
Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“If there was such a thing as a self-made man, you’re looking at him. I was born in a little town called Ripley, Tennessee. My mother passed away when I was four. My father was a sharecropper. And when he could no longer do that or raise us together, he gave me, my little sister, and my older brother away to other family members.
Growing up on a farm in the South, they don’t care how old you are before you start working. Just as long as you’re big enough to do whatever it is they tell you to do. When I was like five years old, I drove a truck in the fields where they were baling hay and my job was to guide it. You put it in what they call double low and it’ll go along with just steering. My feet didn’t reach the pedals. So at the end of the row, somebody would jump in the truck with me to turn it around.
At the age of 17, on December 24th, 1962, I came to St. Louis. I was supposed to return home, but when I got here I decided to stay. I had a lot of trials and tribulations to make new friends and live in a city because I had been on a farm all my life. I finally got a job at a General Motors plant. That first paycheck was more money than it took to raise me. It wasn’t more than a couple of hundred dollars. But I had never seen that before. Nobody was gonna take that from me. Anyway, that’s when I got my activism started because I became an alternate committeeman at GM. I didn’t like how they were doing me, so I didn’t like how they were doing other people. We were on strike two or three times a year. So I was used to protesting and fighting, trying to make things right.
I spent 32 years at GM. And during that time, I was also homeless. Because I didn’t know how to handle money. There was gambling in and outside the plant. My money was getting taken all the time. It wasn’t a good game for me, so I quit. But for a while, I was living here and there, sometimes in a 1952 Chevy I bought from a fellow worker for $125. I wasn’t stable. I didn’t know how to be stable. I never had a stable life, until I got married and took on responsibilities like having my daughters and son.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I remember I bought a 1965 Pontiac GTO, canary yellow, black top convertible. Everybody was my friend then. And I lost it because I just didn’t know how to handle my money. I kept gambling and I’d lose money every week. Plus, if I didn’t feel like going to work, because I’d been up all night, I just didn’t go. I got fired so many times at GM for not going to work or some other stupid stuff. But they’d always bring me back. I’m just one of those guys who never met a stranger. Everyone liked me. And one of the things was that, when I was there, I did a good job. I never played around with my job. I may not have gone to work, but I didn’t mess it up when I was there.
Well, they had some people visit the plant from Detroit and I showed them how I was assembling part of a car. I was a protester though. Whenever we went on strike, I was right there. And whenever we had a demonstration in the plant, I was right there. So the union liked me. Whenever they had a tough job and wanted someone to fight it, because management would put more on us than we could handle if we let them, the unions would recruit me to do it. Still, I wouldn’t go to work half the time. I was out with friends, drinking and gambling. So I’d get fired or laid off, but the unions always got me back.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I came into church one Sunday morning — 19-year-old, cool dude — after being out all night, drunk as a skunk. That’s where I met my wife. I wasn’t looking for her, she found me. She was in the choir. Originally, I didn’t know she was the one. I was looking at a young pianist, so I joined the choir. And every time I tried to do something, my wife kept getting in my way. My wife’s from St. Louis and grew up Downtown. When I met her, her life changed. No longer was she living with her mother. We rented and then I bought a house. Every time I bought myself a car, I’d buy her one too. So even though I was rippin’ and runnin’, she had everything she wanted.
We only dated two months before we got married and it’s lasted 52 years so far. So we have three kids of our own and three others we’ve raised. When I met my wife, she had a three-year-old daughter at the time and I loved kids. I eventually adopted her. I was also adopted. Down South, people take care of you. If something happened to your parents, someone would take you in and raise you. So I had that kind of blood in me. That’s all I knew. When you see needs, you try to meet them.
When I got married to Mrs. Pierson, I felt the obligation to take care of our family. I quit drinking. I quit running around. I eventually just focused on my family. We had three babies then. My wife was working at Sears and when that closed she got a job working at Barnes Hospital until they laid her off. Despite my shenanigans, she’d always take me back. She wasn’t gonna find nobody better than me. I take care of her, she takes care of me.
