Sharpton: Bishop Hilton `charismatic, vibrant, fighting for soul of nation'

FOREST PARK – The email from an assistant Cincinnati police chief, brimming with gratitude and relief, arrived on Thanksgiving morning last year.

Twelve days earlier, on Nov. 12, Cincinnati had teetered on civic violence. A jury could not reach a verdict in the murder trial of a white police officer charged with killing an unarmed black motorist. Ray Tensing's body camera had captured how he'd pulled over Sam DuBose for a missing front license plate and how the traffic stop escalated, ending when Tensing fired a bullet into DuBose's head.

The email recipient, Bishop Bobby Hilton, an African-American pastor of a predominantly black suburban megachurch, opened the message from Terri Theetge, a white West Sider from a family of police officers.

"During the trial, the city of Cincinnati had potential to explode. I hope the citizens of Cincinnati recognize the role you played in keeping our city calm," wrote Theetge, a newly promoted lieutenant colonel, expressing an opinion shared in City Hall. "I and the rest of the citizens of Cincinnati owe you a debt of gratitude."

The retrial of Tensing, a former University of Cincinnati Police Department officer, will begin May 25

Hilton is expected to reprise a central role he played in the prequel. He had attended court each day, availed himself to the media as a trial observer, served when needed as a spiritual advisor and a spokesman for the DuBose family. He led a group of three dozen black preachers who demanded a retrial, even as Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters analyzed whether his office could win a conviction the second time around.

Hilton's role as a leading civil rights voice in the Cincinnati region evolved slowly over the past two decades. His first action was to pull his church's popular New Year's Eve service from Cincinnati's convention center to observe a boycott in the wake of the 2001 riots. The ban followed the police shooting of an unarmed black man, Timothy Thomas, that April.

Hilton, 58, didn't plan on social activism. He took over in 1990 the small Avondale church his father, the Rev. Lewis Hilton Sr., had founded and nurtured for 20 years.

In 1996, Word of Deliverance moved into the sanctuary it built in Forest Park. In 2006, the congregation moved into the Word Family Life Center, a 41,000 square foot multi-purpose building valued at $4.7 million at the corner of Fresno Road and Bishop Bobby Hilton Way.

"As you begin to assist people, you begin to see what they are experiencing, the struggles, the injustices," Hilton said. "I saw that I needed to be out here and help in this area of civil rights."

Consistent voice, advocate for family `hurting, torn up'

Not long after DuBose's death on July 19, 2015, Hilton received a call from Mark O'Mara, the Orlando, Florida lawyer whom the DuBose family initially hired. O'Mara had risen to national notoriety for his successful defense of George Zimmerman, acquitted of second-degree murder charges in the fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2013.

O'Mara asked Hilton to reach out to Terina Allen, DuBose's older sister. Hilton and Allen, who declined comment for this story, speak often, conversations that have grown more frequent with the approach of the retrial.

"The family is hurting and torn up at the loss of Samuel DuBose," Hilton said. "They're anxious with the trial coming back up, wondering if Samuel is going to be treated right."

Hilton had sung gospel songs and directed proceedings during DuBose's viewing and funeral at Church of the Living God in Avondale.

Audrey DuBose, Sam's mother, told The Enquirer that Hilton helped the family through months of trying times.

"He was supportive," she said. "He was there every day for us."

Aubrey DuBose, Sam's uncle, said of Hilton, "He was able to call a wrong a wrong, There is so much political pressure here that people can be afraid to speak out. Bishop Hilton was not afraid."

A day after Tensing's trial, Hilton organized a group of 40 ministers and pastors of several predominantly black churches. They demanded a meeting with Deters and that he retry Tensing.

The Rev. Nelson Pierce Jr., 39, pastor of Beloved Community Church in Norwood, was one of the four other black ministers who joined Hilton in a meeting with Deters on Nov. 14, two days after the announcement of the hung jury.

"Cordial and productive" is how Pierce described the conversation. He said what's most remarkable about working with Hilton "is how he, as tough as he can be when necessary, allows for the possibility of maintaining the relationship. He doesn't burn bridges."

Deters said of his relationship with Hilton, "When we didn't know each other, it was kind of rocky. When we got to know each other, I saw what kind of man he is. He is a very smart man. I think he genuinely cares about the community."

Deters, Pierce and others involved in the Tensing case said Hilton kept the interests of the DuBose family first. Hilton said he listened to family members and made sure to relay their wishes to the public. For example, the family said it understood the black community's need to protest when Tensing was not convicted. Yet the family insisted that the demonstrations be peaceful.

Hilton said he ran into some African-Americans on the street who wanted him to be more confrontational with the power structure.

Brian Taylor, a steering committee co-chair of Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati, said city government leaders traditionally rely on black clergy to mute dissension and quell protests when they have a potential problem with the black community.

"Bobby Hilton and other such leaders would have so much more impact if they directly joined the efforts of our Countdown to Conviction Coalition and act as one movement for justice," Taylor said.

The coalition's dozen member organizations, in addition to Black Lives Matter, includes the Amos Project, Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center and Peaslee Neighborhood Center.

An attentive family man with a worldwide reach

From the time of DuBose's death, Hilton said he was not "anti-cop" but "pro-justice." He volunteers as a police chaplain for departments across Hamilton County, including Cincinnati's.

His sister, Angela Hilton, 50, the youngest of the family's five children, is a 23-year veteran Cincinnati Police officer. A former District 5 patrol officer, she is on medical leave after being diagnosed in December with breast cancer.

In spite of his demanding schedule, Bobby Hilton has driven his sister to Chicago for regular chemotherapy treatments. She is now beginning radiation treatments at the UC Health Barrett Cancer Center here.

