Mount Calavary Community Church
"A Spiritual Church of Christ"
5112 Ames Ave.
Omaha, Nebraska 68104

Bishop William H. Foeman, Pastor


Rev. Malva Taylor, Assistant Pastor

HISTORY OF MOUNT CALVARY COMMUNITY CHURCH

Reverend Roy W. Johnson was the founder and builder of The Mount Calvary Community Church and the first Vice President under Reverend Clarence H. Cobbs of the Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ. He preached his first sermon at the early age of fourteen. He grew spiritually and in the knowledge of Christ at the Western Baptist Seminary and under the guidance and leadership of both Bishop William F. Taylor and Elder Leviticus L. Boswell, founders and pastors of the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Kansas City, Missouri.

In The month of December 1932 following the leading of the Holy Spirit he came to Omaha, Nebraska with only thirty-five cents in his possession. In January 1933 he organized the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Omaha, Nebraska, which was later renamed Mount Calvary Community Church. As the church grew he relocated to several sites until he purchased property at 25th and Grant Street. He pastored there until his transition from mortal to immortality in June 1975.

In spite of his talent, Johnson's own Baptist pastor refused to accept his call to the ministry. The pastor didn't feel Johnson was quite ready for the ministry. Johnson quit his Baptist church and found a new, fast rising church that had started in 1925 - Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ. Johnson joined Metropolitan in 1930. and the church leaders. Bishop William F. Taylor and co-founder, Elder Leviticus L. Boswell, recognized his spiritual talents quickly and ordained him as an associate minister.

The Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ ushered in a new era of worship services for black people in Kansas City From 1910 to 1925 there was a massive shift of the black population from the southern states to northern and western cities. This movenient was the greatest internal relocation ofa single people in American history - The Great Migration. Almost five million black people left the south during this exodus. Black communities everywhere faced unparalleled challenges to socially absort so many new people into already racially segregated, socially underserved and economically depressed environments

In particular, the Great Migration totally dislocated the religious community for many Christian black people. In some cases, entire congregations left together. In other cases, the pastor moved out first and the congregation followed him to the new city. But thrown into new fast paced, dog-eat-dog urban environments, other country black folks desperately needed to replace their former church homes and social networks. This need led thousands of take preachers and tricksters to open store front churches, spiritual parlors, and all manners of unseemly traps for the spiritually hungry, Uneducated and easily misled new comers.

Bishop Taylor, a well-educated, streetwise theologian, and Elder Leviticus Boswell, a musical master, co-founded the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ as an answer to the great need for both a loving church home, and worship environment that incorporated the new cultural tastes that black people embraced in the city. Bishop Taylor introduced candle-lit altars, exciting end gaily coLored pastoral clothing and auxiliary unifomis, dressed church mothers in nuns's habits, and created elaborate sacraments that restored spiritual reverence to worship services. His teachings became known as the Four Square Gospel - healing, preaching, prophesying and praying. He would conduct electrifying hands-on healing services, and special ministers would offer prophetic readings and spiritual guidance counseling to worshippers.

Equally important to the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ's rapid rise to greatness in Kansas City was its incredible music ministry under the direction of Elder Boswell. With Boswell, who was a professional musician before entering the ministry, many of the musicians who made Kansas City one of America's greatest attractions for jazz and pop music, found a minister eager to embrace them and their instruments.

Elder Boswell's musician converts were just as likely to be former womanizers, gamblers and hustlers, as family men. He preached to them all and ministered to them through their troubles. One by one, they would join Metropolitan and consecrate their musical talents to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At Metroçiolitan, great musicians and vocalists had the freedom to rearrange traditional gospel charts and write new songs and expressions of faith. In a short time, almost no church in Kansas City could follow a Metropolitan musical performance.

Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ was exactly the church training ground Rev. Roy Johnson needed for nurturing. The "Mother Church" was spiritually creative, well-organized with disciplined auxiliaries and its leaders were committed to growing ministers and sending them out to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Metropohtan style of worship.

No one was surprised that Rev. Roy W. Johnson was the first minister from Metropolitan to go out and start his own church. His drive, energy and desire for independence was always there. Just as important, in his case God had given him the right helpmate. Ethel Lee Johnson felt the spiritual strength of his call to Omaha and her support was unshakeable and unbreakable from the very beginning. When he told her the Lord was directing him to create the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ No. 2, the soon to be Queen Mother Ethel Lee Johnson told her husband. May the Lords will be done.

