Celebrating a Century: Remembering Rev. Dr. Jack E. McClendon

Today, we honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Jack E. McClendon on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Rev. McClendon passed away on January 26, 2010, at the age of 83, leaving behind a legacy that continues to shape our work.

Long before McClendon Center became what it is today, Jack McClendon was planting seeds, from the pulpit of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he served as Associate Pastor for 34 years, and in the streets of Washington, DC, where he opened the church’s doors to those living in poverty, struggling with mental illness or homelessness, and people of all faiths and backgrounds.

He fought for affordable housing and jobs. He ran after-school programs for inner-city youth. He marched in the streets.

On August 28, 1963, as hundreds of thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington, NYAPC, under his leadership, served as a welcoming center for marchers of all faiths and backgrounds. He was there. He later described that day as a kairos moment – a sacred, fulfilled time – one that helped build the movement that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to preach from that pulpit — twice. And when Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign came to Washington in 1968, it was Rev. McClendon who opened those same doors, making NYAPC a platform for one of the most urgent calls for economic justice in American history.

He called it a “restlessness for racial justice.”

We call it our roots.

“One of the things I’m proudest of in my career is giving the church an open door,” Rev. McClendon once said.

When individuals began leaving St. Elizabeths Hospital without access to treatment, housing, or support, Rev. McClendon saw the gap and moved to fill it. Drawing on his work with the State Mental Health Commission and community advocacy networks, he drafted a proposal to the District government, secured funding, and in 1981 launched a small program on the fifth floor of NYAPC with just four staff members.

“The waiting period was agonizing,” he said. “Everything seemed to take time and more time. But after four months of waiting, we finally employed four staff persons and inaugurated a program.”

That program became McClendon Center.

From the beginning, the goal was simple and radical: keep people connected to community, out of crisis, and treated with dignity. Not care that waits behind a desk, but care that shows up. In shelters. In emergency rooms. On the street. Wherever people are.

Today, more than four decades later, we carry that same restlessness into the wards of Washington, DC, serving thousands of residents each year, the majority African American, low-income, and living with serious mental illness.

The work looks a little different. The commitment doesn’t.

This year, as we mark more than 45 years of service, we’ll be taking a look back at the history, the stories, and the people who shaped McClendon Center, starting with this extraordinary Southern Baptist boy from LaFayette, Alabama who ended up at the center of Washington, DC’s civil rights movement.

There is much to share and much to celebrate. Stay tuned!