John Powell shares his black history
Grandfather and great-grandmother about to be sold just before freedom
by Anna GroffPrint Article Email to a Friend
John Powell’s grandfather (11 years old at the time) and great-grandmother stood on the auction block, about to be sold as slaves, when the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached into east central Alabama “after harvest” in the fall of 1866.*
John Powell’s grandfather and great-grandmother were being sold at a slave auction when news of the abolition of slavery arrived and halted the auction. Photo by Anna Groff.
Powell, Mennonite Mission Network interim director for U.S. Ministries, is only two generations removed from slavery. He heard the story of his ancestors’ freedom from his father. After their freedom, they decided to stay on the plantation with the slave owner but changed their last name from the slave owner’s name to “Powell.”
Several of his grandfather’s brothers had already been sold before the Emancipation Proclamation, and the family was never fully reunited.
“The history of slavery is not that far from us,” he says, “[my story] is not hard to talk about because it’s part of who I am today.”
His great-grandmother was biracial and the favorite concubine of the slave owner. That made his grandfather, John Paul, who went by “Jack,” the illegitimate son of the slave owner.
Powell says he heard that his grandfather could have passed as white.
As the son of the plantation owner, John Paul was taught to read and write. After his freedom, John Paul stayed near the plantation, eventually married and became a sharecropper—gaining and then losing land during the Great Depression.
John Paul instilled self-worth in his children and told them, “You are no better or worse than anyone else,” and, “Respect people, and people will also respect you.”
Powell heard he was a well-respected man across race and class in the community, although Powell never met his grandfather, who died in 1933.
Powell also grew up in Alabama but left the south in the early 1960s for Detroit, where he taught school, became a pastor and worked as a labor union organizer.
He was the first African-American from his community to go to college. He attended Tuskegee (Ala.) University, where he was involved in civil rights on campus.
Powell worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement through voter registration in Alabama and Mississippi. King advised him and others to explore involvement in peace churches. So Powell researched Mennonites and Quakers, choosing Mennonites. “I became a pacifist during my civil rights days,” he says.
Powell worked with Michigan Migrant Ministry in 1963, became more familiar with other Mennonites serving with Mennonite Voluntary Service and met his wife, Shirley Hochstedler.
In 1968 he became pastor at 10th Street Mennonite Church in Wichita, Kan., and served on the Minority Ministries Council from 1969 to 1974, being the first under-represented racial/ethnic person to work in the Mennonite Church at a denominational level.
Powell left the church in 1974, however, “promising never to return.” Years later (in 1993), Powell says he was “evangelized” back into the Mennonite Church by Mennonite Board of Missions staff and friends with whom he worked on urban issues.
“I found myself being drawn back in,” he says.
Powell says when he started working in the church at that administrative capacity, he thought he “had all the answers and so did the church.” But in reality, neither did. This reminds him of how his grandfather would say, “Never assume you have the truth.”
According to Powell, his grandfather, “a periodic churchgoer,” said, “The church is not in the building; church is in the heart.” But Powell’s father told him, “Your grandfather would be proud of you,” as Powell’s ministry is something John Paul should have done in his life.
During retirement, Powell plans to research more of his ancestry—hoping to go back beyond the three generations with which he is familiar. He says it will also give his three adult children some additional foundation.
“I think everyone wants to know how they are connected,” he says.—Anna Groff
*President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. The 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) was approved by Alabama Dec. 2, 1965, and ratified by the U.S. Congress on Dec. 6, 1865. Powell notes that news of freedom traveled slowly in those days.
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Additional Notes
*President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. The 13th Amendment (abolishing
slavery) was approved by Alabama Dec. 2, 1965, and ratified by the U.S. Congress on Dec. 6, 1865. Powell notes that news of freedom traveled slowly in those days.
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