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A long line of Michael Anthony Hardy’s friends and colleagues wrapped around First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem last Thursday. The line replicated the ones that often formed at courthouses where Hardy’s legal genius was on display, and was now one for his memorial services. He died on July 22, twenty days after his 69th birthday. It took an assembly of notables to chart his remarkable passage, but when the Rev. Al Sharpton said “He was my brother,” it drew sustained applause from the crowded church.

“We are honoring a tremendous human being,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Walrond, Jr. the church’s senior pastor. After a welcoming prayer by Rev. Dr. Lakeesha Walrond, president of the New York Theological Seminary, Byron Neal filled the church with a powerful heartfelt rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” a world many said Attorney Hardy helped to protect and perfect.

His brother-in-law Marc Heyison delivered reflections on Hardy’s life, noting that the lawyer “Never took any prisoners, nor ‘asked why me?’” He was always ready and willing to serve. Chris Murray, Tasha LaTouche Burris, and Tim Nanni recounted his record of service. Jack Giordano recalled visiting his ailing friend in the hospital and being told to hurry on because he had some business to take care of.

RELATED: Longtime National Action Network EVP and General Counsel Michael Hardy, Esq. passes away

The flow of encomiums was paused and Minister Tyrone Richardson offered a special version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.”  The Rev. Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, chairman of the board of the National Action Network (NAN), spoke about Hardy being amongst its founding members. Speaker of the New York City Council, Adrienne Adams, said she had known Hardy for many years and Mayor Eric Adams supplemented her warm regards, noting that he stood on Hardy’s shoulders. 

Those shoulders were emphasized by Attorney General Letitia James. Hardy’s niece, Samantha Heyison, recited some of the highlights of his legacy, particularly how his commitment and insight were so instrumental in the successful challenges to the New York Police Department’s stop and frisk policy, which unduly targeted Black and Latino men. She read that her uncle first joined NAN in 1991, after leaving the New Alliance Party. Four years before, as most informed New Yorkers know, Hardy began his long defense of Sharpton in the Tawana Brawley case and later brought justice to Eric Garner, after a police officer killed him in a chokehold.

But it was left to Rev. Sharpton to capture the essence of his relationship with Hardy and for several minutes he enthralled listeners of Hardy’s legal brilliance and tenacity. “He was as selfless a person as anyone I’ve ever met,” the reverend said, making it clear that their legal battles were a shared experience in which they were in mutual accord. “Michael is not dead,” he repeated several times. “When Kamala Harris puts her hand on the bible to be sworn in as the first Black woman president, Michael will be there.”

On the following Saturday at NAN, Heyison said that people will get a chance to offer their memories of Hardy, who is survived by his wife, Dr. Robin Brown Hardy; his sister Gena LaTouche, his nieces Samantha, Lauren, Kristen, Alexandra, Tasha, Suzanne, Ionya, Tanaisha; nephew Jason, and godson, Marcus AI; his mother-in-law Mildred Brown, sister and brother-in-law, Tanya and Marc Heyison. His Band of Brothers includes Tim Nanni, Stephen Hansen, Chris Murray, Wylie Stecklow, and Jack Giordano. Hardy was cremated by the Owens Funeral Home in Harlem.

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The Eagle Academy for Young Men in St. Albans, Queens, has received a $10,000 grant from AXS TV and Spectrum as part of “AXS TV’s Band Together for Music Education,” an ongoing initiative connecting AXS TV with affiliates, local communities, and schools to support music education programs and the benefits they provide students.

Contributed photos

New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks participated in the celebration of the grant, highlighting his role as the founding principal of the first Eagle Academy for Young Men in the Bronx and later as president and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation

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The Danny Mixon Quartet, with special guest Antoinette Montague, recently graced the stage at Marcus Garvey Park as part of the Jazzmobile Summerfest series.

Bill Moore photo

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WASHINGTON—Black clergy who know Vice President Kamala Harris, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, marvel at the fusion of traditions and teachings that have molded her religious faith and social justice values.

A Baptist married to a Jewish man, she’s inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India, as well as the Black church.

“She’s had the best of two worlds,” says her longtime pastor, the Rev. Amos Brown, who leads the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco.

In interviews, religious leaders and theologians told the Associated Press that the Harris candidacy has special symbolic significance in the wake of President Joe Biden’s departure from the 2024 presidential election campaign, not only because she would be the nation’s first female president, but she’s a Black American with South Asian roots and her two cultures are intrinsically linked.

