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"What you
see is what you get…and what you see is a man of
unique and supreme integrity. He is one of the
greatest clerics we have known in our lifetime. His
clerical leadership has proven to be outstanding and
it’s a model that many of us have tried to
duplicate."
-Reverend Calvin Butts, Pastor Of The Abyssinian
Baptist Church In Harlem |
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About
Dr. Callender
 Dr.
Callender was born in Massachusetts Memorial Hospital on
January 21, 1926, to Barbados immigrants. He grew up near
Cambridge, and was the oldest of three children.
A natural leader, Eugene was always selected to head any
organization he joined. He founded a gospel group and was
the president of Christian Endeavor, B.Y.P.U. (Young
Peoples' Union). He graduated 2nd in his class at Cambridge
Latin High School and after being turned down at Harvard
(because they had already met their quota of blacks for that
year), he attended Boston University, registering in
pre-med. He made the varsity basketball team his freshman
year and he eventually switched his major after he realized
that becoming a minister would allow him the opportunity to
get involved in the struggle for social justice and equality
of opportunity for colored people.
 After graduating from Westminster Seminary, where he was the
first black student in the school’s history, Dr. Callender
was hired by the Christian Reformed Church. Based on his
thesis on social action in Harlem at world-renowned Union
Seminary where he was doing graduate work, the Christian
Reformed Church hired Dr. Callender to be its missionary in
Harlem. He became the first non-Dutch-American minister as
well as the first black minister in the church’s history.
 Motivated
by his passion for social justice, Dr. Callender began his
work in Harlem, New York in 1950. With an understanding of
the most critical problems in Harlem at the time, he created
a ministry for drug addicts, alcoholics, welfare recipients,
ex-convicts, battered women and brutalized children. On the
fifth floor of one of his three buildings, he began the
first community-based clinic to detoxify heroin addicts with
the help of doctors, nurses, psychologists, and social
workers that he himself recruited.
At that time in New York City, the use and possession of
drugs was a criminal act. Through Dr. Callender’s
leadership, it became recognized in New York City that the
use of drugs was a public health issue. Among the persons
who were treated in his fifth floor clinic were the famous
jazz musicians Jackie McClean, Ike Quebec, Danny Richman,
Charlie Mingus, James Stewart, Elmer Wright, Bennie Harris,
and a host of lesser known others. During this time Dr.
Callender also became a Chaplain at Rikers Island. There he
ministered to other outstanding musicians: Walter Bishop,
Jr., Johnny Simmons, J.J. Johnson and Chet Baker.
In the early stages of his ministry, Dr. Callender organized
the first rent strike in Harlem at 222 West 122nd Street
after the landlord removed the boiler, leaving the building
without heat in December, the dead of winter. Together with
the well-known attorney, Paul Zuber, he also organized the
first Harlem Freedom School in the basement in another one
of his buildings.
With the
attorney/activist Mark Lane, Dr. Callender took on Warwich
House, the worst of the mental institutions in the state of
New York, which was known to mistreat mentally retarded
young black children of the Harlem community. Because he was
a minister to people who were not church-oriented, he took
his worship services out onto the asphalt of 121st and 122nd
Streets.
In 1959, Dr. Callender was called to the ministry of the
Presbyterian Church of the Master, succeeding the renowned
James H. Robinson as their senior pastor the following year.
During this period of his ministry, Eugene organized the
original Street Academy Program — an educational enterprise
that provided opportunities for high school dropouts to
succeed in a nontraditional environment. He sought to prove
that youngsters were dropping out of public school system
not because of lack of intelligence, but because of poor
educational infrastructure.
Fourteen Street Academies were formed in Harlem with
significant funding by major corporations in New York City.
Dr. Callender created Harlem Prep for graduates of the
Street Academy Programs. No one could graduate from Harlem
Prep unless they were admitted to college, which made Harlem
Prep the only school in New York City — and perhaps even in
America — where every graduate went on to college. Two
thousand students would graduate from Harlem Prep, some of
whom are in prominent positions in America today.
