1936Black Billy Sunday, Inspiration Of Pulitzer Prize Play, Succumbs In South
NEW ORLEANS, April 10—(UP) Black Billy Sunday today went to his own Green Pastures—the Elysian Fields he preached about for forty years and which indirectly inspired Marc Connelly's play. "Lord, I'm ready," he said and died peacefully in his small backtown home last night.
The brightly-polished brass door marker proclaimed:
"Rev. Dr. J. Gordon McPherson, Spiritual Therepeutist (Divine Healer.)"
But to thousands of his black and white friends, he was Black Billy Sunday.
The sobriquet came years ago from a Tacoma, Wash., newsman, after the black evangelist followed with a series of sermons in the tent used by the original Billy Sunday.
Veteran Of War
Veteran of the Spanish-American War and only survivor of fifty men who nursed American soldiers stricken with yellow fever, McPherson came through the conflict unscathed and with a corporal's rank. He earned it on San Juan Hill.
He was proud of this commission; prouder of the fact that he once sat on the same platform with Theodore Roosevelt. That occurred at Tacoma, also, where he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1901. Framed above his death-bed was a diploma of doctor of divinity from Guadalupe College, Seguin, Texas. His doctor of psychology came from the Chicago School of Psychology in 1922.
"I tried to keep my people happy in the Lord," he would say. "And I tried to keep them decent so their white friends would respect them."
"When I heard my own words come over the footlights from the stage in New York City when saw The Green Pastures, I was proud, and humble too," he said.
Ill eighteen months, Black Billy Sunday knew when the end was near.
He asked for his friend, Roark Bradford, the author. Bradford wrote Ol' Man Adam And His Chillum after the evangelist's sermons. But Bradford was en route home from New Mexico when the old man died.
From Bradford's work there followed Connelly's Pulitzer Prize play, The Green Pastures.
—The Modesto Bee and News-Herald, Modesto, California, April 11, 1936, page 13.
1921
BIBLE LECTURES ATTRACT
The opening of the "Black Billy Sunday" Bible Institute Lectures on "The New Life in Christ Jesus" attracted a large crowd to St. John's Baptist church last evening to hear "Black Billy's" message on the subject, "Alone With God." The lecture was preceded by a gospel song service. Tonight the topic of the discourse will be "Some Reasons Why Every "Sane Person Should Be a Christian."
—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, August 18, 1921, page 9. Advertisement from September 24, 1921, same paper, page 5.
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