"He wants me to focus on healing," she said.

The family remains close. Born to Lewis Sr. and Sarah Hilton in Lincoln Heights, Lewis Hilton Jr. was dubbed "Bobby" by his two older sisters. Lewis "sounded too old." The name stuck.

"He's always been very caring and a peacemaker," said Bertha Southall, second oldest of the Hilton siblings, all of whom gathered in their parents' Forest Park home on Mother's Day.

In 1962, they were the second black family on their street when they moved to Silverton. Bobby was 4. He still recalls in detail the sting of being mistakenly disciplined with another black kindergartner and forced to watch white classmates play.

Hilton was few electives short of a bachelor's of science degree in health services administration at the University of Cincinnati when his wife became pregnant with their second child. He quit school and worked a series of sales jobs. He eventually earned a doctoral degree in divinity from International Apostolic University of Grace and Truth in Dayton.

Lewis Hilton Sr. worked 40 years at Milacron Inc., formerly known as Cincinnati Milling Machine and Cincinnati Milacron. In 1970, he started a congregation called Apostolic Church of Deliverance in the West End. After a short move to Lower Price Hill, the church found its home on Hearne Avenue in Avondale in 1982. Bobby Hilton, who would become pastor in 1990, had focused on the music ministry. He had some piano lessons as a child but is a largely self-taught musician, singer and songwriter. His best-known composition is "God Did That Thing."

"He has done a good job," Lewis Hilton Sr., 91, said of his son's work with the church, which has 1,500 registered members.

Bobby Hilton's reach is far greater than his church's Sunday morning and Wednesday night services. He has become a staple in religious broadcasting. Word of Deliverance services have aired on TV and radio and are available for viewing on the internet at pscp.tv/wodom.

Hilton's social action expanded, too, to new levels when he became a fervent advocate for embattled former Hamilton County juvenile court judge Tracie Hunter. Hilton had met through a nephew when the nephew and Hunter were young.

Hilton became president in December 2012  of the newly formed Greater Cincinnati chapter of the National Action Network. The organization's founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton, traveled to Cincinnati to install Hilton at a Word of Deliverance service in January 2012.

In an interview, Sharpton said Hilton falls into a tradition tracing to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and extending through the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sharpton himself. "I saw Bishop in the vein of the black church-based social justice movement, charismatic and vibrant," Sharpton said. "We are fighting for the soul of the nation, not to get even. We come from the position of moral authority."

Cincinnati has its own lineage of powerful black preachers who shaped the larger community, among them the Revs. L.V. Booth, Fred Shuttlesworth and Damon Lynch Jr.

'I wish above all things that you may prosper'

In 2001, Hilton self-published a self-help book about the gospel of success, "The Blessing of Commitment: Releasing Wealth and Riches into Your Life."

Asked about his writings and his personal journey, he quotes from 3 John, "I wish above all things that you may prosper."

"I believe every generation should do better than the one before," Hilton said. "You can't help others if you're down yourself."

Hilton's own life story follows that theology. He had come a long way from Lincoln Heights, Silverton and the Aiken High School Class of 1976.

Parents of two adult children, Bobby and Valda Hilton live in $2 million home in Amberley Village that they bought in 2003 from former Reds shortstop and Hall-of-Famer Barry Larkin. The 8,000 square-foot house has seven bedrooms and bathrooms and was used frequently, Hilton said, as part of his ministry for events such as staff meetings, dinners and playing host to church guests.

A check of property records at hamiltoncountyauditor.org showed that the Hiltons had a $26,696.41 property tax delinquency, with the last tax payment on Nov. 30, 2015. Hilton said he only recently had received notification of the delinquency and that his mortgage company had made the error.

"The full amount is being paid," Hilton said Friday. County Auditor Dusty Rhodes confirmed his office received "something" related to the Hilton property and that it had been forwarded to the county treasurer.

Hilton serves on the nine-member Hamilton County Tax Levy Review Committee. It is designed to provide an independent review of all tax levy requests.

Ministering to all –  professionals, ex-cons, single moms

For all of the large-scale and multi-media platforms to which Hilton has ascended, his ministry, say his supporters and congregants, has not lost the human touch.

Hilton talks with pride about the number of men who'd been in prison – "some for doing terrible things," he said – who returned to the community, completed their educations and today are employed as either blue- or white-collar workers. Hilton bristles at talk that the majority of African-Americans are selling drugs or running guns. "No," he said, "most of us are working and raising our families and want the same things everybody else wants."

His congregation, he said, is filled with medical and legal professionals, elementary school principals and college professors.

In the often patriarchal field of non-denominational Christian ministry, Bobby Hilton's wife of 39 years, Valda, was installed in 2002 as co-pastor. Known as "Pastor V," she has a doctoral degree in divinity and oversees the congregation's ministry for single mothers, known as SOAR (short for Strengthening, Overcoming, Achieving, Restoring).

Saria Lattimore, 24, is one of the graduates of that ministry. She became pregnant at 16 when she was a junior at Winton Woods High School. A member of Word of Deliverance since she was 3, Lattimore said the Hiltons did not judge her.

"Bishop Hilton supported my decision to keep my child and didn't allow anyone in the church to shun me, and he encouraged me to pursue my education," said Lattimore, who went on to earn a sociology degree from Kentucky's Berea College.

She recently married her child's father and the family is a regular at Word of Deliverance's 8 a.m. Sunday service.

On May 5, Lattimore earned her law degree from Northern Kentucky University. Bishop Bobby Hilton was in the audience that night in Highland Heights.