Marshall L. Shepard

Shepard was born July 10, 1899, in Oxford, North Carolina, the son of Robert Shepard and Pattie Gilliam Shepard.[1] Robert Shepard was born a slave and later became a Baptist minister and the superintendent of the Colored Orphanage Asylum of North Carolina.[2] Pattie Shepard was also involved in charitable work and served as the head of the Women's Baptist Home Convention of North Carolina.[3] Marshall Shepard followed his parents in joining the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[4] He attended Slater State Normal School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, then received his Doctor of Divinity in 1921 from Virginia Union University, a historically black university in Richmond, Virginia.[4][5]

After graduation, Shepard moved to New York City, where he received additional education at the City College of New York and the Union Theological Seminary.[6] From 1922 to 1923, he served as secretary for religious work at the 135th Street branch of the YMCA in Harlem.[4] In 1923, he married Willia Lucille Owens, with whom he had two sons.[4] That same year, he was hired as assistant pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, of which Adam Clayton Powell Sr. was the pastor.[6]

In 1926, Shepard accepted the position of pastor at Mount Olivet Tabernacle Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, where he would remain for the rest of his life.[4] The church struggled financially, especially after the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, and several congregation members mortgaged their homes to keep the church afloat.[7] Shepard's reputation as a minister grew, and he served as assistant secretary of the National Baptist Convention and associate editor of the National Baptist Voice.[8]

Shepard chaired the National Baptist Convention's Board of Foreign Missions for many years, and in 1947 he was a delegate to the World Baptist Alliance meeting in Copenhagen.[9] Despite his growing renown, he remained dedicated to his Mount Olivet church. His Sunday morning sermons were especially celebrated, and his preaching style drew praise from many contemporaries, including Gardner C. Taylor, who called him "the best extemporaneous preacher the Black race has produced."[9] In 1960, he endorsed Senator John F. Kennedy for president and decried those Protestants who would oppose him based on their opposition to his Roman Catholic faith.[10]

Shepard spoke at the 1936 Democratic National Convention at Convention Hall in Philadelphia.

Shepard's congregation encouraged him to become involved in secular politics, and he held several offices over his lifetime. Running as a member of the Democratic Party, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1934 as one of three members from the 18th district, along with fellow Democrats Joseph Ominsky and John J. Finnerty. (House members at that time were chosen from multimember districts.)[11] While in the legislature, he co-sponsored a bill that would have banned racial discrimination in state contracting.[12] Shepard was chosen to offer a prayer at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, which was held in Philadelphia that year. The sight of a black minister on the podium led Ellison D. Smith, a segregationist Senator representing South Carolina, to storm out of the convention.[9] Shepard's response to the incident was to say "it was just a sign the good brother needs more prayer."[9]

In 1936, Shepard, Ominsky, and Finnerty were all reelected to the legislature.[13] The following year, he was appointed to a commission charged with drafting a new city charter for Philadelphia, but the resulting document was rejected by the voters at the polls that November.[8] He was not a candidate for reelection in 1938, but in 1940 he ran again and was elected along with Finnerty and Samuel Rose.[14] After that term ended, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Shepard recorder of deeds in Washington, D.C., a position he held until 1951.[15] At that time, Shepard and Mary McLeod Bethune were the only two black people in government service in the nation's capital.[9]

Shepard resigned from his federal post to run in the 1951 election in Philadelphia. The Democrats nominated him for the recorder of deeds post which, unlike the Washington position, was elected by the voters.[16] He was victorious in the election, winning as a part of a Democratic wave that swept the Republican Party from power for the first time in 67 years.[17] The job, a former county-level position, was eliminated and the department consolidated into city government in 1953.[9] Shepard was named to the equivalent civil service position, Commissioner of Records, after the consolidation.[9]

In 1955, Shepard ran for an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council.[18] By the rules of the limited voting system for the at-large seats, each political party could nominate five candidates and voters could only vote for five, with the result being that the majority party could only take five of the seven seats, leaving two for the minority party. Shepard won one of the five Democratic slots and was easily elected.[18] On the council, he served as head of the public works committee.[5] In 1956, charter amendments aimed at weakening civil service protections were proposed. Shepard initially opposed the change, but later voted in favor after party leaders promised him more black Democrats would get political appointments.[19] The amendments found the required two-thirds vote in Council to make it on to the ballot for popular approval but failed in a vote that April.[20]

Shepard was reelected in 1959 and again in 1963.[9] In February 1967, he underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.[5] Three weeks later, he died at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital at the age of 67.[5] After a funeral at his church, he was buried in Oxford, North Carolina.[5] His son, Marshall Jr., went on to lead the Mount Olivet Church until his death in 2002.[7] In 2008, the Philadelphia Housing Authority opened a new housing development near the church, which they named after Shepard.[21]