing this work, and he said he got challenged. He said we are not doing anything, so he got his staff to set up a refreshment stand for these people working that whole week, and so his staff which was dominant white, all white had to come down and provide refreshments. So it opened the door a little bit more, and from that day forward, that bank was a whole lot more interested in what we were doing.
Speaker 1This is 84. This is 84.
Speaker 2And so we were talking about. Slowly, people began to see the good works and glorify God through the fact that the good works that Mendenhall was doing Because of the kids that were working and they probably asked why are you here? Why are you doing all this stuff? They had an opportunity to cross those barriers.
Speaker 1And so we're talking about from 70 to 84. Seeing a lot of the same kind of inequity, inability to work across the aisle in that city, and yet there's just a slow, methodical, consistent commitment to the work. That leads to some glimmers, as you you know, small glimmers along the way. So, in other words, you show up, dr Perkins says, hey, we got a spot for you, but we don't have any money for you. Right, you got to raise it. And so you, and so you raise your, your, your support. You show up in 71, 72, miss Rosie and you guys are working tirelessly throughout this season and you're just seeing small little glimmers here and there of the impact. In terms of the unity impact, I'm sure you're seeing a lot of impact in the lives of the kids and in the lives of the residents, the people of color there that are getting healthcare and getting things that they need. But in terms of that reconciliation impact, it's taken a while before you see the movement there. Is that? Is that correct?
Speaker 2That's correct, and one of the hardest questions it was for me to answer is when, when those who came from outside of Mississippi down to Mississippi to work with us or I am speaking at a church somewhere in California, chicago, wherever and they asked me to question what is the white church in Mississippi doing in relation to this ministry? I want to know why that question was difficult. They weren't doing anything, so why didn't you just they doing nothing?
Speaker 3Okay, you knew the answer. Yeah, but they were hoping that. They were hoping that.
Speaker 2And you were hoping that they would withdraw because the white folks in Mississippi were doing the thing. They were going to draw their help too, right, no, no, no, no that they were saying that if this ministry is doing this good work, what is the white church in Mississippi doing to help you carry this work out? And so at one time, and how? A ministry was the biggest entry in Simpson County Probably so you can't say it. Was you scared? Yeah, we used to. We used to try to look at some of those numbers.
Speaker 2That definitely was the largest employer of people there, especially people of color outside of the plant.
Speaker 2You know people take for granted today yeah, for churches and things going to the inner city or whatever else, and they're still begging for volunteers, by the way, to do things like you're talking about in the inner city and into poor communities or whatever else. Not only that you have people come into the poverty-stricken area of Mendenhall, mississippi, but also, at some point in your life, you help people go to the poverty-stricken places in the rural areas of various places in Mississippi, in Mississippi. But there's a higher one. The higher one is, I believe, that God used us to not only have people coming from Seattle, washington and Menlo Park, california, to Mendenhall to help us with different things, but they also learned that they need to also deal with their own backyard. Wow.
Speaker 3See that again.
Speaker 2Because we used to teach people. Thank you for coming to Mendenhall, thank you for helping us out, but please don't ignore the poverty areas around you. Right, and in Menlo Park, California, about 25 years ago that there was a major church that heard us say that Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and they got introduced to people in East Palo Alto and, although they stopped sitting us, supporting us in Mendenhall, but they started a relationship that far outlives what they deal with us in Mendenhall, Amen.
Speaker 1In East.
Speaker 2Palo Alto.
Speaker 1Amen.
Speaker 2They turned East Palo Alto into a major place that they can invest in rather than always running some other place. That name sounded like it's international, but it was in California. It was in California, okay, I just wanna make sure people understand that. But today we have that challenge. If you get a mission team in a hurry to go to Africa, or Mozambique or some other place, but it's difficult to get a crew. That's what they tell me.
Mission Mississippi
Speaker 2Even the major church will tell me they have a great challenge of getting volunteers to come into, as you say, the backyard. I remember one time Miss Smith Civic Club. We're talking about doing a mission trip, about going to Africa and some other places and what I would remember to say if you wanna see a third world country, I can take you up right up the road. There's Anguilla, hollendale and everything in between. If you wanna see some third world countries and things, when I work for Mississippi Home Corporation we have some places in Bolton and in Edwards that I went to visit and wow, there's like somebody to drop the grenade in those places. So we have poverty among us. Sometime we wanna look beyond and deny what we see before us Absolutely absolutely, Dr Weary.
Speaker 1We've been on a marathon run here with a great conversation. It's probably a two-part conversation to be honest with you.
