ACU Today - Spring 2000 "An Angry Peace"

An Angry Peace

Race and Christian Education

Several attempts to establish schools for blacks in Churches of Christ were made in the early 20th century, all of which struggled against tremendous odds. Of course, it was unthinkable that blacks would be allowed to attend the Christian colleges springing up in places like Nashville and Abilene.

S.W. Womack led the Nashville Normal, Industrial and Orphan School from 1907 to 1909 that met in the building of the Jackson Street Church of Christ. When the school was moved in 1909 to Silver Point, Tenn., G.P. Bowser and his wife served as teachers until 1918 when he resigned in exhaustion from trying to keep the school going financially.

The next year A.M. Burton, founder of the Life and Casualty Insurance Company, persuaded Bowser to return to Nashville and teach at what Burton named the Southern Practical Institute. Burton purchased land for the school and secured the services of C.E.W. Dorris, a white preacher, as superintendent. Bowser complied, but within six weeks of its opening in January 1920 the school was closed. Dorris had insisted black students enter the school building by the back door. Bowser would not tolerate such an attitude, and the students and teachers left in protest.

This points to a major difference between Bowser and Keeble. Dr. James Maxwell, vice president of Southwestern Christian College, wrote in a January 1990 Gospel Advocate article that while Keeble was loved, his accommodation to white racism was eventually rejected by many black Christians. Bowser, on the other hand, is respected among black Churches of Christ for his less compromising stand concerning racial discrimination. Bowser's Gospel Echo provided a place of expression for black frustration at the discrimination they suffered at the hands of their white sisters and brothers.

Bowser continued to do what he could to educate young black Christians in Detroit, Mich., and Fort Smith, Ark. In a 1940 article in the Firm Foundation he expressed his dismay that while there were 10 well-established white schools in the country, not one was open to blacks. Within a few months, however, this would change with the establishment of Nashville Christian Institute.

Financed by a number of white Christians, including insurance executive A.M. Burton, NCI also received support from hundreds of black Christians who gave sacrificially to make the school a reality. A.C. Holt was named the first president, and the school was accredited by the State Board of Education from its beginning.

Within three years, Marshall Keeble was named president of NCI and used his widespread speaking engagements to raise money for the school. He usually traveled with some of the young men training to be preachers, raising funds especially from white congregations. As many as 500 black preachers received Bible training at NCI during its history, and the school became a gathering place and focus of encouragement for black Christians.

Meanwhile in Texas, plans were being made to establish a black college in the Fort Worth area. By the middle of the 1940s property was purchased in Terrell, where Southwestern Christian College was established in 1950, the year of G.P. Bowser's death.

NCI, Southwestern Christian College and the Christian Echo, along with the National Lectureship begun in 1945, helped create an identity, a sense of solidarity among black Churches of Christ on the eve of one of the most significant events in American history - the Civil Rights Movement.

Churches of Christ and the Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights era began with a stunning decision in 1954 in which the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy decision of 1896. On May 17 the Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the "separate but equal" doctrine was unconstitutional. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, "segregated schools are not equal and cannot be made equal, and hence [black children] are deprived of the equal protection of the law."

This was a time of relative strength for black Churches of Christ. Yet the old racial attitudes continued to separate and subordinate black Christians. The Brown ruling and the events of the next few years would ironically drive the black and white Churches of Christ even farther apart than they had already been. When Alabama Governor George Wallace shouted at his inaugural address almost a decade later, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," many in the nation and in Churches of Christ said, "Amen."

Many older members of black Churches of Christ eyed Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement with suspicion. Yet it was a black lawyer trained at Keeble's Nashville Christian Institute who played a significant role in the fight for equality in American society.

Fred Gray grew up in the Holt Street Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala. Between 1944 and 1947 he accompanied Keeble in his travels across the country. After overcoming great obstacles to became a lawyer, he was thrust into the early events of the Civil Rights Movement.

Gray defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and prosecuted Civil Rights desegregation cases throughout the south. This made many black Christians nervous about Gray. Gray reports in his autobiographical work, "Bus Ride to Justice," that when a preacher said to Keeble, "Fred Gray is smart. He is involved in the Civil Rights Movement," Keeble replied, "He's too smart."

