PHOTO | HERBERT L. WHITE

The  Sept. 19, 1931 edition of The Post reported on the United House of Prayer For All People convocation.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles looking back at Charlotte’s Black community as part of The Post’s Black History Month observation.

In the 1930s, no one – or nothing – could draw a crowd like Bishop Charles Manuel Grace.

Grace, founder of the United House of Prayer for All People, was a consummate showman and master of promotion whose annual convocations and parades – complete with shout bands – were the spiritual and social event of the year. In the Sept. 19, 1931, edition of The Post, an unbylined article reported that 30,000 people, matching the city’s population at the time, viewed the parade and baptism of 758 people at Lakewood Park.

Along the parade route, which started at McDowell Street and proceeded to McDowell, First, Brevard, Third and Alexander streets before returning to the House of Prayer, thousands showed up in their Sunday best. Women and girls wore flowing white dresses; men and boys sported dark suits, white shirts, and neckties. Grace, decked out with long, curly hair and a tailored suit, rode in a specially built luxury Packard sedan after the mass baptism of Black and white converts.

The Sunday convocation, which drew 20,000, according to The Post’s account, included a celebration of Grace’s leadership. “One of the highlights of the convocation was a banquet given in honor of Bishop Grace at the City Armory, Saturday night where more than a thousand guests were present,” the correspondent wrote. “a program of music by three bands belonging to the House of Prayer, drills by the Grace Soldiers, quartette (sic) singing and short talks by Messers J.R. Hemphill, W.H. (Bonnie) Pearson, H. Houston (The Post’s publisher), and Seymour Carroll of Columbia, S.C., special guests of the Bishop was conducted before the Bishop was introduced.”

Charlotte isn’t the United House of Prayer’s birthplace, but it was the launchpad for its growth. In the 1920s, Grace, a charismatic preacher from Cape Verde, Africa, visited the city after forming the Pentecostal sect in 1919 in Massachusetts. In Charlotte, he saw an opportunity to spread its message in the South by expanding upon the segregated tent crusades organized by white preachers to the Black community with the Brooklyn neighborhood as its anchor.

Grace, who was known as “Sweet Daddy,” was a master of promotion. He deployed a car covered with verses from Scripture and an angel on the roof as a rolling billboard urging people to see him preach. Brass bands – employing the call-and-response element that are part of today’s sermons – brought thousands of converts to the United House of Prayer and established Charlotte as its headquarters.

Today, Charlotte is home to more than 20 House of Prayer congregations within a 20-mile radius.

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