Religious Ideas of the Segregationists

Journal of American Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 237-262

  Chappell, David L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85012459459     PISSN: 00218758     EISSN: 14695154     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002187589800588X     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. On slaveholders’ ideology and its religious underpinnings, see William Sumner Jenkins, Proslavery Thought in the Old South (1934; reprint, New York: Peter Smith, 1960), and four books by Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made (New York: Pantheon, 1969), The Slaveholders’ Dilemma (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), The Southern Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1994), and The Southern Front (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995). Larry Tise, Proslavery Ideology in America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), and James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Knopf, 1982), each offer challenges to the Genovese view. E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentlemen Theologians (Durham: Duke University Press, 1978), and Donald Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), are both profound on the religious context of proslavery thought, on which see also note 10, below.
2. See H. H. Hyman and P. B. Sheatsley, “ Attitudes toward Desegregation,” Scientific American, 195 (December 1956), 35-39.
3. Dr. Medford Evans, “A Methodist Declaration of Conscience on Racial Segregation,” The Citizen, January 1963, 10-13.
4. See Jenkins, Proslavery Thought, Ch. V, and see note 10, below.
5. Richard King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford, 1992).
6. George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society (Richmond: A. Morris, 1854), 98; see also 93-95, 102-04. See also Thornton Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery (4th edn, Richmond: J. W. Randolph, 1856). On the use of the Curse of Ham in antebellum racist arguments, see George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind (1971; reprint, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 88-89.
7. Bill Leonard's extensive research into fundamentalist propaganda in the 1950s-70s shows that fundamentalist leaders were often brazenly racist in their public statements. But his evidence never shows that the fundamentalists had a biblical, or even a theological, argument for segregation. Bill Leonard, “A Theology for Racism: Southern Fundamentalists and the Civil Rights Movement,” in Tony Badger et al., eds., Southern Landscapes (Tubingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1996), 165-81. Like most historians, Leonard works on the issue of racism, rather than the self-conscious defense of historically and geographically specific institutions - like disfranchisement and legal segregation. The trouble with this approach is that racism is evident among Christians and non-Christians, northern and southern, fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist, black and white, even among civil rights advocates, before, during, and after the Second Reconstruction. I am focussing on propaganda and beliefs that are relevant to the specific challenge to and eventual destruction of southern segregation and disfranchisement in the 1950s and 1960s - not on racism in general.
8. “A Manual for Southerners,” The Citizens’ Council, 2 (March 1957).
9. The Revd G. T. Gillespie, DD, “A Christian View on Segregation,” Reprint of an Address, 1954 Nov. 4 (reproduced and circulated by the Citizens’ Council, Jackson, Mississippi), in Citizens’ Council of America Literature collection, Special Collections department, Mullins Library, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, ser. v, box 146, and in naacp Papers, Library of Congress, ser. iii.a, box 282. A briefer and somewhat less coherent argument using the same Old Testament references appears in Christian Battle Cry, 1 (April 1956), copy in naacp Papers, Library of Congress, ser. iii.i, box 21.
10. See Charles J. Bloch, States’ Rights : the Law of the Land (Atlanta : Harrison, 1958), and David L. Chappell, “The Divided Mind of Southern Segregationists,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 82 (Spring 1998), 9, 18-19.
11. The Montgomery (Alabama) County Citizens’ Council, noting that integrationists probably consider white churches “ the softest spot to work in,” challenged “any preacher to quote from the Bible, a passage actually calling for integration.” It added, “We know of several calling for segregation. (Observe masthead).” The masthead carried two slogans : “ Preserve states’ rights in America,” and “Read Book of Ezra chapters 9-10.” Though those chapters do condemn the interbreeding of various tribes of Israelites with non-Jews, they form a remarkable catalog of the vastness of such interbreeding; at any rate, Ezra says nothing about race or other biological distinctions. Since black and white southerners were both Christians - most of them evangelical Christians at that, who distinguished themselves by emphasizing above all the openness of the community to converts - the parallel between an exclusive tribalism and their religion is hard to find. Not surprisingly, this tract does not attempt to draw such a parallel, rather (like most segregationist tracts) it avoids biblical details as much as possible and moves on to other sources of authority. States’ Rights Advocate (28 June 1956), 1, in naacp Papers, ser. iii.a, box 282. For examples of segregationist despair over the Bible's usefulness, see Carl McIntyre, DD, “A New God for the Space Age,” Right : The Journal of Forward-Looking American Nationalism, 44 (May 1959), and E. H. Gunnerson's 2-page leaflet on the Bible, dated 20 March 1956, in naacp papers, ser. iii.a, box 151.
