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Erica Williams, MRPL ′22

“I am here to gain my humanity back, so that I can go and serve humanity. It’s time for me to turn my face to the divine and say, ‘What is it that you have for me? Who am I? Shine the light on me so I can really know who you created me to be.’”

The Rev. Erica Williams is a student in the inaugural Master of Religion and Public Life (MRPL) degree program at Harvard Divinity School. She is a National Social Justice Organizer for Repairers of the Breach and The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Rev. Erica is the Founding Pastor of Set it Off Ministries. Her life’s purpose is summed up in the social gospel passage of Luke 4:18-19.

Willie G. Morris

I have to honor my grandparents, who were the very first theologians I ever encountered. They didn’t receive anything beyond an eighth-grade education, but they had PhDs in common sense. They were socialists but didn’t know it. We were Baptists. My grandfather was the chairman of the deacon board at our church. My grandmother was also a deaconess and cooked for all the funerals and church events. They didn’t have anything. They was poor. But whatever they had, they gave to the community. 

When I was six, my grandfather died, and I went to stay with my grandmother. I was raised by her. When she died, I had just graduated from Howard University. The nursing home called the house, and I was awake. I heard my Momma say, OK, OK. I knew then. I ran outside— this was at 4:52 am—and looked up in the sky. The sky was clear. There was nothing. I saw an image of wings, like of an angel. I thought, “there she is. She all right.” I ended up going through a really rough period after that, but I always remembered, “Oh, I am unstoppable now because I have GG with me.” GG meant God and Granny. 

At her funeral, people talked about how my grandmother would bring people into our home when they didn’t have a place to stay. She was hands-down one of the best cooks ever. She made plates and would have me taking plates down the street to people. We didn’t have much, but that was her way of showing people that she cared. She taught me how to live that way. 

But it came at a price, even for my grandmother. I found out that when she had my mother, she was in the hospital for about two and a half months dealing with depression. So that is a part of my work: How do we create a world where Black women and girls can thrive? We’ve  been known to be the mules of society. We’ve been the ones who give and support others.

Oftentimes, we don’t have access to the resources that we need. I think of my grandmother, because she didn’t have access to mental health care. She didn’t have insurance. She suffered in silence a lot of times. In the last few years, I have battled with depression and anxiety myself  and have fought to overcome that, but I have access to things that can help me. A lot of women, in particular Black women, don’t have that. 

The work I do now for social justice—in lifting the proletariat, in lifting the working class—I do because that’s who my grandparents were. My grandmother was a domestic worker for almost 40 years. A few months before she died, the nursing home asked her, “What is your legacy?” She said, “That I created a family that I loved and supported and helped to push them to  be the best that they could be.” When she transitioned, her casket read, Let the work that I’ve done speak for me. I was able to bear witness to the work that she did. In everything I do, I name her, because she was the foundation. Her name was Willie G. Morris.

Take Care of You

I’m on a journey, you know? This is the inaugural cohort of the MRPL program. We’re building a plane while flying it. In that regard, and in my own life, I’m just having to—even though it’s a struggle—figure out, what does this all look like for me? 

I had to surrender a few weeks ago. I felt the pressure. I felt the weight of being at HDS. Why am I here? What have I signed up for? I thought, “OK, I’ve got to let this go, because it’s killing me.” I was waking up in the morning anxious. I wasn’t sleeping well. I had to admit to myself and to the Spirit that I wasn’t OK. I’m struggling right now because I’m in a transition. I’m  away from my people. I’m the only Black person in my cohort. I’m in a strange land. But I’m going to enjoy this experience. Harvard does not define who I am. I genuinely try to show up in the world to be the best I can be. I don’t get it right all the time. But at the core, my heart is pure. I genuinely love people. So I’ve deemed this year the year of “enjoying and exploring Erica.” I’m here at Harvard to give birth to a new movement, and I’m also being reborn. 

I was in a bad way in 2018, deep in depression and anxiety. I didn’t know if I was coming  or going. I was broken. I wouldn’t go to therapy because I was like, “I don’t need any help, I’m the preacher.” Finally, I was in a place where I couldn’t go no further. I was at a place where I felt I could take my life and I could be OK. I could be OK because I was tired. It was too heavy of a burden for me. I was in the midst of traveling all over the country, doing the Poor People’s Campaign work, and I remember the Spirit said to me, “I didn’t call you to be a humanitarian and not human. You’re doing all this amazing stuff, but you’re not well.” After that, I cut all of my hair off and I started my locs, my journey. 

