Melvin Charles Smith

“The church has always been the hope of a people,” says the Reverend Melvin Charles Smith. Having grown up in the 1940s and 1950s in South Memphis, Smith experienced how the church worked in the center of the African-American community. “It pushed for education, for intellect, for stability. It was a place where we got inspiration to be liberated from the atrocities of life.”

His parents were vigilant in segregated Memphis, making sure he was protected. “Life was fun for me, for my brothers and sisters; we had a good time,” he says. “Life was that way as long as we were in our community. Our churches, our schools, our entertainment, our businesses were in our community.”

And the ethos of this church-school-community life was purposeful. “You had to be prepared when the day came that you’re ready to accept your assignment in life,” Smith says. “Make sure you’re ready when the glory comes that you can go in and be a part of it. We were taught preparation. We were taught prevention. We were taught to be very, very positive. That was my era of life and that’s how we were able to then blend with Dr. King, and work with Dr. King because we were ready for this.”

Smith is sitting in his office at the Mt. Moriah-East Baptist Church where he’s led his congregation since 1967. Certificates and citations adorn the walls, testimony to his life as a preacher and his life of devotion to community. He’s initiated health-awareness programs at his church, has graduated from Leadership Memphis, is on the board of trustees of Memphis Theological Seminary, and founded the Mt. Moriah-East Development Corporation.

He remembers that at age 15, he got a job mopping floors at the old John Gaston Hospital. “That was my introduction to the wider world,” he says, “when I would hear a grown man being called ‘boy,’ a grown woman being called ‘girl,’ being spoken to in very disrespectful ways. It was such an eye-opener to me that I was disturbed at my family for a moment. ‘Treat everybody right, they gonna treat you right.’ I got out there and that didn't happen. I wondered why they taught me this.”

Smith studied science and would eventually go to work at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where he was a senior technologist working in virology and immunology. It was the first place he worked where he was called “Mister Smith.” “Everybody was treated at St. Jude with great dignity and great respect,” he says. “The medical director, Dr. Don Pinkel, made sure of that.”

While doing this work, he also worked on his ministry. From the time he was a 19-year-old freshman at LeMoyne-Owen College, he knew he was called to the church. He worked as an assistant to the Reverend Samuel Billy Kyles. Eventually, he left St. Jude to devote full time to the ministry. He was in the protest march on March 28, 1968 — the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last march — that turned violent. Then, days later at the moment King was assassinated, Smith was on his way to do a funeral that had to be shortened to accommodate the citywide curfew.

The period following the assassination was a test for churches. Even after the violence that immediately broke out had faded, the social upheaval continued and churches at the center of the African-American communities that were committed to King’s teachings of nonviolence had their work cut out for them.

The leadership that had worked with King led the way. “They knew how to come together to keep things going,” Smith says. “Even though our leader was gone, he had implanted something into the hearts of those who were around him, how to move on, and they did that.”

The road ahead would be difficult. “The early 1970s began to show a little sense of improvement, slight sense of unity, a slight sense of compassion and understanding,” Smith says. “Very slight, but at least it was there. For a while, in my mind, I was really thinking that America is going to be a place where everybody’s feeling comfortable. That didn’t last too long.”

Even so, the mission of churches in the community aimed to continue, to stay relevant in the lives of the people. “That, to me, requires addressing the whole person, not just Sunday morning, but other programs that will inspire and encourage people to be all they can be,” he says. “Here at Mt. Moriah-East, we work hard on the preventive side, not only preventive in health, but preventive in getting away from things that will cause you to have problems in life.”

In other words, continue to teach the virtues not only of religion, but self-protection, education, a good work ethic, being a better person. “Make it do something for you,” Smith says.