From protester to pastor

"What time is it?" the preacher asks.

"Preaching time!" comes the collective response.

"What time is it?" he repeats.

"Preaching time!!" they answer, louder.

"What time is it?"

"Preaching time!!!"

"Gospel means 'good news,' and there's no better news than the Book of John," the Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III begins, steering the congregation at Charity Missionary Baptist Church to Chapter 9, Verses 18-25, which recount the story of the blind man made to see.

The preacher is electric. The people shout out, stand up. Rivers, an ordained pastor for 10 years, a political activist for 40, most of which was spent rising through the ranks of the NAACP, has found a new path to trod, a new calling to obey, a new arena to fill with his spirited cry, a new reason to speak out and speak loudly.

The new reason is not unlike the old reason. He has always strived to decry injustice and light the path toward liberation. The difference now is that Charity is his new home, and faith furnishes his vocabulary.

Formation

"In a time of peace, you need an army to keep the peace; in a time of war, you need an army to fight your battles," Rivers said by way of explaining why the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People keeps on keeping on.

Currently, he serves as the organization's vice president of stakeholder relations. The NAACP is celebrating its centennial this year.

Rivers, 58, born in Bennett's Point in Colleton County, raised there and in Charleston, came of age during the tumultuous 1960s. When he was 12, his family attended St. Paul Baptist Church on Rutledge Avenue and heard the mighty preaching of the Rev. James A. Williams. It would be the unforgettable voice Rivers would emulate years later.

He was 17 when he read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." An obsessive reader during those years, this was the first book he encountered that described with such raw honesty the life of a black man, and it radicalized him, he said.

These were the days he played the trumpet and baritone horn in the Burke High School Band. These were the days he combated arrogance and privilege, embracing the idea of civil disobedience, direct action and loud protest.

It was 1968. That April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. That June, Robert F. Kennedy was killed. It was chaotic in America when Rivers left Charleston for Wilberforce University in Ohio, a school co-founded by Daniel Alexander Payne in 1856.

Payne, who became the first black president of the first black college founded by blacks, was born in Charleston, where he started a school at age 18, a school he was forced to close when, in 1835, South Carolina passed a law making it illegal to teach blacks to read.

By the time Rivers arrived at Wilberforce, his mind was saturated with biographies, histories and science fiction novels, especially the work of Isaac Asimov. He knew all about Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, the American Indian Wars, interstellar empires, robots and Martians.

And, committed to the cause of empowering the oppressed, he became an organizer and protester.

"I became the blackest thing on campus," he said. "Black was everything."

He called for a boycott of the university, complaining that black history was insufficiently taught, that the three-strike penalty system and evening curfews were unfair, that the trustee board ought to include a student representative.

He disparaged the NAACP for being "too moderate, too Uncle Tom." He praised the Black Panther Party. He considered membership in the Nation of Islam. He faulted friends and colleagues if they hesitated to join black organizations on campus.

"You're not black if you don't join," he told one friend, enraged.

Then, a week or two later, someone tried to persuade Rivers to join the Black Liberation Front. When Rivers hesitated, the man said, "You're not black if you don't join." Rivers heard the echo of his own voice, and he began to question his motivation, allegiances and attitudes.

Then he participated in a class debate, defending the views of Booker T. Washington against the ideas of W.E.B. DuBois (which he favored). The debate was enlightening, he said. Although he remained unconvinced by Washington's arguments and actions, he understood that they were made without malice and helped advance the cause of oppressed black people.

Something else happened during this period that challenged Rivers' orthodoxy. His Black Panther friends were getting thrown in jail and couldn't raise enough money to cover the bond set by the court. Only one organization succeeded in freeing them and defending their rights: the NAACP.

Then

A man must earn a living, so Rivers went to work for Liberty Mutual, settling insurance claims up to $10,000 in the nearly all-white town of Rocky River outside Cleveland. He hated the cold; he hated the job. So in September 1974, he returned to Charleston and applied for a job with the Great American Life Insurance Co. When he told the hiring manager he was capable of settling claims of up to $10,000, the man refused to believe it.

