Belleville pastor puts in the work to battle hatred and racism

The Rev. Dr. John L. Curry knows hate when he sees it.

And he has seen a lot of it — from a run-in with the Ku Klux Klan while growing up in Mississippi to working in a prison where most of the inmates were black to receiving death threats right here in Belleville.

“Enough,” said Curry, pastor of Conqueror’s Christian Center in Belleville. “There is a lot of racism out there. And it’s all based on fear. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. ... The only way we are going to change that is this,” he said, pointing back and forth between himself and the listener. “Talking about it face-to-face.”

But that discussion has to be based on truth, not the myth of white supremacy, he said.

“We cannot undo the past, but we can admit the truth about what happened, repent, be forgiven, love each other as citizens of the world serving one God, who is the father of us all. The only thing that works is truth.”

That’s why Curry, a fourth-generation preacher who has been on the front lines against racism in Belleville for 25 years, wrote “Truth to Power: Race in America from My Perspective.” The 19-page book was first published in 2011 but, he said, people need to read it now, when racial tensions around the country have intensified. The book consists of “historical truths” Curry said were left out of the history books, written primarily by whites, and not taught in schools.

Some examples from Curry’s book:

▪ “Many black people were taught that blacks are not in the Bible and are considered to be 3/5 human. ... I found we as blacks are all through the Bible.” He cites a 1988 Newsweek magazine story that concluded Adam and Eve were not white, but black or people of color. He also lists Scripture references that black people held many important positions in the Bible and ruled the great civilizations of Africa. And he points out important contributions black people have made to mankind throughout history. “Young blacks need to take pride in their great history and know they were never meant to be slaves,” he said, “that they are not inferior.”

▪ The founding fathers of the United States owned slaves. “Of the 55 men who wrote the Constitution, 52 of them were men in the church. Yet they also were owners of slaves. This could only be justified by declaring blacks as animals,” Curry wrote. After the 13th Amendment to the Constitution formally abolished slavery in 1865, “slaves were thrown into the streets as dogs, they were illiterate . ... Laws were enacted to imprison the overflow of the black population for all kinds of petty offenses. ... I believe this was the beginning of the criminalizing of the black race.”

▪ Black people in America experience racism every day — while driving on the highway, at the mall, in the workplace.

▪ “One of the greatest symbols of white supremacy to me is when God and Jesus Christ are portrayed as being white, when the Word of God says no man has seen God and lived,” Curry wrote.

“God is not white or black,” Curry elaborated in an interview. “He’s not Asian or Hispanic. He’s not a Democrat or Republican. God is love for all people.”

Ignoring these and other “truths” only re-enforces the myth of white supremacy, Curry said. “Everyone needs to hear the truth. But lots of people can’t handle straight talk.”

Mounting hate

The cornerstone of the book is Curry’s own story. He was born in 1956 in Mississippi to a sharecropper who signed his name with an X. “My mother raised eight children in a three-room shotgun house. She was a missionary and a preacher and taught me to love all people regardless of the color of their skin,” he wrote. “She focused on what we had, not what we did not have. During that time in Mississippi, most blacks had it hard and most whites were doing everything possible to make it harder.”

When he was walking home at age 9, “two white men pulled up beside me and opened the car door and yelled, using the N word, get in this car before we kill you.”

He ran home and the men chased him to his porch, kicking and beating on the door. Curry’s mother came to the door, dropped to her knees and prayed. A few minutes later, the men drove away.

“I asked myself, ‘What did I do to them that they would want to kill me?’”

“After that I was filled with hatred for all white people,” Curry said. “My friends and I threw bricks into white people’s windows. We would do anything to harm white folks.”

Hatred swelled as he attended an integrated high school, where teachers used the N word and refused to teach black students.

When he was 16, his mother sent him to live with his sister in Waukegan, Ill., where he won a track scholarship to Jackson State College. One day a white teammate asked Curry to come to his house to meet his parents. Fearing he would be the butt of jokes by the teammate’s parents, Curry walked away. The teammate’s mother came after him.

“I was invited into their big beautiful home where they showed me nothing but love. His parents treated me like I was one of their sons. It was at that time I started to see white people a little different, but I still had very little trust for them.”

After life dealt him some kindnesses from whites and more than a few slaps in the face, Curry came face to face with the truths he wrote about in the book.

“I became convinced that self-love can and will remove all hatred in the world. The more I came to love myself, the more I loved others. I had to love myself more to end my hatred of white people.”

Ministry was a part-time job for Curry until 2007. He spent 25 years with the Illinois Department of Corrections, starting as a corrections officer and retiring as assistant warden of programs at Southeastern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis.

In the prisons, Curry said, he witnessed mistreatment of black inmates based on fears of the small town white security staff members who truly believed in white supremacy.

“I noticed as time went on black inmates were winning over some white security staff as they talked more about their family. Many white staff members were surprised to see that blacks love their family just like white people.”

Making a difference

Regarding recent racial unrest and rioting in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and New York, Curry put a lot of the blame on “people coming in to take advantage of hate, without really putting in the work in the community. That’s why we didn’t have the same thing in Belleville. We’ve been putting in the work in the community for 25 years.”

“Putting in the work” includes:

▪ Attending City Council and committee meetings to stand up for what’s right. And lobbying in the Human Rights Commission to get more blacks on the city staff and in the police department.

▪ Organizing sessions of “Nations — Race Relations Dialogue” with panels representing all races, ages and creeds.

▪ Sponsoring “The Ish Project — A Rite of Passage.” (Ish is a Hebrew word meaning “man rising.”) “It’s a great program where we turn boys into men and teach them to take responsibility for themselves,” Curry said. The 8-week program emphasizes self-control, self-esteem, anger management, character development, race relations, respect for men, women and the law and active listening through military-style regimentation, physical training, labor, education and counseling.

▪ Organizing non-violent protests whenever racial issues arise. In 2009, when 22 members of white supremacist groups held a boisterous rally to protest a 2009 attack on a Belleville West school bus in which two black students beat a white student, Curry led a silent counter-protest.

“Our message is to preach love for all groups, skinheads, KKK, Nazis, all groups,” Curry said at the time. “Hate and racism has got to stop. Our message is silent love.”

“There we were,” Curry said, looking back on it, “protesting for a white student who was the victim — the same as we do if a black were beaten.”

Curry is proud of his role and those of others working for better race relations in Belleville.

“My goal is to make Belleville shine and also put the truth out there.”

Why did he write the book?

“I don’t want my grandchildren to go through what I had to go through. My heart is about people loving people. But to get there, people — of all races — need to face these hard truths and accept each other as equal.”

“Truth to Power” is available for $10 by emailing jsconquerors@charter.net or calling 618-277-5671.

This story was originally published July 24, 2015 at 7:43 AM with the headline "Belleville pastor puts in the work to battle hatred and racism."