Dear Sisters and Brothers,

In this series of messages i plan to post several documents from my research on race relations among Churches of Christ. The Churches of Christ are a twentieth-century phenomenon, and all of this material is written after 1900. After posting this document i plan to proceed roughly in chronological order.

Today, however, i copy for your reflection a private letter dated 16 May 1968, six weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I do not have the two letters to which the author was responding. One of them had to do with a promotional advertisement for an evangelistic meeting that had designated the race of one of the participating congregations. The other letter had accompanied an article about the MLK assassination.

This letter was not intended for publication or public consumption, though i doubt that either author or recipient ever wrote anything without visualizing it in 11-on-13 Times Roman. The letter is typed from dictation--accounting for the sometimes scrambled syntax--by a secretary on the stationery of the Firm Foundation Publishing House. It has been extensively annotated and underlined by another hand, probably that of the recipient. i shall not reproduce the annotations, because i cannot now be certain of their provenance. i am working from a photocopy that i have had for almost 27 years. No, i do not remember how it came into my hands--and if i did, i probably wouldn't tell you.

Brother Gary, this letter is a window into the collective ambivalence of white Churches of Christ in 1968. MLK was six weeks dead, Marshall Keeble one month. The author of this letter is the editor of the Firm Foundation; the recipient is the speaker on the national radio program, Herald of Truth.

May 16, 1968

John Allen Chalk
Box 2439
Abilene, Texas 79604

Dear Brother Chalk:

I have been away on two meetings, and, therefore, will be able to answer your letters of April 12th written from Stillwater, and May 7th written from Abilene with one reply. It isn't often I get the opportunity to answer two letters with one reply.

Brother Chalk, I do not believe I have an ounce of racial prejudice in me. I never have. On the other hand, I am not as sensitive about some racial distinctions as some other brethren are. I do not agree with you entirely on being so careful not to make any designation of race. If I were a Negro, I think I would be proud of it, and would appreciate under certain circumstances the fact that it was pointed out. I think your view of never mentioning a Negro or a negro situation carries with it a built-in inferiority complex. I think there are certain circumstances for illustration the one you mentioned concerning the ad in the paper where it is quite legitimate to designate a Negro or negro church. There were some latin American churches mentioned, and no racial discrimination was felt. There were also some area churches mentioned, and if there had been a white church that spoke the German language as some congregations in this area do, then it would have been designated separately. It is an assumption, it seems to me, that there is something inferior about the negro race to object to those congregations that are made up of entirely people being designated as such. Of course, the San Antonio ad was the work of the brethren down there, and I ran it like they wanted it run. On the other hand, I do not mind telling you that I am in agreement with the way they ran it, and I do not feel that any segregation was intended or implied by the ad.

With respect to the article you sent me about Martin Luther King and the request that the tribute to him be run in the Firm Foundation, I will give you my views. I think you can see by the article I ran on Keeble and the space we gave to him that I certainly have no races interest at all. I did not run the King article for this reason. A lot of people wanted to compare Martin Luther King to Jesus Christ. In reality King was a modernist, and denied the faith of Jesus Christ as taught in the Bible. I do not agree with praising him either in our pulpits or our papers. If he was not an outright Communist, he certainly advocated communistic causes.

He was perhaps the chief advocate among Americans of disobedience to law and order. If he disliked the law, he had no respect for it, and felt no obligation to keep it. I do not praise this kind of people black or white. Their color has nothing to do with it.

He was outsider to Memphis, yet came with the announced intention of violating the law in Memphis. His assassin was certainly violating the law, and acting no differently than King himself. Why praise one, and damn the other? Although King labeled himself non-violent, everything he said or did was of the nature to stir people both blacks and whites into violence. Perhaps the most nauseating aspect of the ordeal was the action of the political buzzards made their bids for the negro vote by lighting on King's carcass. King's color has nothing to do with matter at all. J. Edgar Hoover branded him as a "notorious liar," and Harry Truman said he was a "trouble maker."

This kind of man black or white I simply cannot conscientiously praise in either the culpit or the press. I would come no sooner doing it if he was red, yellow, or white. I do not sympathize with the idea of making him a hero in spite of what he was simply because he was black. I believe in a true equality of men, and that a black color should neither put one at a disadvantage nor give him a decided advantage.

Yours in the Faith,

Reuel Lemmons

RL/pc

About six weeks after this letter was written, i sat knee to knee with the Rural Lemon on a bench in the fellowship hall of the Stoney Island Church of Christ in Chicago, while members of the congregation tiptoed around us. He told me that "I have never seen a racist statement from any of our brethren." A few minutes later, staring icily ahead, he asked me, "Would you want your sister to marry one?" May God have mercy on us.

dhaymes, his mark +