My brothers, cousins and I pose in suit and tie for a family picture in church with Grandma Bell. Top Left-Right Cousin Carol, me, brother Earl, and brother Bobby.  Bottom Left-Right Cousin Ronnee, Grandma Bell and cousin Tommy (1950).  

Historic Mt. Airy Baptist Church standing tall in the shadows of the Capitol on North Capitol and L Streets in NW DC.  My cousin Brenda and I are standing in front of a plague in the lobby of the church honoring our Great-Grandfather, Rev. Alfred Tyler Johnson.  In 1893 he laid the first brick to help build the church.

My question is, where and how did we lose it and why?  Let us start with the Black church and the fake Pimps in the Pulpits across America.  Politicians taking money under and over the table and Justice & Just-Us.  Let us not forget the black folks who think they have made it, especially, the dysfunctional black entertainers in Hollywood. 

Comedian Kat Williams recently broke the internet exposing comedians and Hollywood stars fighting over the peanuts that movie moguls like Steven Spieberg leave on the table for Ophra Winfrey to fight over while they walk away with millions.  Ophra then short changes talented actresses like Mo’Nique, Tara B Henson, and Viola Davis while she became a billionaire.

Let me return to the Black Church and Grandma Bell.  She was the matriarch and head of the Bell clan in the late 40s and 50s.  She was Clint Eastwood (Make My Day), Charles Brunson (Death Wish), Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator) and Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man) all rolled into one.

Her swat team was made up of my Aunts, Sara, Helen, and June all had blackbelts before Bruce Lee and backhands that would have made Venus and Serena proud. 

I will never forget my brother Earl was late to the dinner table and my Aunt Sara, I called her ‘The Hammer’ long before Fred Williamson brought his forearm to the NFL.

Aunt Sara asked Earl what was the problem of getting to the dinner table on time?  He muddered something under his breath and she hit him with a backhand knocking him into the living room.  When he got up and returned to the table, he was in his right mind.

 My uncles Dwight, Ralph and Hope provided their belts as weapons of mass destruction.  They were the peace makers when a kind word was needed, especially, when Grandma Bell’s New Jack City enforcers (my aunts) were on a mission to jack us up.

My aunts and uncles were like, “Good Cop and Bad Cop” and sometimes they would switch roles within the blink of an eye.  You could not play one against the other.  Grandma Bell ran a tight ship.

Church on Sundays at Mt. Airy were like revivals. Grandma Bell played the organ and led the choir that consisted of my aunts and uncles and they could sing like humming birds.

My Great uncle the Rev. Earl Tyler was the pastor in charge.  He could preach like Martin Luther King and sing like Paul Roberson.

Services started at 11 am and if you were not in your seat by 10:45 you had to stand against the wall. Grandma Bell would give us younguns with seats that look and we have to get up and give it to a visitor or an elder.

If you moved too slow she would call your name out loud and embarrass you.  Grandma it seems knew every youngster in the church by name.  She would call one name out loud (usually one of us) and every young person in the church would get up and give their seats to an elder.

The children could not wait to get to the dining hall in the basement of the church after services.  The Sunday meal of hot rolls, fried chicken, potato salad, greens, macaroni and cheese, home made pies, cakes and sweet tea were meals to die for. 

You best to believe, the Kentucky fried chicken and Popeye franchises copied the recipes of our ancestors. The children were the last to be served, but there was always plenty of food for everyone.  

After eating we would walk our meal off with Uncle Earl and Grandma Bell by visiting the sick and shut-in at Freeman’s Hospital or nearby Sergent Quarters housing complex. 

The Tyler House is named after my Great Uncle, the Rev. Earl Tyler. The 199-unit is a low-income housing complex for senior citizens, located two blocks north of the church at North Capitol Street and New York Avenue, NW.

GRANDMA BELL AND THE MT. AIRY MAFIA

Legendary vocalist Bill Withers lyrics describes Grandma Bell to a “T” in song with his classic rendition of ‘Grandma’s Hands!’

When I became a radio sports talk show host, in 1972 I was smelling myself (EGO).  It was Grandma Bell who advised me to always tell the truth.  She explained a LIE will change a thousand times, but the TRUTH never changes.

The advice help make me a success as a pioneer in sports talk radio.  The Inside Sports talk format  changed the way we talk and report sports in America.  More important, THE TRUTH help me to see people in real times and places.  Every radio and television sports talk show in America an beyond has copied my format.

There are still plenty of snakes, but they are not all in the grass.  Today most are found in church pulpits and crawling in political offices pretending children are first–nothing has change.

There are preachers in the church community who are known to wait outside the homes of their members in their Mercedes-Bens and Bentleys waiting to collect tides after hearing members of the congregation  had hit the lottery or had received an insurance check from an automobile accident. 

*Bill’s next stanza was, “Grandma Hands soothed the local unwed mother, Grandma said, I know that you really love that man, but put it all in Jesus hands.”

Interpretation: The local unwed mother was Mattie Smith, my mother a country girl from Sumpter, S. C. She was 6 months pregnant with me when my “Dead Beat Dad” Alfred Bell a native Washingtonian and Grandma Bell’s son decided to carry his “Poppa was a Rolling Stone” act  to New York City.

My older brother Alfred ‘Bobby’ was the first child of his Grandma Bell had to take into her home.  My mother was pregnant with me and my father leaves DC and she follows.

I am a 4th generation Washingtonian born in King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. 

When I first applied for my Maryland Drivers’ License decades ago, I had to through New York City DMV.  It was mailed to me reading “Male Boy” I had no first name!