I am here to gain my humanity back, so that I can go and serve humanity. It’s time for me  to turn my face to the divine and say, “What is it that you have for me? Who am I? Shine the light  on me so I can really know who you created me to be.” In Jeremiah 1:5 it says, Before I formed thee I knew thee. And I put thee in thy mother’s womb, and I ordained thee to be a prophet unto the nations. That scripture was given to me when I was young. I know what I’m called to be, but yet and still, who am I? At 39, I’m still asking that question. 

So take care of you. Take care of you. That is what  Audre Lorde is talking about when she’s saying self-preservation is the act of resistance. That’s what capitalism and all these structures don’t want you to do. They want you to be busy and frantic. I tell you the honest to goodness truth, that when I started stepping back and resting, I was actually more of a threat to the forces of darkness. Because I was clear. I had laser focus. I love boxing. Muhammad Ali is one of my greatest people. Cassius Clay. I study him, the way he was focused. He knew his opponent because he was focused on them. Boom, he’d give them one good hit! You can only do that when you are at your grounded center space, not when you are frantic, anxious, worried, or doing too many things.

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The Work I’ve Been Called To Do

I admonish you to watch the movie Set it Off. It came out in 1996 and starred Jada Pinkett  Smith, Queen Latifah, Vivica Fox, and Kimberly Elise. The film highlights four Black women living in Los Angeles. They are impacted by police brutality, low wages, and sex trafficking—so many different issues and evils that we still see in society. 

In 2013, I was preaching at an event and the Spirit came to me and said, “It’s time to set it off.” I didn’t know what that meant but I ended up leaving everything. I left my job as the director of the Boys and Girls Club, packed up my little Chevy Aveo and went to Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C. A few weeks after I graduated, I got a call to come work for the Rev. William Barber with Repairers of the Breach. I was their very first national organizer. That was the same year Trump was elected. We were in D.C. every week, protesting. We relaunched the Poor People’s Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. started back in 1967. I often tell people, they didn’t kill Dr. King because he had a dream. They killed him because he had a plan. That plan was to bring together poor Whites, Black, Brown, First Nation—people from all across different races—to challenge the economic plight in this nation. When we relaunched the campaign, we did an audit called “The Souls of Poor Folks, America from 1967 to Current.” We found that there are 140 million poor or low-income people in this country, the richest country in the world, and that we have the highest rate of child poverty in the world. 

I have traveled this country. I’ve been to South Africa three times. I’ve been to Ghana. I’ve  been to Kenya. I’ve been to Palestine twice. I’ve been to India, Brazil, and Cuba. I’ve seen extreme poverty where people literally live in boxes. In a world that God created, where everybody is created in the image of God, nobody should have to live without a roof over their head, clothing, or food. This is the work that I feel deeply called to do. I follow that brown-skinned Palestinian, Yeshua ben Yoseph, Jesus of Nazareth, who was poor, who was homeless. I follow the Christian text, but you look at every religion, and the common denominator is justice; that people have the human dignity they deserve.

Legacy I Hope to Leave 

In the movie Set it Off, they kept saying that all they wanted was to be free. Free from the  various situations and oppressions that they were living under. These women had a spirituality of sisterhood. They looked out for each other. They took care of each other. I’m always thinking, what would it have been like for these four Black women to live in a world where they had everything that they needed? What does it look like for Black women and girls to live in a world where they can survive and thrive? That’s the world I’m seeking to create with the Set It Off movement.

The legacy I hope to leave is that I never gave up. That I am a vessel. My life is a testament that God is real. Whatever way that looks for you, I don’t put a box around it. It could be God’s spirit, however you identify it, but there is something greater and higher than us that loves us, that cares for us, even in the midst of the hard things. I am a testament of that. All I want to always say is, take care of you.

I’m doing my best. So Ase’. Ase’ means “so be it.”

Interview conducted and edited by Madeline Bugeau-Heartt; courtesy photos