- Hi, 2 I'm Hermene Hartman, with Indigo Studio.

And today we are going to have a one-on-one interview with Reverend Dr. Frederick Haynes.

He's the pastor, Friendship-West Baptist Church, in Dallas, Texas.

He has been the pastor there for the past 35 years.

And he got there as a student.

He's the third generation of his family to pastor a church.

He's a social activist, he's a minister, he's a doctorial student, working on his second doctorial and he is a lecturer.

His ministry started while a student, at Bishop College.

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So you've also done a doctorate, your first doctorate, Oxford University.

And I love the title, "To Turn the World Upside Down."

Second Doctorate, you're working on black liberation preaching, with a writing on Dr. Jeremiah Wright.

- Right.

- Alright now, I wanna start from the beginning.

- Okay.

- I wanna talk about your grandfather.

- Okay.

- Tell me about Bubba.

- Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me.

- [Hermene] Thank you.

- Queen Hermene, your amazing legacy already speaks for itself.

And so, to have the privilege to sit with you, knowing of your activism, knowing of your excellence in journalism, is something that we all benefit from.

So thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- My grandfather, for whom I'm named, Frederick Douglas Haynes, Sr.

He was born, I believe 1899, in West Virginia, Summers County, West Virginia.

He was orphaned at the age of four.

And his sister and aunt raised him.

And from age four to nine, they literally were doing homeschooling, before it was a thing.

And he was reading about Frederick Douglas, the silver tongued prophet of freedom.

And when he went to school for the first time at the age of nine, the teacher asked him, "What's your name?"

They didn't have, you know, a computer printout and all of that stuff.

So they asked him what his name was.

His sister and aunt had always given him the nickname, Bubba.

So that's all he knew was, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba.

And yet, when they asked my grandfather, when the teacher asked, "Young man, what is your name?"

His response was, "Frederick Douglas Haynes."

He named himself on the spot.

And the lesson I learned from my grandfather is, in this life, you don't discover who you are as much as you decide who you are.

- You define yourself.

- You define who you are.

You define yourself for yourself.

Or, as, I believe, the great black playwright would say to all of us, Zora Neale Hurston, "You don't define yourself for yourself, you'll be crushed into the fantasies of others."

Well, he defined himself.

And when you look at his ministry, pastoring Third Baptist in San Francisco, where he hosted the NAACP National Convention, I believe in 1959.

He was the host to Martin Luther King Jr.

He was the host to Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, W. E. B.

Du Bois.

Historians know, at that time, they were persona non grata in this country.

Seen as enemies of this country.

And yet they found hospitality and a welcome space, at Third Baptist, under his leadership.

And I believe, what Frederick Douglas Haynes Sr. naming himself, he then defined what his life would be about.

He was also the first African American to run for a County Supervisor in the city and county of San Francisco.

You don't discover who you are, you define who you are.

- So your path.

- Yeah.

- Your path, by name, was destined.

- I literally feel that he set the course for me.

it's almost as if my grandfather, at the age of nine, set the course for his grandson.

- It was destined.

- Yeah.

- Now you grew up in the Bay Area.

- Yes.

San Francisco, yay area.

- And across the bay, were Black Panthers.

- The Black Panther Party.

- How did all of this shape and form you?

- Well.

- Philosophy.

- Oh my God.

- Education.

- Yeah, thank you.

- How did it form you?

- Thank you.

Greatly.

I'm growing up in the church, without question and yet I'm being turned on by the Black Panther Party.

- Social activism.

- Their social activism, they're socially meeting the immediate needs of hungry children.

Protecting us from police who were preying on us.

The Black Panther Party, as far as I'm concerned, injected in the veins of my own spirit, a strong sense of what it means to be a proud, strong, defiant, against the authorities that are oppressive, black man.

The Black Panther Party blessed me because the Black Panther Party let me know there was no shame in my African American game.

- But you're still involved in ministry.

- Still involved in the church.

Growing up in the Christian Church.

And having some problems with what I'm seeing, oftentimes in the church.

And yet, feeling that you can we'd that Black Panther Party activism with the anointing of the Black Church.

And then, as I'm growing up and discovering the history of the Black Church, when the Black Church at its best, has been what the Black Panther Party was doing.

And so it's like the Black Panther Party took over, for what the Black Church had stopped doing.

- You go to high school.

- Yeah.

- First day of high school.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- It's not a good day.

Your father passed.

- Yeah, it's a devastating day.

My father had served as pastor of Third Baptist, succeeding his dad.

And, matter of fact, he served three years, three months and three days.

And he literally passed out in the pulpit, had a stroke of the brain.