Now my kids are all college grads. My son has a master’s and my two daughters are gainfully employed. With my son especially, I thought about what I should do for him based on what I didn’t get. I do whatever I can to help kids. I was 19 before I had a new pair of shoes. We used to get shoes sent to us and just pick out what fit us from the box. Not many would fit me. Everything I had growing up was either too large or too small. But we were glad to get it. We looked forward to that box every year. Sharecroppers don’t make much. Even if they make money, the landowners would take it because you got to buy everything from them.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“My childhood wasn’t ideal, so I wanted to provide a good home environment for somebody else if I could. There is another young lady who calls me Dad and I helped her get her degree. Her father was in prison and her mom was on drugs. I met her through my youngest daughter since they went to high school together. One day, I picked my daughter up and she asked if I could bring her home. How I met a lot of these kids I helped was through my kids. Once you feed ’em, they keep coming back. So I took care of them like they were my own.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I became a pastor in 1977. First, I bought a building from a church that was moving. I paid $9,000 cash for that church. Then the city sent me a letter saying they were getting ready to declare eminent domain. They offered me a price, so I took it. As we made plans to move, there was a small church whose pastor had moved to Atlanta. He asked me to take it over. Since we needed a building, we merged the two churches, and moved to two other locations before moving to our current location here. My late uncle said to me years ago, ‘Tom, you’re a good man. But you got one problem. You don’t know how to say no.’
After August 9th, 2014, the Brown Family’s attorney, Anthony Grey, called me to say, ‘Al Sharpton would like to have a rally at your church. Would you agree to that?’ I said yes. What occurred to me was that the church would be full during the week and empty on Sunday mornings when I needed it. So weekday gatherings could be for them, but the Sunday gatherings were for the church and me.
My uncle’s words kept ringing in my ear. There were other churches who turned that offer down, but I guess I was the only one foolish enough to say yes. And it took off from there. People just acted like it was their church. They’d come in, set up. I went out the door to my car one day and there was a flyer on my windshield. I picked it up, looked at it, and thought it looked pretty good. I thought, ‘I might want to go to this event.’ I looked down at the bottom and it said, ‘Greater St. Mark.’ ‘That’s my church,’ I realized. I didn’t even know they planned an event and were going to hold it here.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“What happened to Michael Brown Jr. was a tragedy and my heart goes out to the family. The day he died, I was here in my office having a meeting with the mayor of Dellwood. We were talking about what to do with the school next door to the church’s property. The chief of police called the mayor to tell him someone had gotten killed in North County. The chief said it was in Ferguson. You hear about people getting killed all the time, so we went back to our meeting. When the meeting was over and I drove into the street, there was a tow truck with a police car on the back and a line of people blowing their horns. I said, ‘Something big must have happened around here.’ And that’s when attorney Anthony Grey called me saying Al Sharpton wanted to have an event at my church.
I thought it was a one-day thing. I had no idea it was going to last as long as it did. I got myself into something where I really did not know what to do. And it took me a long time to figure out people were using the church to make money, but they weren’t leaving any money. The church was footing all the bills for the electricity, heating, cooling. All of that was on the church. People would bring diapers, perishables, non-perishables and I’d take them to Canfield for people to pass out. But I had a $15,000 electric bill to the school next door.. I wanted folks to continue to do their work. I even took an extension cord and ran it all the way over there from the back of the church to the gym. There were just so many people here. We’d have 500 to 1,000 people here on some days coming from everywhere.
I passed up a lot of opportunities because I didn’t know any better. Some corporations were willing to fund stuff. They didn’t tell me that, but they’d ask, ‘How can we help you?’ But I didn’t know what to say. And I grew up in an area with parents who would hurt you if they found out you were begging for money. So I don’t beg for money. I may ask and if you give it to me, you give it to me. But I’m only gonna ask one time. So I didn’t know how to take advantage of opportunities presented right to my face because all this was new and happening so fast. I was getting phone calls from all over the world wanting to know, ‘What made you open your church up to everyone?’ Well, that’s just me. I’ll open it up to anybody and everybody as long as you’re not gonna blow up the place. There’s enough space for everybody.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“Al Sharpton had a meeting here with maybe 25 people and some hecklers came. This group wasn’t gonna let Al talk during a press conference. A few of them went out to the parking lot, so I went out there too. They finally calmed down and drove away. People knew Al and they hated him. I’d get phone calls at home saying I better get with the program. I kept one that threatened me in case something materialized. I didn’t want to see anybody get hurt. It was all different. I had never been involved with anything like that in my life. I hope I don’t again. But if I do, I’d be smarter than I was before. I thought my job was to let folks in. I seldom spoke because it was my church, but it wasn’t my rally.
