Johnny ray youngblood biography for kids
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One afternoon when Johnny Ray Youngblood was 13 years old, a church prodigy who had recently received his preaching license, he watched a New Orleans police officer appear at the door of his family’s shotgun house in the Lower Ninth Ward. The cop was looking for Johnny Ray’s father, Palmon, a longtime worker at the vast Domino Sugar refinery along the Mississippi River. The cop held a warrant for the elder Youngblood’s arrest. The charge: an unpaid parking ticket.
As Johnny Ray’s mother Ottie May and a gathering of neighbors looked on impotently, Palmon miserably surrendered han själv to be handcuffed and taken down to the Fifth Precinct lockup. Then Ottie May phoned the family’s minister and borrowed the money to pay the fine. When Palmon returned home, neither he nor anyone else in the family spoke of that day again.
Not until 30 years later, on March 7, 1991, did the image of his father Palmon’s degradation surge back to Johnny Ray Youngblood’s consciousness. By now, he was the R
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Youngblood, Johnny Ray 1948–
Church leader
Earned Preaching License at Age 12
Faced a Spiritual Dilemma
Supported a Housing Development
Aimed His Ministry at Black Men
Sources
When the Reverend Johnny Ray Youngblood arrived at Brooklyn’s St. Paul Community Baptist Church in 1974, it had a dwindling congregation, an empty collection tallrik, and a community vision that reached no further than its chapel doors. The surrounding neighborhood—described by one of Youngblood’s colleagues in the New York Times as “one of God’s Alcatrazes”—had been dismissed by city politicians as a violent wasteland. Within ten years, the charismatic preacher and his extraordinary ministry had transformed both the church and the community around it into a thriving oasis. By 1993 St. Paul’s boasted A 5,000-member congregation, a staff of 57, and an annual operating ekonomisk plan of more than $3 million.
In addition to drawing scores of young black m
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Johnnie Ray
American singer and pianist (1927–1990)
This article is about the singer. For the other people with similar names, see Johnny Ray.
Musical artist
John Alvin Ray (January 10, 1927 – February 24, 1990) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Highly popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor to what became rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music, and his animated stage personality.[1]Tony Bennett called Ray the "father of rock and roll",[2] and historians have noted him as a pioneering figure in the development of the genre.
Born and raised in Dallas, Oregon, Ray, who was partially deaf, began singing professionally at age 15 on Portland radio stations. He gained a local following singing at small, predominantly African-American nightclubs in Detroit, where he was discovered in 1949 and subsequently signed to Okeh Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records. He rose quickly from obscur