Awakening to Equality: A Young White Pastor at the Dawn of Civil Rights

Awakening to Equality

Awakening to Equality A Young White Pastor at the Dawn of Civil Rights

Karl E. Lutze UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS COLUMBIA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2006 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lutze, Karl E. Awakening to equality : a young white pastor at the dawn of civil rights / Karl E. Lutze. p. cm. Summary: “In 1945, Karl Lutze was a young white pastor assigned to an African American church in Muskogee, Oklahoma. His experiences ministering to black congregations there and, later, in Tulsa provide a unique perspective on the early civil rights movement in Oklahoma and within the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church”—Provided by publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-8262-1632-8 (hard cover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8262-1632-3 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Lutze, Karl E. 2. Whites—Oklahoma—Biography. 3. Lutheran Church— Oklahoma—Clergy—Biography. 4. Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod— Biography. 5. African Americans—Civil rights—Oklahoma—History—20th century. 6. Civil rights movements—Oklahoma—History—20th century. 7. African American churches—Oklahoma—History—20th century. 8. Muskogee (Okla.)—Race relations. 9. Tulsa (Okla.)—Race relations. 10. Oklahoma— Race relations. I. Title. E185.98.L88A3 2006 284.1092—dc22 [B] 2005032002 TM

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Kristie Lee Typesetter: Crane Composition, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: Berkeley and Binner Display Publication of this book has been assisted by a generous contribution from Elizabeth Eggers and Jack Honderd.

Contents

Introduction 1 Chapter One

The Door Opens 5

Chapter Two

Gender and Race—A Partner for the Experience 31

Chapter Three

Benign Whites 45

Chapter Four

The “Minority” People 54

Chapter Five

. . . with Heels Dug In 77

Chapter Six Chapter Seven

The Transition 83 The Supreme Court Speaks 101

Chapter Eight

Identifying New Allies 112

Chapter Nine

Catalyst for Change 116

Chapter Ten

The City Becomes Involved 122

Chapter Eleven

Population Spillover and Neighborhood Change 132

Chapter Twelve

Oklahoma, My Teacher 141 Epilogue 156

Acknowledgments

F

or the helpfulness of Hilda Demuth Lutze and Ellen Brauer, Jr.; for the encouragement and counsel of family and friends; and for the long hours and patient partnership of Gail in my assembling these thoughts and experiences into a book, I am deeply grateful.

Awakening to Equality

Introduction

B

ack in the early 1920s, when I was still very young, people would often rub my little blond head and ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I could have considered dentistry or medicine—after all, Dr. Elvers, Dr. Squires, and Dr. Imig were all very nice men—but I was always frightened by the prospect of visiting any of them, so I wanted no part of their professions. The idea of becoming an engineer never occurred to me because I thought an engineer was someone who drove a locomotive, and that really held no lingering appeal for me. And some who would ask that question would add, “Are you going to be a teacher too?” Not an unlikely question. Dad had begun his career as principal of a two-room country school with eighty pupils in grades five through eight assigned to his own classroom. In 1910 he had become the first principal of Sheboygan’s newer and much larger Washington Elementary School. My three older sisters were all planning to enroll at Dad’s alma mater, Oshkosh State Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh). Add to that my mother, a farm girl who, though she’d not attended high school, had studied keyboard, had served as church organist, and also taught piano lessons. I was adamant. I didn’t know what I wanted to choose as a career, but I was determined not to be a teacher—simply because all the others in the family had decided to be teachers. The pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church, where our family held 1

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membership, had both a penchant and talent for nudging young boys in our parish into considering a church vocation. Through his years of tenure, Pastor Krause must have persuaded almost two dozen of us to prepare ourselves for ministry, either to become pastors or parish school teachers. Our church body, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, operated only two schools within a reasonable radius of 150 miles from Sheboygan: Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois, and Concordia College in Milwaukee (now located in Mequon, Wisconsin). Although both of these schools have now become four-year universities that also offer graduate courses, they were originally designed to parallel the structure of the German Gymnasium. They served as academies or preparatory schools, offering four years of high school, followed by two years of college. Students who graduated from the Milwaukee preministerial school would continue their studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. After two years they would receive a Bachelor of Arts degree. Then, following two more years of theological studies plus one year of internship, graduates were eligible for ordination. The idea of “going away to college,” you may be sure, was exhilarating to a small-town fourteen year old. But there was more to my selecting the career path I chose. The thought of leaving home to prepare for something so awesome and sacred as “the holy ministry” proved for me to be both inviting and compelling. So I begged my parents to let me enroll. I have always had a tinge of regret—almost resentment—about having had to leave my parents at such a tender age. In those vital, formative years I was to be deprived of the richness of my companionship with my father and mother. Not that my bonds with them were severed, but I lost so much, not being with those two very special people who possessed and exuded a sensitive, warm, caring, generous, and wise spirit, parents from whom I had learned so much and who were such magnificent models for me. The Sheboygan, Wisconsin, into which I was born in 1920 was proud of its American Indian name. Most of us at early age had learned the unlikely story that our city’s name, so it was said, derived from a longago Indian chief who had fathered several daughters and hoped des-

Introduction

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perately for a male offspring, and at each child’s birth would ask, “Is She a Boy Again?” Sacred burial mounds had been found south of our city. But much earlier, Native Americans had found themselves unwelcome in what once had been their area of residence. People of the Menomonee and Oneida tribes, as well as those of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of the Mohicans, had been assigned reservation lands some ninety miles to the north, but no American Indians resided in or near our city. Nor did people of Hispanic background live there. Occasionally we would see an African American, when the circus would be in town—or perhaps it would be the chauffeur of some wealthy people touring into the north woods, or a porter stepping down from a Pullman coach to help a passenger climb on or off the train. No one would have begun to think that any such person would take up residence in our town. One could— and did—assume that the people of Sheboygan were of European roots. Ours was a very, very white community. Dad’s Washington School was located geographically near the center of the city’s small Jewish community. And almost all the Jewish children in town attended Washington. Although their number was relatively small, my dad would often meet with neighborhood rabbis to negotiate arrangements for observance of religious days and customs. And he would share his experiences with us at the family dinner table—and always conveyed in such reportings his great respect for these constituents. All through my six prep school years in Milwaukee, I had no occasion to meet African Americans. From time to time, when I’d take the streetcar down State Street, I would see little groups of African American children standing in line to enter Saint Benedict the Moor Chapel. And of course there was the man who shined shoes and swept at the Frank Sage Barber Shop on Twenty-Seventh Street, where almost all of us Concordians went to get our monthly haircuts. During all those years I really never got to know people of racial backgrounds different from mine. The transition into my days at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis was an entrance into a new chapter of my life. I found myself having new experiences, learning new ways of looking at people and at things happening around me. All this helped to open my eyes to a clearer vision of

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what I would be doing as a minister. An important part of this came from my prep school roommate, Nick May, who later became my seminary roommate as well. Eight years of our lives were marked by miles of walking together and hours of talking together about anything and everything, from sports to music—from theology to sociology—and of course our pasts and our futures. He’d bring to our sharing sessions his perspectives as a descendant of Mayflower ancestry on his father’s side and longtime conservative German Lutheranism on his mother’s. Moving to St. Louis also made possible my joining the St. Louis Bach Society’s chorus in the autumn of 1940. It was at an early rehearsal that I met Esther Peters. Years before she was born, her father, a young Kansan who had participated in the historic Oklahoma land rush, left the farm behind and in his late twenties began studies for the Lutheran ministry. He had become pastor of the rather prestigious Grace Lutheran Church in St. Louis, one of the city’s first “all English language” Lutheran churches. Although many of Grace’s members were socially and economically advantaged, Pastor Peters never lost his homey, warm concern for people clearly less advantaged. Both Nick and Esther, when they were in their early teens, had lost their fathers, and this experience for each of them gave them a depth of feeling and understanding that many of my peers and close friends did not possess. Since both Esther and her twin, Martha, had to find employment in order to help support their widowed mother, they did not get to pursue a college degree. However, they did enroll in some evening courses. Both were bright and were avid learners. Esther easily won my heart, and though marriage before finishing my seminary education would have made me ineligible for completing the requirements for graduation, we already in that first year had agreed that we would spend our lives together. Whenever we could, we would be together. Without the slightest idea of where we would be living or what kind of ministry would be mine, we would talk about our future together with much excitement. She was no less committed to a lifetime of such service than I. And this is the point at which my story begins.

Chapter One

The Door Opens

T

he classroom itself was familiar enough. And after four years of studying together, the faces of the other hundred-some classmates sitting there were no less familiar. But this session was different. One could sense it in the mumbled, subdued chattering and uneasy excitement that diminished into an anxious quiet as Seminary Dean Richard Jesse entered the room. He took his place behind the lectern at the front desk. He broke the silence in the dignified, courteous manner with which he would always address us: “Good morning, gentlemen,” to which we respectfully responded, “Good morning.” Then, opening the folder he had brought with him, he explained the purpose of our gathering. Which all of us, of course, already knew—wishing he would get on with it. He observed that he was aware of how important this occasion was, climaxing all of our years of preparation for becoming Lutheran ministers. He went on—and on—explaining the process by which the seminary faculty had arrived at assembling the information he was about to share with us. Then, in deliberate fashion and with appropriate solemnity, he proceeded to read off the name of each one in this January graduating class, and, after the name, the places to which we’d been assigned to begin our professional careers. With so many in our class, it would be a long wait for Wedig, Widiger, Wiltenberg, Zeile, and such. However, the suspense we of mid-alphabet experienced seemed no less interminable. 5

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At long last, the dean in somber tone announced, “Lutze, Karl, Oklahoma District Missionary-at-large, a dual assignment: to be stationed at Hope Lutheran Church, Muskogee, and part-time chaplaincy at United States Veterans Hospital in Muskogee.” I walked to the front and with my assignment paper in hand returned to my seat, eager to read what other information accompanied the document of call that might expand a bit on the meager information given me so far. I could hardly wait for the end of the session so that I might telephone my family—and of course, Esther—to share with them the news. I rushed to the telephone booth located near the auditorium, only to find a string of men already lined up eager to make calls of their own. And of course there was a lot of excited conversation going on among those of us who were waiting our turn. One of those, a Kansan, corrected me, informing me that in pronouncing Muskogee, the accent was not on the third syllable but the second. Most of us in the class were about twenty-five years old at the time— give or take a year or two in either direction. A long-standing Seminary rule clearly stated that students were not to be married—not even engaged—until after graduation. So, with the exception of possibly a few who had not divulged their nuptial secret, we were presumably a tribe of bachelors. I can remember only a very few of my classmates who, if not engaged, had not at least entered into an “agreement” with their respective ladies of choice to as-early-after-graduation-as-possible marriage. Although we knew very, very little about what lay ahead for us in accepting this assignment, both Esther and I were very, very excited. The letter accompanying the document of call, plus a bit of library research on our own, provided us with some basic information. Muskogee was a town of about thirty-five thousand. The Veterans’ Hospital was large. Since my internship-year assignment had placed me as an assistant to an institutional chaplain in Baltimore, I felt I was somewhat prepared—even experienced—for that facet of the assignment. Of Muskogee’s total population, approximately seventy-five hundred, as the document informed us, were “Negro.” And it was among these that Hope Church had been established. There were sixteen active members belonging to the church.

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The Reverend Charles Wedig, who had preceded me, felt the future of the church could best be assured if the congregation would offer a parochial school education to the community. He therefore had persuaded the Oklahoma District Mission Board to construct a modest one-room schoolhouse on the rear of the property and to underwrite the cost of a teacher. Some thirty pupils were on the roster, four of these Lutheran. The house in which the pastor lived was an imposing structure, the largest house in the entire neighborhood. This was the congregation’s place of worship and also served as parsonage for the pastor. It was described in the informal letter that accompanied the document of assignment as “a sort of mansion.” The property on which both house and school stood was of generous dimensions, measuring approximately two hundred feet frontage and possibly three hundred feet depth. The small congregation had been without a pastor now for several months, and the letter expressed hope that the new pastor would arrive as early as possible. For months Esther and I had been talking about our future together as we tried to imagine where we’d be located and what kind of ministry I’d be involved in. We had talked about the possibility of foreign missions or military chaplaincy (for which I’d not be eligible until after three years of pastoral experience). We agreed that wherever we might be “called,” we were ready and up for the challenge. We had never anticipated anything that neared the description of the new position. It sounded wonderful, and we shared an excited eagerness to begin. We had not made any definite plans about a wedding. Any money I’d had up to that time had been pretty well used up in my schooling costs. Much of the little that Esther and her twin, Martha, had been earning had been spent in household costs incurred in their living with their widowed mother and her lone sister. So we were hardly prepared to set up a house. We agreed that I should go ahead and settle in on my pastoring. Esther would stay on at her job in the loan division of her neighborhood bank. I’d now be earning a somewhat-less-than-fabulous $110 a month, parsonage provided. Together we would have enough to begin our marriage if we waited until May. Meanwhile, I’d get a start on the

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ministry. We promised we’d write each other every day and the time would surely pass more swiftly. I had no car, so I rode the Katy Line from St. Louis to Muskogee. Martin Studtmann, pastor of First Lutheran Church, his wife, Ruth, and their two preschool sons, Ronnie and David, were there to welcome me. Ours had been a midterm graduation. World War II was underway. Students preparing to be clergy were deferred from the military draft, classified as 4-D (one level above 4-F—those deferred for physical impairments). Since the government of course would not allow for our having a three-month vacation in our education program, the seminary had designed an accelerated schedule, causing the completion of our courses to occur in January. Though my arrival in Oklahoma was on the last day of January, there was only a slight chill in the air. Back home in Wisconsin, winter had emphatically arrived with its predictable frigidity. Here in Oklahoma not a trace of snow was to be seen. I stayed with the Studtmanns my first few nights. They were wonderful hosts and immediately became two of the closest and dearest friends I have ever had. Martin had a key to Hope Church’s parish facilities. So that very first afternoon he drove by the building that was to be my first church. Two steps led to a roofed, wide front porch without railings. The house, I was told, had once been the home of a wealthy white widow, a lover of the arts and herself a musician. The door opened into a small sort of recital hall, brightly lit by a large bay window on the right side. On the far end, the woman had arranged for a cove to be constructed on an elevated platform. She intended this to house her pipe organ, long since removed. She’d apparently taken the instrument with her when she left, more than a dozen years earlier. A small altar took the place of the organ. The cove now served as a chancel that looked out on about eight rows of folding chairs. A small lectern and piano on the left and a pulpit on the right made the room a very appropriate little place for worship. In the left wall of the room were two tall sliding doors that opened into a generously sized dining room, which some day, it was hoped, might accommodate an overflow of worshippers. A large oak-framed

