EGN NEWS DESK
The Rev. Cecil Murray, a minister who turned a struggling church in Los Angeles into one of many nation’s largest congregations, then made it a base to fight the various ills going through town’s Black inhabitants — most notably throughout and after the 1992 riots — died on Friday at his house within the View Park-Windsor Hills part of Los Angeles. He was 94.
The dying was introduced by the Center for Religion and Civic Culture on the University of Southern California, the place he had taught after retiring from the church.
When Mr. Murray arrived at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1977, it was each storied and troubled: It was the oldest Black church west of the Mississippi, but it surely was loaded in debt and attracted only a few hundred congregants.
Mr. Murray, referred to as Chip, introduced new life to the church. He changed the normal choir with a gospel ensemble. His wealthy baritone voice and entrancing talking fashion drew new worshipers. Within a decade he had retired the church’s debt and introduced attendance as much as about 7,000.
The church was among the many most outstanding within the metropolis’s Black neighborhood, and Mr. Murray was amongst its most revered spiritual leaders. Tom Bradley, town’s first Black mayor, was a member. Presidents, governors and world leaders visited the church, and Mr. Murray led the funeral companies for Black celebrities like Mr. Bradley, Ray Charles and Eazy-E.
Celebrity standing, although, meant little to him. His focus was the struggling communities of South Central Los Angeles. He created outreach packages to fight gang violence and substance abuse. He introduced in buyers to assist low-income housing, scholarships and home-loan packages.
He might really feel the stress constructing after 4 white Los Angeles cops had been charged with beating a Black motorist, Rodney King, in 1991. On April 28, 1992, the day earlier than the decision within the officers’ trial was anticipated, he arrange loudspeakers within the car parking zone of his church so neighbors might comply with the occasions.
The subsequent day, the jury discovered all 4 males not responsible of assault (one was convicted of utilizing extreme power). A couple of hours later, an usher got here to seek out Mr. Murray within the church. He introduced him outdoors and pointed south. Flames had been rising. Then he pointed at flames to the east, then the west.
By the primary night time, fires had come inside a half block of the church. The fireplace division refused to deploy within the space until firefighters’ security from rock-throwing rioters may very well be assured.
Mr. Murray assembled some 100 males to face as a cordon across the fireplace vehicles. He additionally opened up the church to the Red Cross and its basement to greater than 100 folks left homeless by the fires.
In the weeks and months that adopted, he went on a whirlwind marketing campaign to lift cash for rebuilding. He went on “Nightline” and “The Arsenio Hall Show” — Mr. Hall was a congregant — and met with company executives, finally elevating greater than $1.5 million.
But he was fast to notice that this was solely the start. More than 50 folks died within the unrest, which induced some $1 billion in injury, and he feared that there can be extra violence to come back quickly.
“You really feel the thermometer rising,” he instructed The New York Times in September 1992. “It’s like a fever. This place is sort of a canine that’s been in a battle. The hairs on his again are nonetheless standing up.”
Cecil Leonard Murray was born on Sept. 26, 1929, in Lakeland, Fla., to Janie (Williams) and Robert Murray. His mom died when he was about 3, and his father later moved with Cecil and his siblings, Louise and Edward, to West Palm Beach, Fla., the place he labored as a highschool principal.
Cecil took to the pulpit early. He was a junior preacher from center faculty via his senior yr in highschool.
It was the period of the Jim Crow South. Cecil and his brother as soon as watched his father confront a gaggle of white males as they harassed a number of Black folks standing in line at a soup kitchen. The males responded by assaulting Robert Murray, then Cecil and Edward, too.
The incident appeared to interrupt one thing in his father, who grew hooked on alcohol. Mr. Murray stated his father’s expertise helped information his personal imaginative and prescient for his ministry.
“It’s humorous,” he instructed The Los Angeles Times, “however you don’t keep in mind the weaknesses. You keep in mind the greatness of spirit and the sensitivity that allowed him to soak up the ache. Eventually it destroyed him.”
He graduated with a level in historical past from Florida A&M University, a traditionally Black establishment, in 1951, after which entered the Air Force, the place he served as a radar intercept officer.
In 1958, whereas he was at Oxnard Air Force Base, northwest of Los Angeles, his two-seat aircraft crashed on takeoff. He was pinned within the again however managed to flee, although the pilot suffered deadly third-degree burns.
Before the pilot died, he requested Mr. Murray to go to him within the hospital.
While there, “he instructed me he had not forgotten me and he was making an attempt to assist me,” Mr. Murray instructed The Los Angeles Times in 2004. “So these two traumas, the depth of his love and the supply of my life, made me know that I needed to stay past me.”
He married Bernadine Cousin in 1958. She died in 2013. He is survived by their son, Drew.
Mr. Murray left the Air Force in 1961, set on the ministry. He obtained a doctorate from the Claremont School of Theology in 1964, after which he assumed the pulpit of a tiny church in Pomona, Calif.
He later preached in Kansas City, Kan., and Seattle earlier than becoming a member of First African Methodist Episcopal.
In the wake of the riots, Mr. Murray redoubled his outreach efforts. In 2001 he opened the FAME Renaissance Center, which turned a base for the church’s social companies. It quickly oversaw a portfolio of some $400 million in neighborhood tasks.
Mr. Murray retired from the pulpit in 2004, after which he turned a professor on the University of Southern California.
He spent his time coaching ministers and different church officers in social engagement, coming in for a full day of labor each morning till the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. He retired in 2022.
“On Sunday, it’s about saving souls. But on Monday via Saturday, it’s about saving the neighborhood,” he instructed the Knight-Ridder information service in 1995. “I feel the church that’s about private salvation however doesn’t handle the wants of the neighborhood is blasphemous.”
