Notes From a Travel Diary . . .

BACK TO MISSISSIPPI

In view of what happened on my recent venture into the Bayou state (“The Professor and His Poodle,” Restoration Review, December, 1973), one might suppose that it would do just as well to stay away. But when Enos Moore wrote me of his exciting fellowship with a black church in Grenada and invited me to share in this, I could not resist the temptation. There was something about that story - a white man ministering to an all-Negro congregation in Mississippi— that intrigued me. I wanted to look in on it for myself, for I too have had some exciting experiences in a black world.

Not having seen the Moores before, finding each other at the Memphis airport was easier than could be expected. And this is one of the great delights of my busy life: meeting new brothers and sisters in the Lord. I presented Eva, a dear sister that I came to love and appreciate greatly, with a lovely pink rose in bud. As it blossomed in fragrance and beauty over the next three days it symbolized our growing friendship. I now number Enos and Eva Moore among my dearest friends, and I greatly admire them for their labor of love and their work of faith.

They both work, but are looking forward to retiring in a few years; and with their children all grown and married they are going to have lots of fun romping with their grandchildren over their large spread in Mississippi hill country. It is really something to walk in those hills with old Enos, amidst the tall timber of a dozen different kinds of trees, and talk about the Lord. We stood at the highest point in the county and viewed the great Grenada reservoir in the distance, with the longest man-made dam in the world. Below our feet was a remnant of a Confederate fort, one of the many monuments in the area to that ghastly war in which brother killed brother in the name of liberation. And there I stood with a white man who has cast his lot with a black community, ministering in the name of the Prince of Peace in the very heart of Dixie. The presence of the then and now warmed my heart, and because of this sense of history the trees seemed even taller.

And when Eva raids one of two deep freezes and comes up with vegetables grown in her own garden, lays out bacon and sausage and steak, as well as fruits and jellies and jams, not to mention cakes and pies and puddings hauled in by “the colored folk,” and when Enos tops all this off by pouring his guest a glass of homemade peach wine—it is too much, even for a Texan. It is the best of the simple life, that’s for sure.

Grenada is one of those towns known for its racial disturbances. TV brought to everyone’s livingroom across the country scenes of the local high school being burned to the ground, little black children being pushed and kicked in their attempt to attend an integrated school, and federal troops moving in to maintain law and order. One city official went to prison for stomping into the ground a citation handed him by a federal marshal, while several others were indicted. But it is still rare for a white man to get his just desert in a southern court for his racial crimes. Private schools have mushroomed in Grenada, standing as mute testimonials of the white man’s fear that his world will come crashing down upon him if his children are educated with blacks. He can’t see that in diluting the quality of education of all children, he is hurting himself, his children, his community and his state. When his sons begin to be turned away from law and medical schools for lack of quality education, it may be too late for him to tally the high cost of racial prejudice. Only about 25% of white children now attend the public schools, a figure that hardly changes from year to year.

But our black brothers in Grenada tell me that conditions have improved remarkably over the past decade. While a Negro still cannot (and for the most part would not) move into a white neighborhood, there is “approximate justice” in most areas of life. While some blacks still complain of unevenness in working conditions and opportunities, there is reasonable satisfaction in this regard. Many of the young, educated blacks are siphoned off by other parts of the country where things are more promising. One of our sisters, who is both daring and intelligent, spoke positively of the improving conditions, but probably said a great deal when she added, “But we know where we stand.” She makes it a part of her own crusade to answer the ads in the paper on houses for sale. Legally, of course, a Negro can buy anything anyone else can, but the whites simply will not negotiate with a black, and so it would take a court battle to pull off a deal, and how many Negroes are that eager to live in Golden Acres? Anyway, our sister likes to call the whites about their houses for sale, and let them sweat it out trying to figure out on the phone whether she is white or black!

Segregation is of course illogical if not insane. People can shop together, work together, and pay bills together, but they cannot study together. As Samuel Golden has put it: “It is sitting that is the problem!” There is a Grenada mother who has taken a job in order to send her older children to a private school, lest they have to be with Negroes. But to do so she has to hire someone to be with her younger children all day. You guessed it. She’s black!

In the heart of all this sits the Fox Street Church of Christ, the main-line, Herald of Truth-supporting congregation that has never had a white family in its membership until the Moores came along. Enos Moore, whose heroes in the faith are Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett, neither of which he had ever seen until lately, has been a great blessing to these dear souls, showing them the grace of God in a new dimension and inviting them to be free people in Jesus. And they love and appreciate him and Eva greatly, choosing to be themselves in the Lord rather than to be dictated to by party and racial pressures. Trusting in Enos’ judgment, they allowed me to visit with them for a weekend.