The church was renamed to the Mount Calvary Community Church. It is important to look at what Omaha was like in 1933. By 1933, there were more than 14,000 black people in Omaha. Most were from Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkansas. They bad moved to Omaha to beat a life of agricultural sharecropping and debt slavery, and often brutally racist social environments. Yet, even though Omaha had become wealthy because of the great cattle yards and slaughterhouses in South Omaha, the majority of black people in Omaha, too, still were trapped at the bottom of every social aspect of life.

In addition, Nebraska had its own history of brutality against blacks. On September 28, 1919, a mob of whites stormed the Omaha city jail, dragged out a black inmate who had been falsely accused of rape, strong him up from a downtown Street light and burned him alive then hanged the mayor of Omaha for trying to stop them, and set fire to the Douglas County courthouse, almost burning it to the ground. The mob then invaded North Omaha, destroying black-owned businesses and randomly attacking both black men and women, It took National Guard units with mounted machine guns stretched across 24th and Lake Streets to stop the mob from further invading North Omaha for more bloodshed.

Of the 14,000 blacks in North Omaha. more than 12,000 lived crammed in the area bordered by Cuming Street on the south, 18th Street on the east, Wirt Street on the north and 30th Street on the west. Blacks were a segregated city within a city. The majority of black men who could find employment, worked as janitors and other forms of service work.

Black women were just about reduced to a single choice for employment - domestic servant. The 1930 census listed 1.800 black women as gainfully employed and 1.700 were maids. The lucky ones got hired at local hotels, but most of the larger white businesses never hired black women. Most black women with jobs were day workers or live-in maids for white families. These women often labored under conditions that more approximated the old culture of house slaves in the south. Household domestics worked horribly long hours for substandard pay. There was no such thing as overtime pay and they received no respect when asking for time off. The live-in workers usually had very uncomfortable living quarters and were offered little more than scraps for meals. They were given no real social outlets and forbidden to have their children or male companions on the premises. Most white homeowners considered them to be slave/servants rather than employees worthy of respect. Black women were the lowest paid workers in Omaha, regardless of the job.

The one saving grace in North Omaha during the 1920's and 1930's was music. Omaha was a major Midwest hub for Black music. Omaha was mid-point on the transcontinental rail lines so famous musicians regularly traveled through Omaha, while crossing the country on tour. The old Dreamland and Carnation Ballrooms hosted every musical giant from Duke Ellington to Count Basie. All the action was on North 24th Street between Cuming Street and Lake Street, an area Omaha Blacks used to call "The Deuce."

In terms of religion, there was another aspect to North Omaha that made developing a new church particularly difficult. By 1933, North Omaha had one of the highest per capita concentrations of churches in the United States.


From the earliest storefront church, Rev.
Johnson created beautiful altars and
encouraged his flock towards excellence.

There were already more than 40 churches serving Black people by the time Rev. Johnson arrived. Several of them, such as St. John's A.M.E. and Zion Baptist, had been around for more than 40 years. But the majority were storefronts with semi-literate hustlers for pastors. Rev. Roy Johnson faced a tough mountain in Omaha - an economically depressed, racially oppressed, severely over-churched community where pastors were already a dime a dozen and many were outright fakes.


The first incarnation of the Grant Street church. Every brick
and swipe of paint was done by the charter members of the congregation.

Starting in January 1933, while still living in Kansas City and working weekdays as a milk deliveryman, Rev. Johnson would spend weekends in Omaha, chugging up and down the old state highways. He met with former members of Metropolitan who wanted to start the Metropolitan way in Omaha with their friends and relatives. Rev. Johnson's first prayer meetings and Sunday services were held at the home of Mrs. Wagner on the corner of 19th and Burdette Streets.

With his eyes always on expansion, as soon as the meeting group outgrew that home, Rev. Johnson began holding services in a larger private home, and then quickly went through a succession of storefront churches. Each time, he would purchase building materials and try to expand the facility to its maximum capacity. Finally, in 1937, Rev. Johnson was able to purchase a corner plot of land at 2426 Grant Street. The church that he and the original congregation members built by hand on that site would stand as Rev. Johnson's living legacy for next 50 years.

