Bishop King could quiet a room with one evil stare. But if that was all you knew about him, you missed the essence of the man. He was a big man who was more than six feet tall. He had a presence about him such that he occupied a room almost like a celebrity.
For me, he was my Dad, and everything about him was bigger than life: that booming voice, that broad smile, the way my mother’s day seemed to brighten when he’d come into the kitchen and gently kiss her forehead.
Daddy was his mother’s, giant baby. His father had been in the restaurant business near Carrollton, Mississippi. The old man was a dandy, frequently wearing tails to dances in the area. He died in my father’s youth, causing a drastic change in what once was a comfortable existence for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1900s.
He worked a few menial jobs, then headed to Rust College, a small black college operated by the Methodist Church in Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played football, much to the chagrin of his mother. One day during a college-wide assembly, the college president read aloud a multi-page letter from some irate woman. In excruciating detail, the woman reminded President McCoy that she entrusted her son to the school for an education. She didn’t want her baby playing that rough game of football. She feared her baby might get hurt.
Dr McCoy stopped reading, tossed down the letter and peered curiously over the assembled student body during a dramatic silence. “I’m going to ask that baby to stand up so everybody can see him,” Dr McCoy said. “Where is Bishop King? Stand up.”
Daddy rose slowly. As always his tall frame dwarfed those around him, and the other students roared with laughter.
My mother laughed too. But at that moment Bishop King caught her eye. She had already caught his eye. She was the smartest girl in the class: a shy squeaky-voiced kid who raised her hand in class and always delivered the correct answer when called upon. She was a sharecropper’s daughter, the oldest of seven children.
During their courtship, he wrote lots of long letters. Once, he visited her hometown of Greenville, Mississippi. He stayed so long he spent all his money. Undaunted, he confidently boarded the train for home, promising to pay when the train reached Carrollton. The conductor agreed, never even raising an eyebrow. Once in Carrollton Daddy got the money and paid his fare.
Years later, dad became the father who attended all of the school conferences and meetings. Though I and my sisters and brothers sometimes disappointed, he always seemed genuinely grateful that we were in his life. If I stayed home sick from school, Daddy would take a break in the middle of the day so he could come home to check on me. Usually, he’d arrive with a shiny new car for me to play with.
Just as passionately, Daddy was a man of principle and a labor leader. At the time, most blacks in our town banked at Commercial Bank. My father learned that the then-president of Commercial Bank was a member of the racist White Citizens Council. Daddy became one of the first to go into that bank and close his accounts. When a clerk asked why he was closing his accounts, Daddy told them without hesitation. In short order, he was face-to-face with the bank’s president.
The bank president assured Daddy that this was a misunderstanding. Yes, the man said, he was a member of the White Citizens Council, but that was a good thing. Actually, he had only joined because he wanted to keep the group from meeting, and thereby avoid racial animosity in what was a peaceful town in the Mississippi Delta. The explanation didn’t impress Daddy. He said so, ended the conversation and left with his funds.
To my father, there were no strangers. He seemed to know everybody. He would talk for hours to anyone who’d listen. He had a big heart, always going out of his way to help others. In those days there were few roadworthy cars in our community. We were blessed to have one. You would have thought it was a community vehicle the way he responded to anyone who needed assistance.
Mr Jackson, the local grocer, wanted to send his daughter to Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He asked, and Daddy drove her to Atlanta, more than 400 miles over a two-lane highway. I got to go along for the ride and enjoyed hour on hour, of conversation about family and what it meant to be a father, a son, or a friend.
Daddy was president of the local branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers. In that capacity, he attended the group’s national convention in Miami. There he became impressed with a Florida retirement community for letter-carriers. He talked a lot about how he and my mother would retire there, and live out their days in the sun and sand. It didn’t happen that way.
Daddy told us he was going to the hospital for a few days of rest. On the morning of May 13, 1966, he rose early, took out all of our pictures and spread them on his bed. It was as if he was celebrating and praying blessings over that for which he was most grateful.
He drove himself to the hospital. Five days later he was gone. I was 14 years old. I never got to call him up on fathers’ day or pick his brain for advice in my adult years. Still, every day we shared was golden. He always acted as if my siblings and I made him the most blessed man in town. Actually, it was the other way around.
I wish you had known him.
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