Joseph Gomez was born on the island of Antigua and came to the United States in 1908. He served in several ministries, but is most closely associated with Ohio, particularly Cleveland and Wilberforce College, from which he graduated. Gomez-Jefferson captures the growing concern of the Black middle-class with civil rights and its persistent attempts to confront problems with tactics less confrontational than those of the sixties and seventies. More than a biography, In Darkness with God is a history of Black life during the early part of the century and a chronicle of the political and religious struggles of the first autonomous Black church in the United States.