Serves Ministry at White Rock Church

By the time Fisher transferred to the White Rock Baptist Church, Durham, North Carolina in 1933, he was a seasoned preacher and church administrator although quite young. With a wife and growing family, he was ready to settle down with church ministry as his main pursuit. His tenure at White Rock lasted over thirty years, until his retirement in 1965.

The congregation consisted mostly of middle-class, educated blacks, but Fisher attracted others with his innovative community programs and leadership. His recreation programs attracted community youth. He sponsored a Boy Scouts program, a summer football league, a table tennis club, and a boxing team. His table tennis team toured the country. In addition he started a health clinic, a day nursery, an employment bureau, an adult education and job training program, and other self-help services. Fisher was also responsible for attracting black artists and lecturers to the area. His social gospel philosophy was criticized by some church members when he permitted the tobacco workers’ union to hold meetings in the church. Fisher’s ideal was for the church to be the central focus of the neighborhood, addressing needs not just one day a week but on a continuous basis. He planned for the future expansion of the church by establishing a building fund.

Fisher had a bold, forceful preaching style. Music played an integral part in his service, and he often featured different choirs and soloists. For an anniversary celebration in 1948, Fisher presented a program that was a distinctive blend of black history and Negro spirituals. This program was so popular that it became a permanent feature of the church’s annual celebrations. Fisher believed that slave songs were some of the most original music of the nation. When he spoke on the history of the black church, he included some aspect of black spiritual music.

His contributions to the church and community did not go unnoticed or unrewarded. In 1954, Fisher was numbered among the nation’s top ten black preachers by Ebony magazine. The National Recreation Association awarded him their Golden Anniversary Award in 1958 in recognition of the outstanding weekday recreation programs he had created for young people.

In 1933, during his pastorate at the White Rock in Durham, Fisher returned to teaching. As lecturer in the history of religion at Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, he introduced courses on African American history. Fisher maintained a rigorous and productive schedule of preaching, writing, and teaching. In 1933 he wrote a history of the Baptist denomination published by the Sunday School Publishing Board in Nashville, Tennessee. Although a history of the entire Baptist denomination, Fisher highlighted the religious development of Negro Baptists who made up the majority of non-whites within the group. Another article in 1937 discussed organized religion and cults. Additional articles published between 1937 and 1963 were on black history and religion. Shaw University presented Fisher with an honorary D.D. in 1941, and he was inducted into the International Mark Twain Society as an honorary member.

During the summers, Fisher attended the University of Chicago Divinity School where he studied with William Warren Sweet, the church historian. Fisher completed his Ph.D. in1948. His doctoral dissertation was the first ethno-historical study of Negro spirituals: Negro Slave Songs in the United States became Fisher’s best-known work. It offered a new and radically secular interpretation and was awarded the prize for outstanding history volume of 1953 from the American Historical Association. Fisher concluded that slave songs were manifestations of African culture and as such were not truly religious in origin but songs of protest born out of the slaves’ longing for freedom. He combed through historical documents, manuscripts, song collections, and other documentary records in various collections, looking for evidence. Fisher attempted to recreate the events and situations that gave rise to the songs. He believed that religion played an important part in the lives of slaves, but it was less important than their daily labor or dreams of escape. He concluded that the American Colonization Society and other back-to-Africa movements had a profound effect on slaves. He theorized that the slave psyche was steeped in African-oriented stories that naturally flowed out in songs, describing oppression, separation, and alienation from the mother country.

Fisher also suggested that lyrics in spirituals referred to the plight of the newly emancipated slave. For instance, mention of the Promised Land was not a reference to future glory but a yearning to return to the mother country, Africa. Since there was little contact between slaves, some songs were merely communication devices to convey messages of warning or caution about escapes or rebellions.

Many were skeptical of Fisher’s interpretation. Some of his conclusions were contradicted by historical writers, including James Weldon Johnson, who believed that Fisher did not present enough evidence to prove his conclusions. Scholars agreed that spirituals were born from the day-to-day experiences of the slaves but the tonal development of spirituals grew out of their religious experience. Biblical expressions, examples in nature, and personal experiences were all woven together to form the materials out of which spirituals were fashioned. However viewed by critics, Fisher’s book presents a different approach to the origin of the slave songs and as such is an important contribution to the study of black history and thought.

In Durham, North Carolina, Fisher was involved in reinvigorating a branch of the NAACP. He served as its president from 1933 to 1935. He also served with the Durham Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and was a member of the executive board of the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Fisher retired from teaching and active church ministry in 1965. Although he stepped down from the pulpit, he continued to function as an emeritus pastor until his death on December 14, 1970. After that, the Baptist State Convention’s Unified Program established a scholarship fund in his name. A housing development built adjacent to the White Rock Church was named the Miles Mark Fisher Heights in his honor.