Solomon Michaux Lightfoot

Background

Lightfoot Solomon Michaux was born on 7 November 1885, in Buckroe Beach, Virginia. His parents' names are unknown.

Education

Michaux attended public schools in nearby Newport News until the fourth grade, when he began working full-time for his father selling crabs and oysters. Michaux eventually expanded his father's small operation into a profitable business, selling to army and defense establishments in the area.

Career

In 1917, Michaux moved his business to Hopewell, a boomtown that was rife with crime and corruption. Pauline Michaux, his wife, an evangelist who remained her husband's closest associate throughout his life, inspired him to turn his enormous energies from business to evangelism. On her own, Pauline organized girls' groups called Purity Clubs, for which she coined the motto Be a Peach Out of Reach. Soon after he opened a church in Newport News, he began preaching over the radio and quickly gained a large interracial following. Despite strong objections from local authorities, his church meetings were integrated. In 1922, segregationist authorities put him on trial but he was acquitted. In 1929, inspired by what he said was "a voice out of the void, " Michaux moved to Washington, D. C. , and established what was to become the headquarters for his Church of God and its social arm, the Gospel Spreading Association. From a former pool hall across from Griffith Stadium, Michaux began broadcasting daily over commercial radio station WSJV. Beginning in 1931, he was heard on network radio every Saturday evening, and from 1936 to 1938, his sermons were also broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company. "The Happy Am I Preacher and His Famous Choir" program, with its 156-member choir, made him a celebrity and helped inspire the establishment of at least seven churches in various cities. Michaux was noted for his spectacular baptisms. Until 1938 he conducted a yearly Potomac River ceremony, baptizing hundreds of black and white believers while thousands watched from the banks. In 1938, because of his friendship with Clark Griffith, he switched this ceremony to Griffith Stadium, where, in a canvas tank often filled with water imported from the river Jordan, he baptized hundreds more each year. A gifted orator with a flair for the dramatic, one year he staged the second coming of Christ; another time, he officiated at the devil's funeral; on another occasion, he presided while an electrical heart of Jesus splattered blood on white-robed penitents. During the Great Depression, Michaux expanded his social-welfare work. When a branch luncheonette failed, he convinced its owner to turn the building over to him. Michaux renamed it the Happy News Cafe and employed jobless poor to operate it. He also operated a free employment service and had his followers repair an old building to house forty evicted black families. As a result of his friendship with government officials, Michaux received a Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan of $3. 5 million to complete, in 1946, a 594-unit housing development called Mayfair Mansions, for which he had been able to purchase land. In 1964 the Gospel Spreading Association received an additional $6 million loan to construct an adjoining 672-unit apartment project called Paradise Manor on his acquired land. Later there were unproven accusations that Michaux was guilty of bribe taking in these two ventures. Michaux was not enthusiastic about the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Michaux died in Washington, D. C.

Achievements

• Michaux is a prominent example of the so-called storefront religious leader. His mixture of fundamentalist religion and social welfare had wide appeal among the destitute, although middle-class blacks were not as widely attracted. But Michaux's effective use of radio; his monthly newspaper, Happy News, which had a circulation of 8, 000; his residence in the nation's capital; and his ability to attract prominent white supporters gave him an influence that few such preachers ever gained.

Religion

Like numerous other prominent whites, Eisenhower was an honorary deacon of Michaux's church, having begun this association in 1944.

Politics

Michaux was deeply involved in politics. Like most blacks, he had been a staunch Republican all his life, but after President Herbert Hoover evicted the Bonus Army, to which Michaux was ministering, he became a supporter of the New Deal. He later supported President Truman's civil rights program but switched back to the Republicans when Eisenhower became president.

Views

As a preacher, Michaux, who was black, stressed interracial social and political action to battle immorality and poverty. He took full advantage of technology to spread his message.

He openly criticized Martin Luther King, Jr. , for his attack on J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and for his use of the boycott to force implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Since Michaux had long conducted integrated religious and social functions, he was shocked at the confrontational tactics of King and other civil rights advocates. He seemed determined to show his white patrons that he did not support such activities.

Connections

Michaux married Mary Eliza Pauline in 1906; they had no children.

Wife:

Mary E. Michaux

4 July 1884 - 28 October 1967