Washington, D.C. – The company you keep says a lot about a person. Similarly, the invited guests of an institution or church says the same.
According to a new report, Raphael Warnock’s former church repeatedly played host to Leonard Jeffries, uncle of Dem. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who espoused Black nationalist views popularized by Louis Farrakhan.
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Warnock’s former church repeatedly hosted antisemitic, Black supremacist professor
By: Jessica Chasmar
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., worked as a youth and assistant pastor of a church for a decade while it repeatedly hosted a former New York City professor who was ousted over antisemitic and Black supremacist teachings.
From 1991 to 2001, Warnock served as youth pastor for six years and then assistant pastor for four years under Rev. Calvin O. Butts at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, several years before he went on to lead the same Atlanta church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor.
From 1991 to 1998, Butts’ Abyssinian church hosted Leonard Jeffries as a speaker at least three times.
Leonard Jeffries is the uncle of Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to succeed Nancy Pelosi as the next Democratic leader in the House. The congressman said in 2013 that he remained close with his uncle but disagreed with his theories.
At the time of his first appearance at the Abyssinian church in 1991, Leonard Jeffries was embroiled in a legal battle to retain his position as the Black studies department chair at City University of New York (CUNY). He was ultimately removed from his position after a years-long dispute over racist and antisemitic remarks, including blaming Jewish people for the transatlantic slave trade and supporting Black supremacist ideals, like the theory that higher melanin levels make Black people inherently superior to White people.
Leonard spoke about the CUNY controversy during an October 1991 speech at Abyssinian Baptist Church after a student reporter with The Harvard Crimson alleged the professor had slammed the outlet as a “Jewish newspaper” during their interview, threatened the reporter’s life and had a bodyguard physically seize the audio recording of the interview, The New York Times reported at the time.
Leonard reportedly told the church congregation that he sat down with the student reporter with the intention to discuss multicultural education issues, not the antisemitism controversy, and he did not deny the reporter’s accusations.
While Warnock began working at Abyssinian in 1991 after graduating from Morehouse College earlier that same year, it is unclear if he was working at the church at the time of Leonard’s October speech.
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