Sweet Daddy GraceDaddy Grace’s relationship with money – how much he seemed to have, how his followers practically threw cash at him – bothered many people outside the church, including Marcy’s relatives. But what was all that money used for? Sure, Daddy Grace had fancy cars and custom made suits. But in a time when it was hard for many Black people to get a mortgage, the United House of Prayer owned luxury buildings around the country: investment properties that guaranteed the church would last after Daddy Grace was gone. So was Daddy Grace just looking after his own well-being? Or was he actually a brilliant entrepreneur, ahead of his time?
Oh God, here we go.
Nonam tom thumb thumb thumb.
Sweet yes, Sweet Daddy Grace, wool sweete, sweet yeah, Sweet Daddy Grace.
Hey, ain't in a shame. That's his name.
It's not a shame, Daddy Grace. He comes in the morning, comes afternoon, comes in the d to get this fool.
Sweet yeah, Sweet Daddy Grace.
Hallelu yak ain't his name, He's got a name, Sweete.
That's the voice of a civil rights activist in legend who for many years has lived in my hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts. You may know him by the name he was given at his birth.
My name is Jabriel Kazan, but my birth name is Ezelanda Blair Junior.
As is is al Blair Junior.
He was one of the four young black men known as the Greensboro for who in nineteen sixty walked into a Woolworths in the Jim Crow South and sat down at the lunch counter. Their sit in was a direct action protest of the store's policy of segregation in North Carolina and more largely the Deep South. This sit in is widely considered one of the mile markers of the movement for civil rights. I talked with Jabriel not only because of his legacy, but because of his own stories about Daddy Grace.
Coreen. My mother was a country girl from southa the City, North Carolina. Mom gradu from high school, came to Greensboro. She live with a lady who attended Daddy Grace's church. So my mom went to see Daddy Grace at the church. So what was he like, Mama? She said, he was a very handsome man, plus that he could dress himmacreately, three piece soup like he was God. Men hold him on his shoulders and took him in. Wow. And then she said, Then I walked in the church and gets what I saw?
What?
Mom?
She said, five ten, twenty dollars bills on the floor and people were walking on to get the Daddy Grace step.
I said, WHOA come talk to me?
Oh what?
Thousands of dollars on that floor. And the people took off his shoes and walked down that aisle the way. They took the money up and they put more money in the basket. That's Daddy Grace.
But when other folks spoke about Daddy Grace and the money he and his churches raked in they weren't always so laudatory, so supportive. In fact, of all the things Daddy Grace was criticized for, the one that really seemed to bother people, including money in my family, was his and his church's relationship with money, because there appeared to be a lot of it, so much in fact, that the church was able to purchase an expansive real estate empire, much of which they still hold on to today. In the nineteen forties and fifties, this was unheard of for most Black Americans, and although he was primarily a man of God, I have to admit that what Daddy Grace did with real estate has always impressed me.
Daddy Grace didn't.
Come to America to be poor. He came to spread the word of God. It just so happened that he also found the word of God paid very well. I'm Marcy Depina and from iHeart Podcasts, Enforce and Media group.
This is sweet Daddy Grace.
Glad to be happy.
All right. So the parade is over and I am walking down the street. I am seeing that a lot of the people that were.
In the various bands are here. I am in Washington, d C.
For the United House of prayers, annual Memorial Day celebration and parade. Making my way to the national head quarters, the main.
Church to the faithful.
It's called God's White House. And it's not lost on me that Daddy Grace chose the nation's capital for the headquarters of the United House of Prayer.
Oh this church is she.