Speaker 1I would be remissed if I didn't at least take a minute to turn this conversation towards the work of reconciliation that you have been so instrumental in, particularly Mission Mississippi. Talk to us a little bit about how you came into the work of Mission Mississippi, the work of racial healing, and what are some of the more profound moments for you in this ministry, in regards to the moments that brought you the most joy and the most hope as the president of this organization, and even some of the moments that brought you the most frustration and the most sorrow in this organization. Wow.
Speaker 2That was two things that God really kept in my spirit growing up in Mississippi two large elephants in the state of Mississippi. One of them was poverty and injustice among those that were black. That was a big elephant. The other elephant was just pure separation and racism and all of the separation that's going on. So, coming back to Mendenhall, there was an opportunity to deal with the poverty, a poverty side but on still, on the other side of that, there's still this other major elephant that's called racism, and not just racism but racism within the body of Christ. So God had that in my spirit and so when the board, lee Parrish, started talking to me about coming to Mission Mississippi, I remember going to the first board meeting and he was talking about that.
Speaker 2Our goal is, our mission is to bring about unity across racial and denominational lines, and I stopped him and said, listen, I don't think we need to go that route because they both were two big elephants. Whenever you start talking about bringing people together across the denominational lines, that's a big elephant. When you start talking about bringing people together across racial lines, that's another big elephant. And I encouraged the board to allow us to look at pulling together people across racial lines. So if you get a black church, just a method is on the black church and a white church is. The method is pull those together and let's work at that to try to break down this barrier of racism and division and so forth.
Speaker 2And I saw that as a major thing that we needed to do going forward. As we began to go forward, there was some real, significant things that God put in our spirit to do. The one was to do a tour of the state of Mississippi and they call it. Grace is greater than race. Grace is greater than race. That can go into any church. We need to understand that God's grace is greater than our race. We need to reach across those barriers, absolutely, but you didn't start at it.
Speaker 2What did you want to call that before it got to grace is greater than race.
Speaker 3Wait a minute.
Speaker 2I'll wait a minute. Grace don't matter in the body of Christ.
Speaker 3Yeah yeah. That didn't preach me. That's true. Man, it's true, though Dead on a route. That's not true.
Speaker 1Grace don't matter in the body of Christ, in the body of Christ, but I had to abandon that one. That's a true statement, though, man. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2But I would tell you that a major milestone for us was when the pastor of First Baptist Church in Jackson said to me Dolphys, I want you to come and preach at my church, at First Baptist Church.
Speaker 1Where are we year wise in this moment?
Speaker 290s, 2000, and no 1998. 1998, 1998, right, it was at the first prayer breakfast that I spoke at and the pastor was there. So he said, dolphys, I want you to come. And this was April. And he said but you need to understand, it's gonna take a while for me to work out the details. Three months later he called me back and said Dolphys, I'm still working on it. Three months later he called me back and said I'm still working on it. He finally called me back and he had to say Dauphus, you know, it wasn't many years ago before we had decos that used to come every Sunday and standing the door to make sure that no black people would come in and sit down and worship. And he went through all of those kind of things, but he took a chance.
Speaker 2He took a chance another glimmer and it created a glimmer of hope. And that morning, that Sunday morning, when I got ready to preach, I walked in there and must've been 1,800 people there.
Speaker 2And at the end of that first sermon there were 300 people lined up to speak to me. He had to come get me to start the second service. He took a chance, but what that did was it opened up some doors for black, for white churches, Baptist churches particular, throughout the state of Mississippi, and we began to get a little different hearing, a little better hearing around the state.
Speaker 1Dr Weary, that is 1998. 1998., I'm on the campus, rather, of Mississippi State University as a sophomore.
Speaker 2He got his shirt on Austin. You see, he got his shirt on as a sophomore in college.
Speaker 3Repping to miss you.
Speaker 1Wow, in 1998, we're not supposed to be struggling with racial issues, they would tell me as a young college student on the campus of Mississippi State in 1998, those issues are behind us and you're saying that it took nearly a half a year, even longer than a half a year, just to even work out the details, to get you to speak from the platform in first Baptist Church, jackson, mississippi. But wisdom on his part. No, no, no, no very wise, but just it's the reality.
Speaker 2Right the reality.
Speaker 1The reality of that being still prevalent and still existing in 1998., he was still a pastor when the office left.
Speaker 2Just wanted to know that Amen that he was still a pastor.
Speaker 1Because of the wisdom on display. But it's incredible that sometimes we think that this past is so distant. That's not really distant at all.
Speaker 2In 1990, a young white pastor in Mendenhall came to the gym and played with, you know, interested in basketball. His congregation kicked him out of the pool pit, never to be seen again until we were in Amy Mississippi Amy Mississippi, we said. He said, man, I'm still not over the pain. It's not over the pain.