The Door Opens

9

mantle and fireplace, flanked by two oak window seats, filled out the entire side of the room. In the far left was a corner fireplace. Returning to the chapel, one saw still another large fireplace, together with a set of tall double doors on the immediate left. Another tall one in the far left corner constituted the rear wall of the church space. The doubled door in this rear of the chapel led into what became my study, well fitted with ample shelving to accommodate what at that time was still a rather limited library. This room in turn led into a living room fitted with yet another corner fireplace. A bedroom, a hallway, a bathroom, a kitchen, and an enclosed utility room at the rear of the house completed the first-floor plan. Counting those leading to closets and hallway, there were, as I recall, twenty-four doors on the first floor alone. Indeed this must at one time have been quite an elegant house. Lest anyone get the idea that these now were luxury quarters for this young bachelor, the years had taken their toll on what obviously had once been a great and gracious home. Now, the fireplaces had all been closed off. Sheets of black metal filled the openings. These of course kept chimney swifts from flying into the house, but also rendered the fireplaces useless. To preserve the decor and to suggest that the hearths were still intact, two small rectangular chips had been cut out of the bottom of each of these steel plates so that the original andirons could be pushed inside the fireplace and thus prevent their protruding too far into a room. Small radiant gas heaters had been installed in each room to replace logs, which in earlier years had lain across the andirons. I was to discover, come autumn, that frequent field fires in the neighborhood would cause mice and field rats to scurry for cover. They managed to obtain entrance into our somewhat porous cellar and ultimately find their way into our living room through those apertures in that particular fireplace. After discovering their port of entry, I would set traps for the invaders. I remember one particular night that made me feel like a triumphant marksman returning from a hunting expedition, when within a four-hour span I intercepted and eliminated eleven mice and six rats! A ten-foot tub was the key feature of the bathroom—so long that the drain was placed halfway between both ends. My friend Martin observed that since I could not swim I probably shouldn’t go in without a lifeguard. The floor around the toilet itself was another point of concern.

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Whoever would sit on it found the seat beneath settle down almost two inches. Not the weary floor, but the plumbing itself seemed to support the throne. One could never be sure that entering that chamber at firstfloor level might not call for coming up the cellar steps to exit! Some two weeks later, once I’d somewhat settled in, I was determined to make the new abode as pretty and useful as possible before Esther’s arrival. I decided to redecorate two upstairs rooms. The wallpaper was faded and in many places torn, though not stripped. Obviously no one had used the rooms for years. They exuded a musty smell, so I managed to open two windows and caught my breath once again. Since I was wearing work clothes, I decided not to wait, but to get right at tearing the wallpaper from what I had thought were plastered walls, only to find that the wallpaper had been glued on to a burlap backing. The odor was awful—almost smothering—and, worse, the brown cloth backing was teeming with thousands of slithering, shiny silverfish that apparently had been feasting and multiplying—on a diet of old glue. I slammed the windows shut, leaped down the steps and closed off the upstairs with no intention of ever returning to the unfinished task. On my first visit to Hope, Martin and I walked together to the little one-room school building in the rear of the churchyard. The structure looked pretty much like a country schoolhouse would look—however, this building included indoor plumbing facilities, albeit without hot water. Pastor Studtmann introduced me to Mrs. Marie Smith, who shook my hand, turned to the class, and announced, “Children, this is our new pastor; say, ‘Good afternoon, Pastor Lutze.’” And they responded in an enthusiastic chorus, “Good afternoon, Pastor Lutze!” The Studtmanns helped me move in. My dad had shipped his old desk that long had had its place in the living room of our home in Sheboygan. He also had sent along a small bookcase he had built for me when I first went away to prep school in Milwaukee (at the age of fourteen). The desk drawers were stuffed with sheets and pillows and a few additional household items my thoughtful mother had slipped in. Esther and I, from our meager savings, had purchased a blue hide-abed and a comfortably upholstered chair, as well as a kitchen range and oven from Sears. These had arrived too. These were my possessions, by

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and large (or should I say small). So there wasn’t too much involved in settling me in for housekeeping responsibilities. This was where we’d be living and the place I would be working. Everything felt just right. My new friend Martin briefed me on the parish, its history, and its program. And I was eager to begin. I could hardly wait till the quickly approaching weekend. On February 4, 1945, the regular Sunday morning worship service at Hope Church had been canceled. All attention was focused on a special midafternoon service when this young seminary graduate from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, would be ordained and installed as pastor of Hope Lutheran Congregation. Normally among Lutherans, such an occasion is marked by festive preparations. I had never attended an ordination service before. Later I was to discover that it was customary for members of neighboring Lutheran congregations to receive invitations to attend. The district president, either personally or through some other designated officer, presides over the ritual of ordination, and more often than not some special guest speaker presents the sermon. Lutheran pastors from surrounding areas attend, fully robed and wearing celebrative red stoles. At the appropriate moment during the rite of ordination, each of the clergy steps forward to place a hand on the head of the ordainee and speaks an appropriate passage of Scripture. Finally, when the last of these is spoken, the entire group of ministers crowd about the new pastor—somewhat resembling to the less pious a basketball team huddling before taking the floor. Once more they lay their hands on the person ordained while the presiding minister pronounces the charge of ministry. After a prayer and benediction, worshippers gather for a reception where refreshments are served and people have an opportunity to visit together and to meet the new pastor. All these facets of the occasion combine to make these events inspiring and memorable for all who attend—and particularly for the new pastor. My ordination differed a bit from the normal. Some eighteen or so people who regularly had been attending Hope, along with possibly a dozen from First Lutheran across town, were present—hardly a throng. But the chairs were almost all filled.

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My new friend, Pastor Martin Studtmann, was the presiding liturgist. He wore a red stole. Pastor Studtmann read the Scriptures for the day. He preached the sermon. The district president was not present, but he had authorized Pastor Studtmann to conduct the rite of ordination. No other pastors were on hand for the occasion. Pastor Studtmann alone laid his hand on my head and placed the stole of ministry on my shoulders. I was awed by the holiness of the moment. The service came to its close. I turned to face the congregation. As a minister of my Lord in this place, I raised my hands to bless the worshippers. I could hardly speak the words. There they were—God’s people: toddlers, aged folks, mothers with infants in their arms, men and women, white, black—and the words Martin had spoken, “. . . for all people,” still echoed in my ears. With pounding heart I pronounced the benediction and the people sang a hymn of praise to bring the service to its close. Of course people stayed on, and all kinds of happy conversations and handshakes absorbed the moment. But I could hardly wait for the little crowd to disburse so I might get to the phone and share my thrill and excitedness with Esther. And she claimed she wanted to jump into the telephone to be with me in her own excitement as I tried to convey all the details of the day’s happenings. When we had finished talking I felt almost in a new world—an old house, my dad’s old desk—yet everything was new. As exhilarating as the moment was, I felt very small as I began more and more to realize how little I knew about what lay ahead. And I felt very much alone. I recall lying awake a long time before falling asleep that night, so much to remember, to ponder, entertaining a dozen or more scenarios that would mark the next months and years of my ministry—of my life. The next morning came—I hardly knew what to do first. I’d not yet had any formal or official word about what my projected area of hospital chaplaincy would involve. That seemed as good a starting point as any. So I walked the two miles to the Veterans Hospital to learn what my assignments there might entail. After a bit of waiting (I had not had an appointment), I was ushered into the small office of the head chaplain. He was a kindly enough person; however, he seemed a bit surprised to see me. Apparently no one from the Lutheran Church’s Oklahoma

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District Office had been in communication with him since my predecessor had left, to inform this chaplain of progress made in engaging a successor. Nor had he reported developments, which he began to explain to me now. He unfolded the history of the hospital’s arrangement with the Lutherans. Because he had had need of clergy assistance in doing all that was expected of him, his superiors had allocated funds enabling him to engage the services of a local pastor as a half-time assistant. From the very first he had discovered Lutheran pastors available for appointment. He found this arrangement to be very satisfactory and had continued it for several years. However, rather than show denominational favoritism, he and his superiors now had decided that this post would not be reserved exclusively for Lutherans, and therefore he had already engaged the services of a local Methodist minister. I found myself fired before even being hired! Obviously this meant that the Oklahoma District’s treasury would no longer be receiving a check from the government to cover half of my salary. This was hardly to be good news for the district’s administrators. In these post–Dust Bowl days they already found themselves closing smaller churches, simply unable to subsidize them any longer. As a result, however, I was now in a position of being able to devote all my interests, energy, and time to getting settled into my new role as pastor of Hope congregation. I was learning quickly about the problems that come along with home management. Of course, I wouldn’t be receiving my first paycheck until the end of the month. And I surely hadn’t arrived in Oklahoma with any kind of impressive cushion in my wallet. Thrift would be my watchword. Inexperienced and inept as I was in the art of meal preparation, I must have acquired a somewhat hungry and pathetic countenance, for both Ruth Studtmann and Mrs. Theimer, widow of one of Martin’s predecessors (who had initially founded Hope Church), took pity and had me as dinner guest with unwarranted frequency. I knew this couldn’t last, unless one of those households were to formally adopt me.

. . .

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Already in the first week after my ordination, Mr. B. H. Hooper, an eightyish-year-old member of Hope, had approached me, asking permission to convert the large vacant lot south of the church/parsonage into a garden. The Hoopers lived in a little rent-house two blocks away. Their small lot provided almost no space for any gardening. I quickly agreed, and the old gentleman, with all the energy his years would allow, set out on his project. Spade in hand, he turned over the soil himself and planted in place neat rows of almost every imaginable vegetable: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes, cabbages, okra—I’d not seen that before—mustard greens—nor them either—and an array of others as well. When in a few weeks I saw the little shoots and sprouts emerge from the reddish earth, I decided this might be a worthwhile venture for me to try. This might also prove a welcome surprise for Esther when she would join me in May. Lacking the time, the patience, the experience, the know-how, and a few more qualities that Mr. Hooper possessed, I settled for cultivating a more modest-sized plot. I planted only a few tomatoes, bell peppers, and two rows of sweet potatoes. And then there was that small building in the rear. Whatever would I do with that? I surely didn’t have enough skills to warrant it serving as a workshop, nor enough equipment to use it as a toolshed. So I decided to convert the structure into a chicken coop. I found some boards in the lean-to garage attached to the rear of the house. In a far corner was a half roll of meshed wire, so I put together a fence to surround the little shack. Hardly of cathedral quality, the project did look like it would be an adequate home for chickens. Other than having gathered eggs on my Uncle Otto’s farm up in Wisconsin, and scraping droppings from the floor of his hen house—I was all of eleven years old then—I had little to draw on for embarking on a career in poultry. An occasional rooster crow and sounds of hens cackling were common enough in the neighborhood. And just three blocks from the church a white horse was always grazing in a vacant lot across from Jennings’ Grocery. I never inquired, but it seemed quite obvious there were no restrictions on keeping farm animals within the city limits. I made my way to a seed and feed house on the edge of Muskogee’s downtown to buy some chicks. It must have been near the end of the season for poultry purchase. The man behind the counter somewhat

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apologetically said, “All we’ve got left are these thirteen Black Minorcas.” And, as if I had ever heard of such a breed before, I quickly said, “I’ll take them!” He probably had little difficulty in recognizing a novice when he saw one, so he would not have me leave without providing a few tips for launching my new enterprise. I was to make sure the birds were kept warm and provided with sufficient water. I gingerly walked the awkward box of fuzzy, chirping little chicklings to their new home, and with the most motherly care I could muster, dutifully placed them across the seats of two folding chairs I had set before the open door of our new oven. The little orphans obviously welcomed the warmth, and their fretful chattering subsided considerably to a subdued sort of serene peeping. I’d bought a circular glass tray to place under a quart mason jar so they could sip water—just as the feed store man had told me. Before purchasing the chicks, I had already purchased a fifty-pound bag of chick feed and, of course, a tract from the county agricultural agent that provided clues for raising poultry. In prescribing the amount of feed I was to be laying out for chickens, the booklet assumed a far grander scale of operation than I was undertaking. Dipping back into my elementary school arithmetic, I took the amount prescribed for feeding a thousand chicks, divided it by one thousand, and multiplied that figure by thirteen. Esther’s mother was shocked when she learned I was raising livestock in our kitchen, although Esther took the news in stride. In deference to my mother-in-law, I devised a temporary abode for my brood in an oversized corrugated box that I moved to the enclosed porch off the kitchen. I affixed a droplight to shine down on the little birds to keep them warm. They eventually grew and prospered and, in the fullness of time, when they had achieved a degree of heartiness, moved into the outdoor quarters I had prepared for them. The lone male matured into full roosterhood with shiny black plumage and a proud, bright-red fivepointed crest. And the other twelve sisters all survived into full-bodied, egg-laying henhood. Writing letters to Esther and tending to my little fuzzy friends consumed a good share of my personal time, but there was much to do— and to learn—in being pastor at Hope Church. I have never quite learned

