Despite popular beliefs, churches are not ivory towers. Or, as the Rev. Dr. Hickman Johnson put it: “The church should not be cloistered somewhere because it has to be holy. The dichotomy between the secular and the sacred is not real.”
Speaking at this morning’s Friday Forum at Koinonia Coffee House, Hickman, the pastor of Farish Street Baptist Church, explained that churches should engage with every aspect of community life.
Certainly, that’s always been true of Farish Street and the surrounding neighborhood, said Johnson, pastor of the church since 1968. At the time he took the church’s helm, Farish was home to funeral parlors, the YMCA and YWCA, barbershops and beauty salons, bars, tailors, doctors’ offices, photography studios, optometrists, bookstores, domino parlors, movie theaters and newspapers.
Over the years, like in many urban centers, families moved and businesses took in their shingles, and Farish Street spiraled toward near death. Today, Farish is in the throes of another rebirth. Since the early 1980s, efforts between developers, Jackson city officials, business owners, residents and church leaders such as Johnson have sought to preserve and revitalize the Farish Street Historic District.
Current plans call for transforming a two-block-long stretch of Farish Street into an entertainment district similar to Memphis’ Beale Street or New Orleans’ Frenchmen Street.
For a church to back a project that could bring boozers to their neighborhood might seem peculiar. Johnson said that Farish Street is too important to let die.
“Without comprehensive planning and reinvestment, continued decline will steal the heartbeat of this once vibrant monument to the indomitable spirit of African American citizens,” he said.
He added that on Farish Street, it’s possible for the new and old to coexist–up to a point.
“You need good planning so you don’t have the church next to the grog shop (a slang term for a watering hole of ill-repute). You have the church and (next door) you have all this music that says, ‘Back it up, back it up,’” Johnson said.
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.