As was the case throughout American Christianity, white Churches of Christ in the South and in other parts of the country resisted the implications of Civil Rights legislation for their churches and schools. While there were militant segregationists in the white churches - even members of the Ku Klux Klan - the majority took the gentler approach of gradualism. We just need to go slow, they insisted. Let's not upset those who have deep-seated prejudices against blacks, but work toward a gradual change in the situation.

Many realized that this appeal to gradualism was actually a strategy to maintain segregation indefinitely. Martin Luther King had written in his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" that it was not the militant Ku Klux Klan member that was the real threat to the achievement of equal rights for black citizens. It was the white church leaders who constantly urged, "Go slow."

A few exceptions did exist in this pattern. The Stoney Island congregation in Chicago, for example, hired a black associate minister, Norman Adamson, to work with white minister Vernon Boyd in 1967 in an intentional effort to reach out to both communities in a context of equality. Such efforts were, however, few and far between.

The years 1967 and 1968 were pivotal in the history of relations between black and white Churches of Christ. Four events took place that would effectively end the paternalism of the past and seal the pattern of virtual total separation that continues largely to this day. These events were not meant to seal the division - just the opposite. Nevertheless, the result was the final creation of two separate churches divided by race.

The first was the abrupt closing of Nashville Christian Institute in 1967. The board of the school had started as an all-black group, but within a few years it was evenly divided between blacks and whites. Many of the whites also served on the board of Lipscomb University. The integration of Lipscomb, coupled with the relatively poor facilities and resources at NCI, led the board to close the school. The property was sold for more than $225,000 and the proceeds given to Lipscomb to provide scholarships for black students. The black Christians who had sacrificed for years to keep the school going and who saw it as an emotional center for the black church were shocked.

With the aid of Fred Gray, some of the alumni sued Lipscomb, hoping to use the funds for Southwestern Christian College - the only remaining black school in Churches of Christ. They lost the suit. Vernon Boyd expressed the result in his 1986 Doctor of Ministry thesis at Harding Graduate School:

Nashville Christian Institute was dear to many black Christians' hearts, and it was destroyed by leaders of the white church. The fact that it was closed against the will of so many seemed a further humiliation against the powerless blacks in a white society.

For many black Christians, this event remains a defining moment in their relation to white Churches of Christ.

The first event of 1968 was the race relations workshop hosted March 4-8 by the Schrader Lane Church of Christ in Nashville. The meeting, called by the elders and minister David Jones Jr., was the inaugural event for the congregation's new building and was planned and executed with great hope for improved relations. Eleven speakers addressed the integrated audience and pulled no punches.

Jones opened the series by attacking blacks in their acquiescence to the paternalism of the white churches. He deplored "conscience-soothing gifts" given by whites and the blacks who accepted them as "[the Negro's] meal ticket."

Another black minister, James Dennis Sr., frankly stated, "What does a Negro feel? He feels suspicion of the white man, for he has not learned to trust his word. He feels antagonistic because he is not wanted." White businessman Bud Stumbaugh asserted, "I cannot smooth over the church's ugly history of hypocrisy…one does not have to be grossly wicked to be immoral - just spineless."

He went on to accuse whites of figuratively amputating the legs of black people, then criticizing them for being crippled.

Walter E. Burch, a white businessman from New York, contended that the "shameful specter of discrimination and racial injustice implicitly sanctioned by our brotherhood…patently nullifies the claim of Churches of Christ to have restored New Testament Christianity."

Many in the Nashville white churches boycotted the meeting. But the powerful messages and the fellowship between sisters and brothers of the two races prompted forum leaders to publish the speeches in a special supplement to the Christian Chronicle dated May 10, 1968. It was a momentous occasion, but it was in the words of organizers "only a small beginning." How things developed subsequently would be the crucial test of its true significance.

The second event of that year was the publication of the July issue of 20th Century Christian. A special issue on "Christ and Race Relations" co-edited by Burch (white) and Eugene Lawton (black), it was a bold move for this widely-circulated magazine. At the Nashville workshop Bud Stumbaugh had asserted that if future historians were to read the pamphlets, papers and magazines published by Churches of Christ during this era, "they would not be able to discern that America even had a racial problem in the middle years of the 20th century." With this issue of 20th Century Christian, that could no longer be said.

In a private letter written in 1979, Burch characterized the issue's publication as "a miracle somewhat akin to the parting of the Red Sea." In approving the initial idea, Bill Banowsky charged the two guest editors to freely explore the biblical teaching, but "not [to] encourage any deeper antagonisms." The magazine's printer resisted the effort right down until press time.