And then, three days later, I go to school for orientation, my first day of high school.

And after school is over, I immediately rushed to the hospital where he had been in a coma.

And within two hours, the doctor called us in to tell us he had expired.

And so my first day of high school, my father transitioned.

- That was devastating.

- Yeah, my father was my hero.

Even though he was pastor of Third Baptist, following in his dad's footsteps, he was my dad.

And I loved him, admired him, wanted to be like him, wanted him to be proud of me.

And all of a sudden, at the age of 46, he's gone.

And that was devastating.

- You were being trained for the church?

To take over the church?

- Not at all.

Not at all.

As a matter of fact, for me, I didn't know anything about my grandfather being all that he was.

I knew nothing about my dad, except that they were my dad and granddad.

I was just in the family, enjoying granddaddy, enjoying daddy.

And then, it was literally years later, that I came to find out, these were some bad Negroes, who were really doing the thing.

- My name is Frederick Douglas.

- Yeah, my name is Frederick Douglas Haynes, the third.

And that really meant something.

And I had no idea.

Because again, I was blessed to literally grow up in the nest of a family that loved me, loved on me and allowed me to be a little kid.

- So now, we go to college.

- Yeah.

- Bishop College.

- Yeah.

- How'd you get to Bishop College?

What did you study?

What did you learn?

- Wow.

- How did you do?

A student.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- Pastorial lecture.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- And then assumed the church.

- Yeah.

That question is amazing for me because I was on my way to Morehouse College in Atlanta.

And I received a letter from Morehouse, the housing department, telling me they had no more room to stay on campus and I would have to get an apartment off-campus.

Well, that was cool with me.

17, apartment.

But I made the mistake of leaving the letter open on the kitchen counter.

My mother saw it.

My mother said, "You ain't staying in no apartment."

- [Hermene] No, not at 17.

- And not at 17.

And, I mean, I was messed up.

And it's like, "I can't believe I left that open like that."

And she said, "You'll go to Bishop."

'Cause my mother went to Bishop.

My dad went to Bishop.

My granddaddy received an honorary degree from Bishop.

She said, "You go to Bishop, until they find you some housing."

And so I said, "Okay, fine."

I didn't say it like that, where she heard me.

- Oh, I'm sure you didn't.

- Because I wouldn't be living right now.

(Hermene laughs) But I went on to Bishop College, ironically, two weeks later, I have to speak in the National Baptist Convention for their oratorical contest and the President of Morehouse, Dr. Hugh Gloster was there.

He said, "Why aren't you in school?"

I said, "Doc, I'm at Bishop because y'all don't have any room for me.

My mother won't let me stay in an apartment."

He said, "That was a form letter, that was not meant for you.

Your roommate is waiting on you at Morehouse."

And so he said, "Come on back to school."

I said, "Doc, I can't leave and go to school.

I'm already enrolled."

He said, "Well, come in January."

When I go back to Bishop, after speaking in the contest, Queen Hermene, they had elected me, president of my freshman class.

- You can't go to Morehouse now.

- I can't go to Morehouse.

And so I'm literally stuck at Bishop College and fell in love with the school.

And Dr. Gloster, until his dying day, never let me live down that I should not have followed the form letter.

I said, "But I followed my mama."

- But how did you know it was a form letter?

- I had no idea.

And I tried to tell him that.

And so, he's in heaven now, Dr. Gloster, I had no idea.

Please know that.

Yeah.

So I went to Bishop for four years and my senior year and this is mind blowing.

I am invited to preach at a church in Beaumont, Texas.

And the pastor said, "You just get here and I'll take care of your reimbursement, give you a nice honorarium."

And so I had to drive to Beaumont, Texas.

This is before we had, you know, satellites directing us.

- Never been to Texas before.

- Yeah.

And so here I am, I have to get directions.

And so I got directions.

And, I call 'em, negro directions.

Negro directions don't give you street names, they basically say, take a right at the gas station, a left at the mall and then get on the freeway when you see this gas station.

And so, it took me 12 hours to get from Dallas to Beaumont.

And it's normally six, seven hours.

By the time I get to Beaumont, I'm outta gas.

I call on the payphone, the home of the pastor, at midnight, his wife answers and says, "We were looking for you last Sunday, why weren't you here last Sunday?"

And please forgive me, Queen Hermene but I began to speak in an unknown tongue, under my breath because it's like, "No, we ain't playing, I just drove 12 hours to get here."

And she said, "You were supposed to be here last Sunday."

Well, I didn't have a secretary.

And she said, "Well, come on over, you stay the night."

And going back to school, well, I had no money, no gas.

