New street sign on Woodrow Ave. honors his legacy

Of all places, a military posting on the outskirts of London during the late 1950s was where the late Bishop Hurshel Langham found his calling to preach the gospel and live out a life in the ministry. That turn of life eventually led him to Dorchester’s Woodrow Avenue, where he would lead the Faithful Church of Christ family for almost 50 years before his death in 2013 at the age of 77.

In the beginning of his new vocation, he was stationed outside of London as a member of the US Air Force and traveling with the military’s gospel team to churches and cathedrals in the countryside, preaching to Englishwomen. His wife, Jacqueline, related the story in an interview with the Reporter:

“They would go out to these old gothic cathedrals with these old ladies there and the other guys would tell him, ‘You preach, we’ll sing.’ That was how he preached his first message.”

Last Sunday, after services at the Woodrow Avenue church, its leaders, family, and friends gathered on the corner of Lucerne Street and Woodrow Avenue to unveil a blue street sign that reads “Bishop Hurshel Langham Way.”

On hand were state Rep. Chris Worrell and his brother, City Councillor Brian Worrell, who have been members of the Friendly Church of Christ most of their lives. “It makes all the sense in the world to honor Bishop Langham here where he gave so much to the community,” said Chris.

Added Brian, “When this neighborhood was quite different and was blighted, he made sure young men like us had the resources to succeed.”

Hurshel Langham, the stalwart example, mentor, and evangelist in Dorchester, grew up far from Woodrow Avenue. He was born into an Alabama sharecropping family who lived about 40 miles from the Mississippi border. His great-grandparents, Buck and Fannie, were likely born into slavery, as his grandfather, Stephen, was born in 1875. He lived his life as a sharecropper responsible for planting and harvesting in brutal conditions, but his children, including Bishop Langham’s parents, left for the coal mines of West Virginia.

Langham joined them in Man, West Virginia when he was five, and took his first job in the company store at the age of 10 before he headed into the mines shortly after.

Hurshel N. Langham unveils the memorial sign on Woodrow Avenue last Sunday honoring his father, Bishop Hurshel Langham, while his mother, Jacqueline, looks on. Bishop Langham, pictured in his Air Force uniform, spent almost 50 years of service to the Friendly Church of Christ on Woodrow Avenue prior to his passing in 2013. Seth Daniel photo

It was a brutal existence, not much better than sharecropping, he often said. According to Jacqueline Langham, “He always noted that Martin Luther King, Jr., said sharecropping was a second form of slavery. Based on my husband’s experiences, the mines and the camps were third forms of slavery. For my husband, the military was a way out.”

He served in the Air Force from 1956 to 1960, was honorably discharged and found his way to Boston for a “visit,” said Jacqueline.

“He came to Boston the summer after he was discharged from the military to check on a sibling and had no intention on staying in Boston,” she said. “He was headed for California – the golden coast – but he never got there … He visited the Friendly Church of Christ, and never left. In our church culture we are always going … He was like a mule grinding the corn, going around and around and never stopping. Once he started going, he kept going.”

Soon, Hurshel was volunteering for the church, at that time located at 763 Shawmut Ave. in Lower Roxbury. He worked at Mass. General Hospital, at John Hancock Insurance, in construction as a heavy equipment operator and married Jacqueline in 1963. Three years later, when the church’s pastor, ET Payne, passed away, he was elected interim pastor and then installed in 1967.

At that time, the meeting house for the church was in the way of the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s (BRA) Urban Renewal plan for the High School Campus District, eventual site of Madison Park and John D. O’Bryant high schools.

“We had to leave, and we looked around Lower Roxbury but eventually turned our attention to Dorchester,” said Jacqueline. “We bought this building in 1970 from Congregation Hadrath Israel – a Lithuanian Jewish synagogue – and we paid it off in 1974.”

The 1899 building first housed a Baptist mission of the Codman Temple in Codman Square, an offshoot of the Tremont Temple downtown. Around 1918, Congregation Hadrath moved from Crawford Street in Roxbury to Woodrow Avenue – an area seeing a heavy Jewish inflow. Across the street sat another Jewish temple (now Temple Salem Seventh Day Adventists) and next door was a third Jewish worship site.

“Our congregation was thinking we landed in heaven with an old but usable commercial kitchen and air conditioning,” she said. “Are you kidding me? We had only been able to open windows before. It was quite a change for us.”

In 2004, the congregation began a major renovation, raising $2.25 million over two years to fully rehabilitate their church and the area around it – including a large parking lot that Bishop Langham had the foresight to purchase in the 1980s.

“The money he asked for was quite astronomical, but the people believed he was going somewhere,” said Jacqueline. “It amounted to about $10,000 per person. Some people went into their 401ks, but they did it.”

She said her husband was prepared for the tough life of a minister in the city in times that weren’t as prosperous – helping others with problems and keeping people faithful in dark days. While later in life, he earned degrees from Gordon Conwell Seminary, and master’s degrees in religious education and divinity studies, Jacqueline pointed to his days in the coal mines and military as the times when he forged a resolve that she said she has never seen in anyone else.

“The discipline required in that hallow of West Virginia and back in those mountains was rough. The military was even harder,” she said. “It all honed him to be laser focused when the Lord called him to the ministry.”

She said his secret was simple - dedication to prayer, sometimes for an entire weekend. “He would choose times and he would say to me he would not be coming home for the weekend. I knew that meant he was going to the church by himself for prayer and reading scripture – not eating, either. I knew he needed to be by himself and was not going to be coming home.”

State Rep. Chris Worrell, Hershel N. Langham, Jacqueline Langham, City Councillor Brian Worrell, Pastor Audi Lynch, and Will Dickerson, Mayor's Office of Faith-based Initiatives. Seth Daniel photo