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how pastors with several hundred—and, in some cases, more than a thousand—members could possibly know with any degree of intimacy all these individuals, their home and job settings, the different concerns that absorbed their waking and sleeping hours. Far more than managing an institution or administering an organization, responsible pastoring has to concern itself with the lives of persons. And one cannot do this without knowing people well. Though I couldn’t have afforded one even if they had been available, I had no car. These were the days of World War II. Automobile manufacturers were producing cars for the government’s use or had converted their facilities to produce tanks and other equipment for military use. So wherever I went, I walked. Not many white people frequented our neighborhood. From time to time one would see utility company repair personnel, meter readers, delivery truck drivers, mail carriers, and occasionally, but far more rarely, door-to-door salespersons. As a white person, I was somewhat a rarity—but not for long. People got used to seeing me on the sidewalk—or on the streets where there were no sidewalks. The only other white person who lived on our side of the tracks was the man who lived next door, an elderly gentleman who politely warded off my overtures toward establishing a close neighbor relationship. Never attended our church. Few words. Didn’t volunteer much. Wasn’t really aloof. Surely wasn’t hostile, just very private. Never commented about the number of African Americans coming to our church. I did discover that he ate much garlic; I could tell, without his explaining. In one such conversation extending beyond forty seconds, he explained that it worked wonders in controlling his high blood pressure. Next to him lived a very attractive young woman, mother of one of the second graders in our one-room school. She lived with her no less attractive mother in a little cottage, probably the prettiest home in our neighborhood. Cordial and friendly, they too were quite private. And for all our efforts to know them better, they remained somewhat strangers to us. Across the street was a small family-owned grocery store. Its shelves were not very abundantly stocked, but we were able to patronize them for a few items from time to time. I remember being startled by their

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dog, a small one of indeterminable breed, but difficult to watch. It had no use of its hind legs, which it dragged along in a pitiful way as it maneuvered about. Its owner told how, when it was still quite young, “the children were riding it, playing pony,” and permanently injured the poor creature; but, she explained, the family loved it too much to terminate its life. A short unpaved alley that lay next to the little home/grocery connected our street with South Fifth Street. A similar lane provided passage to South Fourth. Most of the houses there were small and old. The Hoopers lived on the east side of the street. My first visit to their home was memorable. One couldn’t have wished for a warmer welcome, for more genuine hospitality. Whatever steps once may have led to the front door had long ago disappeared and had been replaced by a tall but flat rock, requiring no small degree of agility and careful navigating for gaining entrance. I found myself having to perform a mini-pirouette as I would venture across their threshold. Mrs. Hooper was up in years. She was a very heavy woman and walked at a slower gait. I wondered how she managed her comings and goings. This troubled me much. I did own a saw and hammer—my providential Dad had sent these and a few other tools he deemed essential for a clergy person. I took these and a few boards I found in a dark corner of the dank cellar of my new home, and with Mr. Hooper lending a hand, we fashioned a very respectable set of steps. With a bit of grunting and groaning we moved the huge rock to the side, and the entrance to the house was now easily navigable. On subsequent visits I noticed that at various places water seeped through the roof when it rained. I was cooking for myself in those days, and my meal would often consist of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. So with a supply of emptied cans on hand, I applied the can-opener to the bottom of a few, cut a slit down the can’s side, and flattened the metal. The pieces served well as patches when nailed over the holes in the roof. The Hoopers were so very grateful to me, and I experienced a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. There were several other tired little rental houses on South Fourth Street. I was visiting the Hoopers one day when a large black Chrysler drove up the unpaved street. The white owner of these houses sat alone

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in the rear seat, his driver alone in the front. Each week the scene would repeat itself. When the horn would sound, the tenant was to go to the car. The landlord would lower his window. The money would pass through to him. Transaction completed. This time the man had words with Mr. Hooper. He had noticed the “improvements.” Next week the rent would be higher! What a painful end my helpfulness had effected. Some favor I had done the Hoopers! One of the first items on my desk that needed attention was to inform my church judicatory head about the hospital’s decision not to engage my services. In his letter of response, President Otto Hoyer explained that the Oklahoma District was in terrible financial straits and that this development was most unwelcome. He continued, “Our Lutheran Church body does not have Negro congregations. We do all our work with Negroes through the Synodical Conference Missionary Board. The proper procedure for you now is to contact the executive secretary of that organization, requesting them to assume financial responsibility for and supervision of your ministry at Hope Church.” I really didn’t know anything about those institutional technicalities. And frankly, I was already deeply absorbed in my working with the people at Hope. Not aware of the appropriate procedure for the kind of negotiating this situation required, I asked my friend Martin for advice. He had had no experience in such matters and suggested that I simply wait for further word from President Hoyer. Pastor Hoyer was also serving as full-time minister of a large congregation in Alva, and with all the other matters on his presidential agenda, he seemed never to have gotten around to discussing the matter again. Later, when District Executive Secretary of Missions John F. Schultz and I discussed the president’s earlier letter to me, he simply said, “No, you don’t want to get involved in that program. You’ll be much better able to serve by working with us in your ministry.” And in later years he was proved to have been very right. In other southern states where the program of the aforementioned Synodical Conference was operative, Lutherans practiced segregation well into the 1960s—and in some cases, the 1970s. However, from Hope’s earliest days, back as far as 1946, African Americans from Hope Church were welcomed with courtesy and respect by the prepon-

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derantly white Oklahoma Lutherans at conventions and other intercongregational assemblies. I blush to recall how utterly naive I was about the state of race relations in the South. I hadn’t even known prior to my arrival in Muskogee that Oklahoma was categorized as a southern state. Racial segregation was not only practiced but also legally enforced. I remember once remarking to a casual acquaintance that I was serving a congregation of African Americans. The person commented in surprise, “You do? White people by law are not allowed to be together with colored in any public gathering!” Who was I to doubt or even challenge his assertion? But I remember being angry and declaring my commitment to participate in worshipping God with anyone, regardless of what any governmental authority might declare. And I had much to learn. Meeting Mrs. Theimer became an occasion for learning. Her husband had died in the mid-1930s at the age of forty-two. He had been minister at First Lutheran Church across town. All the attributes of a good pastor seemed to be his. Prime among these was a love for people. Pastor Theimer’s early ministry had been in Apache, on the western side of the state, where he’d been assigned to serve in a situation which many a parson would have felt very uncomfortable. But he loved it. Although he had studied German in his preministerial schooling, he was nowhere near fluent with the language. Yet here he was, planted in a German-speaking community, fairly well isolated on an Indian reservation. Legends abounded that marked the Apache tribe as both menacing and threatening. However, while Mrs. Theimer was somewhat frightened by such stories and remained a bit fearful throughout their stay, the young pastor made friends with the local tribal folk and seemed almost energized by the entire experience. His daughter Elizabeth recalls her mother’s accounts of Pastor Theimer writing out his sermons in English so that his wife (who knew German very well) could translate them into flawless German. He would memorize the text, word for word, and preach it—apparently to the

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satisfaction and appreciation of the little group of worshippers. And he seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, caring for his Germanspeaking parishioners and getting along well with his American Indian neighbors. Earlier, the young minister had served in the military reserves, so he also was accepted when he applied to be a part-time chaplain with the government’s Civilian Conservation Corps, developed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. He found working with youth and spending days at a time with nature appealing and invigorating. He carried that zest for life, his love of youth, and his delight in nature with him as he accepted an invitation to become pastor of First Lutheran Church in Muskogee. He would take young people from his parish on camping retreats into the Cookson Hills near Tahlequah. The program grew as he invited young people from neighboring parishes to join in these retreats. Interest increased. After a few successful summer events, the purchase of land was completed, and a stone building erected. Camp Lutherhoma was born. For a short while the building was put to use as a school for Indian children who lived nearby.* The Theimers were blessed with two sons, Louis, who became a physician, and Milton, who worked in the U.S. Postal Service. In the days of their sister Elizabeth’s arrival, Pastor Theimer engaged the services of a young high schooler to help with household cares. She lived in Reeves Addition. African Americans represented upwards of one-fourth of Muskogee’s population at this time. Most of them lived around the edges of the city. Reeves was on the far north side. When Pastor Theimer had returned his helper to her home one evening, he asked if he might meet her parents. It seems they had been faithful Christians who had been deeply disappointed in the personal and professional conduct of leaders in the church where they had held membership. They had stopped attending. As they lamented how they “missed hearing the Word,” the pastor indicated his willingness to * That site is now inundated by the lake that was formed by the construction of the Tenkiller Dam. A replacement camp was set up in an area not too far away and still serves as a youth camp today.

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come out some evening to lead them in a Bible study. They eagerly accepted his offer. The following week, on the appointed day and hour, he drove to their house and found the parents and their daughter, and several of their neighbors as well, sitting on the front porch awaiting his arrival. The experience was so gratifying to all present that they agreed to hold such meetings again in the weeks that followed. After one of those sessions in which the discussion had focused on baptism, a young couple acknowledged that they had never been baptized and wanted to talk to the pastor about this. In several meetings with him they explored the matter further, and when they asked whether he would administer their baptism, he was delighted and told them he would arrange for this to occur the following Sunday. Pastor and Mrs. Theimer had invited them to come to their house beforehand. They accepted the invitation. Years later Mrs. Theimer would recall, “And we were as excited as they were!” Mrs. Theimer felt a sense of joyful pride as she sat with this young couple as they were formally entering the Christian family in the welcoming grace of Holy Baptism. When the benediction had been spoken and the service ended, there was opportunity for the worshippers to meet and welcome this new brother and sister. However, people hurried by and left the church quickly without speaking a word to them at all. It was an unpremeditated yet unanimous shunning—a frigid snubbing rather than a warm welcome. The Theimers recovered quickly and invited the two new Lutherans to their house next door to join them in the dinner Mrs. Theimer had prepared. As soon as she had set out the food they all took their seats. Pastor Theimer spoke the table prayer. At best, the conversation was awkward, as they tried to salvage from the morning something that might be positive or spiritually enriching. They had hardly begun to eat when they were interrupted by phone calls—one after another—from angry members berating the pastor for bringing these people into their church. Didn’t this minister know this was Oklahoma, this was the South? No other churches or their clergy did anything like this! The situation became increasingly awkward, and when the meal— which had now become a most uncomfortable ordeal—was ended, the

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young couple politely spoke their words of thanks and quickly took their leave. Mrs. Theimer wept. Her husband felt crushed. The passages of Scripture he knew so well came to his recall as a flood. Saint Paul’s words, “Welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you!” Jesus talked about “joy in the presence of the angels of heaven” when a sheep enters the fold. The newly baptized pair never returned to First Lutheran Church. In time, the ire of the offended members subsided. But Pastor Louis Theimer could not let the matter rest. He was determined not to abandon the ministry he had begun. Shortly before all this had happened, the pastor’s mother died, leaving in her will a modest amount of money for her son and his family. Both he and his wife had been deeply moved by the affront caused by the young couple’s disappointing experience at their church. Both agreed to do whatever they might with their newly received largesse to respond to the hurt that had been inflicted. They decided that there ought to be a Lutheran Church that would serve the African American community. Determinedly, they set out to make their ideas materialize. With their own money they purchased the commodious house at 549 South Sixth Street, located immediately south of the tracks of the five railroads that passed though there. And that was the beginning of Hope Lutheran Church. For a long time, however, things didn’t seem to be hopeful at all. The word had gotten around. The young African American Lutheran couple had been rudely embarrassed and deeply hurt. Who would want to belong to—or even attend—a church that was so blatantly racially exclusive? Being a minister in this kind of situation would have to be discouraging. The young men and women of the community were extremely reluctant to respond to any invitation or overture of friendship. People up in years, however, who since childhood had borne the brunt of oppressive segregation, proved willing at least to give this new neighborhood phenomenon a hearing. So among the few who did attend and actually became members in those early days, most were very, very advanced in years.

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Not too long after Hope Church’s beginnings, Pastor Theimer died at the age of forty-two, some friends claimed of a broken heart. The entire enterprise had been a venture of his own making. When he died, the responsibility for the project’s continuance would fall upon the Oklahoma District of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, the church body in which Pastor Theimer had served. Although Oklahoma had tasted prosperity in the developing oil industry, the debilitating Great Depression coupled with the devastating Dust Bowl days had taken its toll on the state’s economic well-being, especially on its rural population. Most of the Oklahoma District’s five dozen or so Lutheran congregations were located in just such country communities. In maintaining its ministries, the district itself had to receive subsidy from the national church body. Since both the district and these subsidized congregations found themselves in such dire financial straits, the leaders had introduced a standardization of salaries for clergy serving subsidized parishes. The income for pastors was therefore extremely modest. Furthermore, the district’s board of directors had begun to resort to such severe measures as closing down some of the churches that were small and seemed not to show promise of growth. It hardly seemed likely that these officials, operating in such a climate of down-sizing, would want to add to the district’s already overburdened budget the full cost of operating a little “Negro Mission” that served only a handful of members. Hope’s future appeared to be less than hopeful. And then a surprising thing happened. Women of the district learned of Pastor Theimer’s untimely death. And when they discovered that this faithful man had used money he had inherited at his mother’s death to purchase the church, they rightly reasoned that the four thousand dollars would have passed on to his widow and been available to her and her three small children. Deeply moved by that realization, these women voluntarily gathered sufficient funds to purchase from Mrs. Theimer the building and the property on which it stood. And then they presented the site’s title to the Oklahoma District. Although recently one woman has served as a member of the Lutheran

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Church–Missouri Synod’s board of directors, the church body’s record is not one of having given women much voice. At this writing, the church has not ordained women pastors, and at the local level many congregations do not allow for women to hold any positions on church governing boards. The role of women in Missouri Synod congregations was even less significant in the mid-1930s. However, when these women presented their gift, demonstrating such sensitivity and devout generosity, the board was apparently overwhelmed and was left with no other choice but to accept the gift and honor these women’s intent to keep Hope’s ministry intact and to ensure its future. Fortunately, Hope’s first resident pastor, the Reverend Walter Moose, was engaged as half-time assistant to the chaplain at Muskogee’s Veterans Hospital, and this lessened the amount the district would have to pay toward his salary. This same arrangement obtained during the ministry of his successors, Pastor Werner Saar (who had since become an army chaplain) and the Reverend Charles Wedig (who had left to accept a pastorate in Clovis, New Mexico). The assumption that this arrangement would continue had prompted the district office to extend the call for me to fill the post. When I arrived on the scene in January of 1945, some eight years had already elapsed since those beginning days of Hope Lutheran Church. I knew only fragments of the small congregation’s history. Pastor Studtmann passed on to me a packet of index cards bearing the name, address, and phone number of each parishioner. In addition, there were a few cards with names of Sunday schoolers—just names and not addresses. Mrs. Theimer filled me in with a narrative account of some of Hope’s history. Pastor Studtmann shared with me what my predecessor had passed on to him. Conversations with members provided me with more bits of information. And Mrs. Smith filled in what she could about the school, although she had only served there for a short period and at that time she herself was not a Lutheran and knew little about the congregation. Moreover, well over two-thirds of the forty elementary and preschool children enrolled in her classroom did not attend Hope Church on Sundays.