Oh Wow, has a five pointed star at the top a gold dome. This church is truly notable. It's a building meant to cause a sensation. It's monumental. It's an impressive piece of real estate. Inside is home to an extensive public archive of the United House of Prayer history. There are countless photos of Daddy Grace, newspaper clippings, letters he wrote to the congregation, preserved copies of Grace magazine. It's like a museum. But the other piece of real estate I was struck by during my trip was right on Logan Circle, eleven Logan Circle to be exact. It's in the historically black Shaw neighborhood, which has been home to many prominent Black attorneys, judges, architects, politicians, and musicians, including Duke Ellington. Eleven Logan Circle is a majestic house boasting seven bedrooms and five bathrooms. It's currently estimated to be worth three point five million dollars, and it too is owned by the United House of Prayer starting in the nineteen thirties. It was where Daddy Gray stayed whenever he was in town. I cannot describe the feeling of pride that I felt when walking along with the parade, we rounded the corner and I first saw the house. The neighborhood is gentrified now and Daddy Grace's home is one of the few black owned properties in the circle, one of the last reminders of the prosperous black neighborhood that once was here. Smith the church opens it up to the public, they also know it something to show off. Eleven Logan Circle would be an impressive property for anyone. But here's the thing, both in Daddy Grace's time and for the House of Prayer today, it's just one of many real estate holdings, one parcel in a vast empire. This was very much on purpose. Daddy Grace's vision for his church was to make sure it could and would always keep growing, and he knew that meant money. Daddy Grace deeply understood that one of the best ways to build wealth in America was by owning real estate.
Alvicente, who was born in.
Kabovid and has also studied Daddy Grace, spoke directly to this point.
He bought.
Huge complex in Manhattan that didn't rent the Negroes, and he bought it through you know, channels at that time, was one of the big purchases in Manhattan.
The fact that Daddie Grace was able to purchase properties that would not even rent to black tenants, never mind sell to them, was remarkable. He hired white real estate agents and attorneys to make the arrangements for him. This sprawling business empire he built with church funds and donations. It wasn't just here in America, it was also an international empire of real estate.
He had a coffee farm in Brazil and egg farm in Cuba, so he was pretty dynamic. He was a bright, bright guy and an astute businessman.
This was all the more impressive when you consider the world he was operating in a black man in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties.
As a black person in America, he does not have the access to credit and capital that white people have.
Doctor Hassan Jeffries is an associate professor of history at the Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on the civil rights and Black power movements. He's also of cathe Verdian descent.
He's not being given access to credit.
Line for the most part, mortgages are not really available, and so a lot of what he's having to leverage is just cash.
Right.
So this is where so the cash coming in by the church becomes really important, because you're buying stuff outright, and.
The properties Daddy Grace wanted to buy, they were often expensive and big in wealthy areas.
And so how did a black person do that?
It wasn't enough just to have the money, right, You then have to negotiate, and not one on one negotiate, I'm saying, negotiate the color line.
In order to actually do.
The thing that allow you to purchase, you got to have some white bankers. You got to have some white front people, right who were willing to do these negotiations on your behalf.
Because a lot of these not.
Just real estate brokers, but homeowners, business owners would not sell to an African American period the Rockefellers, they had to worry about that, like if they had the money, they just showed up. They got better deals than anybody else. Right because of the name. That doesn't hold for black folk, that doesn't hold for Daddy Grays.
But Daddy Grace seemed to thrive in this environment, buying up the property of rivals like Father Divine and Harlem and Prophet Jones in Detroit right from under them. He bought a theater in Newark, mansions in New Bedford, Montclair Bridgeport, the sort of places that require staff to take care of them, the sort of places where white neighbors complained when they found out.
Who the new owner was. And in nineteen.
Fifty three he bought the crown jewel of his achievement, the El Dorado, an Art Deco apartment building right on Central Park in New York City. At the time, it was called the tallest apartment building in the world, some thirty stories high with two pinnacled towers, It's an iconic structure part of the backdrop of the park. Daddy Grace claimed it was one of the largest real estate transactions of its kind on record. The El Dorado had thirteen manual elevators and a lobby full of murals statues and fourteen carrot gold decorations. It housed more than two hundred apartments, and as Daddy Grace well knew, all of his renters were white. As he told the press, the income from the property would be used as an investment for the betterment and welfare of his congregation. Daddy Grace knew how to take care of his people, and the congregation was proud their church. Daddy Grace's church owned one of the grandest buildings in one of the most famous cities in the world. It was such a point of pride that many of the United House of Prayer churches, not just in New York but around the country, had framed photos of the El Dorado at the altar right next to the picture of Daddy Grace himself. Daddy Grace seemed to be untouched by the cold hand of faith by economic ruin. He and his church endured. If anything, they prospered. But although preachers like Daddy Grace seemed to be getting rich, much of their congregations were just trying to hold.
