Rusty Benson

AFA Journal associate editor

January 2001 – A Black pastor is arrested and jailed for his participation in a public demonstration. Later, to spotlight their cause, black ministers lead a march from Newark, New Jersey, to the nation's capital. Along the way, rallies are held in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore. 

1962? The civil rights movement? 

No. The year 2000. The "new civil rights movement." 

"During the first civil rights movement, we wanted better education, better jobs, better housing and more opportunities," says Pastor Johnny Hunter. "But the new civil rights movement is about saving children's lives. What good is a better job if the child doesn't get to be born?" 

The 51-year-old pastor and veteran of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s is now the national director of LEARN, Life Education and Resource Network of Virginia Beach, Virginia. In its seventh year, LEARN is the largest African-American pro-life ministry in the U.S. 

"History proves there is a correlation between the legalization of abortion and the legalization of slavery in America," Hunter says. "Both involved the right of one person over that of the other, and both are fueled by desires for financial gain. However, unlike abortion, slavery increased the Black population in America. To the contrary, legal abortion has reduced the African-American community by over four percent." 

Hunter contends that many in the African-American community have been duped by a greedy abortion industry ($90 billion a year), as well as pro-abortion Black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson. 

"Jesse used to be pro-life. Some of our best pro-life speeches were given by Jesse years ago. We have people in our organization today who are pro-life because of Jesse's speeches in the past," Hunter said. However, when Jackson ran for president he abandoned his commitment to life to be accepted by the Democratic leadership, according to Hunter. 

"Across the nation many Blacks have realized that Jesse is nothing but an opportunist. And he goes whatever way the money and cameras are going. If you don't have TV cameras, you don't have Jesse Jackson," says Hunter. 

Hunter also warns of the connection between abortion in the African-American community and the racist, genocidal roots of Planned Parenthood and the modern abortion-rights movement. In a New York Post article, Hunter said the writings of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were "unabashedly racist." He added, "There's never been a case so clear of genocide written about and planned in public, and it's gotten such a beautiful whitewash in history." (See below.)

The North Carolina native said that from the Roe v Wade decision in 1973 until 1992, over nine million African-American babies have died at the hands of abortionists. Today two out of every three minority babies are aborted. 

But the winds of change are beginning to blow in the Black community, according to Hunter. "We're changing the face of what the dominant media want people to think about the Black community--that is that we are very pro-abortion and so far to the left. But that's not exactly the case." 

One way LEARN is bringing change is through marches reminiscent of the earlier civil rights movement. "We have hit the streets, marching for life," Hunter says. 

In October LEARN organized the "Say-So" ("If you love the children, say so.") marches in several U.S. cities. The efforts were aimed at bringing attention to the 1,452 Black children aborted every day in the U.S., and to expose what would be called "ethnic cleansing by other means," Hunter wrote in Insight magazine. 

Say So March spokesman Damon Owens offered this perspective: "This march is a civil rights march. We're organizing this march to tell our Black brothers and sisters that we have been duped into destroying ourselves. Even though we make up 12% of the population, we supply 33% of the abortion industry's business. We have fallen prey to the Margaret Sangers of the world." 

"Two hundred years ago our African- American heritage was robbed by a group of elitist individuals who intentionally kept us ignorant concerning the devastating effect of slavery," Hunter has written. "Today, our heritage is being robbed by elitist individuals who have intentionally kept us ignorant concerning the devastating effect of abortion on our race. They are robbing us to profit from the deaths of our sons and daughters." 

Martin, Malcolm, Mohammed 
One of the earliest memories that Johnny Hunter has of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s was the time the deacons of his local Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, refused to let Martin Luther King, Jr. speak from its pulpit because he was deemed too controversial. Hunter was about 12 years old and has the distinct recollection of being embarrassed. 

Later in college at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), Hunter was drawn to the more militant approach of Malcolm X. "I became a racist. I didn't hate all whites, just most." 

Another influence in those days was Mohammed Ali. "I remember hearing him say when he refused to join the army that no Vietnamese had ever called him ‘nigger.' That inspired me to become an activist." 

Some years later, God changed Hunter's heart and called him to become a pastor. Now his commitment to civil rights for his race is refocused on the most basic civil right--life. 

It was his wife Patricia's arrest outside an abortion clinic in Buffalo, New York, two days before Christmas that God used to push Hunter to a greater boldness for life. "I received a call that day and it was from the Holy Spirit," Hunter remembers. "And He just asked one question: ‘With whom is God most pleased?' Is God most pleased with ministers like me who could preach a sermon on how the wise men warned Jesus? Is He most pleased with a wonderful Christmas cantata? Or is He more pleased with those few women from our church who said, ‘No child should die two days before Christmas'?" 

Miracle in Buffalo 
It was a typical freezing January day in Buffalo, New York, where the average temperature during that month is 31 degrees and the average snowfall is 23 inches. About 100 people gathered outside an abortion clinic to pray, picket and distribute literature. 

"As we began to pray," Hunter recalls, "God spoke to my spirit. He said, ‘Just pray.'" Hunter instructed the crowd that there would be no signs, no picketing, no slowing down cars to distribute literature, only praying. 

The pastor said the Christians fell on their faces in the snow praying,"Oh, God, please don't let anyone come get an abortion." But women came anyway. 

Then they prayed that at least one woman would come out of the clinic without an abortion. But no one came out, except clinic workers who mocked the praying Christians. 

"Then we prayed, ‘Oh, God please don't let the abortionist show up today,'" he said. But the doctor arrived. 

"I felt a little defeated that day, but I knew we had done what God said," Hunter confessed. Only later would he learn the impact of their prayers. 

"We were at that same clinic when a lady brought her little baby by. She told me the child had been saved from an abortion at the clinic a year earlier." 

The lady recalled the cold January day a year earlier when Hunter and his friends had been praying outside in the snow. But on the inside of the clinic 24 women waited for an abortion. Then somebody's baby began to move in the womb. Then another lady's baby kicked. Then another and another. "Many grabbed our bellies and cried, ‘Oh, child, we promise not to hurt you,'" the mother told Hunter. 

Although clinic workers asked the women to stay in the waiting room for three more hours until the protesters were gone, no babies were killed that day. 

The new abolitionists 
Hunter compares his mission to that of the nineteenth-century abolitionists who were often labeled Christian fanatics. "They were not deterred, however, knowing… that just because an activity is legal doesn't make it right," Hunter wrote in Insight magazine. 

To Hunter the parallel between the atrocities of slavery and abortion are obvious. The only question is how many more Black babies will die before the African-American community agrees.   

Who was Margaret Sanger? Excerpted from a brochure written by American Life League, © 1996. Used with permission.
To suggest that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist is to raise the ire of many of the present-day leaders of Planned Parenthood and other anti-life organizations. However, the facts do speak for themselves. 

For example, throughout the pages of the Birth Control Review, Mrs. Sanger's journal, there are countless quotes which not only suggest that she favored eugenics, but that she provided a forum to those who wished to spread their fear of human life, when that life was conceived by someone other than a member of society's elite. 

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an adulteress, racist, and bigot, a supporter of Hitler's Nazi party and a believer in eugenics--the purification of a particular race of people by selective breeding. Her journals were filled with writings and articles by well-known eugenicists and members of Hitler's Third Reich. 

Instead of helping the poor, she considered them slum dwellers (particularly Blacks, Hispanics, and Jewish immigrants) who would soon overrun the boundaries of their slums, contaminating the better elements of society with their diseases and inferior genes. 

On October 19, 1939, Sanger outlined a plan for stopping the growth of the Black community. She predicted that "the most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their rebellious members." 

Entire text can be purchased here.