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WA Criswell 1956 Segregation Speech to the South Carolina Legislature NOTICE: This printed version from the pamphlet appears to be a sanitized speech. It isn’t known whether it is a sanitized version of what he said to the South Carolina legislature or whether the speech that Criswell gave to the South Carolina legislature was version sanitized by himself of the speech he gave to the Southern Baptists Conference the day before. For example, the use of the term “chiggers” isn’t in this speech. A printed copy of the version given to the Baptist Conference doesn’t seme to exist, however, lengthy extracts were printed. The extracts from Criswell’s speech to the Southern Baptist Conference will be in an appendix at the end of this paper. This is an exact copy, even the errors in the text are copied without correction.
[Cover of pamphlet] An Address by Dr. W.A. Criswell Pastor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas to the Joint Assembly Wednesday, February 22, 1956 12:30 P.M.
[Title Page]
An Address by Dr. W.A. Criswell Pastor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas to the
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Joint Assembly Wednesday, February 22, 1956 12:30 P.M.
[Unpaginated Page 3 starts here.] Governor Timmerman, the Members of this Legislative Assembly: You, yourself, know how surprised I am to be here today, I have just finished speaking at the closing session of the State Evangelistic Conference of our denomination in South Carolina and I have come here without even having the opportunity to catch my breath, but it was a signal honor to come and I could do no other thing than to accept the Governor’s and your gracious invitation, and if I don’t address you right or begin right, why, you charge it up to gross, unadulterated, unmitigated ignorance. I just don’t know how to do any better! Now, our folks where we are, are like the folks where you are, though we’re divided by the Mississippi River and by several hundreds of miles. My grandpap and my greatgrandpap fought in the Confederate Army—one of them on my mother’s side and one on my father’s side. And I knew them as a boy, and to this day I’ll refuse to believe that any Yankee I have ever seen whipped either one of my grandpaps. I don’t believe they did. I’m like that fellow who said that there was a mistake made at Appomattox Court House. It wasn’t General Lee that surrendered his sword to General Grant, but it was General Grant who surrendered his sword to General Lee; and General Lee was too much a gentleman to call the attention of the press to the mistake. Well, I am also glad not only to be a Southern but I am glad to be a Southern Baptist. You know Paul was a Southern—he was a Southern Baptist. All the though those letters in the Bible he says “you all—y’all”. That’s in the Bible. Now, he wasn’t a South Carolinian Baptist for he also said, “I have learned that in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” He wasn’t a Palmettoian but he was a glorious exponent of the gospel of Christ. Now for just a moment—the occasion of this invitation. I came over here to preach to the State Evangelistic Conference held in the First Baptist Church in this city—a yearly convocation of the Baptist ministers of South Carolina. This is the third year that I have done that. I came on Monday when I was to begin speaking on Tuesday and I happened to be in a little group. And as I listened to the conversation of that little group, just a
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little informal gathering, around a lunch counter, why, they began to say things like this; “Now this thing of desegregation, and this thing of integration, now we are not to mention that, we are not to speak of that.” And I thought: Well! Isn’t it a strange come to pass that a minister of the gospel of the Son of God, whose forebears and predecessors were martyrs and were [Page 4 starts here in the pamphlet.] burned at the stake, isn’t it a strange come to pass in our day and in our generation— why the minister is cowardly to circumvent any issue such as that. Well, I just decided I’d no preparation, no plan to speak on any such thing at all, but I just decided when time came for me to speak I would say some things that are in my soul and in my heart about that. And I did. And that was the occasion of this invitation here this noontide. Now, for just a moment, may I say a word about that. There are people, there are people—they are not our folks. They are not our kind. They are not our strip. They don’t belong to the same world in which we live. I mean that in many categories, lots of categories, American categories, spiritual categories, democratic categories, most every category that I am proud to belong to. There are people who are trying to force upon us a situation and a thing that is a denial of all that we believe in: the cultural life, the social background, the spiritual life in which we are really not children and to which our families belong. Now, in saying these things we have malice towards none. We don’t look down on any race or any creed or any church or any people, nor are we setting ourselves apart, as being better than anybody else. It is just this—that one of the glories of a democratic society, we can choose the mates that share with use the building of our homes. We can choose our lives. It’s a free country. It’s a free nation and that thing of … They don’t like the word of segregation—but call it that—that thing enters all of the realms of our lives, and there is no escaping from it if a man has the liberty of choice. For example, our daughter—we try to rear her in a segregated life. Now, I’m not talking about just colored people. I’m talking about the whole character of her upbringing. We try to segregate her from people that are iniquitous and vile and dirty and low down. We try to throw her in certain groups. We try to pull her away from still other groups. Not that we are trying to be prudish. We are not cads. We don’t feel ourselves better than anybody else. It is just the privilege of a father and mother. We have a child, one daughter, and we are trying to throw around her friends that will be a blessing to her and a blessing to us. Now, that same thing happens in our homes. We have a home, but I don’t go down anybody’s street and say, “I’m a great commoner, I’m a great democrat. All of you come into my house and into my home.” Maybe I should, but I wouldn’t have a home if I did. A home is a man’s castle. Those four walls around him—the word for it if you want to say it—they’re segregated in there—my wife, my daughter, my mother-in-law, who lives with us. We have a home.
