Born in Shelby, Mississippi, on September 26, 1934
Minister, Civil Rights Leader, eyewitness to
Martin Luther King’s assassination
BIOGRAPHY
The Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles is defined by his faith. It prodded him to the Movement, which, in turn, led him to jail. It placed him at the side of Martin Luther King at the moment of King’s assassination. It led him to pastor a church for more than 40 years. It guided him the way it did his parents.
He was born in Shelby, Mississippi, 100 miles from Memphis, to Ludie “Queen” Kyles and the Rev. Joseph Henry Kyles. Reverend Kyles pastored four churches in Shelby, rotating Sundays.
The younger Kyles was one of the couple’s five brothers. His mother, a master nicknamer, gave him a moniker after the famous white preacher, Rev. Billy Sunday. He kept the name, and eventually made it a legal one.
Kyles as a young man
The child was surrounded by the Black church, and he loved it like he loved his dad. “He [Joseph Henry] was such a cool fellow….He never once hollered unless he was preaching.” The Rev. Kyles was the “official prayerer” for the NBC’s president. He would pray for the president when the NBC leader’s tenure got stormy. Kyles would play preacher as a kid, imitating his father. The child blessed animals and gave funerals to birds.
Gospel music swelled within him. He was part of two groups in Chicago: The Thompson Community Singers and the Maceo Woods Singers. The Woods group had a recording contract with Apollo Records. A family friend, the Rev. C.L. Franklin of Detroit (Aretha’s dad), knew the Rev. Kyles and his second oldest son very well. The younger Kyles would sing for Franklin.
But another urge soon took over the son’s heart. One night, he stood up to sing, but his mouth began forming sentences instead. He got tired of fighting the urge to preach: “Well, I guess it was baptizing cats and all that.”
One Saturday morning, the Rev. Kyles was called home. “That just turned everything around.” His older brother was married. The younger Kyles was only 15. Mom had to go to work and take care of business for the first time in her life. Now the man of the house, the younger Kyles left school to help out at home. The pastor who followed his father reneged on church promises to take care of the family. The younger Kyles left the church for a time (“it was very painful”), but came back when Mount Pleasant got another pastor, the Rev. J. L. Madison. Madison helped pay for the younger Kyles’s seminary. They became very close. Madison died the night of Kyles’s first sermon, delivered at around 17.
Mt. Pleasant wanted a new Rev. Kyles, and they didn’t have to reach far to grab one. The board pushed Kyles to wear his father’s shoes. There was a vote. The youth of the church participated. Kyles won. The board disqualified the youth vote. (Kyles said he learned years later that his own mother, afraid he wasn’t ready, actively campaigned against him.) The youth protested by refusing to sing, doing a kind of “sit-in” in the church.
The sit-in had become a popular happening. In 1959, Kyles saw pictures of protests in Greensboro, N.C. and had an urge to join the movement. Kyles would be in the Movement, but not in Greensboro. The man who did get the Mount Pleasant flock, Rev. H. R. Jelks, was from Memphis. Some former parishioners of his wanted him to return to Memphis temporarily to organize a new church. So Jelks called on Kyles to go in his stead and preach a sermon.
The Rev. Kyles was Memphis-bound. It was time to return to the belly of the beast. Everyone but his mother thought he had lost his mind. “‘Why leave the Promised Land to go back into the slavery of Egypt?’” they asked him. His mother told him simply, “Go with God.” Kyles went. He found a church home—one he had to make from a rented auditorium. He was turning 25. “We didn’t have anything but faith.” Now Monumental Baptist has a congregation nearing 1,000.
Memphis in 1959 was segregated, as the saying goes, from cradle to grave. After settling in, Rev. Kyles went straight to the NAACP to get involved. It was his turn to witness for freedom. “In two months I was in jail.” Why? For protesting against segregated buses. The success of the young pastor whose flock had desegregated the buses in Montgomery, Alabama had lit a fire. He had to convince his new, and shocked, congregation that being a jailbird for freedom was a badge of honor, not shame: “‘You’ve paid me a salary so that I don’t have to ride the bus. But you have to ride the bus every day….We don’t have to take this…We’re going to be driving these buses on day, and you can’t drive them from the back.’” (In 2005, the chairman of his church’s trustee board is chairman of the bus company.)
The Rev. Kyles drew meaning from his participation in the Movement. The NAACP chapter is Memphis was so active, a SCLC chapter never formed. He had strong allies—the Rev. James Lawson and the Rev. Benjamin Hooks, just to name a few of the 100 ministers supporting the Movement in Memphis. Looking back, he enjoyed being a “terror in my day.”
In 1968, he invited Martin Luther King to his house. Later that day, on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, King was killed. King was brought to Memphis by Lawson and others to help organize a garbage workers strike. Memphis was just one of about 100 cities to be inflamed by King’s assassination.
Today, Memphis is a desegregated city. Part of the reason is that the Rev. Kyles passion for the Movement did not die with King. He saw another Movement leader in that group he was with when King died—the Rev. Jesse Jackson—and transferred a little of his loyalty to King to the younger man. As a result, Memphis became the first city outside of Chicago to host the convention of Operation PUSH, Jackson’s organization. Kyles would remain PUSH’s point person for more than three decades. He would also help Jackson with his 1984 and 1988 Presidential campaigns.
His leadership led him to be appointed by President Clinton to the Secretary of State’s Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom Abroad. Suddenly, he became friends with world religious leaders, expanding his world beyond Chicago and Memphis. He has put many to tears with his many recollections of King’s last days in his city. He has become a living recorder of King’s dedication.
He has the same faith in his five children and five grandchildren as he does in the United States to free itself of racism and intolerance.
VIDEO CLIPS |
My Childhood | broadband modem |
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Migrating From the South | broadband modem |
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I Was a Gospel Singer | broadband modem |
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My Introduction to the Ministry | broadband modem |
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Organizing a New Church | broadband modem |
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Martin's Last Speech | broadband modem |
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My Last Hour with Martin - Part 1 | broadband modem |
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My Last Hour with Martin - Part 2 | broadband modem |
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After King's Death | broadband modem |
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Will There Be Another MLK? | broadband modem |
EXTERNAL LINKS
URL (Click to bookmark): http://www.visionaryproject.org/kylessamuel