Clergy and scholars have noted that the concept of nonviolent resistance, a critical strategy in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, gained influence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in India, who was an inspiration for America’s Black preachers and civil rights leaders for many decades. Gandhi was a Hindu who preached Hindu-Muslim unity.

“It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world,” Gandhi said in 1935 to a visiting delegation led by Black U.S. theologian Howard Thurman.

Those shared cultural links can be found in Harris’s family history, too. Her maternal grandmother was a community organizer, and her grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, was a civil servant who joined the resistance to win India’s independence from Britain.

Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, even met King as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, where she participated in civil rights demonstrations.

“She was conscious of history, conscious of struggle, conscious of inequities. She was born with a sense of justice imprinted on her soul,” Harris wrote of her mother in her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold.”

The Black church tradition has also influenced Harris.

“The vice president has a strong Christian faith that she’s talked about a lot,” said Jamal Simmons, a pastor’s son and Harris’s former communications director. As a Democratic strategist, he has helped candidates make inroads with faith communities.

“She was raised in a Christian church, and attended Christian churches throughout her life, and I think that still influences her—her worldview and her ethical commitments,” he said.

The Rev. Freddie D. Haynes III, who currently leads Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, first met Harris at Third Baptist in San Francisco, sparking their more than 30-year friendship. Haynes, whose family has close ties to Third Baptist, was guest-preaching at the time while visiting his mother. Harris, then the Alameda County district attorney, had just joined the congregation.

“She has always understood that Jesus and justice go together, so it’s not hard to see why she chose a church that has that kind of justice DNA,” said Haynes, whose grandfather shaped Third Baptist’s social justice identity as its pastor. Then his father carried it on during his time in the pulpit.

Through the years, Haynes and Harris connected over their shared faith. Haynes said she admired his ability to blend Black Christian theology in the pulpit with the cadence and rhythm of hip-hop. It was Harris’s commitment to serving the most vulnerable that impressed him.

“Her spirituality has been informed by a sense of justice for those who are othered, disadvantaged, and treated as second-class citizens,” said Haynes.

As a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Harris was immersed in a cultural environment influenced by deep faith. The fellowship and service she learned at her alma mater is key to understanding the spirituality driving her sense of purpose, said Matthew Watley, pastor of nearby Kingdom Fellowship AME, one of the fastest-growing churches in America.

Watley said Howard’s commitment to service through religious passion and academic prowess never leaves its students. Several of Harris’s friends, including a line sister in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., worship at Kingdom Fellowship, where Harris has attended twice in recent years.

Joshua DuBois, former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said because of the influence of Eastern and Western cultural and religious traditions, Harris exudes a kind of ecumenism that makes her candidacy appealing to an array of religious voters.

“I think that presidents are grounded in their faith and inspired by their faith in numerous ways. It’s the wellspring that they draw from,” said DuBois, who worked under former President Barack Obama’s administration. “When you know the world is going mad, how do you connect to something larger than yourself?”

Haynes added that “I also think faith can help you with prioritization. Oftentimes, you can only focus on one thing as president and you face the question: Who needs you the most? I think that is certainly how Jesus walked. That’s how Gandhi walked.”

Black women, including clergy and activists who have not stopped organizing and praying since the COVID-19 pandemic, are quickly embracing Harris.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon, who joined 4,000 Black clergy on a recent pro-Harris call organized by the Black Church PAC, co-founded by the Rev. Michael McBride, a longtime Harris supporter and pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, said the outpouring of support for her is connected to the anticipated ugliness and opposition she is bound to face in her sprint against former President Donald Trump.

“She should be president because she’s equipped, prepared, and the best candidate for the job,” said Blackmon, a St. Louis-based United Church of Christ minister, who spoke to the AP as Harris gathered delegate support.

McBride told the AP that he was still in the pulpit on the Sunday when Biden withdrew his candidacy. After the benediction, McBride said, one of the church mothers stood up, shared that news, and asked, in effect, “What do we do now?”

McBride and many other Black pastors who have been calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war will be looking to Harris for leadership that would bring about peace. Brown, her own pastor, was among the Black clergy who visited the White House in recent months to appeal to the Biden administration.

“To me, it’s a matter of peace and justice,” Brown said.

After Harris was endorsed by Biden. she sought out Brown with an evening phone call, about an hour before the AP reached him at his home in San Francisco.

“I’m calling my pastor,” Harris said in her typical greeting, referring to the man whom staffers in her office are instructed to get to know during their first week on the job.

She wanted her pastor to pray, and pray Brown did, that Harris “would be the quintessential instrument to bring healing, hope, and wholeness” to the United States of America.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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