On to what they had.
Meanwhile, Daddy Grace wore fancy suits, custom hats, and expensive jewelry. He drove or had others drive him around in a brand new car. In Daddy Grace's view, the Bible clearly says that the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven should be found on earth too. But it wasn't just that he was rich and lived well. There was also much talk about the spectacles of money to be seen inside the church. For instance, the dollar bills all stacked up in the shape of a house or a full size money well that his follower's bill and presented to Bishop Grace as a love offering when he was in town. None of this was ever mentioned in the Bible. Yet there was Daddy Grace telling his faithful congregants during services that he didn't want to hear the sound of jingling coins being dropped into the donation basket. He wanted to hear the sound of paper. People outside the church would sometimes ask Daddy Grace about this, about the money they figured that he had. He said personally that he didn't care about money, that he only had a small salary or none at all. It was enough of a sticking point that he'd even sometimes address it in his sermons. How he wasn't there because of any financial incentive.
I'm the only poor man going and charge these people a dying I ask him, man, see why chide, I'm gonna die?
And he repeated over and over that the money collected from the congregation belonged to the United House of Prayer, which, of course was technically true, And it was equally true that as the head of the church, under the church's bylaws, the bishop was given funds for personal use, funds for travel, food, housing, clothing, and servants. All of that to say, Daddy Grace's lavish lifestyle was all above board, But was it out of line? There is a cultural discription and that needs to be clarified. For many people of faith in America, it might seem obscene for a religious leader to spend church funds on a luxurious lifestyle. Many Christians would not recognize a holy expression in Daddy Grace's chauffeured cars and expensive manicures, But among the faithful in Black America, this isn't always the case. We often expect our religious leaders.
To be doing well.
If anything, it was a sign of God's blessing to speak to this truth of life in the black faith communities. I spoke with someone who knows the criticisms and the rationale. Bishop Talbert Swan.
The preacher is often caught in a catch twenty two.
If the preacher is lacking in resources and destitute, it has to seek help himself to support his own life style in his family. Then he's mocked and the question is asked, what kind of God do you serve when you can't even take care of yourself.
Bishop Swan is the prelate and the Bishop of the Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts. He's also an activist, an author, and the president of the local NAACP chapter. His own style is more understated, but he recognized the internal dilemma a man like Bishop Grace might have faced the ways Daddy Grace made much of his money often rubbed people the wrong way. He had a whole product line blessed by his touch and bearing his name Daddy Grace, soap, Daddy Greces, toothpaste, hair creams, face powder, and cookies, emblems, badges, buttons, banners. This capitalistic promotion of himself for a lot of people didn't seem right. For a man of God, it seemed the opposite. But it's important here to recall Daddy Grace's Catholic roots the Catholic Church has stacked cash for centuries, growing rich by selling rosaries, handkerchiefs.
Photos of the Pope, statues.
Of saints, any and all blessed by the Pope, and for sale in the gift shops and at the Vatican. So I can see the criticisms of Daddy Grace. I see how he presented himself. I understand how his way could be offensive to someone. But I also see someone who was attempting to create a lifestyle really an entire faith based ecosystem, one that operated pretty similarly to the Catholic Church, with the same kind of money.
And so for Daddy.
Grace, just like for the Pope, if you asked him, there was no doubt he was a man of God and just speaking to our modern moment, Daddy Grace should rightly be considered one of the forefathers of contemporary megachurches, the religious movement best exemplified by Bishop td Jakes craftlow Dollar, and Joel Ostein these prosperity gospel evangelists have all built large followings as well as political power and of course, multimillion dollar business verticals. While Bishop Swan isn't part of this group of prosperity Gospel ministers. He understands why Daddy Grace may have chosen this path.