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As well as I could, I pieced together all that I was learning from these sources and set out to try to justify the efforts my predecessors had invested in developing this little parish, a church which now, for the first time, was to be served by a full-time pastor. The records named sixteen persons as “communicant members.” A few more adults had joined in the preceding years. Although their names appeared on the cards, they now lived in other cities and I had never met them. About a dozen children attended Sunday school with fair regularity. In my earlier days of preparing for the ministry, I’d often envisioned myself developing a strong youth program when I would finally be serving a parish of my own. The only teenagers on our roster were: Diana Lowe, who was attending a boarding school in Alabama; Otis Mack Peterson, who had enlisted in the army; Rudolph Valentino Peterson, his brother, who also seemed to be living elsewhere; J. W. Hooper, who played on his high school football team; and Harold Cherry, who at that time was an eighth grader in our parochial school. With that kind of list to draw on, a youth recreation program could be reduced to a chess match. Of Hope’s sixteen adult members, eleven were over age sixty-five, and seven of these were over seventy-five years of age. In jest, I remarked to Pastor Studtmann that perhaps I should consider forming a Methuselah Society. Four or five of these older ones had been denied schooling and had never learned to read or write—but to have achieved their age, against tremendous odds, they surely had emerged as survivors. With far less formal schooling than rightfully would have been theirs, their eyes and ears were tuned and they learned by watching and listening. Limitations in knowledge were compensated by a homespun wisdom they had acquired. And I learned from them to listen. They became my teachers—patient teachers of this new seminary graduate who learned more and more each day how much he didn’t know. Preparing meaningful sermons that would be understood by my hearers called for some revising of the ways I’d learned to present the

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Scriptures. Back in those days the Bible most everyone was using was the King James Version. Its old English style often proved difficult for even seasoned readers to grasp. Passages like the one in St. Paul’s Letter to Roman Christians, Let love be without dissimulation, begged for clarification. Biblical counsel to avoid chambering and wantonness could hardly be absorbed in casual conversation. Similarly, theological terms—even the more familiar ones, such as redemption, reconciliation, and righteousness—deserved more explanation and interpretation than merely being mentioned in passing. It wasn’t a matter of condescending, or what is sometimes referred to as “dumbing down.” My prayer before preparing and delivering sermons through the years has been: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.” I was accepting the responsibility of conveying a message that God would want people to comprehend for their own personal lives. Conducting the worship and Scripture education sessions were the highlights of the week for me. The number of people in attendance each Sunday was obviously and admittedly small. There would be twentytwo or twenty-three on hand week after week. People would express appreciation for my message, and their generous words seemed genuine. Of course, I wanted the church to grow. I made it a point to visit people of the community, hoping to win their interest and confidence in our church and its ministry. One of the men I met was Mr. Jake Simmons. It seemed that everyone in Muskogee, whatever their race, knew that name. And in both communities, white and nonwhite, people regarded Jake Simmons with a sort of inconclusive assessment. This was a bright man. He was well-to-do, successful. He had a way with words. He moved in white circles and among his own people with a rather clear sense of self-assurance. People knew he wielded a great deal of influence. It would be clearly advantageous to have him on your side, and unfortunate to have him oppose you or what you were doing. On one occasion, I noticed a gathering of neighborhood folk—it may have been at nearby Douglass School. It was an autumn evening. Lights were strung up, and I soon discerned the event was a political rally.

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Neighbors would quip about these as “times of lots of talking and warm soda and cold weenies and more talk.” Jake Simmons mounted the makeshift platform and introduced a candidate to the crowd as one they should carefully consider at the next election. Though they lived in what was regarded as a southern state, African Americans in Oklahoma did have voting rights. I cannot recall who this white candidate was, nor the office he hoped to win. I remember clearly what followed. The speaker thanked Jake Simmons for introducing him. After saying a few words of commendation about him, the politico was ready to launch into his oratory of the evening. According to the well-tested formula of public speaking his introduction was intended to fit into the category known as captatio benevolentiae—literally, the capture of the goodwill of the audience. He began, “You know I have a great and warm affection for you darkies . . .” And before he could say another word, Jake Simmons stood up and shouted, “I demand that you apologize for the use of that term!” The fully befuddled man at the microphone tried valiantly to extricate himself from his plight and pleaded in his fumbling best that he had not intended to hurt anyone’s feelings. The Simmons retort: “The word is offensive and insulting to us and I demand you apologize!” The bewildered candidate then became mired into even deeper trouble as he tried to explain that this was a term he often used, and to him it was “one of endearment.” With that Jake Simmons gave the order, “Turn out the lights! The meeting is over! I do not endorse this candidate!” The mumbling audience dispersed into the dark streets to their homes, obviously amazed by the brash candor of Jake Simmons and surely dissuaded from voting for the man who had come to win their support. Apparently this was not an isolated instance of Jake Simmons taking such a stand. In his biographical book on Jake Simmons, Staking a Claim, Jonathan Greenberg writes of an almost identical occurrence. Once, when I was in conversation with Mr. Simmons, he began probing into the nature of my ministry, its structure, my motivations. I truly welcomed his questions and concern, and it seemed I emerged from the discourse with his genuine interest and respect. It was obvious

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that he recognized my unfamiliarity with racial issues as well as my innocence and naïveté as I was entering the scene in Oklahoma. However, without any speck of condescension, he spoke encouragingly and took from his shelf two volumes he wished to lend me. They were the classic American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, the definitive text for people wanting to understand the racial situation in our country. As we parted he promised, “Call me now if you have any questions or would like any help from me.” People say things like that, and we are likely to dismiss them as if the words were another way of simply saying good-bye. This time as Mr. Simmons spoke them, however, they seemed more than casual. Only a few of Hope’s little one-room-school pupils attended our Sunday school. It occurred to me that, if I were able to put together a program that would attract youngsters, we could change all that. So I met with the few seventh and eighth graders and suggested we have a picnic. They were excited by the proposal. I asked for their ideas as to a site for the event. They named a park of which I’d not yet heard, and they told me it lay immediately behind Manual Training High School on the little road that wound its way to Provident Hospital. Now I knew the place. I had seen it. It was an unattended plot—overgrown and unmowed, its swings and teeter-totters looking rusty and unused. I said, “Oh, wouldn’t you rather go to Honor Heights Park, near the Veterans Hospital?” They readily—and gleefully—agreed. Then I outlined my plan. We’d leave right after the worship service on the next Sunday and we’d hike the two-and-one-third-mile distance to Honor Heights Park. I’d furnish the sandwiches, and we’d carry our KoolAid with us, and we’d play games, eat, and go home again before sunset. They were enthusiastic and excited. And I began to wonder why none of them had suggested our going to Honor Heights. I had been in Oklahoma long enough to have become aware of segregation practices, and I began now to wonder about what I had planned. Then I remembered Jake Simmons’s invitation to call him if ever I had questions. So I did, and after telling him of our plans, I asked him directly, “Is it all right that I bring the youngsters to Honor Heights Park?”

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He answered me with a series of questions. “Pastor Lutze, who owns our city parks and how are they paid for and supported?” “Well, I suppose the people of Muskogee—the taxpayers,” I responded. “Aren’t these children’s parents taxpaying citizens?” “Well, yes, I imagine they are,” I agreed. “Does that answer your question?” he asked. And I answered, somewhat relieved, “Well, yes—thank you!” And I could almost hear a smile in his voice as he said, “You call me anytime—now have a good time with the children at the picnic!” Sunday arrived, and my brilliant strategy to get the youngsters to Sunday school and the church service had fizzled. The five who had been attending regularly were there, of course, but it surely would be a smaller group going on a picnic than I’d hoped for. The service came to an end. After I had greeted the worshippers, I went into my quarters to put on some clothes more fitting for picnics than my ministerial vestments. When I emerged at the church’s front entrance with beverages and munchings in hand, there they were, waiting for me—all sixteen as well as a Sunday school teacher, an adult member who had agreed to come along to help. Spirits were high and the walk, though long, didn’t prove tiring. We must have arrived there well before the regular Sunday afternoon picnickers, because we had our choice of any number of the small cubicles that rimmed the park. Each of these spaces was hedged in by shrubs to afford privacy. We spent the afternoon in our little area, playing circle games, telling stories, eating, and having a wonderful time. People driving by slowed a bit to peer in at our party. I presumed they were checking to see whether the cove where we were was occupied, and, when they saw it was in use, they moved on. My assisting adult stood behind the foliage at the entrance and seemed to convey uneasiness. Nonetheless, her enthusiastic participation in our activities was an encouragement to me. Hours later, somewhat exhausted (as was our supply of food and beverage), we left on the long trek and returned to the church. The group obviously regarded their afternoon as an exciting experience, and they left for their homes.

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I had barely settled myself in my office when the phone rang. “This is Jake Simmons. I called to see how your outing with the children went.” “Just fine!” I answered. “The setting was great and we all had a wonderful time!” “Great!” he said. “Pastor Lutze, you desegregated Honor Heights Park!” I certainly had had no idea that I was doing any pioneering of such dimensions. This was 1945, and I surely had not intended to involve unprepared children in any kind of public confrontation. There was no mention of the happening in the paper and most people in Muskogee were quite unaware that anything significant had occurred in the social patterns of their city. And I suppose really nothing discernible had.

Chapter Two

Gender and Race— A Partner for the Experience

W

hen Oklahoma’s days as Indian Territory came to an end, its lands in the west became available for settlers to come in and stake their claims. Among them were two young farmers, Ernest and William Dietrich Peters. They drove their wagon down from Kansas and laid hold of farmland in a small German-speaking community in Garfield County, near Fairmont, to set up a homestead there for their widowed mother. As time passed and the farm became well established, William told his brother that he had always wanted to be a Lutheran minister. Ernest, a pious man himself, urged his brother to pursue his dream. He would take over the responsibility of running the farm. Some years later, William was ordained and became pastor of a church in Asheville, North Carolina. William, Jr., and Ruth were born to him and his wife, Peggy. Subsequently, he became pastor of the large and prestigious Grace Lutheran Congregation in St. Louis. This had been established as one of the Lutheran Church’s first congregations to abandon any vestige of the German language usage. Many members of Grace were prominent businessmen who, in the aftermath of World War I, were eager to dissociate themselves from anything that hinted of German ties. Pastor Peters was now required to attire himself for formal ministry in striped trousers, Prince Albert coat, a top hat, and winged collar and cravat—a far cry from the style of his rural roots. 31

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As well as he adapted to his new situation and was respected by his congregation in his dignified bearing, he nonetheless retained the warmth and homey charm he brought from his Oklahoma days. Although many of the members of Grace were among the upper echelon of St. Louis society, they were impressed with the fervor of his ministry and his indefatigable efforts to know the people of the church’s neighborhood, many of whom were far less than prosperous. Twin daughters arrived in the Peters household shortly after the family’s move to St. Louis. Martha and Esther, early on nicknamed “the Tweeter Pins,” became the showpiece of the family—and of the parish. They adored their father and would often accompany him on his walks through the neighborhood. Years later they would recall how he would stop and bend down to speak with children he’d meet, eager to know them and to invite them to Grace’s Sunday school. And they told how he would regularly go to the home of one older woman who could no longer fully care for herself and he would wash her hair. When the twins were only thirteen their father died, following surgery for cancer. The congregation had made almost no provisions for the family upon their father’s death. Shortly after, Mrs. Peters’s wellbeing was severely affected by bipolar syndrome, at that time called manic depression. There simply were no funds to cover home expenses and allow for her children’s college education. Her son Bill entered military service. Ruth became a full-time employee at a large department store, and as soon as the twins finished high school, they too found employment to help support the household. And they loved music—as their father and mother had—so quite naturally they sang in choirs: the Saint Louis A Capella Choir, the Bach Festival Choir, and of course the choir of Grace Lutheran Church. The conductor of all these groups was Dr. William B. Heyne, whom their father had engaged early on to direct Grace Church’s ministry of music. While I was attending Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, already in my first year I sang in these choirs too. At my first rehearsal I was attracted to Esther—as were a dozen or more other members of the choir. I felt sure that she was already committed to any one of many who seemed to me would be her first choice. After four or five weeks I finally drew up enough courage to ask her for a date (to attend a church service with her!) and I could hardly be-

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lieve it when she accepted my invitation. After that I would see her at least once a week—mainly at choir rehearsals. After many months of these, there seemed little doubt that after my seminary graduation, we would be married. Since both of us were decidedly limited financially, we did a great deal of walking—and talking. And many of the places we’d pass through— often late at night—were neighborhoods where only African Americans lived. I was impressed with the way Esther would stop when we’d encounter little ones—or teenagers—and how easily she would slip into conversations with them. She asked me to meet her one Saturday morning at an inner-city project. When I arrived, she led me into a building where she was meeting with more than a dozen African American children, engaging them in storytelling and conversation. And I could tell instantly how much she genuinely loved them—and how they loved her. In the spring of 1941 I was passing through a corridor in the classroom building at the seminary when I noticed a slip tacked to a bulletin board: Grace Negro Lutheran Mission (between 18th and 19th on Biddle Street) needs volunteer to organize and direct a choir. Each weekday morning for two weeks I would see the note. I finally thought to myself, apparently no one has wanted to take on the task. Well, I had sung in enough choirs—I decided to give it a try. I was excited about the prospect of leading African American singers in a choir. I had heard the Wings over Jordan choir in concert, and I surely knew of the fame of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. I had listened to recordings of Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, and other renowned singers of color. I was eagerly looking forward to this new experience. That week I met at the little store-front church with the minister, Pastor Wilbert Fields. He had brought with him a few young recruits he had invited to join the new musical group. I took them to the piano to determine their ranges. To my dismay I found that two of them were monotones who couldn’t have carried a tune in a laundry basket. They became my “librarians,” assigned to distribute and gather the sheet music, arrange the chairs, and attend to other sundry duties that made no demands of any vocal contributions. I began to discover the invalidity