Queen Mother Johnson's responsibilities were equally great during those momentous early years. When Rev. Johnson started his Omaha mission, she was working at a Kansas City manufacturing plant. She was with the housekeeping unit, and even though barely in her 20's, was supervisor of a small crew. Her work discipline, educated intelligence, and a natural personality beloved by all the female employees - young and old - led to her being made a supervisor of fellow black employees. Once Rev. Johnson moved to Omaha to pursue his ministry on a fulltime basis, Mother Johnson became his primary provider, along with financial assistance from Rev. Johnson's mother, Laura. Only this lifeline of support made it possible for Rev. Johnson to devote so much of his time as pastor and street missionary from the very beginning. It took working seven days a week to so quickly establish his character and spiritual reputation and meet the needs of a rapidly expanding flock.

In fact, Mount Calvary Community Church's growth came so fast, Rev. Johnson soon needed his wife to join him in Omaha. He needed her organizing skills, her strong Bible teaching ability, and above all, her unifying, joyful personality to assist him in supervising and guiding the increasing number of people in his care - the majority of whom were women. So Mother Johnson resigned from what she would years later describe as "one of the best jobs I ever had" and moved to Omaha to formally begin life as "The First Lady" of Mount Calvary Community Church.

Rev. and Mother Johnson would live in the homes of congregation members for several years, then in small cramped apartments, usually above the storefront housing the church.

The congregation members gave what they could, but it was still North Omaha and it was still the era of America's Great Depression. Not until the 1940's and World War II would things open up for Omaha black community.

Until economic times got better for the congregation, time after time, when Rev. Johnson needed some extra money for lumber and materials to decorate or do for the church, that extra money more often came from Mother Johnson's purse than it did the church collection plate. While Rev. Johnson did work on various local jobs, his employment opportunities were always a sideline activity and all his income poured into the church. Mount Calvary Community Church was his career.


With his own bus. Rev, Johnson really put the church
on the road. He wanted his congregation to visit
other Metropolitan churches for fellowship and
spiritual education.

In fact, during those crucial early years, Mother Johnson was actually the family credit rating. God blessed her to be hired for maid's work with some prominent families. It was her employers endorsements for Mother Johnson that enabled the owner of Mickland's Lumber Yard and other white businesses to sell supplies to Rev. Johnson on credit whenever he needed it. With a church on every other corner in North Omaha, Rev. Johnson's ministerial standing meant nothing to local business people until he went home and brought Mother Johnson back with him. Mount Calvary Community Church simply could not have expanded so quickly in four years without Mother Johnson blessings.

When the new church was finally built on Grant Street, the pastor's aides and missionaries fixed up the back of the church into a small apartment and Rev. and Mother Johnson lived in those little quarters for almost 17 more years. Mother Johnson continued to put the interests and needs of Mount Calvary Community Church before any desires if her own. In total, it would be almost 21 years after she left Kansas City for Omaha before Queen Mother Ethel Lee Johnson would be able to live in a home she could call her own.


In 1939, many church members, led by
Rev. and Mother Johnson, would dress
in western clothes to celebrate Golden
Spike Day in Omaha.

Once Mount Calvary Community Church settled into its own house, the congregation found the wings Rev. Johnson always desired. The bonding between those charter members laid the congregation's foundation that now resides 64 years later solely in the presence of Mother Ethel Lee Johnson. There is only one other charter member still living - Rev. Mildred Jackson(as of July 2001) - who has been in an Omaha nursing home for more than five years and is of failing health.

The unity between those original members was forged while building the old church at night, over the weekends, or joining Rev. Johnson during the workday whenever they could. People would spend their lunch hour at the church, even if it was just to paint or hold a ladder for somebody. They didn't consider it work. To them, building the church was fellowship.

Mother Johnson's leadership skills and devotion to the congregation greatly assisted Rev. Johnson's ability to not only acquire new members, but to train and keep them active. Her high school ROTC captain's honor was not misplaced. Everybody loved and followed Mother Johnson.

By the mid-1940's the new sanctuary was packed for every morning service. Rev. Johnson's preaching, self-assurance, humor, irresistible charm, good looks and astonishing flair in pastoral clothing, turned Mount Calvary into a magnet and the envy of half the pastors in North Omaha. In the 1940's and 1950's, he drew as many new members from other churches as he did people who accepted Christ for the first time. During many of those years, very few pastors would to do church exchanges with Mount Calvary. They feared that their members would quit after experiencing Rev. Johnson and Metropolitan Spiritual worship services. While many worshippers quit their own church and joined Mount Calvary, most just stayed put, and attended Mount Calvary for night services. In those days, just about every black church still held a 6 p.m. evening service. By the mid-1950's, Mount Calvary's night service was the hottest church action in Omaha.

