Cherry Hill to Capitol Hill

Raised in Baltimore City, Barry C. Black became the U.S. Senate's first African-American and first Seventh-day Adventist chaplain. (Sun photo by Andre F. Chung / January 31, 2008)

WASHINGTON - Barry C. Black was 8 when his mother returned to their West Baltimore home one day with a record album of two sermons by Peter Marshall, the famed preacher of Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.

It was a gift from the family whose house she cleaned.

"I learned both of those sermons," says Black. And more than half a century later, he still knows them, putting on Marshall's high Scottish brogue as he recites: "The morning sun had been up for a few hours over the city of David ... "

Marshall was chaplain of the U.S. Senate when he died in 1949. Black has held that same position since 2003, when he retired as an admiral and head of the Navy's chaplain service.

"What are the statistical probabilities that an African-American child, coming out of the pathologies of the inner city, who memorized those sermons, would then grow up to be the Senate chaplain?" he asks. "I would say the probability was extremely low."

Black was in his office in the Capitol, with its view of the National Mall and the Washington Monument - a long journey from Division Street in Baltimore that he made on a path prescribed by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a story he chronicled in his 2006 book, From the Hood to the Hill.

He had just come from the Senate chamber, where he opens most sessions with a prayer. "That's what the public sees, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of what he does," says Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona.

As chaplain, Black's days include advising senators on the ethical aspects of legislation, counseling individuals and running seven Bible study groups, whose participants range from senators to cafeteria workers - as well as an extensive schedule of speaking engagements.

"It is amazing all that they do out of this small office," says Aaron Jenkins, a member of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's staff who attends a weekly Bible study. "He really makes people feel comfortable with their faith in this setting."

Though religion is often a political fault line in America, Kyl says Black has made it just the opposite in the Capitol. "Before he became Senate chaplain, he was head of the chaplain services for the Navy," Kyl says. "There he learned how to deal with people of all faiths, to bring them together."

Black, who demonstrated for civil rights while attending college in Alabama, offered a prayer when the body of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks lay in honor in the Capitol rotunda. He did the same when former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford lay in state there.

"It is the opportunity to be pastor to about 7,000 people," Black says of this job, a lifetime appointment. "You provide for the spiritual needs of not only the 100 senators and their families, but also for the thousands who make up the Senate side of Capitol Hill."

"He is a great preacher and a great teacher of the Bible," Kyl says. "Not everyone can do both."

At 59, Black still has the lean and fit look of the national-class runner he was in his younger years - 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash in college; a 4:05 mile later. His is a story of firsts: the first person of color, the first Seventh-day Adventist and the first retired military officer to serve as Senate chaplain, a position that dates to 1789.

None of that was visible from Division Street.

His mother worked sporadically as a domestic. "I still recall that she made $6 a day," Black says. When his father could get work, it took him away from home as a long-distance truck driver. When he couldn't, he drank.

Welfare was often the only source of income, Black says, and he recalls coming home three times and finding the family's possessions on the street after an eviction.

Right next door was Pennsylvania Avenue. But Black doesn't share the halcyon memories of that street with many in the African-American community of the 1950s, who recall it as a vibrant center of segregated Baltimore's black culture.

"It was a very violent area," he says, and the sound of gunfire was common. "There was all kinds of pathology on Pennsylvania Avenue - prostitution, drugs, alcoholism, all very prevalent."

He has a kinder view of Cherry Hill, where he moved in the late 1950s with his mother and four sisters. "Cherry Hill for us was an oasis," he says. "There was grass, a swimming pool, a playground. We felt like the Jeffersons, 'Movin' on up.' It was a wonderful experience for us."

Related topic galleries: Photography, Parliament, Minority Groups, Diseases, Cherry Hill, Martin Luther King Jr., Gerald Ford

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