12. In addition to the examples below, see the argument of J. Bruce Henderson, a businessman from Prairie, Alabama, rejecting the view of “some of our ministers, educators, politicians and misguided laymen” that Christians and citizens have a moral duty to promote integration. For Henderson, statistical evidence (on crime, illegitimacy, and venereal disease rates in integrated states and among Negroes) was enough to refute this view. Henderson to John Bartlow Martin, 9 July 1957, Martin Papers, Library of Congress, box 158, f. 7.
13. King, “ Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can't Wait (1963; reprint, New York: Signet Books, 1964), 76-95 (quotation on p. 90).
14. The Revd Albert H. Freundt, “Oxford Clergy Wrong in Calling for ‘Repentance’ ! ” The Citizen, October 1962, 5. Several segregationist clergymen stress this point in T. Robert Ingram, ed., Essays on Segregation (Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1960).
15. D. M. Nelson, letter in The Citizens’ Council, October 1955.
16. Oldham made a perfunctory reference to the curse of Ham, but no other references to the Bible.
17. Another example of failing to concentrate their fire is in the advertisement that appeared in The Citizens’ Council of July 1957, for two pamphlets by the Revd Carey Daniel, “God The Segregationist,” and its “ sequel,” “ Segregation's Archenemy: Hiss’ United Nations.” Daniel was Pastor of the First Baptist Church of West Dallas, Texas (an sbc affiliate) and executive vp of the Dallas Citizens’ Council. The United Nations was a frequent target of nationalist groups, who resented efforts to create “one world,” which they often likened to efforts to create “one race.”
18. “A Manual for Southerners,” The Citizens’ Council, 2 (February 1957).
19. “Manual for Southerners,” Sec. II, pt. 5, for 5th and 6th graders, The Citizens’ Council, (August 1957). There are no other Bible references in the “Manual” for 5th and 6th graders.
20. Citizens’ Council, 2 (July 1957).
21. The Citizens’ Council, 2 (July 1956).
22. See, for example, The Citizens’ Council, 3 (Nov. 1958).
23. The Citizens’ Council, 3 (April 1958).
24. The Citizens’ Council, 3 (May 1958). On Karpov's actual role, see William C. Fletcher, Nikolai: Portrait of a Dilemma (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 6, 51, 151-52, 193. Karpov was an agent of the secret police, according to Fletcher, but actually won some autonomy for the church under Stalin.
25. The Citizens’ Council, 4 (October 1958), and The Citizens’ Council, 2 (December 1956).
26. The Citizens’ Council, 1 (March 1956).
27. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is complete hogwash.
28. Harris quoted in Time, 7 April 1961.
29. Workman, The Case for the South (New York: Devin-Adair, 1960), 109.
30. Harris quoted in Atlanta Constitution, 3 Feb. 1960.
31. Putnam in the Jackson Daily News, 27 Oct. 1961, and Jackson State Times, 27 Oct. 1961. In an earlier statement, Putnam had denounced the Catholic Bishops’ statement that “ segregation cannot be reconciled with the Christian view of our fellow man” in November 1958. In a letter to Cardinal Spellman, Putnam said the Bishops were accessories to a “crime against the South.” The Citizens’ Council, 4 (December 1958). The Citizens’ Councils duly reported the statements of local, regional, and national religious bodies in support of the Brown decision, apparently in the belief that the statements would shock readers into defiance. The American States Right Association distributed to its readers an article by Angus H. McGregor, “Has the Methodist Church Gone Mad?” Memorandum to Members, 14 April 1955, in National States Rights Association Papers, file 416.1.2.1.15, Birmingham Public Library. “ I am disgusted with the stand that the preachers have taken,” one of Bull Connor's supporters wrote him, praising the leadership he had shown. C. B. Gambrell to Connor, 24 Jan. 1963, and Connor to Gambrell, 25 Jan. 1963, in Bull Connor Papers, file 14-51. In the same vein, Homer H. Hyde, “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them,” American Mercury (Summer 1962), 35-39, asserted that the communists had infiltrated the churches and gotten them to support or at least not fight desegregation. In Bull Connor Papers, file 10-27, Birmingham Public Library.