“Suffering Links Blacks to God, Bishop Says”

“Suffering Links Blacks to God, Bishop Says”
The Tennessean April 25, 1973
RG 910 News and Public Affairs
Vanderbilt University Archives

The headline here is a summarization of Johnson’s 1973 homily, “The Sermon on the Mount in the Black Tradition.” His sermon, which contains a meditation upon the Matthean Beatitudes, offers a strange parallel to Johnson’s ascendance at the University: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Read through his Black liberative framework, one might argue that the meek are Blacks, and the earth, Vanderbilt.