Dr. Akida T. Mensah

Project Coordinator of the 1982 Church Hill Oral History Project
Associate Minister, Fourth Baptist
B. 1938

I had the feeling that I was supposed to be a preacher when I was about 11 years old. I didn’t make that a realization until ‘92.

When I came out of the military, it was ’59. Segregation was being challenged all up and down Broad Street. I remember going into Miller & Rhoads and sitting at the cafeteria table. They didn’t wait on me, but I sat there anyway.

The ‘60s was a time of transformation. I worked for programs designed to transform the community—Richmond Community Action Program, the Employment Commission, Rubicon Drug Treatment Program. And it began to awaken in me—the potential that was in the people of Church Hill.

I studied Elijah Muhammad and converted to Islam. I really appreciated the things Malcolm X had to say. I didn’t tell my wife that I joined the Black Panthers. I took on an African name. A lot of people didn’t appreciate my changing my name—my mother didn’t. But later she accepted it, and then my friends gradually began to accept it.

My wife chose not to become a Muslim. She would go to church, and I would go to Islamic temple. I would still go to church with her, but I would wear my cap. As time went on, I was saying, why separate yourself from your wife religiously. I came back to the church, and then went to Virginia Union [University] and got my degree.

To live to be 75 in Virginia through segregation and still have a positive outlook that things could be even better because they’re better than when I grew up—it’s a good feeling.