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29 July 2012| last updated at 10:55AM

US couple denied wedding because they were black



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WASHINGTON: A Mississipi couple got the shock of their lives when the pastor at the church they attended told them the wedding they planned could not be held there because they are black, ABC television reported Saturday.

 

Pastor Stan Weatherford told the network there had never been a wedding for  blacks at the First Baptist Church in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, since it  was opened in 1883.
 
He said some of the white congregarion so virulently opposed the wedding of  Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson, who are black, that they threatened to have him  fired.
 
Weatherford, a pastor who is white, offered to wed the Wilsons down the  road at a mostly black church, he told the network.
 
“My 9-year-old was going to the church with us. How would you say to your  9-year-old daughter, ’We cannot get married here because, guess what sweetie,  we’re black,’” Charles Wilson told ABC’s affiliate WAPT-TV.
 
The would-be groom told WAPT that the couple intended to join the church as  members after their wedding, which was planned for July 20. Until they got the  bad news that forced them to move their ceremony to another church where it was  held July 21.
 
Locals voiced shock at the pastor’s move.
 
“That church was their home,” said local resident Theresa Norwood, 48. 
 
"What would Jesus have done? He would have married them, without a doubt,  because it’s the right thing to do. We’re all God’s children,” she said. -- AFP

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