wfn.org | United Methodists celebrate historic black deaf church

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Oct. 23, 2000 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71B{483}
 
By Dean Snyder*

BALTIMORE (UMNS) -- The Rev. Peggy Johnson began the 95th anniversary
celebration of Whatcoat Black Deaf Mission by apologizing.

"I am sorry you were separated," said Johnson, pastor of Christ United
Methodist Church of the Deaf in Baltimore, to her African-American members
who had been a segregated congregation until white and black deaf churches
merged in the mid-1950s. "I am sorry your church did not get a pastor
sometimes," she said. 

"And I am sorry because you have no pictures," she said. "We found only one
picture in 95 years. You were too poor to even have pictures." 

But Johnson, who believes Whatcoat Mission was Methodism's only black deaf
congregation, also found a lot in the church's history to celebrate. 

"You were the first church to join together (racially) because you know the
truth - that we are all one family in God," she said.

"Even when you did not get a pastor, you kept the church going because you
used lay people as preachers," she said. 

"You had no money and limited jobs," she said. "Your church was poor, but
you were rich in spirit."

Whatcoat Mission for Colored Deaf was begun in 1905 by the Rev. Daniel
Moylan, a deaf white pastor who had founded Baltimore's Christ Church of the
Deaf, a white congregation, 10 years earlier in 1895. In addition to being a
pastor, Moylan taught shoe repair at the Baltimore School for the Colored
Deaf and Blind and became concerned about the spiritual welfare of his
students. Whatcoat Methodist Episcopal Church, a white congregation located
at Pine and Franklin streets in Baltimore, allowed Moylan to hold meetings
for deaf African Americans in its building, and the new deaf congregation
took on its name.

In March 1905, Moylan submitted a report to his district superintendent
about what he called "the new work among the colored deaf mutes."  

"I started to work with very little apparent encouragement," he wrote. "But
after a little more patience, I began to see the work appreciated. I held
two evangelistic services for two Sundays during January, resulting in nine
conversions." 

The congregation, which eventually grew to more than 60 members, met in many
different buildings between 1905 and its merger with Christ Church of the
Deaf some 50 years later, according to Charles Waters, one of the church's
oldest members.

Waters, 87, who is sometimes called "Mr. Black Deaf Methodist History,"
explained that churches would permit the congregation to meet in their
buildings for a time and then expect it to begin paying rent. Using sign
language translated by an interpreter, he said that black deaf men went to a
different school from white deaf people and were trained for lower-paying
jobs, such as shoe repair as opposed to the more highly paid trade of
operating newspaper printing presses. As a result, the congregation rarely
had enough income to pay rent, so it was forced to relocate frequently, he
said.

In 1928, with a donation from a deaf man who had sold his family farm after
his parents' death, Moylan bought a building at 215 Calhoun St., the former
Bethany Methodist Church, for his white and black congregations. The
African-American congregation met in the basement on Sunday mornings while
the white congregation worshipped in the sanctuary on Sunday afternoons.
 
Congregants and their deaf friends donated their labor and money to repair
the building, but there were not enough funds to fix the furnace, according
to Waters. After his wife's death, Moylan moved into the church and slept
behind the pulpit. Waters believes Moylan, who died in 1943, contracted a
terminal case of pneumonia as a result of sleeping in an unheated building.
The congregations continued to meet in the building until it was sold in
1956. 

After Moylan's death, hearing pastors, using sign interpreters, served
Christ Church of the Deaf but not Whatcoat Mission. For at least 14 years,
Whatcoat Mission had no assigned pastor. Waters, who led worship and
preached along with another deaf man, Jerome Horsey, recalls no visits from
district superintendents or other denomination officials during that time.
The congregation went without Holy Communion. "We could preach, but we
couldn't conduct communion because we weren't ordained," Waters said.

In 1957, the Rev. Louis Foxwell was appointed pastor of both Christ Church
and Whatcoat Mission. Foxwell was the hearing son of deaf members of Christ
Church, and he had often served as interpreter for hearing clergy. The
congregations continued to share a building but worshipped at different
times in different rooms. During this era, the Baltimore area had no other
integrated churches, yet Foxwell persuaded the white and black deaf
congregations to worship together.

"Some said blacks and whites can't be mixed in church," Waters explained.
"Foxwell said, 'Leave if you want to.'"

At first African Americans sat on one side of the sanctuary and whites on
the other, according to Waters. "But Foxwell would sit with the whites one
Sunday and the blacks the next until it all got mixed up," he said.

Other long-term members of Whatcoat Mission who attended the Oct. 15 banquet
celebrating the mission's anniversary were William Richardson, 92,
Baltimore's first deaf truck driver, and Bessie Hall, 93, who joined the
church in 1931.  

Keynote speaker for the banquet was Al Couthen, vice principal of the School
for the Deaf in Columbia, Md., and former president of National Black Deaf
Advocates. He spoke about the need to recover lost black deaf history and
the advocates' efforts to videotape deaf black leaders. "My goal is to get a
videotape of your history," he told the surviving members of Whatcoat
Mission.

Entertainment was provided by the Wild Zappers, a deaf hip-hop dance group
from Washington that promotes deaf awareness. The troupe's dramatic
interpretations, using sign and dance, included popular songs such as "I
Believe I Can Fly," hymns like "His Eye is on the Sparrow," as well as
original compositions.

"They made being deaf cool," Johnson said.     

# # #

*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Annual
Conference of the United Methodist Church.

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United Methodist News Service
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