Grandma Bell tried her best to get my father to do the right thing, but he wanted to be a ‘Play Boy!’

He finally married my mother after she gets pregnant with my brother Earl.

Having babies today and then, getting married later is the norm.  Grandma Bell was having none of it in the 30s and 40s from her sons and daughters.

*Bill’s next lyrics really hits close to home when he says “Mattie don’t you whip that boy, what do you want to spank him for, he didn’t drop no apple core.”

Interpretation: Grandma Bell would not allow my mother or father to spank us.  She and my aunts were the only ones allowed to discipline us.  When my mother finally came to get me and my brothers, Bobby and Earl to take us to live with her in a new housing project, she had to negotiate with Grandma Bell.

Earl and I cried bloody murder.  For some reason Bobby never shed a tear.  We did not want to leave Grandma’s house.  Grandma Bell made my mother an offer she could not refuse, she would keep my older brother Bobby and raise him–case closed. 

Much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we followed my mother down the The Yellow Brick Road to the housing project called, ‘Parkside.’ Somehow we managed to escape the overt racism, police brutality, the mis-education of the Negro in Parkside. 

My only encounter with law-enforcement is unforgttable.  My mother had lost her ‘Good Goverment Job”at the General Accounting Office in downtown DC.  It had something to do with ‘The last hired-the first fired.’

Late one evening my brother Earl and I ventured across the railroad tracks to the predomanily the white side of Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road, NE to a Safeway Food Store

The projects were really and truly a “Village.”  We looked out for each other.  When you talk about diversity, we had school teachers, lawyers, postal employees and government workers all living in ‘The Hood’ together. 

We had our own “Neighborhood Watch” before it was popular-outsiders were scutinized.  The weekends, family and friends were allowed to move about on their own.  Crime in the projects was at a minium.

In the 1930s and 40s black children in DC could not wait to get to church and now in 2024 children are standing on street corners or hanging out in malls on Sundays across America with their pants hanging down waiting to go to jail.  Harden criminals are waiting there to pull their pants down further.

This is just one example, in Washington, DC there were close to 1,000 hijacking of cars in 2023 by youth.  The bright idea to control this phenom was to put trackers in automobiles and track down the hijacked cars after the fact!   We have to change the mentality of the hijacker and putting trackers in cars is just a bandage.

THE JAMES/BELLS’ FAMILY TREE !

THE PARTY CREW: DC-NEW YORK AND VIRGINIA

AUNT HELEN-DENYCE-HB-RONEE-MOMMY B & AUNT JUNE

HATTIE T-HB-MOMMY B & BOBBY

EARL-BILLY & HB

MOMMY B

BROTHERS EARL & BOBBY: DC COP & US MARSHALL

AUNT ELAINE (AGE 104) DONOVAN MITICHELL (NBA POINTS 71)

GRANDMOTHERS AND CHURCHES AIN’T WHAT THEY USE TO BE!

In 1955 I was in my first year at Spingarn High School when my Great-Uncle the Rev. Earl Tyler of Mt. Airy Baptist Church died. He was Grandma Bell’s younger brother-I did not realize it at the time, Uncle Earl was just 54 years-old. 

His homegoing service was held at Mt. Airy. Uncle Earl was so loved and popular in the church community, two services were held in his honor. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.

It was the biggest funeral I had ever seen. It seem like it lasted all day.

After the death of Uncle Earl, church never seem the same to me. My brother Earl (he was named after our uncle) and I had moved from Grandma Bell’s house to the Parkside Housing Projects.

My mother had made a promise to Grandma, we would be in church on Sundays. Mother tried her best to get us on the bus on Sunday mornings headed to Mt. Airy. It was difficult we had become knuckleheads and church was hit and miss for us on some Sundays.

Those early years with Grandma, she laid the foundation of how important it was to have a church home. Moving to the housing project with mother was like a jailbreak from Grandma Bell and Mt. Airy.

The early years at Mt. Airy gave me a sense of what REAL church was like–I have not encountered anything like it since.

After the passing of Uncle Earl, I became like a visitor/guest on Sundays. Grandma Bell did not like us missing church. She made a big deal out of me being a star athlete in high school and now I did not have time for Mt. Airy. Nothing could been further from the truth.

Sports had become an important part of my life, but it had nothing to do with me missing church. The problem, I had found a way to earn some extra money on Saturdays and Sundays. I became a caddy at the Burning Tree Golf Course in Bethesda, Maryland. 

It was there I met Richard Nixon, the Vice-President of the United States. He would later become the President and the rest is American History. Thanks to Grandma Bell, God has always been first in my life.

Several ministers tried to follow in my Uncle Earl’s footsteps, but they came up short. Family members started to move slowly away from the church, especially, after Grandma Bell went home to be with the Lord in 1975. 

We not only lost the matriarch of the family, we lost the backbone of the family. Even though it was 20 years after losing Uncle Earl, I knew we were in trouble as a family when one of my aunts join the Catholic Church.

In 1999 all hell broke loose when the Deacons tried to overthrow the new minister of Mt. Airy who wanted operate under a dictatorship. A fistfight broke out between the two factions caught on local television. 

I called a press conference in front of the church trying to resolve the conflict-too little too late. I went back to what I did best-talk sports!

Memberes of the media and supporters, Mark Chisolm, Punchie, Dr. Gilbert Hoffman participate in the press conference.

My younger brother Billy, covered the press conference for the New Observer Newspaper. The headline read; “HISTORICAL LANDMARK-CHURCH IN CHAOS.”

ALL THE GLORY GOES TO GOD–AND GRANDMA BELL!