On the Road to Black Caucus
In preparation for the 48th gathering of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus, the Presbyterian Historical Society offers stories from the Black Presbyterian Archive. Click here to learn how PHS is collecting records of the Black Presbyterian experience through the African American Leaders and Congregations Initiative.
Venetta Baker was born in 1955 in Charlotte, N.C., scion of a line of Presbyterian ministers. Her great grandfather was a Lincoln University graduate who came south to organize a Black church in Lincolnton, in the Presbytery of Catawba. Her parents were products of Presbyterian schools -- her father attended Johnson C. Smith University, and her mother attended Harbison Junior College.
Baker became blind in high school, and resolved to follow the same course she had set out when she was sighted. She graduated from Meredith College in 1977, and was accepted into the Peace Corps. She taught in a school for deaf and blind girls in Bello, Antioquia, Colombia.
She returned stateside after a year to work out what to do with her life. In a 1985 interview with the Albuquerque Tribune, she said that the ministry had always attracted her “but [she] had always seen the men leading the services. The only thing open to women was to be the head of the women’s club or play the organ.” Baker enrolled in Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, thinking, “if I’m really supposed to do something God will let me do it."
In a 1985 oral history, Baker recalls feeling “isolation” as the only Black woman student at the time. In her recollection the only other Black woman on campus worked in the registrar’s office. She felt doubly isolated by being blind: “You just can’t pour your heart out and share your pain and put your heart on the floor to be desecrated at all times.”
She graduated in 1983 and was taken under care of Catawba Presbytery but moved west to take a position in Christian Education at the Menaul School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was ordained there by the Presbytery of Santa Fe in March 1984. She returned to Charlotte after a short period at Menaul and then served as chaplain at the J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center.
In her contribution to the volume African American Presbyterian Clergywomen: The First Twenty-Five Years, Baker writes of the gifts God has given being for everybody, no matter how they’re shaped: “On beautiful autumn days, I am reminded that God’s beauty, which is prevalent in the fall leaves, is not just for the strong, rich, or powerful; it is for us all. While I may not be as capable as others of appreciating the colors of the leaves, I know that they are there. I know that the fall is present because of the apples, the cool mornings, and all the rustling underfoot.”
In her oral history, Baker recounts the hardships and slights she endured in the ordination and call process and reminds the next cohort of women ministers, “the church is made up of people -- it’s the people who run the church” for good or ill. She reminds her readers that “preachers need preaching,” and they should be open to being ministered-to: “You can be ministered by people whom you didn’t even expect to be ministered by. And that’s the way God works.”
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