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of the stereotype that declared all these people to be naturally good singers. The four young girls were all sopranos. The three males, whose voices very likely had changed only a few months before, were all in the baritone/bass range. If we were to have a choir we would need a tenor— I am not one, but I would be the tenor section. Esther agreed to be the necessary alto. We sang valiantly—after much, much rehearsing—but only on two occasions in worship services. All this became for us far more than a musical experience. Early on in our meeting with these young people, we learned that one of them had been discovered to have tuberculosis. Her case was so advanced that doctors predicted she may well have to lose a lung in surgery. This was frightening indeed. The next time we met, one of the girls told how her family had just learned that her brother had been killed in the war. Another one of our young baritones would be leaving for the army the following week. What we had expected to be a delightful experience had come to be a deeply moving one. These were not simply young people of another race with whom we sang. These were real people with heavy personal burdens. These were our brothers and sisters who had allowed us to enter their struggles of faith and life. For Esther and me this was a moment of discovering how very much we wanted to be mutually engaged and supporting one another in caring for people who traveled difficult roads. Esther had her Oklahoma father’s heart and commitment. I didn’t have the slightest notion or hint of what my future in the ministry would look like or where it would take me, but, wherever it would be, I wanted her at my side. And to my great joy, that is where she wanted to be. My year of internship was another gift that provided me with new dimensions of understanding the conflict and confusion latent in America’s dealing—or neglecting to deal—with the issue of race relations. My assignment was to do chaplaincy ministry in Maryland. This was 1943, and that state still observed laws of segregation. Among institutions I served was Henryton, a sanitarium for tubercular patients, at that time “the largest Negro TB hospital in the world.” Because of its limited ca-

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pacity and the long line of patients waiting for space to open, only the most severe cases were admitted. The death rate here, a nurse confided in me, averaged nine each week. The situation called for having deeply personal one-on-one visits with these patients each week. Many of those I met were in their final days. Our conversations achieved an intimacy and intensity that gave me insights into their lives, experiences, and feelings which I probably could never have acquired in any other way. After my year of internship my final two semesters of the seminary sped by quickly, and my first four months of ministry were exciting. Those months passed swiftly, and then it was time for my return to St. Louis to wed Esther. Those months had been packed with excitement as I was learning more and more about ministry and people and Oklahoma. There were surely many adjustments Esther would be expected to make in coming to be with me. Not the least of these were the weather vagaries peculiar to Oklahoma. A particularly memorable and awesome event occurred on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, exactly one month before we were to be married. I was stepping from my front porch to walk downtown and noticed a strange formation of clouds. One layer was racing wildly to the left and another layer above it was moving with equal speed in the opposite direction. Where I stood it was eerily quiet, and above me the skies were darkening quickly. I thought rain might fall any moment, so I hurried on my trip—half running as I went. I kept watching the rushing clouds. Suddenly the two layers of clouds in the east seemed to slide against each other and they began merging into a crazy and disturbed confusion. By this time I was halfway on my trip, across the street from a garage that serviced buses. The skies, now turned almost black, suddenly seemed to empty on me. The first drops on the pavement were as large as half dollars. I raced across to find shelter at the garage. In that short distance of no more than sixty feet I was thoroughly drenched. The rain slammed down hard on the pavement and on the building’s roof—almost deafeningly. Since it appeared that the downpour wouldn’t soon end, I stepped into the office where several of the mechanics had gathered. We stood there listening to a small radio on the shelf crackling noisily with the

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static. The commentator was announcing in sober tones, “Our President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has died.” Then above the din of the rain and the noisy static of the radio we began to hear screaming sirens obviously hurrying to the east side of the city. Before the storm had receded, the radio already was informing us that a tornado had dipped down and that the Oklahoma School for the Blind had been in its path. We were to learn later that amid the twisted girders and crumbled walls, several of the children residing there had lost their lives. May arrived, and I boarded a train for Missouri. At long last I would marry Esther. I had so many stories to tell her when I got to St. Louis. And she was eager to hear them all. It was a wonderful wedding, attended by much hurried activity. My sisters and my parents came to St. Louis from Wisconsin. Arranging for their lodging, meetings with Pastor Kurth (successor to Esther’s father) who would perform the wedding, finding an organist to replace the one who at the last moment had had to withdraw, and countless other details immersed us. On May 12 we arrived breathless at a church filled with friends and members of Grace Church, eager to see one of the “Tweeter pins” as a bride. She was beautiful! A former Grace member, director of a funeral home, furnished the nuptial party transportation from the church to a reception at the home of Esther’s mother, three blocks from the church. Wishing to make the occasion special, he took us there by way of the miles of turning roads that wound their way through mammoth Forest Park. Our tardy arrival at the reception had Esther’s mother worried half to death as she tried to assure the uneasy guests we’d be there any minute. I am sure we spent far too little time with the wonderful people who had come to the wedding. After only a short time we rushed off so that we might be on our way. Anticipating the frugal lifestyle we were beginning, we chose to make the wedding trip by train—en route for Muskogee, with a five-day stopover at the Kentwood Arms in Springfield, Missouri—the only concession to luxury we had agreed upon. For the most part we ate at small cafés, spending a great deal of time

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on long walks where our treats were largely confined to popcorn, ice cream cones, and window shopping. Since both of us came from conservative—almost Victorian—backgrounds, and since we’d not been given any depth counseling in preparation for marriage, we did find our way to the public library and sat together at a table reading from a book that was “all about marriage.” Most of what we read was pretty much common-sensical. However, we both lifted our eyebrows to read the assuring words about conjugal experience: “It is not necessary that during marital intercourse both partners experience peak excitement simultaneously so that they kick the ceiling out of their bedroom . . .” So much for counseling. I do remember, though, the advice that one fellow seminarian had offered. Instead of expensive champagne, one could add to a bottle of Mogen David wine a bottle of Seven-Up for the same effect. So when we went to the hotel we did indeed bring some Mogen David and Seven-Up. It tasted, however, very much like Mogen David mixed with Seven-Up. My ten days away were wonderful days. Now, however, Esther and I would be beginning our new life together, with Hope Lutheran Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Probably none of the other fellows who had been in my seminary graduation class were serving congregations of such small membership. When I joined the congregation the membership “soared” from sixteen to seventeen. And now there were eighteen. Unless my name was Brigham Young or Joseph Smith, I could hardly anticipate a larger membership by increasing the size of my family! In spite of my visiting almost every home in the neighborhood, extending personal invitations to the church, the membership—and attendance—at Hope Church for my first months of ministry remained consistently—and somewhat disappointingly—constant. I thought, surely, I’ve put a lot into my sermon preparations, and one of these days, the word will get around and we’ll grow. Esther and I were both surprised and thrilled when, on the Sunday that followed her first Sunday with me, the attendance leaped from twenty-three to thirty-four. Next day, while Mr. Hooper was working his garden patch, I went out to chat with him, still excited about the

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upswing in our attendance. I thought surely he would agree with me that my preaching was “finally taking hold.” Not wishing to hurt my feelings, he explained, “Your sermons have been fine, but people have been hearing about Mrs. Lutze.” Then I learned that my predecessor’s wife—as was the custom of all families of white Lutheran pastors serving in African American communities in the South—would worship with the nearby white congregation on Sundays when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. “Mrs. Lutze stayed with us and drank from the Holy Cup with us.” Although we surely had no intention of seeing the number of members of Hope Church increase by adding a string of little Lutzes to the roster, Esther and I were hoping we might have a family of our own. And during our first September together we were delighted to learn that an infant was on its way. The members were excited about the news and quite solicitously showed their care for Esther’s well-being. They’d make frequent phone calls, curious about how she was faring and admonishing their pastor to be watchful and caring. Their concern was not without cause. Several times—especially during our last weeks of waiting—Esther tumbled, and each time Doctor Ashby ordered her to rest for hours at a time with her feet elevated to prevent loss of the infant. Although I had been denied the appointment to serve as assistant to the chaplain at Veterans Hospital, his office would often call me to inform me of Lutheran patients there who had requested pastoral care from a clergyman of their own denomination. On one such occasion— and I’d often be gone for two or more hours on such visits—I returned home and found that Esther was not there. This wasn’t altogether unusual. She would often take short walks to visit with some of the neighbors, and most frequently with Mrs. Johnson, who had just recently undergone surgery for removal of her leg. Before I could even sit down at my desk, the phone rang. It was Esther. She was crying. I blurted out, “Where are you?” She managed to get out the words, “I’m in jail!” I could only respond rather unhelpfully, “What are you doing there?” And then, in another burst of tears, she simply pleaded, “Just get down here!”

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I raced out of the house on foot and covered the mile distance in what must have been record time. She was sitting in a chair—very pregnant, eyes red from crying. The chief of police stood there—we were in his office, which somewhat resembled that of Ron Steiger when he played the role of Chief Gillespie in the film In the Heat of the Night. I lifted her from the chair to hug her and asked if she was all right. And then I noticed standing off in the corner in his army uniform, Private Harold Cherry, a member of our church. His face was ashen and he was obviously frightened. I asked, “What is all this?” Esther began to unfold the story. Harold had dropped by the house to see us. Happy to be home on his first furlough, he was asking for help before he was to move on to another camp on the eastern seaboard. He had showed Esther the rather complicated orders that had been given him, outlining his routing to the new destination. Rather than trying to explain the details to Harold, who was certainly inexperienced in rail travel, she had suggested that they walk down to the train depot together where she would help him to purchase the tickets which called for use of several railroad lines and involved some transfers en route. As they were walking past the city hall, a patrol car pulled over to the curb. The officers made them enter and drove them to the police station. The chief took over the conversation, explaining, “This is the South and we don’t have any colored man walking down our streets with a white woman. We were getting calls about them and that’s why we picked them up.” I was furious. I stormed at him with a passion I hardly recognized in myself. “This lady has come to this city to join me in trying to make this a good city. This young man is a member of our church and is willing to risk his life in the service of this country, and she is trying to help him pursue his responsibilities, and you would take them into custody as they do this together for this country?” The chief made more feeble attempts to justify what had happened, finally ending with the comment that after all he was protecting them from someone who might have attempted to hurt them. His comment simply riled me more, so I persisted in my tirade.

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“You can see that my wife is expecting a child anytime and you’ve submitted her to a horribly frightening and humiliating experience. You may be sure that if anything happens to her or to our child you will hear more of this.” And then because he could not find words to respond, I went even further and said I was sure that the NAACP would want to know if that happened. Admittedly that was a bit of a stretch, since I really knew hardly anything about the organization. However, my words must have been persuasive because he did offer to have us returned home in a patrol car. I refused, commenting that today it had been a “vehicle of shame” and I wouldn’t want to be seen in it. He apologized, and we never again in our seven-year stay had any further confrontation with the police. We were able to help in completing Harold Cherry’s travel arrangements. We didn’t say anything about our experience to anybody. But very likely Private Cherry did. The following Sundays saw an increased attendance at worship. More than fifty were coming to our services, and by the end of our second year more than twenty adults were added to Hope’s membership roster. Esther’s life obviously spoke as effectively as any of my sermons. Periodically, small study conferences were scheduled so that professional church workers might be involved in continued studies for strengthening their ministries. Most of Oklahoma’s sixty-five Lutheran congregations at this time were in rural communities or small towns. While these congregations in almost all instances furnished parsonages (of varying quality, I might add!) for their pastors, few paid salaries as high as $150 per month. So when such study conferences were held, in order that they be budget-friendly, local congregations would take turns hosting the visiting participants, serving meals at the church and providing sleeping accommodations in homes of the members. Attendance was not mandatory, but few of us missed them—unless there was good reason, like having to perform a funeral. All the pastors in that region were expected to be present. Any who would not attend could expect to be chided or admonished for their absence. However, most participants looked forward to these convenings. For many, such

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a meeting served as a kind of refreshing oasis. Not that these were mere occasions for social outlet. Some of these sessions proved edifying and enriching. People who prepared papers for presentation often worked hard in readying themselves for the occasion. Probably the greatest benefit of these conferences, however, was the opportunity they afforded the participants to be together in a relaxed, informal setting where they could share their experiences and encourage one another. Some of us lived considerable distances from our closest colleagues. These trips were infrequent and especially precious to those of us who could not buy a car during the war years. And some of us could not have afforded one even if cars had been available. Many of these pastors, located far out in Oklahoma’s Panhandle in places like Guymon, Woodward, and Texhoma, were more than two hundred miles west of the center of the state—and these were pretelevision days. Often those who lived in such distant and isolated localities would bring their wives to our conferences. This afforded them a change of scenery, a bit of respite from day-to-day sameness, and an opportunity to visit with one another. Some years later, when airplanes became available, Pastor Waldo Bentrup of Shattuck, near the state’s far west border, did purchase a small craft. A lovable fellow, we called him “Bing,” a name he had picked up during his seminary days. Having his own plane was particularly advantageous to him because he also served another small church across the state line in Follett, Texas, some twenty-five miles from his home. The young minister had not married, so he had a lonelier home life than most of us. With his new prize Bing was now able to take off from time to time to visit with friends or to visit one of the larger Oklahoma towns for shopping, taking in a movie, or just going out for dinner. One morning, when the fog lay heavy on the fields, he took to the air for a short trip. The skies were blackish and the weather was such that it should have ruled out his taking to the air. But he was young and confident and at other times he’d ventured out, following familiar roads to find his way. This time, however, the fog was so thick that he lost sight of the highway, and with strong winds tossing his little ship, he apparently turned about in the changing currents, and, without realizing it, was flying upside down. In his attempts to gain altitude he actually was fly-

