and lasting appreciation, I acknowledge the competent, untiring assistance, and critical review of my wife, Mrs. Dianna McLain; typing and clerical assistance of Mrs. Helene Moss, clerk/secretary of Little Union Baptist Church; and my high school class sponsor, Dr. Mary Louise Wilson, for her countless reviews and contributions.
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| Claude Clifford McLain | Camp Philip Payne | Frederick George Sampson II |
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| Ceasar Arthur Walter Clark | Comie Dwaine Simmons | Perry Hicks |
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| Moses Lenard Price | Timothy Moses Chambers, Sr. | Ernest Edward Jones |
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| Sandy Frederick Ray | Edward Victor Hill | Henry Prophet Jenkins |
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| William Augustus Jones | Nelson Henry Smith, Jr. | Samuel Dewitt Proctor |
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| Wyatt Tee Walker | Harry Starks Wright | |
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| Dearon King | Gardner Calvin Taylor | Manuel Lee Scott, Sr. |
Introduction
During my first visit to the campus of Virginia Union Seminary, I met the dean of the school, the dean of the chapel, and the faculty members. To my surprise, they knew me and the theological icons I had met in my ministry. After being introduced to one of the classes that was taught by one of the homiletics professor and a visit to the beautiful chapel, the suggestion was made that I write about some of the great preachers I have known and those who influenced my preaching.
As I pondered that, I said to them, “All of them were great influences on my life,” and “Certainly, these are not all but they are the ones whose meetings and times spent with left indelible memories. I met them through my father.” I heard and shared special moments while hosting them or sitting at their feet, listening and learning. Blessed as a young boy, not only was I born in the house of a preacher, my father, I grew up on a street where five other preachers lived. Most are included in this writing.
All the ministers included in this brief writing were introduced to me by my father. There are many others, but these are a few of the ministers who greatly influenced me and my generation. I was influenced by John Bishop Huey, Clyde Lewis Oliver, David V. Martin, J. D. Jackson, David Matthews, and L. D. Scott, who said “Son, you are standing on your father’s shoulders, and you are expected to go higher.”
Claude Clifford McLain
No single preacher/pastor influenced me as much as my father, Claude Clifford McLain. C. C., as he is fondly called posthumously today, was born December 28, 1912, into wealth and privilege to John and Almeta McLain. His father was an entrepreneur and the son of a white farmer, who gave him eighty acres of land. Within a short time, John McLain owned a six-hundred-acre farm, two sawmills, three taxicabs, and the only commissary (grocery store) in his hometown, Choudrant, Louisiana. He also owned racehorses and was the largest stockholder in the local bank.
John was the apple of Claude’s eye, his idol and hero. At age six, in September, 1919, everything changed. Three months before C. C.’s seventh birthday, his father John was shot in the back by a white employee. John McLain died the next day on his forty-second birthday. A transcript of the court record laid on the dining room table of our home for years. All of the money, stock, mills, and most of the land were taken from Claude’s mother by the manufacture of “You owe me.”
Growing up, Claude walked to Grambling to get a high school education. He endured humiliation and demeaning acts by whites, who rode the buses, and often, they threw their excrement from the bus window on him as he made the ten- to twelve-mile walk one way in pursuit of his high school diploma. After Grambling Negro Normal School, C. C. worked and studied under George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute during the Great Depression. While reading books about Dr. Carver’s life, particularly the one entitled In His Own Words, the writer of the foreword suggested that Dr. Carver’s voice was pitched higher than the average woman because he was probably castrated to be sure there would be no children fathered by Carver being that he lived in the “big house” with whites.
My father told us that, upon meeting Dr. Carver, he first heard his greeting from behind some rosebushes. “May I help you?” Carver asked in a very high voice. C. C. had just arrived by freight train and walked to the campus. He worked a while for Dr. Carver and Dr. Moreland, learning farming and how to administer medication to livestock. This was extremely helpful during his years of cattle farming, planting, growing and harvesting southern plantation pine trees. After Tuskegee, C. C. attended and graduated from Bishop College located in Marshall, Texas, at the time.
Our mother, Mildred Oliver McLain, told us that Dad’s first marriage ended when his wife Grace died in Tuskegee while he was a student. There were no children born to that union. After studying at Bishop, Claude was a teacher and the principal at the Saint Rest Elementary School. C. C. would laugh upon reflecting on his many responsibilities as principal/teacher at St. Rest. This was a time of growth and learning for both him and his students.
During the late 1930s and early forties (1940), C. C. would come home from teaching school and work at the sawmill, which was less than a half mile from the lot he and mother had purchased. He received no monetary pay. Instead, he was paid in lumber. By 1942, he had completed the nine-room framed house that still stands at 1419 Oakdale Street in Ruston, Louisiana. He hammered and nailed even after dark while mother held a flashlight.
In the mid-1940s, C. C. pastored two churches, New Hope in Ruston, Louisiana, and Galilee in Hodge, Louisiana. While pastoring the New Hope Baptist Church in Ruston, in the early 1950s, C. C. was told by a member of the church, “Pastor, you know what happens before our night service is over?”
“No, what happens?”
“A lot of the members go across the street to the Red Onion.”
“What is the Red Onion?”
“You know, it’s a joint, where they dance and stuff. It’s a shame.”
C. C. said, “I’ll go over there if
