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NATCHEZ — Congressman Bennie Thompson teamed up with the Natchez Business and Civic League on Saturday to celebrate Black excellence in Natchez and Adams County.

Approximately 75 individuals were recognized, ranging from professionals to law enforcement officers to business owners and unsung heroes.

However, Joseph A.C. Smith stole the show with his keynote address, which was part sermon, history lesson, and pep rally.

Smith, a Natchez native who grew up in the Cannonsburg and Church Hill area, is the first of seven generations of his family to graduate from college. Smith left home for Washington, D.C., where he earned his undergraduate degree in 2006 and his Master of Divinity degree in 2010 from Howard University.

Smith was ordained in 2014, and his accomplishments are many. He is back in Natchez, CEO of Joseph A.C. Smith Ministries, and founder of BlackNatchez.org. BlackNatchez.org is working to preserve African American history and revitalize Black neighborhoods in Mississippi, including a multi-million dollar restoration of Natchez’s historic Black business district.

Smith began his message by getting the 300-plus people in attendance to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” He then asked them to recite the Lord’s Prayer with him, focusing on the words “on earth as it is in heaven.”

“What is heaven on earth? What is heaven in Mississippi? … What does heaven in Natchez look like? Does heaven look like affordable housing? Does heaven look like a rec center with swimming lessons and fishing lessons for our kids?

“Does heaven in Natchez look like good paying jobs for our kids, whether they decide to go to college or not,” Smith asked. “Does it look like Black folks and white folks working together to build an economy where everybody wins?”

“Does it look like Blues clubs and Jazz clubs and assisted living facilities for our seniors or our retirees? Does it look like a place where a person can go into jail a criminal but come out of jail a productive citizen,” he asked. “Does it look like a place with engineering labs and robotics labs and where violence is replaced by a vision of who God has called us to be?”

Smith said it takes transformational leaders and change-makers to “manifest our ideas about what God wants here in Natchez and Adams County.

“You may be saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m qualified to be a transformational leader. If you are breathing, you are needed…What God is waiting on is for you to accept his invitation to change the world. God is waiting on you to grab the baton.

“We have so many wonderful, exciting, good, diligent, forward things happening in this community. If God had more people helping, God could bring heaven to earth a little sooner,” Smith said.

Becoming a transformational leader is simple, he said.

“If you want to be a changemaker, it’s so simple. You have to think and you have to act. It’s really that simple. You pray and produce. You conceive and create. Like my grandmother would say, you make a plan and work that plan. It really is that simple,” he said.

Smith outlined five things needed to transform the Miss-Lou.

• Be positive. ”If you see somebody doing something good, don’t hate on them. Help them out.”
Make space for other people. “Give the young people a chance.”

• Get stuff done. “If we are going to move this community forward, we don’t need people who just talk the talk. We need people who are going to walk the walk. We have to pray, plan and do. We have to pray as if everything depends on God. We have to do as if everything depends on us.”

• Collaborate to elevate. “If we are only willing to collaborate with people who share our skin color, we are missing the point…Everybody Black ain’t for you and everybody white ain’t against you.”

• Quit being scared and lean toward the light. “What I have come to understand about this world is that everything moves along a continuum. On one end, you have the light. And on the other end you have fear. And every decision that gets made in this world is a lean toward the light or a lean toward fear. And what we have to do in this community is  make sure with every decision we are leaning toward light and are not leaning toward fear because when we lean toward the light and not toward fear, we will build bridges instead of fences. When we lean toward the light instead of fear, we won’t be locking doors, we will be opening doors for others.”

Smith thanked U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson for his work for Natchez and Adams County.

“You have just become our representative, but you have always been our Congressman. Thank you for your decades of service to all Mississippians,” he said.

Smith said his organization, BlackNatchez.org, is a 501c3 non-profit focused on “using heritage tourism as an engine for workforce development, community revitalization, and historic preservation.”

To learn more about the organization or to donate, see BlackNatchez.org.