And I'm in a jacked up situation.

And she gives me some gumbo, that was slamming.

And she says, "Stay in the guest room tonight and get on the road in the morning."

Well, as God would have it because I prayed, I said, "God, I don't know how to get back.

I have no money."

- You weren't gonna take no more Negro directions.

- And I had no more Negro directions to take.

(Hermene laughs) But while I was asleep, her husband called, she told him what happened and he called his best friend in Beaumont, who pastored the largest Black Church in Beaumont.

And he said, "Man, I'm thankful you called because my guest got sick and I need a guest preacher, do you have someone?"

"I have someone."

And it was me.

And so I ended up preaching for the largest Black Church in Beaumont, that Sunday.

And they gave me a love offering, with a lotta love and paid for my gas back to Dallas.

And when I get back to Dallas, the payphone is ringing in the dormitory where I'm staying, we didn't have cell phones.

And the payphone is ringing, the dorm mother says, "You hear the payphone, grab it."

And so I grabbed the payphone, "Hello."

And pastor on the other end, it was a pastor, Robert Castle.

He said, "I need to speak to Frederick Haynes."

And so I said, "I'm speaking."

He said, "You just preached for my best friend in Beaumont.

He says you quite a preacher.

And your dad was my good friend.

I need you to come preach for me at Friendship-West Baptist Church."

And so I said, "Okay."

And so I preached for him in July of 1981.

And he asked me to come back.

I preached for him in February of '82.

Unbeknownst to us, he had walking pneumonia.

And he passed away.

I'm the last preacher they heard.

And they invited me to serve as interim pastor.

And from there I became pastor.

- How old are you?

- 21.

21 years old.

And a junior at Bishop College, going into my senior year.

It all started because I went to Beaumont the wrong Sunday and ran outta gas.

- That's called, Negro directions.

- Negro Directions.

Hallelujah for Negro directions.

(Hermene laughs) - So, when you got to Friendship.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- 100 was in the congregation.

- Yeah.

- Today, 13,000.

- Yeah.

- How did you grow it?

- Wow.

First, only God.

Because, keep in mind, I'm 21 when they extend the call to me as pastor.

22 when I actually go.

So I don't know what I'm doing.

And I had never served on staff of a church.

I did not know what I was doing.

So, if I say anything but God, then, you know, you need to run because I'll get struck down right now.

So first, it was God.

Second, God blessed me with mentors who basically walked me through, in spite of my ignorance, talked me through everything I had to deal with in those initial years.

And so I'm forever indebted to Emmanuel Scott and E.K.

Bailey, Caesar Clark.

And later in the ministry, I met Jeremiah Wright Jr. And all of those persons, I look back on and I'm convinced that God used them to pour into me, when I was about to make a dumb decision.

The phone would ring outta nowhere.

And here is someone saying to me, "That's dumb, don't do that."

- So what did you learn from Dr. Jeremiah Wright?

- [Frederick] Oh my God.

- What did you learn from another mentor, Reverend Jesse Jackson?

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- What were some of the lessons?

- Yeah.

So, let me say this.

Reverend Jackson, I met as a junior at Bishop College, right before all of this broke out in my life.

And Reverend Jackson and I'll be forever indebted to him for this, taught me that real ministry is not confined to the pulpit.

It has to show up on the pavement, where the people are.

Real ministry is not only addressing, as he would say, "Sin within but the sin we live in."

And so I went to that church, with that mindset, that I wanted to be in the streets and confronting those in political and corporate suites, during the week, while trying to feed the people on Sunday morning.

I shared with you about my grandfather.

My grandfather ran for County Supervisor of San Francisco.

And some haters began to talk about him.

And they talked about him to one of the deacons of the church.

He's at the post office and the deacon is confronted saying, "Your pastor is out here in these streets.

Your pastor needs to be feeding the sheep."

The deacon clapped back and said, "Our pastor's a good shepherd who feeds the sheep on Sunday and fights the wolves on Monday."

And that's what Jesse Jackson embodied for me.

Feeding the sheep and fighting the wolves.

And then here comes Jeremiah Wright, unapologetically black, unashamedly Christian, Black Panther Party.

- Unashamedly, South Africa.

- Unashamedly, with his Africanity.

And making us feel that we should be proud to be from the mother continent, as opposed to the shame that was imputed onto us in too many instances, as it's referred to as what, the dark continent.

And Jeremiah Wright showed me an enlightening approach to our history.

Letting me know, we ain't got nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to our Africanity.

What's a shame, is the colonization that took place.

What's a shame, is the fact that they came to us offering the Bible and then stealing the land.