"I had to recalibrate my thinking," Rivers said.

He found work with Brown & Williamson, maker of Kool, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and many other cigarette brands. Rivers said he was the company's first black sales rep. He was with B&W for nine years until 1984. (Five years later, the company would hire Jeffrey Wigand as its vice president of research and development. Wigand would become a whistleblower made famous by a "60 Minutes" investigation that contributed to the massive Medicaid suit and $368 billion settlement against the tobacco companies.)

As a cigarette salesman, Rivers traveled extensively throughout the state, getting to know its urban centers, back roads and small towns. It was good preparation for his future work as an NAACP organizer.

During those salesman days, Rivers and a few others decided they wanted to establish a new NAACP branch downtown to revitalize the mission of the civil rights organization in Charleston. But there was already a functioning branch, and they couldn't have two.

In North Charleston, though, the branch was inactive, so Rivers and his colleagues got busy. A young man was vying for president against the Rev. Willie Davenport, the experienced pastor at Royal Baptist Church. Though Rivers and his colleagues backed the younger man, hoping that fresh blood would reinvigorate the branch, Davenport had a roomful of supporters and won handily, Rivers said.

Rivers credited the loss to a lack of familiarity with the nominating rules. "He was not cheating me, but he was beating me because he knew the rules," Rivers said of the victorious pastor whom, later, he would befriend. "I vowed never to lose again because of the rules."

In 1978, Davenport appointed Rivers as first vice president and youth adviser. In 1980, Davenport decided to step down and throw his support behind Rivers, who became branch director. A poised, capable leader who knew how to energize the community, Rivers was positioned to rise rapidly through the ranks of the organization.

In 1984, he was elected director of the state conference, succeeding Ike Williams. The issues he had to contend with were many: a Confederate battle flag mounted atop the S.C. Statehouse, education disparities, diluted representation in the state Legislature, lack of business opportunities for blacks, chronic discrimination, ongoing incidents of illegal segregation and more.

"It was a critical time for the state conference," said James Gallman, who was Aiken branch president 1988-97 and state president 1998-2004.

Gallman said he remembers Rivers as always being ready to take the lead anywhere in the state.

The two men, along with four others, visited the Buffalo Room restaurant in North Augusta in 1989 after hearing that the restaurant refused to serve blacks.

"We decided to go to check this out," Gallman said.

When they arrived, the owner came running out, cursing and threatening to strike the men with a big pot. A trial judge, warning that such behavior should have been expected, nevertheless awarded the plaintiffs $100,000, which was never paid, Gallman said.

On another occasion, Rivers joined Gallman in Aiken after a group of young black men were told they could not swim in a private, "whites-only" area of Richardsons Lake. The owners called the NAACP the next morning to apologize for their employee's actions, and a face-to-face meeting quickly was set up for that afternoon. Rivers brought one of his young daughters, who splashed in the water nearby as the men talked.

Rivers was vigilant, talented, well-versed in the issues and a capable speaker and organizer, Gallman said. "With most direct action, Nelson would be our point man," he said.

Rivers said one of his proudest accomplishments was the NAACP's role in the transformation of at-large voting systems to single-member districts that helped correct decades of black under-representation in several governments. Between 1986 and 1994, the number of elected black officials increased by about 300, he said.

By 1988, state membership in the NAACP increased from 8,000 to 37,000, then leveled out at about 22,000, Rivers said.

No fools here

The Rev. Joseph A. Darby, pastor of Morris Brown AME Church and who has been long active in the NAACP, knew Rivers when both men lived in Columbia. Darby said his charismatic colleague is expert at formulating solid arguments that are difficult to dispute.

"He's an impressive brother, very articulate, very poised," Darby said. "He's not one with much tolerance for -- what's the word? -- he doesn't suffer fools wisely."

