Omaha Impulse

A model of democracy is the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Once a year each of its 289 presbyteries elects a moderator to be its presiding officer. In Omaha last week met pastors of 10,000 Nebraska Presbyterians. When nominations for moderator were requested, no one immediately thought of a name, and to Rev. Ralph Valentine Gilbert of Fremont there came, as he said later, "an impulse." Leaping to his feet he proposed the name of Rev. John Simeon Williams. Startled, the Omaha Presbytery pondered Minister Gilbert's proposal long enough to agree that it was good. Someone moved that nominations be closed. Thus elected was the presbytery's only Negro, the second man of his race ever to become a moderator of a presbytery.*

"God has been kind to me," said Mr. Williams in the precise British accent of his native Jamaica, B. W. I. "But I didn't expect anything like this." In Omaha, scene of lynching and riot in 1919, newshawks called a dozen Presbyterians at random, found ' that all but one, a Southerner, approved of the election of John Simeon Williams. For seven years this slight, 39-year-old man of God, who left Jamaica to labor in Cuban sugar fields, left there to earn his way as a tailor through Alabama schools and a Chicago seminary, has shepherded an Omaha flock of 57. A good tenor. Minister Williams built up an interdenominational choir which has given 250 concerts, sings on the air once a week. In their modest home near his church, Mrs. Williams last week neglected the washing to receive visitors.

Predicted she: "He will succeed with his new job. He is never afraid to try anything, even impossible things. He can talk to the poorest Negro or the richest white man with equal ease."

*First was Charles Trusty of the Pittsburgh presbytery in 1923.

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