The issue carried frank and confrontational articles attacking racism in Churches of Christ. Clyde Muse exposed "Racism in the Church." Jennings Davis contended that "It is Time to Confess Our Sins." John Allen Chalk wrote of "Total Equality in Christ," and Roosevelt Wells of "The Contradiction of Racist Christianity." Again, the effort was a sign of hope to many. However, others in Churches of Christ seemed to think differently. According to one report, the magazine lost half its subscribers because of the issue.

The third event of 1968 was the Atlanta Conference on Race Relations held June 25-26 and called by black leaders Eugene Lawton and Roosevelt Wells and white leader Jimmy Allen. It was a bold move for Allen, for he risked being identified with "the liberals" on this issue. Andrew Hairston of Atlanta hosted the meeting and delivered an eloquent address titled "Spiritual Equality in Christ." Forty-seven leaders attended including ministers, college presidents and journal editors.

At the end of the meeting a statement was produced acknowledging the sin of racial prejudice in Churches of Christ and church-related institutions and businesses.

It set out specific guidelines to remedy the evil in congregations, schools, Herald of Truth, publishing houses and Christian-owned businesses. Twelve of the 47 present refused to sign.

The events of these two years showed deep division in the midst of high expectations. Our schools had been integrated. A beginning had been made in admitting the evil of segregation and racism. But the potential seen in those meetings and publications was simply not realized. Racism and segregation remained the norm, and the black church leaders who had cautiously participated in the efforts, saw that their white sisters and brother were, for the most part, not going to change.

In a 1968 article in the Christian Chronicle, Jack Evans declared that many in the black churches were "ready to exchange servility and dependence for independence and, if need be, estrangement." The die was cast for another generation, and the two fellowships went their separate ways. The hurts and the suspicions and the anger remained because the sin remained. An angry peace existed between the two churches.

Next Page >>

'The Right Thing to Do' An Angry Peace 1 - 2 - 3 Institutional Progress has been Slow but Steady

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Last Update: July 7, 2000
Page maintained by Jeremy Parish, parishj@acu.edu
Questions to Ron Hadfield, hadfieldr@acu.edu
http://www.acu.edu/acu-today/spring2000/cover02.html


