“Front Porches & Corner Stores” Leaving

“Father God in The Mighty Name of Jesus! My Sweet Lord. Please Sir! If it be thy pleasure and if it be thy will. Let this bitter cup pass. Tear it up from the root that this family may walk with you down through the generations all the days of our lives. Amen.”

It just wasn’t right to see or hear such a thing in a sanctified house. God wasn’t nowhere in it. A father and son standing toe to toe hollering at each other like wasn’t no love, like wasn’t no God in em. It was dangerous like judgment coming. They never forgot that night Mother Howard turned her face to the wall, refused to stop praying to the Lord. Anted up the score for the life she lived before Him. Told Him how she raised her children in His Will and in His Way. Called Him on His promises like she knew Him. Held Him to His word, gave it back to Him. Told Him she wasn’t letting go His unchanging hand. Put her foot down on it and wouldn’t back up off it. Told Him though you slay me yet will I trust you the more. Told Him how much she loved, needed, leaned and depended on Him. Walked through her home speaking in unknown tongues. Touching and anointing the walls with holy hands. Stomping her foot, raising her arms, reaching and grabbing like she was snatching something right out the air. Quickening, that’s what she was doing. Shouting every scripture with a rumbling in her voice stirring the spirit in her soul. Igniting the power of the Holy Ghost. JE had a praying mother.

Raised along the Great Ohio River, just north of its convergence with the Mighty Mississippi. Where the Cairo Mississippi and Cairo Ohio River steel truss bridges joined Illinois to Missouri and Kentucky. Where Villa Ridge was seated in Pulaski County on 470 acres. Where Native mounds, earthen formations like flattened hills and mountains were replaced with development and farming. In a segregated Mound City, Illinois, late winter early Spring 1961, James Earnest Howard came home to leave.