What's a shame, is the most evil expression of enslavement in the history of humanity, that took place as the colonizers came.

Jeremiah Wright showed me that.

And so I began to try to make that a part of our ministry at Friendship-West.

Where we are in them streets, like Jesse Jackson.

But at the same time, having that unapologetic Africanity wedded to our Christianity, that Jeremiah Wright brilliantly and prophetically embodied.

And so Jeremiah Wright and thank you for saying that.

Jeremiah Wright, having the anointed audacity to put a sign up in front of Trinity United Church of Christ, free South Africa.

While Ronald Wilson Reagan was engaged in what he called, constructive engagement, which meant we profit from the pain of Black South Africans, while calling ourselves, engaging with them, in order to slowly bring about their freedom.

Jeremiah Wright said, "No, free South Africa and free them now."

- So that position that Dr. Wright took.

- Yeah.

- Was very similar to the position that Dr. King took.

- Come on.

- On Vietnam.

- Say that.

- On the war.

- Say that.

- Stop the war.

Let me be a human Christian philosophical guy.

- [Frederick] Say that.

- Not a black guy.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- From the neighborhood.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

Yeah.

- Would that be right?

- Oh, that's so on point.

Because, with both of them, they were coming at it again, unapologetic in terms of who they are but at the same time, as moral leaders.

- That's right.

- [Frederick] Exercising their moral authority.

- Philosophical.

- This war is wrong.

- That's right.

Period.

- Period, the end.

- [Hermene] That's right.

- South African apartheid and oppression is wrong.

That's what Jeremiah Wright was saying.

That's what Martin King was saying.

And again, that is what's feeding.

- Is what your grandfather was saying.

- Say that.

Say that.

- Am I right?

- That's what my granddaddy was saying, as he defined himself.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- I wanna get to Oxford.

- Yeah.

- You lived in England for a while.

- [Frederick] Yeah.

- Your dissertation, first doctorate.

- Yeah.

- "To Turn the World" - "Upside down."

I want to know what you wrote about.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

Again, because of the influence of my name.

Because of the influence of a Jeremiah Wright who literally pushed me.

I mean, cussed me out if I was not handling my academic business.

you know, I.

Have no right, you know?

Yeah.

He gets me out of shame.

Yeah.

unashamedly.

Yeah.

Unapologetically.

but because of that, again, that shaping my sense of ministry and at that time, there was this huge church growth emphasis.

And as they're talking about church growth, from a Eurocentric perspective, they're talking about in a white washed away homogeneity is what grows a church.

And so basically, you know, having a church that's all of a certain class and color.

And I was saying, no, that ain't what my Bible says.

And then I read this passage in acts chapter 17 where it says, these who have turned the world upside down have come here also, right after a chapter where the church explodes in growth.

And it's not homo genius.

Instead it's reaching this culture, reaching this class and, and, and and confronting systems of oppression.

As I see it, that's what I've seen with Trinity United Church of Christ.

That's what I've seen with other models of ministry that confront injustice, engage in activism while feeding the membership so that they see that when I'm when I join a church, it's not just about joining that church, it's about impacting the world, changing door, turning the world upside down.

And so that that's what my dissertation is about.

My dissertation is about the fact that no, this Eurocentric model, which has proven over time to be not only a toxic model, but it's proven over time to be a racist model.

And so the model, the biblical model of turning the world upside down, says that you do that when you transform communities, when you fight for justice, and at the same time you grow people.

William Augustus John says, the kingdom of God is spiritually social and socially spiritual.

When you are doing the work of the church, truly you recognize you can't be pious and avoid what's political.

You have to.

And this is what Reverend Jackson has emphasized throughout his ministry.

Give a voice to those who are voiceless, and God honors that.

And I've discovered at Friendship West and Dallas and countless other churches throughout the world who do this kind of work.

If you major in ministry, to those who are othered, to those who are dissed and dismissed, God says, I'll bless your ministry.

I'll grow your ministry as you turn the world upside down.

Wow, doctor.

Reverend - Dr. Reverend Freddy Haynes, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- For being with us.

And for just a wonderful interview.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for being with us.

With an incredible interview, with Dr. Reverend Freddie Haynes.

- I'm just letting you know, that long before we arrived, there was greatness, genius and grace, that characterized our people.

And yet, here is what Maya Angelou declared.

She said, "We arrived on a nightmare, I hang out there homiletically, arriving on a nightmare, Hang with me for just a moment because to arrive on a nightmare is a reflection.

Poetically, if you extrapolate it, of the fact hang with me for just a moment because, to arrive."

that we arrived on the nightmare of the most evil expression of enslavement in the history of humanity.

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