		An Angry Peace Race and Christian Education Several attempts to establish schools for blacks in Churches of Christ were made in the early 20th century, all of which struggled against tremendous odds. Of course, it was unthinkable that blacks would be allowed to attend the Christian colleges springing up in places like Nashville and Abilene. S.W. Womack led the Nashville Normal, Industrial and Orphan School from 1907 to 1909 that met in the building of the Jackson Street Church of Christ. When the school was moved in 1909 to Silver Point, Tenn., G.P. Bowser and his wife served as teachers until 1918 when he resigned in exhaustion from trying to keep the school going financially. The next year A.M. Burton, founder of the Life and Casualty Insurance Company, persuaded Bowser to return to Nashville and teach at what Burton named the Southern Practical Institute. Burton purchased land for the school and secured the services of C.E.W. Dorris, a white preacher, as superintendent. Bowser complied, but within six weeks of its opening in January 1920 the school was closed. Dorris had insisted black students enter the school building by the back door. Bowser would not tolerate such an attitude, and the students and teachers left in protest. This points to a major difference between Bowser and Keeble. Dr. James Maxwell, vice president of Southwestern Christian College, wrote in a January 1990 Gospel Advocate article that while Keeble was loved, his accommodation to white racism was eventually rejected by many black Christians. Bowser, on the other hand, is respected among black Churches of Christ for his less compromising stand concerning racial discrimination. Bowser's Gospel Echo provided a place of expression for black frustration at the discrimination they suffered at the hands of their white sisters and brothers. Bowser continued to do what he could to educate young black Christians in Detroit, Mich., and Fort Smith, Ark. In a 1940 article in the Firm Foundation he expressed his dismay that while there were 10 well-established white schools in the country, not one was open to blacks. Within a few months, however, this would change with the establishment of Nashville Christian Institute. Financed by a number of white Christians, including insurance executive A.M. Burton, NCI also received support from hundreds of black Christians who gave sacrificially to make the school a reality. A.C. Holt was named the first president, and the school was accredited by the State Board of Education from its beginning. Within three years, Marshall Keeble was named president of NCI and used his widespread speaking engagements to raise money for the school. He usually traveled with some of the young men training to be preachers, raising funds especially from white congregations. As many as 500 black preachers received Bible training at NCI during its history, and the school became a gathering place and focus of encouragement for black Christians. Meanwhile in Texas, plans were being made to establish a black college in the Fort Worth area. By the middle of the 1940s property was purchased in Terrell, where Southwestern Christian College was established in 1950, the year of G.P. Bowser's death. NCI, Southwestern Christian College and the Christian Echo, along with the National Lectureship begun in 1945, helped create an identity, a sense of solidarity among black Churches of Christ on the eve of one of the most significant events in American history - the Civil Rights Movement. Churches of Christ and the Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights era began with a stunning decision in 1954 in which the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy decision of 1896. On May 17 the Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the "separate but equal" doctrine was unconstitutional. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, "segregated schools are not equal and cannot be made equal, and hence [black children] are deprived of the equal protection of the law." This was a time of relative strength for black Churches of Christ. Yet the old racial attitudes continued to separate and subordinate black Christians. The Brown ruling and the events of the next few years would ironically drive the black and white Churches of Christ even farther apart than they had already been. When Alabama Governor George Wallace shouted at his inaugural address almost a decade later, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," many in the nation and in Churches of Christ said, "Amen." Many older members of black Churches of Christ eyed Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement with suspicion. Yet it was a black lawyer trained at Keeble's Nashville Christian Institute who played a significant role in the fight for equality in American society. Fred Gray grew up in the Holt Street Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala. Between 1944 and 1947 he accompanied Keeble in his travels across the country. After overcoming great obstacles to became a lawyer, he was thrust into the early events of the Civil Rights Movement. Gray defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and prosecuted Civil Rights desegregation cases throughout the south. This made many black Christians nervous about Gray. Gray reports in his autobiographical work, "Bus Ride to Justice," that when a preacher said to Keeble, "Fred Gray is smart. He is involved in the Civil Rights Movement," Keeble replied, "He's too smart." As was the case throughout American Christianity, white Churches of Christ in the South and in other parts of the country resisted the implications of Civil Rights legislation for their churches and schools. While there were militant segregationists in the white churches - even members of the Ku Klux Klan - the majority took the gentler approach of gradualism. We just need to go slow, they insisted. Let's not upset those who have deep-seated prejudices against blacks, but work toward a gradual change in the situation. Many realized that this appeal to gradualism was actually a strategy to maintain segregation indefinitely. Martin Luther King had written in his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" that it was not the militant Ku Klux Klan member that was the real threat to the achievement of equal rights for black citizens. It was the white church leaders who constantly urged, "Go slow." A few exceptions did exist in this pattern. The Stoney Island congregation in Chicago, for example, hired a black associate minister, Norman Adamson, to work with white minister Vernon Boyd in 1967 in an intentional effort to reach out to both communities in a context of equality. Such efforts were, however, few and far between. The years 1967 and 1968 were pivotal in the history of relations between black and white Churches of Christ. Four events took place that would effectively end the paternalism of the past and seal the pattern of virtual total separation that continues