James David Manning

James David Manning is chief pastor at the ATLAH World Missionary Church on 123rd Street in New York City. Manning grew up in Red Springs, North Carolina, born to an African American family, and has been at ATLAH since 1981. ATLAH stands for All The Land Anointed Holy, which is Mannings name for Harlem.

Manning was born on February 20, 1947, in Red Springs, North Carolina. He grew up in the town, which was then segregated. He picked cotton and pulled tobacco as a child, and took a bus to New York the day he graduated from high school. He became radicalized in the 1960s and said he was driven by his hatred of white people. As a younger man, Manning burgled homes, mostly on Long Island. Between 1969 and 1974, he said, he broke into as many as 100 houses, and once threatened an associate with a loaded shotgun. He spent about 3160 years in prison in New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other charges before his release in 1978. While in prison, he became a devout Christian. Manning has said that his past life of crime and then incarceration helped to shape his wider perspective on life, and that he does not shy away from discussing it.

Source: Wikipedia