He was the prosperity preacher before it was such a thing. And I believe that the preacher ought to be an example of what they're preaching to the people. So if I'm telling you that you need to get into a position where you're debt free, or you need to conduct your life in such a way that you can secure a future for your family and pass on generational wealth, well I've got to be the first example of that. And for some reason, folks think that the preacher should teach those things, but then not be the example of those things that he or she teaches.
It's inarguably true that sweet Daddy Grace didn't mind a little bit of flash or a flare of style, and yes, he certainly had that swagger and bravado. He clearly took great care in terms of how he presented himself to the world and to his congregants. But what also made him special was the little things that set him apart from his followers. Like he insisted that no one in the church could grow fingernails as long as his or there were the big things that set him apart, like the boasts that he spoke twenty eight languages, or his far more incredible boasts like that he alone ended World War Two. You have to understand Daddy Grace had to constantly contend and combat how other people, especially the press, doubted him. The press, when they did write about him, would often put his title bishop and quote, or would focus far more on the money he raised than and what he actually preached from the pulpit. Even Ebony Magazine was guilty of this mistreatment. The magazine made for black readers, It too, seemed to believe some of the rumors. In one article, the journalist wrote that Grace is not his real name, but serves a symbolic purpose. This is something that was said a lot about Daddy Grace, that he made up the name to sound more legit, but it just wasn't true. Grace was the Anglicized version of Daddy Grace's cap Verdian birth name, the Grassa. It was also the name he'd been using way before he started his church. But the notion that he'd changed his name to sound more godly it definitely helped perpetuate the myth that Daddy Grace was a con man or worse.
A joke.
It is not a surprise nor a coincidence that we're talking about the depression era, and the depression doesn't begin just in early thirties people African Americans.
We see it through the twenties and lasting through the nineteen forties.
That's Professor Jeffries again.
And so people are searching for something and they're finding a bit of salvation here on earth. But for white people to look at that, that's particularly troubling. If white people can dismiss Daddy Grace, if they can dismiss him as a charlatan, then they can dismiss all of the other things that he's actually doing. When we think about the big personalities with large followings during the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, you know, I think we have to put it into the sort of broader context of the power of performance, the power of the big ego.
This is something far more common now. We almost expect the big ego to be highly visible and the sccessful black man. In that era, you most certainly had to have a big ego, and you had to put it on display where it could cost you your life or at the very least your livelihood.
I mean, we saw the same thing with Marcus Garvey. Right.
If you can convince people not to take the person who is speaking seriously, then you can dismiss the people who'll find resonance in the message that is being offered.
Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican immigrant and political activists, advocated for black self determination and unity between the African diaspora and Africa. He championed ideas like Black pride and Black nationalism, and like Daddy Grace, he was also charismatic and a polarizing figure. But not everyone, including those in his own community, approved of his approach and his focus on the needs of the everyday black.
And yet Garvey says, the people need it, the people need the celebration, and there's something to be said when we go back to the history of enslaved folk having parades, right, having these ceremonial elections, right, which of course draw on West African traditions. I think we're too quick sometimes to say, oh that this was just a play the ego, Like no, I mean, there was a value and understanding of the power of this kind of performative rhetoric and performative action in the service of religion and community building. That wasn't just oh, you know, I'm playing a role. This is a way of communication that is resonating because my people.
See the value in this.
Especially, I would add at a time when black folk people of color are told to be seen and not her having a.
Big ego, it was an act of strength and rebellion.
The louder you were, the more attention you drew, the more danger you drew. Because the most dangerous place to be for a person of color was in the presence of white people. So we are conditioning ourselves and our children to survive, to be silent, to be unseen. And here you have somebody who was standing up like.
No, you are going to see me.
And by people, that is an attraction in and of itself because they're like, boy, that's daring, that's bold, that's the vine, and that's what we like because we don't get enough of it.
The thing is, despite all this controversy surrounding him, theologically, the United House of Prayer fit pretty soundly into other Black Pentecostal and Apostolic churches, and Daddy Grace knew his Bible as well as any preacher, maybe even better. Those long fingernails he had, he said it was proof that he he was a prophet, referencing an obscure Bible verse about a prophet with horns growing.
Out of his hands.
And the name of his church was taken directly from Isaiah fifty six to seven, from my house shall be called a house of.
