Where did he come from?

One of his videos about Obama has 1.6 million hits on YouTube. Another has 188,000. Clearly somebody is listening to what he says. But who is he? And how did he get so much attention so quickly?

His name is Rev. James David Manning, and he's the pastor of the Atlah World Missionary Church in New York, located at 38 West 123rd Street in Harlem. But until last year, had anybody ever heard of him?

Rev. Manning's church is not very big or particularly well known by Harlem standards. There are only 150 members of his church, which is located just two blocks away from the busy Harlem intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. But his videos give him a presence beyond the small circle of his congregation.

Some time last year his church started posting controversial snippets from the pastor's sermons on YouTube. One, called "Obama Is A Good House Negro," says white people "have found themselves a good Negro" in Obama. "Barack is a good Negro. He doesn't say anything mean to us," Rev. Manning says, imagining what white people say about the Illinois senator.

Manning goes further. "Don't trust any Negro to be your leader who's never been to jail," says Rev. Manning, explaining that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X also went to jail. "If your pastor hasn't been to jail, don't trust him," the minister says. Manning knows about jail. He's been in prison too, convicted and sentenced for burglarizing 100 homes in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the New York Times.

Manning, 61, argues in one sermon that white people will use Obama's election, should he win this year, as an excuse to stop doing anything for black people. Quoting a fictitious average white person, he says: "See, we solved our problem with slavery. We put this Negro in the White House."

Rev. Manning says that "Now they can feel good about themselves, white folks...They don't owe y'all nothing. Don't y'all ask for nothing else no more because we done give that Negro called Barack Obama everything. Shut up, sit down. Don't ask for any school, don't ask for anything. Praise the Lord."

A similar message has been communicated by other black observers who fear that white America will use a potential Obama election as an opportunity to absolve itself from its racial history. But there's something about Rev. Manning, and the way he speaks, that makes it much more provocative.

His latest campaign is sure to stir up controversy among blacks in Harlem, if anybody ever hears about it. For the past few months, Rev. Manning has been encouraging people to boycott Harlem businesses in an effort to protest gentrification. His goal, according to a Monday New York Times article, is to "to force businesses to close -- including those owned by blacks -- causing the neighborhood's economic rebirth to stall and, therefore, property values to decline." 

Manning is no stranger to controversy. Just watch the videos. In one video he claims "Obama is a mack daddy" and an "emissary of the devil." No, it's not an April Fool's joke. Those are the minister's own words.

"Obama pimps white women and black women....You didn't notice him until he brought out those big-chested white women with their tight t-shirts and their short pants," Rev. Manning said in one video, in an apparent reference to the "Obama girl" YouTube videos that spread without the Obama campaign's involvement or consent.

"That's what a pimp does," says Manning. "She must be a 54-D. Double D. That's what started his campaign. He put his name on two big 54-Ds...That's the first place you saw his name. That's the first place I saw it, on two great big old tits."

Accused of trashing Obama, whom he calls a "long-legged freak," Rev. Manning sees it differently. "I haven't trashed Obama. His African-in-heat father went a whoring after a trashy white woman. He was born trash."

But in the same video, Rev. Manning praises former president Bill Clinton, who he says gave Harlem $250 million to rebuild the community. He accuses African Americans of betraying the Clintons by supporting Obama.

Rev. Manning says he's "a diplomat, not a compromiser," but with sermons like that, Rev. Jeremiah Wright almost seems tame in comparison.