By Garry Blanson
It’s fascinating how every week I’m able to find a different “FORGOTTEN BLACK PIONEER!” Sometimes while I’m researching a totally different subject, I get drawn to an event, post, or person that leads me to someone new, just as it was this week. As I was reading a post on Facebook, I was drawn to a comment that mentioned the name of a forgotten Negro Preacher named ,”REV. M. M. FLYNN.” Moments after googling his name, I knew that I had found this week’s Black Pioneer!
Once again, this was my very first time ever hearing about him or his remarkable achievements in the State of Louisiana. Our story begins when Milton McElroy Sr. was born in Northwestern, Louisiana on Christmas Day in 1900. Although I didn’t find any records of his early childhood and schooling, it was reported that by the age of 22, Milton had taken a bride, and the couple had welcomed their first child, Milton McElroy Jr., into the world. Also, by the age of 31, he had officially become a Baptist Preacher. A few of the churches in Louisiana that he pastored included : Rocky Valley Baptist Church, in Grambling, La.; Greenwood Acres Baptist Church, in Shreveport, La.; Mt. Bethel Baptist Church, in Keithville, La. ; and Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Homer, La.
While Rev. M.M. Flynn held down the duties of pastor, he was also elected as President of the Shreveport Chapter of the NAACP. Well, on March 22, 1938, Rev. M.M. Flynn called for an NAACP meeting to be held at “The Little Union Baptist Church in Shreveport” to inform Negroes about their rights as American Citizens. The guest speaker was William Pickens, a nationally acclaimed Negro and a Field Secretary for the NAACP.
In case you were wondering, “Little Union Baptist Church” just so happened to be the same Baptist Church in Shreveport that a “different NAACP official called a different NAACP Meeting some 25 years later,” where a Civil Rights icon, by the name of Rev. Harry Blakes, was severely beaten by White Shreveport Police! However, unlike the meeting in 1963, where Rev. Harry Blakes was attacked, Black people in Shreveport found out about the White Sheriff’s scheme to lynch William Pickens, and William was able to escape from the church unharmed! By the way, during W.W.II, when Rev. M.M. Flynn was pastor of Rocky Valley Baptist Church in Grambling, Louisiana, he and his church congregation appeared in a scene of a government-sponsored film called “Food For Victory!”
Out of thousands of rural Southern churches in the South, Rocky Valley was the church selected, “and you could bet that the Black people in Grambling, Louisiana, were sho’ nuff proud of themselves about that!” A few other interesting things about Rev. M.M. Flynn included that he and his wife, Beatrice donated food from their home garden, known as “Victory Gardens,” to the Allied military troops during World War II.
Also, the couple operated a Book & Bible Store in Shreveport that was located on Looney Street. In 1940, by the time that the Louisiana State Baptist Convention convened in Shreveport, La., Rev. M.M. Flynn had also become the business manager of a local Negro newspaper called “The Announcer.” In the early 1970s, he and a group of other Black men ran for offices on the Caddo Parish Police Jury. Rev. M.M. Flynn ran on the theme “You Can Depend On Flynn!” When the Negro candidates: C.M. Lester, Hersey D. Wilson, Rev. Edward Jones, and Rev. M.M. Flynn were officially seated,” they were the first Blacks to hold seats on the Caddo Parish Police Jury since the period in America that was known as “Reconstruction!” On January 5, 1985, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, a widely respected preacher, former President of the Shreveport Chapter of the NAACP, and former Caddo Parish Police Juror passed away in Seattle, Washington.
