ELEGY FOR REV HARTSFIELD

ELEGY FOR PASTOR HARTSFIELD Saturday, January 25, 2020 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Rev. Wallace S. Hartsfield, Sr., late pastor of Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, was my friend. He passed away, Thursday, January 23. His impact on my life was profound. In December 1989, he allowed me and a group of friends, to host “Ceremonies in Black Manhood” at his great church on New Year’s Eve, even though I was not a Baptist, Christian, nor “member” of any church at that time. This he knew. He also knew much more: that God rules and super-rules, seeing into dark corners clearly. A few years later, he mortally wounded me in the spirit, as he preached. His eyes were probing me, inquiring of me. When he finally extended the invitation I was greatly relieved, as his gaze swept away. I then stepped away, out the front door. I later collapsed in spiritual surrender to Jesus Christ at Allen Chapel A.M.E, Church in Kansas City, Missouri, two weeks later, spent. Its then-pastor, Rev. Alvin L. Smith, was reading from the 139 Psalm, “Oh Lord thou hast searched me and known me,” after having preached, “Looking for a Few Good Men.” I virtually drifted down the carpet aisle, joining the earliest African American denomination. Pastor Hartsfield had also financially helped me to host Dr. Samuel B. Copher, of the Gammon Theological Seminary, his former “Old Testament” Professor, whom I had invited to Kansas City to speak on “Black People and Personalities in and of the Bible.” My Nile Company, publisher of THE NILE REVIEW newsletter, had brought him to K.C. to speak on that topic one Saturday at a K.C. Hotel for free. That Sunday, Pastor Hartsfield, allowed Dr. Copher to preach at Ebenezer. Yet, not once, did Rev. Copher say anything about black people/personalities in the Bible! On another occasion, in the early 1990s, I had been politely chastised by Pastor Hartsfield for inquiring about the injunction against “graven images,” in the Book of Exodus. I asked after his acceptance speech of an award, at a white Episcopal Church event. There, such graven images were ubiquitous. He told me to mind my manners when a guest in the home of another. I quietly nodded in humble assent. Other interfaces occurred with Pastor Hartsfield, Ebenezer, and its members over the years, but no need to elaborate; just to say that I loved this man like a father, which he really was to me, my godfather, in the ministry of Savior Jesus Christ. #30