For February, it was an unusually warm Sunday, but there he was. The Rev. Dr. Jeffery Joseph Sr. sat in the church he founded nearly 60 years ago, New Heaven Missionary Baptist Church in Pacoima.
Due to recent health issues, Joseph, now 96, hasn’t been preaching from the pulpit lately, but he rarely misses a worship service. He sat stoically in his wheelchair, listening as one of his associate ministers preached the word of God to a smattering of congregants, including a few of Joseph’s adult children, grandchildren and great-grandkids.
Although the number of churchgoers varies week to week, “These days, people just don’t come to church like they used to,” lamented his daughter, Lamoyne Joseph, one of his 13 children.
Rev. Jeffery Joseph
“Trump is taking us in the wrong direction.”
Much has changed, Joseph said quietly after the service. The demographics in Pacoima have shifted. In the 1960s, 90% of the San Fernando Valley’s nearly 10,000 Black residents lived in Pacoima. Now, the community is 90% Latino. And a lot has changed in the White House, he said. Joseph believes the president is actively trying to sow “divisions” and create rifts between Latinos, Blacks and other races and ethnic communities, to get them to turn against each other.
“These are dangerous times we’re living in right now, because what needs to be done isn’t being done,” said Joseph with quiet emphasis, his eyes widening to match the urgency of his words.
“Trump is taking us in the wrong direction,” he added. “Anytime a president is carrying people away from one another, instead of trying to bring people together, it’s dangerous for everyone.”
An Unsung ‘Hero’ for Civil Rights
Joseph is well acquainted with dangerous times. He has been a church pastor for over 77 years, since following in his father’s footsteps to become a Baptist minister in the late 1940s in his segregated hometown of Jennings, Louisiana. Not long after he started ministering, around 1950, Joseph took to the local airwaves and gave a radio sermon preaching about equality, declaring, “Out of one blood, God created all mankind to dwell upon the face of the Earth.”
Afterward, people urgently warned his father that Joseph should stop preaching that way because “he’s going to get us all killed,” he recounted. Joseph acknowledged that it was a very risky thing to do during such perilous times, especially “as a Black man among white people,” he said.
At the time, he was barely 20 or 21 years old, according to his daughter Lamoyne Joseph, who grew up hearing about – and deriving important lessons from – all of her father’s stories.
“The warnings didn’t stop him or deter him from doing what he was called to do by God,” she said.
As the civil rights movement grew across the South during the 1950s and the early 1960s, Joseph continued to preach about equality from the pulpit, and regularly marched for civil rights alongside the Rev. A.D. King, the younger brother of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
While marching together, Joseph and A.D. King were arrested and jailed multiple times. Joseph had met A.D. King while they were both serving as church pastors in Louisville, Kentucky.
In late August of 1963, Joseph almost missed his train to Washington, D.C., to participate in the March on Washington. On that historic day, Joseph ended up standing approximately 50 feet away from Dr. King while he recited his powerful and iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
When asked if he still recalls that significant moment, Joseph quickly replied, “Oh yes. … I had great interest in Dr. King,” adding that he admired Dr. King’s work and found him “inspiring.”
When Joseph watched the deeply disturbing footage of young protesters being beaten and sprayed with fire hoses in Alabama, it motivated him to raise money to help support Dr. King’s work. He partnered with a radio preacher and together they launched Operation Freedom, eventually collecting more than $14K – equivalent to approximately $145,000 in 2026.
After spending about half of the funds they collected to commission charter planes to safely fly activists into Selma, Alabama, Joseph presented Dr. King with a check for $7,000. That was still considered a significant sum for that time.
“My father has been a great man all of his life. He’s done great works,” said Lamoyne Joseph. “There are a lot of silent heroes that you hear nothing about, but who have done so much.”
One of the recognitions Joseph did receive to honor his work for civil rights was being presented with the pen used by the governor of Kentucky to sign the Kentucky Civil Rights Act of 1966.
Moving to California
Joseph said he decided to move his wife Addie and their kids from Kentucky to California “because of the way things were.” Despite the changes being made at the state and federal levels to dismantle segregation, outlaw discrimination and protect voting rights, more work remained everywhere.
Joseph established New Heaven Church in Pacoima in late 1967 and A.D. King got to visit. Joseph invited him to Los Angeles and together they held a revival at his then-new church. Less than two years later, A.D. passed away.
Two of Joseph’s sons – the Rev. Jeffery Joseph Jr. and the Rev. Shawn Joseph Sr. – eventually followed his example by becoming Baptist ministers, and both currently serve at New Heaven.
Joseph and Addie were married for 68 years, until she passed away in 2017. Together, they had more than 100 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A key lesson most of the family has often heard is about the importance of “loving everyone” – no matter what, said Lamoyne Joseph.
To this day, she vividly recalls trying to embrace that lesson when she repeatedly saw a hateful message written on a sign at the entrance to her school, Verdugo Hills High, that said, “No n*****s.”
“You can’t stop people from being who they are, [so] you have to be responsible for who you are [by] loving them” – even when it’s difficult to do, she explained. “That was his main message.”
Joseph had the opportunity to meet the late President Jimmy Carter, a person he always greatly admired – and who also lived by the Christian principle of responding to hate with love.
“President Jimmy Carter was a great inspiration in my life,” he recalled. Unfortunately, everything happening with the current administration makes Joseph feel “so downhearted.”
“It’s a critical time,” he said regarding the current political climate, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducting raids nationwide targeting Latinos.
“It’s causing people to be carried from their homes – they’re being arrested and separated from their children,” said Joseph. “It’s a terrible time to have … people being treated this way.”
He’s had a lifetime of ministering to bring change and been witness to great strides and progress as society moved forward, and then slipped downward, returning to a cycle of racism and injustice.
Joseph feels it’s difficult to remain positive, but said he holds on to “limited hope” and continues to pray.