largely to this day. These events were not meant to seal the division - just the opposite. Nevertheless, the result was the final creation of two separate churches divided by race. The first was the abrupt closing of Nashville Christian Institute in 1967. The board of the school had started as an all-black group, but within a few years it was evenly divided between blacks and whites. Many of the whites also served on the board of Lipscomb University. The integration of Lipscomb, coupled with the relatively poor facilities and resources at NCI, led the board to close the school. The property was sold for more than $225,000 and the proceeds given to Lipscomb to provide scholarships for black students. The black Christians who had sacrificed for years to keep the school going and who saw it as an emotional center for the black church were shocked. With the aid of Fred Gray, some of the alumni sued Lipscomb, hoping to use the funds for Southwestern Christian College - the only remaining black school in Churches of Christ. They lost the suit. Vernon Boyd expressed the result in his 1986 Doctor of Ministry thesis at Harding Graduate School: Nashville Christian Institute was dear to many black Christians' hearts, and it was destroyed by leaders of the white church. The fact that it was closed against the will of so many seemed a further humiliation against the powerless blacks in a white society. For many black Christians, this event remains a defining moment in their relation to white Churches of Christ. The first event of 1968 was the race relations workshop hosted March 4-8 by the Schrader Lane Church of Christ in Nashville. The meeting, called by the elders and minister David Jones Jr., was the inaugural event for the congregation's new building and was planned and executed with great hope for improved relations. Eleven speakers addressed the integrated audience and pulled no punches. Jones opened the series by attacking blacks in their acquiescence to the paternalism of the white churches. He deplored "conscience-soothing gifts" given by whites and the blacks who accepted them as "[the Negro's] meal ticket." Another black minister, James Dennis Sr., frankly stated, "What does a Negro feel? He feels suspicion of the white man, for he has not learned to trust his word. He feels antagonistic because he is not wanted." White businessman Bud Stumbaugh asserted, "I cannot smooth over the church's ugly history of hypocrisy…one does not have to be grossly wicked to be immoral - just spineless." He went on to accuse whites of figuratively amputating the legs of black people, then criticizing them for being crippled. Walter E. Burch, a white businessman from New York, contended that the "shameful specter of discrimination and racial injustice implicitly sanctioned by our brotherhood…patently nullifies the claim of Churches of Christ to have restored New Testament Christianity." Many in the Nashville white churches boycotted the meeting. But the powerful messages and the fellowship between sisters and brothers of the two races prompted forum leaders to publish the speeches in a special supplement to the Christian Chronicle dated May 10, 1968. It was a momentous occasion, but it was in the words of organizers "only a small beginning." How things developed subsequently would be the crucial test of its true significance. The second event of that year was the publication of the July issue of 20th Century Christian. A special issue on "Christ and Race Relations" co-edited by Burch (white) and Eugene Lawton (black), it was a bold move for this widely-circulated magazine. At the Nashville workshop Bud Stumbaugh had asserted that if future historians were to read the pamphlets, papers and magazines published by Churches of Christ during this era, "they would not be able to discern that America even had a racial problem in the middle years of the 20th century." With this issue of 20th Century Christian, that could no longer be said. In a private letter written in 1979, Burch characterized the issue's publication as "a miracle somewhat akin to the parting of the Red Sea." In approving the initial idea, Bill Banowsky charged the two guest editors to freely explore the biblical teaching, but "not [to] encourage any deeper antagonisms." The magazine's printer resisted the effort right down until press time. The issue carried frank and confrontational articles attacking racism in Churches of Christ. Clyde Muse exposed "Racism in the Church." Jennings Davis contended that "It is Time to Confess Our Sins." John Allen Chalk wrote of "Total Equality in Christ," and Roosevelt Wells of "The Contradiction of Racist Christianity." Again, the effort was a sign of hope to many. However, others in Churches of Christ seemed to think differently. According to one report, the magazine lost half its subscribers because of the issue. The third event of 1968 was the Atlanta Conference on Race Relations held June 25-26 and called by black leaders Eugene Lawton and Roosevelt Wells and white leader Jimmy Allen. It was a bold move for Allen, for he risked being identified with "the liberals" on this issue. Andrew Hairston of Atlanta hosted the meeting and delivered an eloquent address titled "Spiritual Equality in Christ." Forty-seven leaders attended including ministers, college presidents and journal editors. At the end of the meeting a statement was produced acknowledging the sin of racial prejudice in Churches of Christ and church-related institutions and businesses. It set out specific guidelines to remedy the evil in congregations, schools, Herald of Truth, publishing houses and Christian-owned businesses. Twelve of the 47 present refused to sign. The events of these two years showed deep division in the midst of high expectations. Our schools had been integrated. A beginning had been made in admitting the evil of segregation and racism. But the potential seen in those meetings and publications was simply not realized. Racism and segregation remained the norm, and the black church leaders who had cautiously participated in the efforts, saw that their white sisters and brother were, for the most part, not going to change. In a 1968 article in the Christian Chronicle, Jack Evans declared that many in the black churches were "ready to exchange servility and dependence for independence and, if need be, estrangement." The die was cast for another generation, and the two fellowships went their separate ways. The hurts and the suspicions and the anger remained because the sin remained. An angry peace existed between the two churches. Next Page >> 'The Right Thing to Do' An Angry Peace 1 - 2 - 3 Institutional Progress has been Slow but Steady

		News \| Sports \| Hilltop View \| Second Glance Back Issues \| Feedback \| Alumni Bookcase \| Tipsheet \| Our Staff .
		Last Update: July 7, 2000 Page maintained by Jeremy Parish, parishj@acu.edu Questions to Ron Hadfield, hadfieldr@acu.edu http://www.acu.edu/acu-today/spring2000/cover02.html