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ing closer and closer to the ground. His plane slammed into a farmer’s barn. The young pastor was killed in the crash. The turnover among Oklahoma’s Lutheran pastors was clearly noticeable. Through the years there was always a new group of a half dozen or more—usually fresh from a seminary—who would stay only a short time and then move on elsewhere. But there was always also a pocket of veterans who had stayed on in Oklahoma since earlier days. They might have moved around from one parish to another through the years, but they knew Oklahoma and had hours of storytelling to share with any who would listen. Between sessions at these conferences, the younger crew would often indulge in softball, touch football, or horseshoes. And in the evenings, before disbanding to the various host families’ homes, we’d sit about playing pinochle, all the while swapping stories, and just as often seeking counsel from our peers for dealing with problem issues in the home parish. I found conversations with the older members of the group especially appealing. I recall Pastor Karl Frese telling how, when he arrived in Tulsa in the early twenties, he had been told by his superiors how to initiate his work. “Go to the first public phone booth you see and copy from the directory all the names and addresses of names that sound German. They’re probably all Lutherans, so ask them if they’d want to help you form a church.” Pastor Armin Dubberstein, when I met him, was serving a congregation he had helped develop in El Reno. He had spent much of his ministry in Oklahoma and now, up in years, he had a host of stories to tell about early days in the state. We’d all gather round when he’d share his reminiscences because he told them so engagingly. I remember particularly one occasion when he was telling how one of the farmers in the western part of the state had demonstrated for his pastor how—with great deftness, I might add—one was to grasp the tail of a snake (apparently they were in abundance), swiftly snapping it so its neck or head would burst. I’m not sure whether or not he was pulling my leg, but as he told it, the story was altogether believable. I was impressed, and so were the other members of his audience. I recall arriving at one conference, and one of the men roared out,

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“Hey there—here comes the colored preacher!” And a few of the others with him chuckled. I’m sure he’d intended to be the comic rather than be mean. And I remember my confused emotions. I felt his words a put-down, and yet, if I were to be identified with the people I was serving, I was proud, and proud to be sharing in the humiliation they bore constantly at the hands of white people. Many, many years later, when our family had moved to Indiana, our son Stephen, enrolled in our Lutheran school, was made to stay after school because he had been tardy in returning to the classroom after recess. He didn’t make any excuses to his teacher, but I was curious why he would dally when he knew better. He explained, “The bell rang and one of the kids yelled, ‘Last one in is a—well, you know the word we’re never supposed to use—’ and I thought of George and Ralph and Sterling and all my friends in our church back in Oklahoma, and I wasn’t ashamed to be one of them.” I knew what Steve meant. For some of our conferences we also invited teachers in Lutheran elementary schools to attend. I raised the question, “Were I to bring with me Mrs. Marie Smith, who teaches at our school, would she be welcome?” There was an uneasy quiet in the room. Finally veteran Pastor Otto Hensel from Enid rose. He said, “I’m sure that there are some people in my congregation who would not invite her to their homes, but she is my sister in Christ. My home is open to her.” One man said, “But don’t you think neighbors might object? You know, this is the South.” Pastor Hensel quickly replied, “I always have felt, my home is my castle, and it’s nobody else’s business what goes on there. And if I want to invite Mrs. Smith or anyone else into my home—whatever their race— that’s my decision. That’s my business. And that’s all there is to it!” Pastor Hensel proved to be a true partner in ministry. And other pastors, edified and encouraged by his stand, assured me that any teacher or member from Hope would be welcomed in their homes as well. It was May 1946 and time for another pastoral conference. This one was to be held halfway across the state, over in Breckenridge. I really didn’t like the idea of leaving Esther alone. She was in her last

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days of awaiting our first child. But she assured me she’d be all right, and that she’d be staying in touch with our family doctor and with Ruth Studtmann, whose husband would be driving me to the conference. One of the “assignments” I left with her involved tending to the chickens. The little flock was to be given fresh water and feed. Of special concern, however, was the one hen that was warming a nest full of fertilized eggs. It was important to see to it that the eggs would be turned each day, lest the embryo stick to the shell as it developed. The mothering hen might sometimes fail in attending to turn one or the other of the eggs during the nesting process, so human intervention would preclude such neglect. Esther was sure she could take over that job. It was at an early morning hour when I said my reluctant good-bye and drove off with Martin toward Breckenridge. That evening when our study sessions were over, we were all gathered together in the church hall. Most were playing cards. Some were sipping coffee and were deep in conversation. The telephone on the wall rang and Pastor Walmar Frank answered. He called over to me and said, “It’s Esther and I think she’s crying.” I had been so excited about becoming a father, so everyone in the room knew by now that Esther was expecting. Everyone became quiet. They were as apprehensive as I was suddenly worried. Esther was sobbing and I think I was able to console her. The flow of tears seemed to subside. I assured her that all would be well. I would be back with her tomorrow afternoon. I told her I loved her and we hung up. Everyone in the room wanted to know what had happened. I probably blushed as I explained that she had been reaching under the brooding hen to turn the eggs. When the disturbed animal had pecked her, she dropped the egg and in the splattered remains Esther could discern the unborn chick. The experience crushed this dear, sensitive city girl. But that was Esther. The men chuckled, and I sensed their caring concern and relief that it was nothing more serious. They loved Esther too. In spite of latent racial prejudices (which rarely surfaced), my clergy peers were always warm, kind, and affirming. None of us were native Oklahomans, but we shared in our devotion to our ministry a loyalty to each other, and an excitement in taking on the challenges this young state offered us.

Chapter Three

Benign Whites

T

he patient who is undergoing tests to determine the nature of her tumor is relieved when the doctor announces, “It’s be-

nign.” The word means kindly and is surely more welcome when contrasted with the alternate verdict, malignant. Nonetheless, a tumor is an invasion of one’s well-being that has to be dealt with. If left unattended, the growth, at the very least, is likely to bring the patient discomfort and may possibly result in serious injury to her health. I have not found it useful to use the term racism. Many whites seem to associate that term with meanness—remembering the brutality, lynchings, and burning of crosses and churches that have marked the conduct of rabid bigots who have brought shame and disgrace to this country’s history. Since those who are repulsed by such conduct would never become thus involved, they would likely exclude themselves from being regarded as racist. Nonetheless, they may well tacitly subordinate people of another race. I have found it helpful, therefore, to define the issue this way: It is the reality of subordinating— by attitude, words, or actions— other individuals or groups for irrelevant reasons, such as racial or cultural derivation. This triple-thrust subordinating (attitudinal, verbal, active) of course may be intentional, but often is quite unintentional. It very 45

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often manifests itself in such subtle ways that the person employing it may not even realize it and may in fact deny it. It is this very subtlety that makes it difficult to identify, to deal with, and ultimately to eradicate. However, although it appears to be benign, it is in every case debilitating. The everyday experience for African Americans in Oklahoma from infancy was subordination. And all the people who lived in this state seemed pretty well adjusted to the status quo. I began to realize that a sort of rhythm had developed in the life of Oklahoma. This racial subordinating simply was taken for granted. Quite unquestioningly, people on both sides of the racial divide were accepting of this rhythm. I found myself in the peculiar situation of being white and yet wishing to identify with and be a part of the people among whom I lived, with whom I was working, whom I was assigned to serve, and whom I already had come to love. Esther and I brought with us to this new chapter in our lives and to our new setting in “the South” an innocence and naïveté that called for garnering much further experience and counsel. And, by far, most of such counsel came from the lips of members of my new congregation and people in the community I was to serve. During my years in Muskogee I never encountered any real meanness of the white community toward people of color. There may indeed have been individuals who were mean to African Americans, but I cannot recall witnessing such conduct. Far more did I experience a more kindly disposition on the part of the white people whom I met. Mrs. Harbeck was such a person. She was a member of First Lutheran Church, a sweet and generous lady. She would often invite me to be her guest for breakfast at her small Lady Esther’s Café located directly behind the post office. I felt very awkward accepting her kind invitation, knowing full well that members of my church were not to go there—or to any other eating establishment in the white community. I was to learn later a saying: “It’s great being white in America until you get caught at it.” I mentioned my uncomfortableness to a neighbor, Mrs. Margaret Phillips, who in later months also joined Hope Church. She was a principal of a small segregated rural school not far from Muskogee. She said, “Pastor, there are places we can’t go—we can’t go there yet. We

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want to—and we will some day. We want you to have everything that we are wanting, if you can, even if we can’t now, can’t yet. It won’t make us feel any better if you don’t go there.” Esther and I both felt strongly that in our new situation we did not want to divorce ourselves from white people. To do so surely would have been inconsistent with our faith that claimed to embrace all people in the love of God. My ties with the Studtmanns were already strong. They had accorded me such a warm welcome and so much genuine care. Martin invited me to go with him to the local YMCA to participate in its recreational offerings. It was here that I met some whites who were other than Lutheran. Among these was Ed Griesel, an attorney. He was up in years, and his volleyball prowess hardly qualified him for the Olympics. However, he proved a helpful friend. Later—at no cost—Ed provided me with help in legal matters concerning our church property. I met Dr. Hugh Ashby volleyballing at the Y too. No one called him by his name. He was Doc. His office was in the same building with Ed. Doc Ashby was probably in his mid-forties, but he never would reveal his age. Whenever filling out forms of one sort or another, he would always write in “over 21.” He was unmarried, so once Esther arrived on the scene, he would often be our guest at dinner. Small wonder, then, that as the time drew near for our first son’s arrival, Doc became our family physician. One of the framed certificates hanging on his office wall was a doctor of medicine diploma from some institution in Kansas, with whose name I’d not been familiar. I assumed that the school probably was no longer in existence or had not been accredited. A somewhat larger framed diploma declared him to be a graduate of the School of Osteopathy in Kansas City. He told us of his early days of practice in a small town in Kansas. There had been only one doctor in town, so it seemed a likely place to set up his practice. People there were friendly enough to this new doctor, but when they got sick they would always go to the other doctor. He became very discouraged. At long last he was relieved; a few patients came to his office and there were a few requests for house calls. Problem: almost all these people he was treating were in extremely bad

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health and most of them died shortly after he began serving them. “I finally realized what was happening,” Doc told us. “That old codger was referring all these severe cases to me. Meanwhile he was getting people to regard him as the one who cured his patients and I was the doctor whose patients died!” When the older “competitor” died, Doc was in a position to exercise the full range of his medical skills as the only physician in town. At the time we met Doc Ashby, osteopaths were not permitted to make use of the services of community hospitals. That meant Doc’s practice was limited to office appointments and to house calls. When he encountered cases that required surgery or other hospital care, he was obliged to refer his patient to some local M.D. who had access to the facilities of Muskogee General Hospital. Because Doc had been caring for Esther during her days of pregnancy, he was very eager to be the one who would be presiding at the birth of our firstborn. With a sort of blushing pride he assured us that, though he hadn’t done so recently, he had delivered dozens of babies into the world— and that he hadn’t lost any of them in childbirth. We had no doubts about his competence, and he had already anticipated our concerns about where the birth would take place. He informed us that Tulsa had an osteopathic hospital, but that it was sixty miles away. However, he told us of two of his osteopath colleagues who were operating a small hospital in Checotah, about twenty miles south. He had already inquired of them whether he might bring a maternity patient to their hospital, and they indicated their willingness to oblige. We had no car, but Doc said he would personally drive us there when it was time for the infant’s arrival. We were pleased with the arrangement, and we had now only to wait. It was the evening of May 28, 1946. Doc was at our home—for dinner and some card playing. He loved the game of pitch. Before we got very far into the game, Esther began to have some discomfort, and Doc began taking note of the time that elapsed between these surges of discomfort. At length he told us he thought we ought to get to the hospital soon. Esther’s little preparation bag had been ready for almost a week now, so it took us only minutes before we were in Doc’s car on the way to Checotah.

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Sheets of rain blew against the car. None of us found words for the moment, so in our own silence we became very aware of the noisy rain and the wipers beating furiously across the windshield. As Doc had requested, Esther would report each time the pain would strike again and he would have a soft, reassuring word for her. My own apprehension level was mounting. Though the trip had lasted only half an hour, I thought we’d never get there. Doc had called ahead, and two nurses were standing in the drugstore’s doorway, waiting to help Esther up the stairway to the second floor which was the hospital—modest, clean, and hospitable. The nurses took Esther to her bed, and I stood at her side until Doc came in, having parked his car and found some towels with which to dry himself a bit. Esther’s pain seemed to have subsided. Near midnight Doc announced that the child would not likely be born before morning. He would be going home and, from his office the next day, he’d be in constant contact with the hospital to be apprised of Esther’s progress toward birthing. I stayed with her, holding her hand through the night. I can’t remember that either of us got any sleep. She was really in discomfort. The morning came and passed slowly. No seeming progress. Doc called—as he had almost every half hour. At four o’clock he arrived. It was obvious that he was more than a little concerned. The nurses had told me, “Her water has broken.” Altogether naive, I welcomed Doc’s explanation: the water pouch below the womb, whose purpose it is to open a passage for the infant’s arrival, had burst. The head of the fetus had been bumping at the channel’s opening and could not find its way out. Esther’s pain was severe. Garbed in surgical clothes now, Doc proceeded to effect an enlarged passageway manually and worked at this for hours until finally he felt that the delivery was imminent. By now, the hospital staff had been rushed into fevered activity because of an accident that involved serious injuries. It was almost ten o’clock and the nurses were not available to us. They were attending to the accident victims. The two doctors, however, had completed their work and offered to fill in. I felt somewhat relieved to know that I had three doctors working together on Esther’s needs. These were the days when fathers traditionally paced the corridors

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while their wives were in labor. No one even dared entertain the thought that he might witness his child’s birth. Doc asked me, however, whether I’d want to sit in the delivery room now. I was surprised; yet, I had already been so intensely involved in the process to this point. I eagerly followed into the shadows of the delivery room where Dr. Stewart pointed to a chair in the corner about seven or eight feet away from the table where Esther lay under the bright light of the surgical lamp. One of the doctors was administering an anesthetic, the other bearing down on her abdomen as Doc was waiting at the entrance, all of them urging Esther to participate with her deep breathing and pushing. Dr. Stewart turned to look at me in the midst of their struggling. I must have looked as pale as I felt. He spoke to me—almost shouting, “You! You put your head between your knees; we’ve got enough to do here without worrying about you!” I obeyed, and in a moment or two had regained a bit of inner balance. I watched closely. I could see the very top of the little fellow’s head for several minutes before he finally pushed into his new world. By now, two nurses had joined us, and the moment the baby emerged, I could sense the relief everyone felt. And then everything became very quiet. Peter hadn’t begun breathing. The doctors were doing everything possible, stroking and massaging. The infant had been in the channel so long. Moments were passing and there was no sign of life. The doctors huddled to weigh the options in procedure, with little Peter lying there, very still, near his mother. Unexpectedly, quite by himself, the baby managed a cough and a cry, and suddenly the entire room blossomed into a crescendo of exultant screams and laughter and busyness. And after it was all over, Esther said, “I knew something was wrong the moment he was born—it was so deadly quiet, and I wanted to cry and I couldn’t. And then—it seemed like an eternity—the room was full of excitement and I knew God had given us a child.” A totally exhausted Dr. Ashby and I found our way downstairs and into a nearby café to settle down with some coffee before our drive home. His tired hand was trembling so uncontrollably that he had to hold his cup with both hands. He said, “That is one strong woman you have there. And bringing home that little guy! That was my first one for a long time, and the most difficult one yet. But our baby is here and I’m