 From
students to famous musicians, thousands have been inspired
and supported by Dr. Callender's work. In 1957, he brought
Dr. Martin Luther King to Harlem for the first time, and
created the Prayer Pilgrimage from a flatbed truck in front
of the Hotel Theresa on 125th St. 25,000 people came to hear
Dr. King speak that night, the Duke Ellington Orchestra
played, and Duke himself gave up his gig at the Apollo
Theater to be there.
 In
the summer of 1962 Dr. Callender discovered a young black
man sitting with his typewriter on some orange crates on
Grove Street in Greenwich Village. He engaged him in
conversation and ended up taking him home with him. The
young man was Alex Haley. During the ride home, Haley told
Dr. Callender about his ancestors. Dr. Callender took Haley
to Reader’s Digest, and Haley wrote for them the article
that would become Roots. Haley stayed with Dr. Callender
during which time he wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X;
and after Doubleday Press rejected the manuscript, Dr.
Callender helped find a willing publisher. Dr. Callendar
still has the first copy of the book that came off the
press.
During his ministry at the Church of the Master, Dr.
Callender was responsible for the creation of the first and
largest anti-poverty program in America, HARYOU-ACT. He
eventually became the Executive Director of the Urban League
and served as the Deputy Administrator of Housing under
Mayor John Lindsay. Dr. Callender also served as President
of the Urban Coalition, which was founded to deal with the
crisis in our cities after the widespread rioting in America
during 1967 and 1968. As President of the Coalition, Dr.
Callender helped bring into being Positively Black,
the first major black television show on NBC; Ashanti
Clothing Enterprise; New Breed Clothing Company; and
Essence Magazine.
Subsequently, Dr. Callender has served on five presidential
commissions under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush
Sr., and Clinton. From 1983 to 1989, he served as
Commissioner for the New York State Office for the Aging
under Governor Mario Cuomo, and from 1989 to 1991, he served
as a member of the Parole Board for the State of New York,
also under Cuomo.
From 1982 to 1993 he served as President for the Board of
Directors of the SYDA Foundation, an international
organization that teaches people to live from their inner
strength and love so that they can transform their everyday
world.
Dr. Callender served as Pastor at the Christian Parish for
Spiritual Renewal from 1991-2000. In 1996, he was National
Chairperson of the Senior Citizen Council for the
Clinton-Gore presidential campaign. For many years Dr.
Callender was an active participant in the Hunger Project
and served as a senior advisor to their Global Board of
Directors.
From 2002 to 2007 Dr. Callender was the pastor at St. James
Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1895 and is the
oldest African-American Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.
While at St. James Dr. Callender was instrumental in
creating The Harlem 40 and the Harlem 50.
The Harlem 40 are forty students “adopted” from the sixth
grade from P.S. 123 who are now in the ninth grade. From the
beginning they were told they could go to college and are
surrounded with support and direction while they are at
school, in their neighborhood and with their families. They
have developed into a vital peer group in their community
with a quality goal.
The Harlem 50 are young men from the community who had
dropped out of school, who could be clearly identified as
“street-addicted” but also as street leaders. They were
brought together into a G.E.D. College Prep program at St.
James. These young men are surrounded by support and
direction and have committed to go to college and to help
young people follow their example.
 In
August of 2007 Dr. Callender was appointed Leader in
Residence at the Colin Powell Center at The City College of
New York (CCNY). Dr. Callender gives seminars and
colloquiums to graduate students on emerging issues
involving race in the U.S. He is also Chairman of the Board
of the National Black Theater of Harlem and serves as the
Chairman of the Senior Coordinating Committee of the
Democratic National Committee.
A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Callender holds a
B.A. from Boston University, a Master of Divinity degree
from Westminster Theological Seminary, cum laude; a Master’s
Degree in Theology from Union Seminary; a Doctor of Divinity
from Knoxville College and a Juris Doctor from New York Law
School. He has taught at Columbia School of Business, New
York University, The New School for Social Research and CUNY
York College in Queens. |
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