In the Name of the Father - Page 3

Benjamin knows that stigma still surrounds Ajabu. Even now, in his church, a few people seem reluctant to return his embrace. People outside the church are even more skeptical. When they learned that Ajabu would be entering seminary to become a minister at the bishop’s urging, even Ajabu’s ex-wife and his daughter—with whom he remains close—suspected the move was purely a power grab to further his political agenda. “Ajabu is generally misunderstood,” Benjamin says. “But it comes from his checkered past.”

The bishop says that since their initial hug in 1995, Ajabu has given him authority in his life, making him something of the father the adult Ajabu never really had. He sees Ajabu as an honest and caring man who was consumed by his own anger. A man who has always sought to do good but strayed from the righteous path as a child and spent his entire life, more than half a century, finding his way through violence and hate back to the place he began. “He did not know Christ. He did not know the power of love,” Benjamin says. “But now he is finally putting himself in a position to go back to his beginnings.”

When all the congregants are in the hall and seated, Ajabu takes his place, not in the front row, but on stage with his fellow ministers, like his father before him. And as the choir breaks into song, Ajabu sways to the beat, reaching to the sky and singing. His eyes fill with tears. “We are all defined by our fathers,” the Bishop says later. “Everything we do in life is either in honor of, or in reaction to them.”

Paul West was a Baptist minister and father of six living in West Parkview—a black neighborhood tucked into the largely white west side of Indianapolis. In 1949, his eldest son was born and christened Paul West Jr. The boy would later become Mmoja Ajabu.

West Parkview was essentially a cluster of five streets of homes, shops, a fire station, and the Baptist church where the senior West occupied the pulpit. The community was tight-knit, a place where the children’s neighbors were also their parents, especially in terms of authority. And in that environment, Pastor West emerged as a prominent figure. “He was the neighborhood wise man,” Ajabu says. “He was a counselor.”

But the senior West was also a strict disciplinarian, a man who struck fear into many children in the community, none more so than his son. “He ruled by the board,” says Kwame T. Mumina, who grew up two streets down from the West family. “If he said to be home at 7:00 and you came in at 7:01, you were going to get it. He had no tolerance. And I think (Ajabu) was afraid of him.”

That fear drove the young Ajabu to excel in school, where he was not only a star athlete in football, basketball, and tennis, but was also a solid student, particularly in math. His respectful demeanor won him the admiration of many students, teachers, and parents at the mostly white Ben Davis High School. Still, Ajabu could not escape the era’s blatant racism.