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[Page 5] We’re not against anybody else. We’re just there in that home and we invite certain ones in there; and others we do not, not that we hate or despise them. We just love some of them and there are in our home. And our home is built upon that; that a man has a right of choice. He can bring into that house a woman—he can’t bring just everybody—any woman. Yes, but I don’t believe in segregation. I believe in being promiscuous then? Oh no, oh no. You choose and you build a home with a woman and the children and the friends you invite. Now the same thing is with my religion. I’m not looking for the Bishop in Dallas of the Sacred Heart Cathedral which is right over their from me—I’m not looking for that Bishop to come down the aisle at the First Baptist Church in Dallas and shake my hand and say, “Brother, we are going to desegregate. All of us Catholics are coming over there with you and we want you to come with us and we’re going to do away with all these segregated church ecclesiastical lines. All of us are going to be together. Why, he’s not going down that aisle and give his life to a Baptist way of serving God. And that’s not but half of it. I’m not going down to the Sacred Heart Cathedral and bow myself before what I call his images. I’m not going to do it. I don’t hate that Catholic Bishop as such, nor his flock, nor his people. All I say to him is this: Your Honor and Your Grace, right over there you take your people, and you take your flock, and all them who are of your persuasion and you worship God as you feel in your heart you should, as your conscience dictates, and, Bishop, I’ll gather my folks and I’ll gather my kind, and kin, and ilk, and tribe and communion, and faith and congregation. We’ll be here on this corner and we’ll be singing and working and preaching and praising God according to the good old Southern Baptist way. And we’ll get along fine and be friends—you over their swinging incense pots and bowing down and going through that litany which is the way he wants to do and I over there in my church, shouting so loud and preaching so loud you can hear me five miles away, having a great time, all of us doing what we want to do. That’s America. That’s freedom. That’s a spiritual democracy. All right, the same thing obtains with regards to our church and our colored people. I don’t hate the Catholics. I don’t hate a colored man. I don’t look down on a Catholic. I don’t look down on a colored man. I don’t feel that way about it. I wasn’t raised, I wasn’t brought up to feel that way about it. They never taught me that I as such was better than anybody else. I was just brought up like this and this is the kind of church we have. Down there in the heart of our city of Dallas is located this great First Baptist Church, a tremendous church. We don’t have nine thousand members, Governor, we’ve got twelve thousand, and I [Page 6]
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tell you, it’s growing, that is twelve thousand when I left. It maybe twelve thousand five hundred now. It’s a sight the way that church is growing. It’s a great congregation of people. It’s a wonderful congregation of people. Now, right there from our First Baptist Church, right there, oh, five blocks, something like that, is the Good Street Baptist Church, colored, and they have a marvelous congregation and a gifted preacher, and there they are. Now right here from our First Baptist Church, a little closer is the New Hope Baptist Church, colored, a little congregation, a smaller one, but very much given unto the service and ministry of Christ. And right over there, further away from us, oh, I’d say a mile and a half, something like that, is the St. John’s Baptist Church, colored. Now you haven’t seen any church until you go to the St. John’s Baptist Church, colored. Man, the pastor of the St. John’s Baptist Church rides around in a long, sleek black Cadillac. That’s more than I can do unless you come and join me and hist my salary more than it is now. Why, he rides around in style with his family and when they go to church they dress beautifully, you know with gloves. And they’ve got decorum and dignity, and I don’t know what all they’ve got in that St. John’s Baptist Church, colored. Brother, it’s something, it’s something. Now, what I say to my brethren is this: Why under Heaven’s name am I an outcast and a renegade, why am I a dirty louse, why am I un-American or undemocratic, or unspiritual or ungodly, or un-anything else that they are trying to call me when I say, now look here, you blessed colored friends of mine, you come down here in our church, you won’t like it. Why, men, you couldn’t excel in our group; you couldn’t be a leader in our congregation. And my dear Mrs. Colored-Wife, you couldn’t be a Sunday School teacher or a president of our Women’s Union here in our congregation. And these children, they’d grow up all their lives not integrated into this group and for you to come down here with us is a violation of your privilege and your responsibilities as a family, and as a people of God. Now this is what you do. You go right over there to that Good Street Baptist Church. You join that church or that little New Hope Baptist Church or, if you’ve got the wherewithal, you join the St. John’s Baptist Church. You go over there; yes, sir, and if you go over there, you can be a deacon in that church, and if God calls you to be a preacher, you can be the pastor of that church. And this wonderful colored woman here, this fine christian wife, she can be president of the Missionary Society. She can teach a fine Woman’s Sunday School class. And these blessed children, they can grow up and they’ll have power in the Lord. They’ll express themselves within their group, they are in their social stratum, they’re among their kind. They will like it and they will prosper in the Lord. And so they go there and they sing their way. I’d like to be able to sing like those colored folk [Page 7] sing. I just can’t do it. And my folks can’t do it and my choir can’t do it. I tell them to sing a Negro spiritual for me, why you never heard such sorry Negro spiritual singing in your life. They can’t do it. But they can over there at that colored folks church. Theygot lots of things over there at that colored folks church I wish I had. I’ve never seen a white