Mother Ethel Johnson was a constant calm in the spiritual ocean Rev, Johnson was stirring up. On any given Sunday she was the most physically beautiful and fashionably dressed woman in the congregation, but completely humble in personality-the proverbial farmer's daughter. She taught Sunday school and Bible study, was the leader of the Ladies Auxiliary, ushered, and even sang in the choir-wherever she was needed, whatever Rev. Johnson wanted done.

Mother Johnson still laughs about how Rev. Johnson kicked her and another choir member out of the choir for talking during rehearsals. Rev. Johnson attended all his choir rehearsals. In his generation, a pastor who couldn't sing could never hold a congregation. Mother Johnson always told the members that being the pastor's wife didn't put her above discipline, in fact, it made disciplining her even more important. A lot of the members didn't believe Rev. Johnson would put his own wife out of the choir. But he did. To Mother Johnson, the pastor was head of the household and she endorsed her husband's decision and continued on with her other church responsibilities. The other woman expelled from the choir never got over it and eventually quit the church.

The early years of rejection by Omaha pastors never bothered Rev. Johnson. He never looked to Omaha pastors for his role models, anyway. He was the pacesetter in Omaha. For example, Mount Calvary was the first black church in Omaha to use the electric organ and drums in the service. Just as in Kansas City, any musician who joined Mount Calvary, joined the church band.

Rev. Johnson looked up to the great pastors in the Congress of Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ, in particular. Dr. Clarence Cobbs, pastor of Chicago's First Church of Deliverance and his best friend. Rev. Johnson recruited Dr. Cobbs to join the Metropolitan Congress. In 1938, Dr. Cobbs was consecrated president-for-life of the Congress and became one of America's elite black pastors for the next 37 years.

Dr. Cobbs died in 1979 and almost 10,000 people attended his funeral. Mother Johnson attended, but was unable to enter the sanctuary because of severe overcrowding. She was content to join the thousands of other visitors, mingling on the street, many in a series of closed circuit television tents. When the Senior Captain of the Ushers for First Church was notified that Mother Ethel Johnson was outside the church, he came into the crowd and personally escorted her into the sanctuary. The gray-haired elder usher remarked, "There will always be room in First Church for Mother Ethel Johnson. You were close friends with Dr. Cobbs for 40 years." In fact, Dr. Cobbs never called her Ethel. He always called her "Little Sistah."

The 1950's and 60's were banner years for Mount Calvary Community Church. Many of the church's present deacons and leaders came of age at Mount Calvary during those years. The church used to have it's own bus and a regular Sunday afternoon broadcast of its worship services on radio station KSWI.

It would have been easy for Mother Ethel Johnson to finally rest on her role as pastor's wife by the end of the 1940's. But she saw the church's growing congregation and Rev. Johnson's success as a completely different opportunity. She never forgot her mother's medical missionary work, and she always enjoyed the church's missionary visits to sick and shut-in members' homes. But, she wanted to do more than just bring food and prayer; she wanted to bring medical help as well.


Ethel Lee "Johnnie" Johnson, LPN

In 1949, Mother Johnson completed training and certification to become a licensed practical nurse. While she continued her duties to the church, she absolutely loved to put on starched whites and that stiff nurse's cap, and spend her shift in the patient wards of the old St. Joseph Hospital on 10th Street. She was never "Mother Johnson" on the hospital floor. She was just "Johnnie" to one and all. But don't think the most stylish woman in North Omaha lost her touch just because she was a nurse. Mother Johnson had 15 nurse uniforms and refused to ever wear the same uniform twice before washing it. And she kept that up for 20 years.

Mother Johnson. She was always concerned for the well being of the church and never wanted to burden the church's finances. But after 20 years of apartment living, she really did want her own home and privacy again. So she dedicated her nursing salary to buying the first and only home she and Rev. Johnson would have in Omaha. In 1954, the Johnsons held an open house and tea at their new home at 2436 Evans Street.

Once again, the Lord's blessings upon Mother Johnson carried the day. A Jewish widow originally owned her home and no blacks had ever been sold a home in that neighborhood. The Johnson's used to drive through the neighborhood and would stop wherever they saw a "for sale" sign. Most people turned them away as soon as they opened the door and saw their color. But after meeting Mother Johnson, the owner said she didn't want anybody else in the home. Mother Johnson told the owner about some of the Jewish homes she used to clean as a maid - people the owner knew. The owner felt that if Mother Johnson had cleaned their homes, then she truly understand the value of a fine home and would care of hers, too. She sold that home to Mother Johnson at such a discount, the woman's real estate agent begged her to go back and charge the Johnsons more money. The owner stuck with the original price and Mother Johnson continues to live in that same home 47 years later.