It was in bold contrast to my previous visit to Mississippi. It is amazing how Churches of Christ can be so different, and I’m not talking about color. I have never been treated with greater appreciation and love. They spoiled me with praise, applause, and embraces. One lesson was on God’s great promises that make us partakers of the divine nature. They responded with delight and enthusiasm, one brother saying to my amusement, “What I like about you is that I can understand you!” Another presentation was on what the Holy Spirit does for us today, which brought enthusiastic amens. Some of them told me they liked the way I stay with the Book. In this meeting I had the brothers who sat in the “amen corner” to do a lot of the reading. They were pleased to learn that they had “inner eyes” that the Spirit will open so that we can see deeper into the revealed Word!

Another lesson was on sanctifying Christ in our hearts as Lord, based on I Pet. 3:15, one of the great texts in the teaching of Alexander Campbell, and they readily saw the difference between believing in Jesus as the Christ and enthroning him as Lord of our lives. And since God made him “both Lord and Christ,” they showed a willingness to make him both in their lives. My last discourse was on God’s love as portrayed in the story of the prodigal son, and they cottoned to my insistence that a man has to be neither white or rich or good for God to go out and meet him and welcome him home.

A brother from another and larger black church in the state heard the lesson on the prodigal son, and he was so impressed with how this story reflects God’s love and so convinced that it is just such lessons that his own church needs to hear, that he was gung-ho for me coming to his congregation, and the sooner the better. Someone alerted him that it might spell trouble to have me around and that he had better check it out before inviting me. He was puzzled as to how I could be a controversial figure. “How can anyone cause trouble for a man who preaches the love of God like that?” he was heard to ask.

Well, the dissenters did come—Ouida calls them “the Judaizers”—even to this meeting, though whites rarely visit a black congregation in Mississippi. Nor is the reverse of that encouraged. The Fox street brethren once offered to attend a “white” singing in mass. The white brethren met to deliberate upon this grave matter, and decided that they would rope off an area of the building for the blacks. When even this was objected to, the idea was dropped, and brethren were posted at the door to make sure no Negroes entered. Needless to say that fellowship between blacks and whites does not exactly abound in Mississippi.

And not just Church of Christ folk. When the Methodist conference ruled that its Mississippi churches must integrate, the First Methodist Church in Grenada pulled out of the conference, built another building and now has an independent church. Negroes never came to the old church, but the racists couldn’t take any chances. It is just as well that such people, whether theirs or ours, have no serious intentions of going to heaven, for they quite obviously would be most uncomfortable since heaven is composed of “every tribe and language, people and nation” and not likely segregated.

As I said, the dissenters did come, and, bless their hearts, as much as I love them I can hardly understand why they must police me on my “far our” views on unity and fellowship, even to the point of being unable to talk about anything else. I had come to encourage my black brothers, and so I chose to speak on God’s love and grace, the Spirit’s mission in our lives, and the “one hope” of our faith. Our open forum was in this direction, with questions covering everything from the nature of the resurrected body to whether the Holy Spirit actually prays for us. But talk about love and grace and hope and the Holy Spirit was not interesting enough to our white brothers from the other side of the tracks. They couldn’t wait to ask me if I really believed that people in the Disciples of Christ and Christian Churches were Christians! My answers have a way of never being quite satisfactory to such minds, and I seem to improve little with time.

But the blacks are not as undiscerning as some whites might suppose. As one sister put it, commenting on that part of the forum, “I think those brothers were after somebody!” One of the brothers said, “Since they’re always gettin’ on us for supportin’ Herald of Truth, I figgered when they walked in that they was up to no good.”

Herald of Truth is not as popular in Mississippi as it was before John Allen Chalk’s prophetic outcries against racism. In Grenada it is this black church that sponsors it, not the white ones, and so they can make their own announcements. I got a bang out of sitting there before Eva’s country breakfast and listening to Batsell Barrett Baxter’s excellent presentation, followed by a detailed announcement of my meeting!

Herald of Truth has not quite recovered from John Allen’s call for social justice in such presentations as Are You Worshiping a Criminal God?, Hate Thy Neighbor, Hatred is Only Skin Deep, and Is Jehovah God a Racist? Our southern leadership flinched as he insisted that “No church can forbid the water of baptism and the fullness of fellowship to any other human being,” and when he bore down on the “idol of racism.” He deplored our failure to see “the real needs of real men in real suffering and poverty,” and pointed to love as the answer to “the power of personal involvement” that may otherwise be humanly impossible, in his presentation on Are You a Respecter of Persons?

The trip to Mississippi was enhanced by a visit from “the professor with the poodle” who drove over to be with us and to meet the Grenada folk. He reports that conditions in his congregation are now improved and that hate and reprisal are about to spend themselves, even though “the Sunday morning massacre” is still vivid. In fact, the assurance of 1 Pet. 3:16 now seems evident: “Keep your conscience clear, so that when you are abused, those who malign your Christian conduct may be put to shame.”

Well, it was a great delight going to Mississippi and building on the foundation of concern and goodwill as laid by Enos and Eva Moore. The experience was unique enough without having brought home with me a rather unusual gift—a gallon, not a quart, but a gallon of Enos’ homemade peach wine. Ouida was sampling it before the evening was over and praising it highly. Now if I can just keep her out of it somewhat, we might have some left when you come to see us.—the Editor