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going to love that little boy.” And, both of us agreed, God had been very good to us. Esther’s ordeal and the subsequent surgical repair called for her remaining in the hospital for an additional ten days. I would take the bus to Checotah each day and hitch a return trip with Doc Ashby, who would come in each evening to check on Esther’s progress. Without my presence and the cheery helpfulness of the nurses, it would have been a rather lonely experience for Esther. In these war years no washers and dryers or other appliances were available, and since we’d not expected Esther’s stay to be so extended, we’d not brought nearly enough of the things that were needed. The nurses cheerily hung up diapers and gowns they had washed for her. They treated Peter as though he was their very own. They called him their little “Peanut” and proudly showed him to all who came to their hospital. Of course, Pastor Martin and Ruth Studtmann came over to visit Esther and see the new arrival. We could count on them. There were two more friends we had met shortly after we’d come to Muskogee: Carl Flick—another volleyballer—and his wife, Bobby. They visited Esther twice and brought her flowers. Early on, the Flicks and Lutzes would get together for picnics and such. Their visits to Checotah to see Esther and eight-pound, eleven-ounce Peter greatly cheered the new mother. There were people in distant places who had assured us of their prayers, and I was to call them as soon as “things begin to happen.” Elmer Witt was one whom I phoned, a longtime friend who was a pastor in California. His response: “Karl, that’s a big baby—the kind you don’t have to baptize—you confirm them right away!” Since our first days in Muskogee, Esther and I were eager to cultivate ties with people in Muskogee’s other Lutheran church. First Lutheran had seven o’clock vespers each Sunday evening. Since no meetings were scheduled at Hope on Sunday nights, Esther and I would walk the twelve or so blocks to worship with Martin Studtmann’s congregation. That’s where we met the Don Petering family. Don had inherited his father’s funeral home. He had the reputation of being one of the finest morticians in the community. He was a soft-spoken, gentle, caring person.

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He and his wife, Erna, would often return us to our home on Sunday evenings after vesper services at First Lutheran. And if even the slightest gray cloud was in the sky to suggest the threat of rain, the Peterings would come by to pick us up. And, of course, when the time drew close for Esther’s becoming a mother they’d regularly be at our front door those Sunday evenings to drive us to vespers. The Peterings would sometimes take us to their home for coffee and snacks before bringing us home. Since their living quarters were attached to the funeral home, our conversation often made it possible to ask about Don’s work. He proved a good teacher, and I learned much from him about the role and responsibilities of a mortician. It became clear to me that African Americans were expected to call on “their own” funeral directors—of which there were several in Muskogee. This provided white morticians with a rationale for the situation. They were able to say that they did not wish to compete with African American funeral homes. And too, of course, there were “Negro cemeteries” for their patrons as well. As in many places at that time, funeral establishments also provided the community with ambulance service. Although several of our new friends offered to drive to Checotah when Esther was to return from the hospital, Don insisted that he be the one to bring her home in his ambulance. Good, kindly people, the Peterings. And later, when their daughter, Billie Ruth, became a teenager, she served as a volunteer during Hope’s summer programs for children. It was at First Lutheran Vespers that I met Mr. and Mrs. Louis Koepsell. They were very actively involved in the programs of their church, and we found them to be very interested in our ministry at Hope. We were guests at their house for dinner one evening. In the discussion that ensued I asked Mr. Koepsell about his line of work. He told how he was manager of the local Coca-Cola Bottling Company. He talked a bit about the nature of the operation and the number of people employed by the firm. While we were talking, it occurred to me I knew of several young men and women in our congregation and neighborhood who were unemployed—and some who were underemployed, holding low-paying, menial jobs—people who’d be able to fill more advanced types of work if given opportunity. So I asked him whether or not he had any openings

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for which some member of Hope Congregation might apply. It hadn’t been my intention to distress him. However, as he fumbled for words, I understood I was trespassing in an area that was making him very, very uncomfortable. It seemed obvious that he had never considered the thought of hiring a member of Hope Lutheran Church—or any other African American—in jobs that had always been filled by whites. Nobody in the business world did—or would. It was unthinkable. He simply said, “No, no, I don’t think so.” Obviously even my mere suggestion that he consider doing so erected a chilling wall between us. How could I have dared to propose a disruptive procedure that would defy and collide with practices so deeply implanted in not only the social but also the economic life of Oklahoma? Mr. Koepsell was a really kindly, gentle person. I feel rather certain, had I pressed him further, he would probably have tried to assure me that he had “nothing against Negroes.” This simply was the way things were. The power of the segregating patterns was such that it even rendered people—people of goodwill—who were in positions of power powerless to break out of those patterns.

Chapter Four

The “Minority” People

I

was beginning to discern the sharp economic contrast between the two racial communities. I had learned that some sort of provision was awarded the very old in the community I was serving— as I remember, about forty dollars a month. Mr. Hooper, in his eighties, had to support his wife, a daughter, and her two school-age children on that amount, with help from another daughter, Dorthy, who also lived with them and had a job downtown working the presses in a white-owned dry-cleaning establishment. I performed my very first wedding when Dorthy became Mrs. Homer Hamilton. Her new husband had returned from military service in Italy, where he had worked in the army’s motor pool. He had driven huge trucks over the winding mountain passes and had learned the kind of mechanical skills required to repair and rehabilitate equipment that would break down. In his backyard, Homer had rigged up a frame with chains and pulley for lifting engines from cars. Since no new autos were available during the war, most of his neighbors and friends who owned cars had old and usually well-worn and very tired cars. These people had little money for repairs. Homer would help them in his after-work hours to do ring jobs and to work with other automotive problems that came along with these limping vehicles. A good many of the younger African American men had moved to industrial centers farther north, where war-related job opportunities abounded, thereby draining off some of the brightest, strongest, 54

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and most industrious men of the community. There were those who strove valiantly to operate small businesses that for the most part served only those of their own race. Mr. Eubanks, Mr. and Mrs. Maxey, and a few others owned small groceries. So did Mr. Jennings, who also was principal of [Frederick] Douglass School and a part-time sports announcer for a local radio station. Second Street was dotted with a sprinkling of more shops and businesses—Mr. Phillips owned a pool hall. To the south were a photo studio, a small theater, and sundry other enterprises. The market for their services, however, was limited. Whites had their own commercial spots of preference. So the competition among these merchants was a bit crowded. Mr. King, who owned the Peoples Funeral Home, lamented to me, “I went to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where Booker T. Washington taught us that you don’t have to leave home to make it in this world. He told us, ‘Prepare yourself well and lower your bucket where you are.’ Well,” he continued, “I dropped my bucket where I am and found there’s hardly enough water to fill my bucket!” It seemed that of the several morticians in the community, all were struggling to survive. I was earning a less than fabulous $115 per month—plus my housing. And yet I was earning more than most people in the community I had come to serve. Friends and even some of my family back in Wisconsin—and whites I had met here too—couldn’t quite understand what I was doing here and why I would want to be here. Straddling two separate and very different communities and cultures was almost impossible for me to fathom fully at the time. I could hardly expect others to understand. The more I became involved in the life of the community in which I lived and served, the more I began to feel the restraints and the pains these people had been enduring night and day since they were born. It was a Saturday, a good bit after midnight, when I was awakened by a phone call from the Veterans Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Did I know how to contact the father of a young man who had just died? When admitted at the hospital, the young soldier had apparently registered as a Lutheran from Muskogee, and that probably accounted for the hospital personnel tracking me down. Although I really did not know him, he had attended Sunday school at Hope prior to my coming

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to Oklahoma. I had become acquainted with his father, whom the hospital now had not been able to find. I realized how a father would dread learning such news and how deeply it would pain him, but it was imperative that he be found and told. I wished someone else had been given this bitter assignment. I called the house—no answer. I dressed and went out into the night to his residence two blocks away. All was dark. I pounded on the door. No one answered. I stepped from the porch to the street and, fortunately, met a man who was finding his way home. He seemed a little startled as I accosted him. I asked if he knew where I might find the father. He told me, “I just left him! He’s in the bar on Second Street next to the theater.” I thanked him and left quickly for South Second Street, probably half a mile away. Now, this was Saturday night on South Second Street, not a time or place one would expect to encounter a white person—let alone a clergyman. Fortunately, it was now after two o’clock in the morning. No music, no people. The street was quiet and deserted. I walked into the dimly lit tavern. I think the bartender almost dropped the glass he was wiping dry. I asked him whether the man for whom I was looking was there and he pointed me to a booth at the end of the bar. Two men were sitting there with their beverage of choice. I knew and recognized this companion—his wife attended our church. The man I came for was slumped over. The first one shoved his partner’s arm off the table and wakened him rather abruptly from a deep sleep. Both of them were very drunk. The man I’d come to see could hardly lift his very bloodshot eyes, but he seemed to recognize me before his head dropped once again and he was fast asleep. We both shook him and I shouted in his ear. After more than an hour of repeated efforts, I finally got the message through to him that his son had died. This started him off into a crying spell, in which he was muttering his remorse almost unintelligibly, and once more he slumped over into a deep sleep. This bizarre attempt to converse ultimately netted his realization that he was to return the call to the hospital to make arrangements for the funeral and such. The two of us finally pulled him out of the booth to his feet. His legs were totally useless. Then with one arm over my shoulder and the other across the shoulder of his drinking partner, who

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himself was having difficulty navigating, we stumbled our way out the door and staggered down the walk to where my helper’s Model A Ford coupe was parked. We managed to ease him into the front seat, and, with our burden propped up between us, we wove our uncertain way down Second Street to our destination. Once there, we helped the troubled man up the porch steps to his house. His friend stayed and took on the task of sobering him up to the point where he could make his call to the hospital. And I wondered: what if any police—or any neighbors—or members of the church—or anybody at all—had seen this white preacher and these inebriated friends staggering out of the bar at that early morning hour? I hoped they were all in bed, sleeping. As the war was coming to an end, veterans were returning. Reentry to the home scene after the military experience could be difficult. Recognizing this, members of First Lutheran Church wanted to welcome home one of their members, Oscar Borovetz. Oscar liked basketball, so the men of the congregation decided to buy uniforms and enter a team from First Lutheran in the YMCA’s church league. There were hardly enough athletically minded men in the small congregation, so Pastor Studtmann agreed to recruit some players. The only league requirement was that the players would agree to attend some church at least once a month, regardless of what church they joined. Martin asked me if I’d play. Now, with Oscar, there’d be three of us. Then he enlisted Bob Kamprath, the teacher of First Lutheran’s oneroom parochial school. The Bruton brothers—both a bit older—agreed to fill in, but with some reluctance. The Roman Catholic Church entered no team, so I recruited volleyballer Carl Flick (who had been the captain of Oklahoma University’s freshman squad) and, of course, Doc Ashby. Doc, in turn, enlisted a few more—patients of his who were more than six feet tall. And we performed adequately, if not altogether scintillatingly. One of the teams we played was sponsored by Bacone College, a small church-related school located on the edge of town. Founded by the American Baptists as a school for American Indians, the school, as I recall, required that applicants be at least one-sixteenth Indian. I had

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always assumed that American Indians were regarded as a “minority” group. No African Americans were playing at the YMCA. It was clear that American Indians were not categorized with African Americans. Here I was once again, moving freely and undisturbed in a world where members of my congregation or their neighbors were summarily excluded. I found myself loving every moment of my involvement with the African American community. Each night I would retire nearly exhausted from all the walking and working my pastoral role required. Yet I’d always anticipate with eagerness and excitement what the next day would hold for me. However, I welcomed the change of pace that came with my YMCA activities. I’d always find myself in new learning experiences there as well. Playing against the Indian team from Bacone provided such an experience. They were good. To be sure, to enlist the full team, First Lutheran stretched a bit by bringing in some non-Lutheran “ringers.” We learned in one particular game that Bacone was not above doing the same. We had played them before and pretty well knew all their regulars. This time when their starting lineup came out on the floor, they brought in as forward one particularly beautiful athletic specimen, who must have been taller than six feet and easily weighed two hundred pounds. First Lutheran’s Roman Catholic captain, Carl Flick, pointed at me and yelled, “You try to stop the big guy!” To do this was far beyond my “prowess,” so after he kept leaping far above me and my attempts to outjump him proved futile, I decided on moving in under him each time he would leave his feet, giving him trouble in gaining his footing when he came down. The referee didn’t call “foul!” so I continued my strategy. Shortly before the half ended, I heard the big man say to one of his teammates, “That little guy over there, I’m going to get him!” Minutes later, the half-time whistle sounded and I was spared for the moment. When our team was huddled, someone commented that our large competitor was a professional football player. It suddenly dawned on me who he was. After our brief rest, while both teams were taking practice shots, I sidled over to him and said “I just want to tell you that I’m from Wisconsin, so you know I’m one of those Green Bay fans. You really did

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a great job for the Packers at fullback last season.” He sort of blushed and even thanked me. Our game resumed and I abandoned my earlier strategy. Of course, they walloped us. However, we had effectually averted what might have proved to be the finale to my days of basketball. Like a frame around a picture, the African American residents lived on the edges of Muskogee. Those farthest from Hope Church lived near the foot of Honor Heights, below Veterans Hospital. I found one particular cluster of residents there who were very hospitable to me when I’d visit, but several of them, who were quite up in years, said that Hope Church was too far away. So I began holding meetings out there in one of the homes. That’s where I meet Mrs. Perkins and her children, J. C. and Samantha. Mrs. Perkins was a most hospitable woman and in our conversation one day she was speaking of her Oklahoma roots, explaining that her forebears were Freed Creek. I hadn’t heard the term before. She explained how in slavery days the Creek tribe—and other Indians in Oklahoma—rejected the idea of owning another person as one would own livestock. Because the idea was repulsive to them they would often marry people of slave background and thereby give them status as free. This was her heritage. And she explained further, “A good many Negroes in Oklahoma have the same kind of roots.” I began to wonder, “Why then would these not be regarded as Indian?” And of course I was failing to realize that all over America, if a person, who was for all appearances white, were to be discovered as having even a trace of African American blood, that person would be regarded as nonwhite. When Oklahoma became a state, I was to learn later, the legislature’s first act was a segregated railways bill. Racial distinctions were spelled out by law: everyone not having “African blood” was included as a member of the white race. Accordingly, any Indian that did not have “Negro blood” would be regarded as white.* This, of course, erased legally for children of Freed Creek and such in Oklahoma their claim of Indian heritage. Family ties that existed then between African Americans * See Nathan D. Greenberg, Staking a Claim (New York: Atheneum, 1990), p. 61.