Mother Johnson maintained her nursing career until 1969, when she had a brain tumor removed and retired. She has since been visited with a 30-year long host of ailments ranging from seizures, goiter removal, bladder surgery, and, in 1988, a chronic auto-immune skin disorder that eventually led to the loss of her eyesight and a 13-year battle with inflammatory skin eruptions. Yet, she continues to weather these stormy seas and is still shows up for church on any given Sunday.

Rev. Roy W. Johnson died at home in 1975. He was 72 years old - his life cut short by emphysema. Life was dark and uncertain for Mother Johnson in the initial years after his death. She never tried to run the church or project herself into church politics, as some pastors' wives are subject to do. She was always willing to give her opinion but once having done so, deferred to the authority of the pastor and church officials. In October 1977, she rented a room in her home to an employee of the Great Plains Black Museum, as a favor to her next door neighbor, museum founder/director Bertha Calloway. The renter was a 30-year old African-American writer named Walter Vincent Brooks. He is still with her today and serves as her guardian.

The years following Rev. Johnson's death also were difficult ones for the Mount Calvary Community Church. His dynamism and dominant personality would have been impossible to follow for just about any pastor, short of Rr. Clarence Cobbs. Assistant Pastor Reverend Alonzo Frazier, a native of Omaha, served as Acting pastor from July 1975 until early June of 1976 when he was formally installed as the second pastor of Mount Calvary. He led the church for eight years and presided over the church's fiftieth anniversary. He eventually resigned his position. His tenure was from June 1975 to June 1983.

On December 8, 1963, William Henry Foeman became the first member of the First Church of Deliverance in Bronx, N.Y. Under Reverend Riley Sturgis, he served as choir president and Trustee.

In JuLy 1968, while attending the National Congress of the Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ, he received his call to the ministry. He responded by enrolling in the Manhattan Bible Institute. He received his license to preach and was ordained by President Reverend Clarence Cobbs and Vice President Reverend Roy Johnson on July 24, 1970.

After graduating with honors from Bible College, Reverend Foeman received a divine call to missionary duties in Africa. Representing Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ he departed on March 31, 1973. Over the next ten years, he was responsible for ministering to spiritual churches: The Faith Healing Temple, Monrovia, Liberia with Reverend Wilhelmina Dukly, and The Lord's House of Prayer Church, Accra, Ghana with Reverend E. K. 0. Bossman.

Upon returning from his African mission, he was appointed Chairman of Foreign Missions of the Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ by President Dr. I. Logan Kearse. In August 1983 he was called to be pastor of Mount Calvary and was formally installed in November 1983. Under his leadership and guidance, Mount Calvary has grown in its ministry and on March 31, 1990 we purchased and relocated to our present sanctuary at 5112 Ames Street, all to the glory of God. As with any life that is blessed to realize 90 years, Mother Ethel Lee Johnson has had to bear the loss of many who were near and dear to her. She lost Artena, in 1922; brother, Louis, in 1968; sister, Flora, in 1988; oldest sister, Georgia, in 1998 at the age of 92; and 90-year old brother, Luther, in 1999. Poppa George Thomas, 89, passed in 1972 and Momma Dovie Ann Thomas, 88, passed in 1979. Longevity runs deep in the Thomas family gene pool, and her surviving seven siblings range from Celsius, 92, Tiana, Ossie, Etha, Buddy and Thelma, to the "baby" of the family, Tommy, now almost 70.

In telling Queen Mother Johnson's story, brief as this account is, there:, is no way to begin or end a roll call of her beloved Mount Calvary Community Church members who came forth, gave their all, and moved on to glory. To name one or two, would necessitate naming one or two hundred. The most important thing to remember is that Queen Mother Ethel Lee has been with Mount Calvary all 68 of its years. She hasn't come through anyone. Everyone has come through her.

However much time God will continue to bless us with her light, one thing is for certain. Queen Mother Ethel Lee Johnson was born a servant of Jesus Christ, has remained one all of her natural life, and will die in the blood of the Lamb. At that divinely appointed hour, she will take her seat at morning service with all the other saints of Mount Calvary Community Church who surely are waiting for their Queen Mother to come home.


GOD IS GOOD!

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