In 1994, Rivers was promoted to Southeast regional director. In 1999, he became national chief of field operations. In 2002, he assumed the mantle of chief operating officer. In 2006 and 2008, he was a serious candidate for president of the organization.

Then, last year, Rivers decided it was time to come home. He had been serving as associate pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church for nearly five years, working under the Rev. William Tindal. The desire to pastor full time had been brewing for a while, he said, and he was willing to continue as associate, or find another position somewhere else. A church in California offered him a job, but the West Coast was not God's plan, he said.

He heard about Charity Missionary Baptist Church, rooted in the Liberty Hill neighborhood he knew so well from his days as the North Charleston NAACP leader, a church that was home to friends and colleagues, a sanctuary in which the strong words of the Rev. B.J. Whipper once rang out. Rivers announced to Charity's leadership that he wanted to be their pastor.

Looking forward

Along the journey, Rivers has made some enemies; those who resent his stinging recriminations, his dogged persistence in fighting against what he perceives to be unjust, his ever-incisive firebrand rhetoric. And, of course, he has made many friends.

The Rev. Al Sharpton came to Charleston last month at Rivers' invitation to preach at Charity Baptist's "Celebration of Unity" gala and banquet. Today, the Rev. Jesse Jackson will visit the Lowcountry to preach in honor of his friend's one-year anniversary as pastor of Charity.

Such connections make Rivers an asset and a potential risk: Some in the congregation have worried that their new pastor will bring politics to the pulpit, according to Rossilind Daniels, Charity's minister of music and a member since childhood.

Expectations are high. Charity was without a pastor for more than a year before Rivers joined, and without steady leadership since the Rev. Jay Charles Levy left in 2005 after nine years at the helm, Daniels said. Attendance had been in decline. About half of the church's 300 members left when Levy ended his tenure, she said.

Today, membership is on the rise, and worries are appeased.

Rivers has focused on building the body of Christ, not a political movement, Daniels said. There have been no calls for boycotts from the pulpit, only a spirit-filled preacher imploring the congregation to listen to the word of God, she said.

"The Lord has told him, 'Here's your new venue, this is your new walk, to be pastor,' " she said.

Darby said his friend's charisma, intelligence and organizing skills can be applied effectively within the church.

"Hopefully, he will be one of those people who can bring about some of the needed cooperation among clergy in Charleston," Darby said.

At 58, Rivers has much left to do. He has a new flock, a vision to strengthen Charity, a determination to bring people together to share the good news and improve their lives. He will preach inspired by the memory of his mentors and role models: the Rev. James A. Williams, his childhood pastor; the Rev. Julius C. Hope, who was president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and director of religious affairs for the national NAACP; the Rev. Dr. Howard W. Creecy, who a decade ago ordained Rivers at Olivet Baptist Church of Christ in Fayetteville, Ga.

His family is with him: wife Carolyn; son Sonni Ali; daughters Dana, Tamara Carin and Jamilia Ayana; and his four grandchildren.

'Now I see'

In the sanctuary on a recent Sunday, the congregation is rapt with attention, responding to Rivers' sermon with bursts of vocal affirmations.

It's a common idea that God punishes us for our sins by making us suffer, he tells them. But this isn't true.

"The Lord doesn't pay you back like that," he says. "Some think the Lord is your hitman, you can sic him on somebody."

Laughter.

But maybe we suffer so that when suffering ceases we know whom to credit. "It might be when you get in trouble, and you get out of trouble, God can get the glory!"

The Pharisees wanted to know how Jesus cured the blind man, he says.

"But it doesn't matter how he did it; what matters is that he did it!"

And what did the blind man answer, when threatened with expulsion from the synagogue should he confess the "sin" of acknowledging Christ's miracle?

"Whether he is a sinner or not, I know not. One thing I know. Whereas I was blind, now I see."

We cannot see God, but we must trust him, Rivers says, raising his voice louder and louder.

"Whereas I was blind, now I see!" Rivers says. "Now -- I -- see!"

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postand courier.com.