Prayer for all peoples.
He impressed people by how often he quoted scripture verbatim, But maybe even more impressive were the connections he fostered within his church. As is common in the Black faith communities, Daddy Grace supplied his congregants a way to be fully immersed in church life. For many House of Prayer members, the church became the central part of their spiritual and social lives. The services which are held every day are lively and full of music, especially shout music. The call and response with the repetitive sounds enraptured the congregants. They spoke in tongs filled by the Holy Ghost. And there were and are still to this day, various clubs for different interests for all different ages, band choir, literature, banking, junior nurses, scouts, and there were also rewards in the form of cash, titles and positions. It was a major privilege to be a Graceguard, Grace Queen, or a Grace made personal attendance for Daddy Grace when he came to town. All of this was intentionally designed to keep House of Prayer members fully submerged in a life where God was at the center and the forefront. But more than that, it was a reminder of their own importance to God, a message they often didn't receive outside of the church.
The first Black denomination was founded as a result of the inability of white folks to accept our full humanity.
As Bishop Swan can speak to and knows well, Black churches, including the United House of Prayer, have always been both foundations and load bearing pillars of their communities.
They have provided services in black communities. They have spoken on behalf of black people, and done all of this with only the support of their congregates. We're not talking about endowments, We're not talking about grants and loans.
We're talking about.
Chicken dinners and tag sales and people giving to support the minister, to support the church.
In short, the Black Church gave people opportunities that they weren't allowed to have outside in the wider world.
Black people as we are today wouldn't be where we are today without the Black Church. The Black Church honed our leadership, trained our leaders. You could be the janitor somewhere in the world with the head of the trustee board in the church. You could be without a job in the world with the head of the deacon board in the church. And so our churches helped our people see their own self worth. It was the one stop plaza for everything.
By nineteen forty nine, the United House of Prayer claimed to have two million members. This may or may not have been an inflated count, but regardless of the numbers, the church served the needs of its followers, people who were only too happy to tithe and to contribute their time and efforts to something that was so meaningful to them and their community. They gave to the House of Prayer, and as far as they were concerned, the House of Prayer it gave back. After World War Two ended, America began to imagine its place in the world and to adjust its domestic agenda, its balances of power, its traditions of exclusion. As the United States grew and changed, so did the world of black Americans. In the post war period, black gis returned home having seen how others might treat and respect them as full human beings, and they returned home trained by the armed services in terms of how to fight a war against racial intolerance.
They brought that fight back.
Home to America and began a new era in the fight for civil rights. Daddy Grace was not at the center of that fight, nor involved in any public way at least, but Professor Jeffrey says that really that wasn't unusual. Not everyone is a Malcolm or a Martin.
I think we have an outst understanding of what the black church was in the civil rights movement.
The vast majority of churches never took part in civil rights actions period.
It's like the vast majority of black people never took part in civil rights protests, civil rights demonstration, civil rights actions. Now, to be sure, the church space becomes very important to civil rights organizing. Right, the beedifics itself becomes important because it's one of the few spaces that black people had.
Autonomous control over.
Right, but in all of these local communities where we see movements emerging, you might have one hundred churches and four opened their doors. And so in a way, the fact that you know, Daddy Grace is not a frontline activist as a member of the clergy, it's actually not that surprising.
Especially after death, this perceived in action has been for some people a mark against Daddy Grace.
I mean, the criticism comes because they're like, oh, man, if you're this powerful with access to these many resources, could you and should you be doing more?
Like that's a separate question.
I think then, you know, should you be doing more as a preacher, because in a sense it's kind of.
Along the lines of where most were. King was an exception.
Yet we look back and we say, oh, everybody, all the preachers were like King, No.
They weren't right. They were like, look, we're not getting involved in this message.
Y'all gonna burn down my sanctuary, right, y'all are gonna come after me. I ain't dealing with that. And so it really was the rare few. But you know, we look back now, it's like, oh, you should have been in it.
This is always important when assessing history to measure the people against the standards of their time, not ours.
I think we have to we just have to look at the universe of possible actions, rather than just saying, oh, well, you weren't with.