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preacher in my life that can preach like an honest-to-goodness, old-time, old-fashioned, colored preacher. Down in South Carolina, let me tell you that, why they set my soul afire, some of them. But it is better for them to be over there in their way, in their church, with their preacher, carrying on as they like to do, and then I’m over here with my flock and my kind and we are carrying on like we want to do; and everything is just fine. Who said it wasn’t fine? I’ll tell you who said it wasn’t fine. It’s some of those twoby scantling, good-for-nothing fellows who are trying to upset all of the things that we love as good old Southern people and as good old Southern Baptists. They are not our kind, I say. They don’t know us, and I’m glad. Let them stay where they are, wherever they are, but leave us alone. We get along fine. We are not having any trouble. We are not having any trouble at all. We are just getting long the best you ever saw in your world. I have no trouble at all, none at all. Now I want to say something personal and then I am done. Then, I’m through. What is the thing that lies back of this pulling apart? Some of us are here, some of us are there, and some of us are yonder, and some of us are there, and it’s not just on racial lines. It’s just on every king of line and color and complex that you can think—our people getting together. I’ll just mention a few of them here. This is what lies back of it. Listen to me. There are some things you can be broad and liberal and open about and it doesn’t matter. Who walks down Main Street? Oh, it doesn’t matter who walks down Main Street. Who trades in that store? Why, it doesn’t matter who trades in that store. Who is building this great State House? It just doesn’t matter who is building this State House. It doesn’t matter at all. Those things are general. They belong to the body politic. It doesn’t matter at all. But there are some things that get way down on the inside of us. And there are some of those things. Whom are you going to marry? That’s so personal. And that daughter of yours, and I can’t get that out of my mind, because we’ve just got one child. Whom is she going to marry? Those things are personal. All right, you listen to me. Wherever you cross over those social lines, wherever you cross over those social lines, that’s going to get into your family. “Aw, preacher, they say, we’re all going to be brothers and not brothers-in-law.” I have a great friend who’s a federal judge in New York, and he said to me within a week, [Page 8] he said: “There were more than a thousand marriages last year in the state of New York between white and colored people.” And I happen to know a Baptist pastor up there that has lost his church because he said, “I’ll favor desegregation and all the young people being together in my church.” And, lo and behold, the thing happened immediately. One of his young men, white, fell in love with one of the young girls, colored, and when they had the wedding in the church, it blasted the church wide open—up there in the North, yes, sir.
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Some of these things are personal. Some of them belong to the inside of your heart and your soul. They belong inside your family. Whenever you cross them over, whenever you cross them over, you’re going to get into all kinds of trouble. I want my girl to be thrown with a certain kind of boy—you know what kind I’d want. I don’t want one that gambles and drinks and carouses and cusses. I’m segregating her all I can. I’m trying to put around her the friends that are like we are, of the pastor’s home, and for her to marry and fall in love with a boy like that, because she’s not going to fall in love with a she doesn’t know. She’s going to fall in love with a boy she knows and goes with. And that’s human nature. You’re going to build your home out of stuff that’s around you. And it’s a whale of a lot better for us to place our families and our young people and our children around groups like we are. I’ll tell you another thing if I could be blatant about it. One of the worst problems I have found is for a Baptist to marry a Catholic. And I inveigh against it, all of the time. If you are a Catholic marry in your communion and if you are a Baptist, marry in your communion. It is better that way. You’ll be happier. You’ll have a greater opportunity for success in your home life and in your family. But when you start crossing over, you are going to meet lots of trouble. Now that’s the reason that we have our homes, and we have our families and we have our friends, and we have our groups. We build our lives according to those deep intimacies, some of which you don’t even talk about publicly. They’re so precious and so dear. Now that’s what I covet for all of America. If you want this group, or that group, or that group, or that group, brother, it’s a free country. If I want my group, let me have it. Let me have it. Don’t force me by law, by statue, by Supreme Court decision, by any way that they can think of, don’t force me to cross over in those intimate things where I don’t want to go. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my family. And what you give to me, give to every man in America and keep it like our glorious fore-fathers made it—a land of the free and the home of the brave. From newspaper reports of the speech before the Conference of Southern Baptist minsters on Feb. 21, 1956 in South Carolina. From The State, “Baptist Leader Blasts Integration as ‘Idiocy,’” Feb. 22, 1956, Wednesday, page 1 and 3. [Page 1] [1st Column] “But this thing they are trying to ram down our throats now is all foolishness; it is idiocy,” he declared emphatically.
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[2nd Column] “And they teach that spurious doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man—which is a denial of everything in the Bible.” [Page 3] [2nd Column.] “Why the NAACP has got those East Texans on the run so much that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer; it has to be ‘cheegro.’”