The late Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor union, had a meeting here when someone finally mentioned that my church was struggling to keep the lights on. I didn’t ask him for anything. That’s not my style. But he opened up the door. Organized labor stepped up and checks started coming in from all over the country. That’s how we were able to hang on to this building and sustain ourselves during the Ferguson Uprising. So I am forever indebted to and a huge fan of organized labor.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝐿𝑒𝑡’𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑝. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑡. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟. 𝐴𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑝. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑡ℎ, ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑀𝑖𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑒𝑙 𝐵𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝐽𝑟. 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑑. 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡?
“When I began to hear more about the story, it changed me. First, a Black man gets killed. You hear that all the time. But there was something different about this one. Then when I got details of how long he lay on the street uncovered in front of his family, there was an element of cruelty involved in that. The whole thing was unnecessary to me. As a State Representative at the time, I had to go back and forth from Jefferson City.
So I did some talking to the legislators there about that. Matter of fact, I wrote a bill that, by and large, said if a police officer shoots someone unarmed and they’re 20 feet or so from him or her and they kill them, they should be discharged without pay pending a full investigation. Right now, police officers get put on leave for a while and can keep drawing that pay. That’s no incentive to stop doing what they’re doing. But if I kill someone and don’t get paid, I’m gonna think twice. What happened in Minneapolis with George Floyd changed the narrative. Because those officers were charged and convicted. That put a little doubt in the police’s minds as to whether they can get away with this. But, in St. Louis, Darren Wilson was charged and acquitted.”
𝐷𝑖𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑?
“The committee was made up of police officers and their wives. So the bill didn’t go anywhere. But something needed to be said or done.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“A couple of times in my life I had close contact with officers. Like when I went out with some guys and we were in a parking lot when a police car pulled up. The officers sat there about three yards from us and didn’t say nothing. So I walked over to ask what they wanted. They rolled the window down and when I got close, one of them had a gun in his hand. I just turned around and said, ‘Guys, let’s go.’ Two white officers pulled up with a gun in their hand? That’s intimidating. And that’s not to say we don’t need the police department. We need them. But we need to weed out the haters. People who hate me should not police me.
Where I grew up down south in Ripley, Tennessee, we had three police officers in town and all of them were white. They’d come around a bunch of us kids, stop and talk to us, and give us baseball cards. We loved the police. But today, officers are different. When I’d first gotten to St. Louis, cops would stop me all the time. Because my sisters lived pretty close together, I’d walk between their houses. Cops would stop me, asking, ‘What ya doin’? Where ya goin’? How come I see you every day?’ They’d pat me down to see if I had anything. I was new in the city. I was just walking back and forth. That kept happening until my brother-in-law made a call. Then it never happened again.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝐹𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ’𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡?
“I’d always been an activist myself. But I never moved the church to do what I do. With the church, we feed people, we clothe them, we visit folks in the hospital. God has a requirement and that is love, mercy, and to do justice, and we’ll kneel before Him. We try to practice that here. We will give people what they need. However, the church needed an Evangelistic arm to everything. Of all the people who were coming here during the uprising, only one joined, and that was like six months ago. A year after the uprising began, a lady came here and sat through the service. When it was over she raised her hand to say something. She saw one of the protestors and came to say thank you for letting them in. Imagine, of all the people who came here, only one said thank you. It bothers me and it doesn’t bother me, because the work I do I was doing for the community. So you don’t look for a thank you, but a thank you is in order. When Jesus healed the blind and folks with various diseases, only one came back and said thank you. And he just said, ‘Of the ten I healed, where are the other nine?’ So it’s a thankless job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟?