Speaker 3His wife had.
Speaker 2His wife had right, His wife had had twins, just had twin babies, and then you know, they have a home. They have a home for the pastor on the campus. Kicked him out of the home, kicked him out of the pastorate because he was associated with us. He just went down there to play basketball Play basketball.
Speaker 1Play basketball, yeah, and he lost his parsonage Right, lost his ability, lost his living Right Because he played basketball With the young family With the young family, yeah, with the young family In 1990. 1990. Yeah, and so you're talking about 98, 90. Of course we mentioned 80s. You know where there's the struggles. 86, before you really see any real movement, you know in terms of in Mendejawe. Hey, let's let you know, we're gonna start fixing a few cups of lemonade for the folks that are coming down and doing work here on Mendejawe Ministry property.
Speaker 2I think you're making fun of that. But then we go here.
Speaker 1No, no, no, it's just a progress that we oftentimes tell ourselves was so massive in the 60s and the 70s was a lot slower than we really sometimes acknowledge or even understand Even now, even now. And so this progress is real slow and real methodical. So you said in 98, it unlocks some things to be on that platform in first batch, absolutely. And what did it unlock? What opportunities begin to come out of that Once that happened?
Speaker 2within the quote Baptist church. The churches began to open up more in Tupelo and around the state because we had had a open door at First Baptist Church in Jackson. Was that the year you committed to going to the farter white church and farter black churches and we ended up going to like 90 something? Yeah, we got our preaching feel at you.
Speaker 1I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2But the doors open up in a wonderful, fantastic way because of that, yeah, yeah, that's phenomenal.
Speaker 1That's phenomenal. As we round the turn and close out our time here, what gives you hope as you think about your own journey and how far you've come, how far we've come and where we are today? What? Are some of the things that give you hope about Mississippi.
Speaker 2Michigan, Mississippi. I think we didn't pay them. We didn't pay them to say that. We didn't pay them. See, it's easy to ignore the problem. Yeah, it's easy to keep on being right going in the wrong direction. Being right going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 3Man, he got some deep stuff, it's just easy to do that.
Speaker 2It's harder to say we need to start looking at doing things different. You know, I sort of hate to say this, but let me just say it in a way. I got on the board of Belhaven College probably in mid-90s, walked in the room, understood that the campus had about 20% African-American students and I learned that we had no teachers, no administration, no coaches, nobody. Everybody was white. In a school right here in Jackson Mississippi that had 20% African-Americans at that time and I said to a friend of mine, I said we got a problem. He said, yes, I can understand the problem as I talked to him about it and he was on the board and he said he said Dolf is, the problem is the school has so many white males that's in their 70s and 80s on the board and they got money and they ain't gonna change. What we need to do is try to move some of those board members to emeritus status, retirement so forth, let's get some young.
Gratitude for Dr. Dolphus Douglas
Speaker 2And it took us about three years, okay, before that happened. And then all of a sudden things began to go in progress in such a way that that bell haven now you look at it, you look at the number of African-Americans that are teachers, you look at the numbers of the you look at it now you say, wow, this is wonderful. But it started back in the mid 90s intentionally doing some things that can make it happen. And I think Mission Mississippi gives people this sense of intentionality that we're not gonna look at the elephant and say, wow, that's a great elephant, let's just forget that it's an elephant and let's just keep on doing things the way we've been doing. No, let's look at the elephant and say where do we start chopping from this elephant and how do we make it happen? And I've seen Mission Mississippi move methodically to keep on keeping it before people how we need to move forward to erase this elephant in our community.
Speaker 2This has been incredible, Dr Weir, and we're grateful for your time and grateful for you, thank you for what you're doing and keep on doing it, because it's what God wants to happen. Let's quit putting stuff, hiding stuff, trying to look good. Let's be good rather than look good. Let's be good rather than look good.
Speaker 1Okay, thanks you, pat, on behalf of my incredible, incredible, remarkable friends, remarkable.
Speaker 3Mr Incredible.
Speaker 1Netty winners in Austin Hoyle.
Speaker 2No, no, no, no, mr.
Speaker 1Incredible.
Speaker 2I want to make it clear Austin Hoyle is Mr. Mr.
Speaker 1Incredible. Incredible According to my wife, yeah, and the most important person in his life named him that Validation. Validation pending.
Speaker 3Validation pending. And. She may or may not have been sarcastic.
Speaker 1Validation pending, don't be trying to make a deconational statement here On behalf of my remarkable, incredible friends, netty winners, austin Hoyle, with our incredible guest Dr Dolphus Douglas Weary. We're signing off saying God bless.
Speaker 2God bless, god bless.