King and Selma, so therefore you had nothing. You did nothing at all.
I don't think it's in either or, and ask doctor Jeffries points out this same calculation was made by another prominent religious leader of the day.
You know, we see a very similar and perhaps even more extreme decision being made by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. We think about the Nation of Islam, which gives us Malcolm X as being sort of these radical activists. Well, the Nation of Islam, as a small group in the late nineteen thirties nineteen forties are conscientious objectives to World War Two, and Elijah Muhammad and others go to jail and the Nation of Islam almost implodes. And so when Elijah Muhammad comes out, he says, we're never doing that again, and so they stay on the sideline. I mean, part of his rip with Malcolm X in the mid nineteen sixties is that Malcolm wants to get involved in civil rights. Elijah Muhammad was like, we took too much heat in the past. We're not going to deal with that in the present. In order to preserve what had been built. It was just too much of a risk to take that heat by being front.
And center in a particular way.
As we wrapped up our conversation, I was thinking about Daddy Grace's legacy, what he meant to not only his congregation but to Black America.
I think Daddy Grace's principal legacy.
Was about institution building, about you have to build something more than that which you just enjoy for yourself. And so he had a very expansive understanding, I think, of what needed to be done to create security for people. And he also, I mean, he was living in a capitalist society and he understood that. He made so the surveying the land, It's like, okay, what do we have here and how does this work?
Right?
And then he said, oh, I get it. It's all about acquiring assets. And he did that in order to insulate the organization that he was building that really was committed to Some might dismiss as utopian, but really was committed to building a better society for people. And I think there's real value in that for us today.
Alphacente said something that struck me too, self.
Help, building from within, creating generational wealth, and your self from age and say, hey, you can have here as beautiful as mind. If you use Daddy Grace from you can have the best coffee in the world if you buy Daddy Grace coffee.
You know, stuff like that.
But he he's learned from what I gathered from Walker, where people were given some of his products and they sold it and got some of the proceeds from it so that they can build up themselves. But he had Senior Citizens Center where he said people, daycare center. All were involved in his churches because he believed in promoting self help.
So I think that's that's the biggest part of his legacy.
I tend to agree with Alvicente and doctor Jeffries, people who've studied Daddy Grace and understand what he was up against and what he accomplished. But I can see why his behavior could rub members of my family the wrong way. Keith Verdians as a general rule, are humble, they're conservative and have always done their best to stay under the radar to protect themselves and their families. Particularly with my family being associated with a man like sweet Daddy Grace who was not not only highly visible, extremely controversial and had multiple run ins with the law, it felt dangerous. We can't forget that Cape Verdians in America were foreigners, African immigrants who always ran the risk of being on the receiving end of racism or being deported back to a life of abject poverty and famine. My folks were just trying to make a life for themselves and being caught up with the wrong people or situations could completely derail their lives and the lives of their families. But it wasn't only my relatives that thought that Daddy Grace was dangerous. The US government did too, and so Uncle Sam tried to have him stopped. That's next time. Sweet Daddy Grace is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Force, a media group. This show is hosted by Me Marcy de Pina and produced by Marissa Brown and Me. Our story editors are Darryl Stewart, Duncan Riedell, and Zarren Burnett. Editing, sound design and theme music by Jonathan Washington, Additional editing by Matt Russell. Show cover art by Viviana Salgado of Studio Creative Group. Fact checking by Austin Thompson. Our executive producers are Marcy Depina and Jason English. Special thanks to Will Pearson, Nikki Ettore, Ali Perry, Tamika Campbell, and Lulu Phillip of iHeartMedia, and all of my family members who talked to me for this show, my ancestors, the United House of Prayer for All People, and the countless number of people who shared their memories of Sweet Daddy Grace with me. Thanks also to doctor Marie Dollam and doctor Danielle brun Sigler, whose academic work on Sweet Dayaddy Grace has been incredibly helpful. And finally, I want to thank Bishop Grace himself for choosing me to tell his story. For more information on Bishop Charles M. Grace, check out the website Sweet Daddy Grace and follow me at Marcy Depina on all social platforms