“That award kind of made me feel justified in not saying no to opening the church’s doors. If I had said no, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here now. If I had said no, Al Sharpton and Cornel West and a whole host of others who were here that I met personally wouldn’t have happened. So when I stood there that night to receive an award from Mound City Bar, an organization of Black lawyers, I was so glad that I didn’t say no. It was a lot of trials and tribulations. And if a situation to that scale ever happened again, I wondered if I’d be able to hold on to the church.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 10 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑈𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔?
“What has changed is Black leadership. I made it clear when I was mayor of Bellefontaine that I wasn’t gonna tolerate foolishness. Don’t go around shooting folks. We had some officers quit, but so be it. Get rid of that old way of thinking. It’s a new day. Bellefontaine Neighbors will probably never again have another white mayor. You see that with Jennings, Dellwood, and Ferguson, too. I see that change.
Then again, not much has changed. Police officers aren’t killing as many people then as they are now. But, I mean, a cop stopped me and my wife down the street here just last year. He pulled me over and said they were looking for a man in a black truck who let somebody out or something. So he asked for my driver’s license and insurance. I said, ‘I didn’t drop nobody off. Wife and I are coming from the doctor.’ The officer got in his car and ran my license. And when he came back, he gave me my license and insurance and said he was sorry. Told me to have a nice day. He probably checked it and saw I was a mayor. Still, pulling me over not for speeding or breaking the law but because he thought I let somebody out of my car? I didn’t even know what the situation was and there I was, my life in jeopardy for driving a black truck. My wife and I both are in our 70s. He should have looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry. You can go on.’”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢?
“Young families don’t go to church much anymore. So they don’t get to hear the kind of messaging a pastor would give talking about love and respect. Take voting. What does it mean to vote? Why do you think things happen to you? Things happen to you because a law was passed. A police officer does not make the laws. Their job is to carry out laws that someone in Jeff City made. So what happens in Jeff City makes a difference in what happens to you and your family at home. That’s why I’m running again for State Rep. I’m going back for two years. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the table. We need more African American people thinking about running for office and helping their own community. I said to a group of young people, ‘Times have changed. If you don’t like the way the police treat you, then you become the police. And treat yourself right. Become police officers. Becoming paramedics. Become firefighters. We have local laws that govern people. And you don’t know who your leaders are? When you get mad, you go to cussing and shooting. But did you know this past August 6th was an Election Day?”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“My congregation is relegated to seniors and seniors aren’t gonna march. A young man said to me in the audience once, ‘What I don’t like about the Black preachers is that you don’t march with us.’ I said, ‘I’ll march with ya.’ ‘Yeah, but what about when the tear gas and rubber bullets go flying?’ I said, ‘I’m not gonna be with you when that happens. I’ve had a heart attack and I’ve had colon cancer. No one’s gonna run over me cause I can’t run anymore. So, you’re right. This old preacher ain’t gonna be out there at night. But during the day, I’m with ya.’ He stood up again and said, ‘Young men are for war. Old men are for counseling.’ So I said, ‘When you want some counseling, tell me.’ What am I gonna do out there running around getting tear-gassed? Heart beating fast, blood pressure may be up. Shoot, I’ll stay in my place when it comes to that. But when leadership says, ‘Walk,’ let’s walk. We must change. We cannot stay the same. I cannot leave a farm in Tennessee, come to St. Louis, and act like I’m still on the farm. I’ve had to learn how to live a decent life in the city now.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“Any community wants to thrive, be good, and set examples for their children. What I do, I do for my children. I came close to killing a guy once. And I didn’t because I thought about my children. I wasn’t gonna do time for that and miss out on my children. So I let him go. We need to think about parents and the home environment. You’re never gonna change the mindset of people until we change how we treat our kids and young people at home. Because every robber, murderer, and gun shooter all came out of somebody’s house. One way we’re gonna fix that is in the house. I see so many parents with young babies. The babies smack ’em and bite ’em, and it’s cute. But when the babies become teenagers and older, now it’s not so cute. Kids shape their attitude for life when they’re young.”