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and their American Indian relatives were officially dissolved. So this, I had to learn, was Oklahoma too. Of course, I had heard of ugly instances of racial discrimination in the Deep South. I was now discovering that while the patterns and pains of segregation were surely present in the Oklahoma I was getting to know, the state was not a Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama. Nonetheless, it didn’t take me long to realize that there were few places in this predominantly white country where African Americans could be totally sheltered from assaults on their dignity and personhood. I began to realize that here in Oklahoma too they were experiencing the deep and serious pain inflicted by the patterns of racial subordination. A long-ago editor of the Christian Century, Kyle Haselden, defined stereotyping as denying another “the right to be.” Stereotyping denies individuals their own identity and uniqueness. In one brush stroke stereotyping paints an entire category of people into a blurred generality. It especially violates the person who may not possess certain attributes and qualities that might be prominent in the personhood of others included in such a stereotyped grouping. One of the painful aspects of life for any of us—and especially for socalled minority people in our country—consists of being stereotyped. Whether for better or for worse, “they’re lazy, they’re good singers, they’re hard working, they’re slow learners,” or any such labeling can make the victim want to scream, “Don’t judge me by others! I’m different from everybody else—I’m me!” I discovered in my new friendships with African Americans how so many stereotypes that were applied to them violated their personhood. While there was an abundance of poverty in Muskogee, an impressive number of African Americans lived there who were home owners. With pluck, industry, resourcefulness—and against great odds—they had managed to carve out a more comfortable living for themselves and their families. A young member of our church, J. W. Hooper, played on the Manual Training High School football team. We were eager to cheer him, so Esther and I would attend his games. Because we’d be the only white faces present, we were rather easily noticed. The warm welcome given us

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by teachers and others with whom we’d speak caused us to realize that, besides being altogether enjoyable, these occasions provided a wonderful way to meet people of the community. So we began to attend more athletic, musical, and other special events offered at the segregated schools. Whatever negative views toward “that little Lutheran Church” that may have been aired about in the community in earlier years seemed to have faded. Although people were hardly storming the gates to come in, little by little we began having public school teachers attend our worship services. And it was gratifying as some of these who further explored the teachings of the Lutheran Church chose to become members. And the congregation continued to grow. As I got to know our new members better, I learned their stories. I found that most of this group had attended college. Two of them had studied in Ohio schools, but almost all of them had enrolled at Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma, out in the countryside, not far from Guthrie, onetime capital of the state. Langston University wasn’t very large. It seemed a sort of stepchild as colleges and universities go. The vast share of the state’s higher education budget was directed toward the University of Oklahoma in Norman and Oklahoma A & M in Stillwater. Back then these institutions, of course, were not accessible to African Americans who might apply. But Langston held a loyal spot in the hearts of many. The school, with a lively esprit and some talented and dedicated faculty members, strove valiantly to perform its task of preparing young people for their roles of service to the larger world. Because so many professionals in the state’s wider African American community were alumni(ae) of this small school, it proved quite literally to be an alma mater, a kindly mother, and many who had their academic roots in this campus found Langston a source of a special and rare kind of bonding. It provided a sense of identity and a base for a strong network for African Americans in the state. Three weekly newspapers, editor Rosco Dunjee’s Black Dispatch, printed in Oklahoma City, Ed Goodwin’s Oklahoma Eagle, in Tulsa, and M. Simmons’s Oklahoma Independent in Muskogee, made their own unique contribution to this bonding. African Americans subscribed to and read these papers.

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The society pages of the white newspapers might show a full-length picture of a prominent family’s daughter in her wedding gown, but there would be no printed notice of a marriage of an African American couple. As in dozens of cities all over the country, these black weeklies served to bring the shunned community news of “our people.” These papers told what was happening in the schools and churches. They reported the success stories and printed the obituaries. People were able to learn about what was going on in the lives of other African Americans in the country, and particularly in other parts of the state. African Americans in Oklahoma—as much as their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the country—yearned for changes that would break through the delimiting web of segregation that was everywhere. They too found gratification and hope in the astounding news that Jackie Robinson had broken through the racial barrier in professional baseball (1947). Probably less broadly noticed, but no less important nor less dramatic, were local instances when people chose to stand up and with courage defend their own dignity. I recall one occasion when I was in conversation with several teachers at Wheatley School. Mrs. Thelma Eubanks was telling of an experience in which a white man had addressed her as “Thelma.” She told how she bristled and informed him that she had not granted him the privilege of addressing her on a first-name basis. If he spoke to her, he was to call her Mrs. Eubanks. Her colleagues cheered her plucky spirit. Among the mainstream churches of our country, voices were occasionally raised, expressing a conviction that if people from minority groups would ever be persuaded to join their ranks, they would have to be invited by pastors who shared the racial and cultural background of those particular prospective members. Because few minority clergymen had been enlisted and prepared by these denominations, this claim probably served as a rationalization for what was in reality an unwillingness to share their faith, their message, and their fellowship with minority communities on a hand-in-hand, face-to-face basis. In our situation, however, where the pastor and his family lived and worshipped with the people of the community he served, they were able to see “up close” and assess whether or not this ministry had a gen-

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uine ring to it. There seems to have been an advantage in the situation, because African Americans, albeit cautiously, were ready to move into a world of honesty and reciprocal respect. By the end of 1947 more than forty-five worshippers were crowding our little chapel Sunday after Sunday. It had become obvious that we were outgrowing our church home and that having more space and new facilities would be helpful. Though attendance had increased and the Sunday money offerings were larger, we had to acknowledge that we really weren’t able to consider launching a multi-thousand-dollar building project, so we appealed to the district officers of the Lutheran Church for help. Three of the district officers drove over from the western side of the state. They were obviously impressed and pleased—and surprised—that the congregation had been experiencing such gratifying growth. No other of the district’s subsidized parishes had flourished at such a pace. Well before the arrival of these men, we had done some homework in anticipation of their visit. We had learned that the government was shutting down its facilities at nearby Camp Gruber. Among the buildings for sale on the base were a few army chapels. The buildings, fitted with gallery and tall amber windows, fully furnished with altar and pews, accommodating well over two hundred worshippers, were for sale for the absurdly low price of less than three thousand dollars. A structure would be available to any party that would dismantle it and haul it from the premises. Ever since I had arrived in Muskogee, I had found Mr. Croisant, a member of First Lutheran Church, to be a generous and helpful friend. He was one of the few white attendees at my service of ordination and installation. Soft spoken, a man of few words, he would often come by on a weekday evening to drop off some fruit from his orchards, or to do minor, and sometimes major, repairs about the place. When I had told him about the chapel for sale at Camp Gruber, he invited me to jump into his pickup truck and go out to look things over. If I were limited to describe Mr. Croisant with a single word, I might choose the word “competent.” This was the rare kind of self-made man who could and did own and manage a farm implement sales and repair

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establishment, a cotton gin, and a farm where he grew pears, peaches, apples, and grapes. Of course he had a staff of more than a dozen working for him. None of these employees did jobs that Mr. Croisant himself could not do—or would not occasionally be found doing. He would never have said so—and never did—but I sensed that he had a special, warm spot in his heart for our ministry, not in spite of, but because of its concern for and involvement with people of color. It was clear he wanted to have a part in this ministry. He wanted to be a friend. When we arrived at Gruber, he went over every square inch of the building we wanted to examine. He checked out the inside and outside, probing every possible facet of its construction, its heating, plumbing, and wiring, making entries on his small notepad as he kept moving about. Finally he announced his verdict, “We could do it.” I wasn’t quite sure what his short statement embraced, so I asked him, “What would it take?” He simply said, “If the district can come up with the purchase funds, I’ll come out with some of my men and we’ll take it down and haul it back to Muskogee.” “How much would that cost, Mr. Croisant?” I asked. “We’d take care of that,” he said. We climbed back into the truck, and I didn’t attempt to begin a conversation. I could tell he already was busily running plans for the project through his mind. And I was excited. The three visiting church officials heard me present my proposal, and after huddling together over lunch, returned with instructions to proceed with plans to build a new church. They expressed a regret that the present property on which our combined church/parsonage/school stood was probably not ideal because it lay in immediate proximity to multiple sets of railroad tracks, where whistle blasts and soot from the steam locomotives and their cars rattling behind had often proved a noisome nuisance during hours of worship. Besides, the sale of this large homestead might help offset the cost of the new move. They really seemed enthusiastic about the potential project. They were not able to stay longer, so they left the whole matter in my hands and authorized me to proceed and negotiate whatever steps were needed to launch the move.

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I was feeling “almost giddy” about receiving the go-ahead signal from these men who felt sure they could persuade the rest of the district’s board of directors to support their decision. When I reported the action of the district, the congregation was overjoyed. My excitement had reached such a high level, I could hardly fall asleep that night, rehearsing all the developments of this wonderful day. It was then that the realization suddenly and frighteningly began to overwhelm me. I was totally inexperienced and unprepared to take on an assignment like this. Since a cluster of Hope’s members lived within two blocks of Mr. Jennings’s store over on Southside Boulevard, about six blocks from Hope Church, I often walked in that neighborhood. I would look wistfully at the large vacant lot across the street from the store. It was in a semi-wild state, more like a small field, somewhat trimmed by a grazing, off-white-colored, tired-looking horse that seemed regularly tethered there. The property stretched all the way from Fourth to Third Street, measuring probably a hundred feet deep from its block-long frontage along South Side Boulevard. Now that we’d be looking for a location for our new church, the site seemed ideal for our purposes. Mr. Jennings told me he had no idea who owned the property. All my inquirings of people who lived nearby proved futile. I could find no one who could provide the information I needed. It was my YMCA friend, attorney Ed Griesel, who came to my rescue. He may not have had a future in the world of big-league volleyball, but he was proficient and helpful in finding the information I needed. He discovered that the property of concern was owned by Ms. Mary Severs Owens. I lost no time in my attempts to find her. I learned that she was living in an apartment in the five-storied Severs Hotel downtown, named for her father, who apparently had been one of the founding citizens of Muskogee. I hurried there to see her. I tapped at her door and she called from inside, inviting me to come in. She was sitting before an open window, in the direct stream of a fan noisily blowing on her and apparently affording a degree of relief from the torrid heat that had come down on Muskogee that day. A woman who carried her years well, she sat, almost regally, with dignity and

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poise, fanning herself, appearing very much like the lead character of a southern novel. I launched into a conversation with her rather gingerly. After all, we were total strangers to one another. I told her a bit about myself and my role as a pastor. In her response to my questions, she shared a bit of her personal history and heritage as a longtime resident of Oklahoma as well as her father’s prestigious past as active participant in governmental matters. The visit had become congenial. It seemed to me an appropriate moment to turn the conversation toward the matter of Hope Congregation’s plans for a new church. Then I explained that I had learned the South Third Street lot belonged to her and that it would be a perfect place for our new church. We would be interested in purchasing the property from her. She seemed a bit surprised and probably curious about “a Negro congregation with a white pastor.” Courteously, but clearly with finality, she gave her terse response, “Not for sale.” I hoped my gulp was not audible. With great care I ventured a smile that I hoped she would read as a gracious acceptance of her verdict. I immediately tried to change the subject—and with a bit of luck, her mind. Ingeniously, I chose weather. She agreed with me on how insufferably hot it had become. In the absence of any hint of hostility on her part, I offered to leave her momentarily to get us each some ice cream. She agreed that this was a brilliant suggestion, so I hurried down to street level to fetch the treats, all the while wondering what strategy I might devise to rescue the original purpose of the visit. She was delighted as I handed her the cone and a napkin. We both were quiet as we concentrated on managing our rapidly melting cones. We did it all with an admirable degree of tidiness and enjoyment as well. Ready now to resume conversation, I dared to begin. “Ms. Owens, because you inherited that property from your father, I can understand that you might not want to part with it.” “It’s not so much that,” she responded; “I just don’t need the money now.” I wondered to myself whether race was for her an issue.

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Then I tried once more. “Ms. Owens, I understand. However, if you were to sell that property, what kind of price tag would you place on it?” “It would be more than you’d be able to pay,” she said. “Well, Ms. Owens, the officers of the Oklahoma District of the Lutheran Church have authorized me to explore the possibility of purchasing your property. They’ll be expecting me to report on my findings. Would you at least provide me with a figure to show them, so they could see why the cost would be too high?” She paused. Then, somewhat reluctantly, she said, “Well—say two thousand.” I quickly said, “Oh, thank you, Ms. Owens! That is the amount I have been authorized to pay.” Her eyes were wide with surprise. Then, slowly, a smile came across her face, her eyes twinkled a bit, and we laid plans for the formal implementation of the exchange. I felt hilariously happy in my success of stumbling through a transaction that seemed to come off a page of history of the Old South— right here in Oklahoma in 1947. Under Mr. Croisant’s painstaking supervision, the Camp Gruber chapel was dismantled—piece by piece, each carefully and systematically marked to simplify the reassembling process. Once the restoration was completed, a member of our church, Mr. James McFarland, an art graduate of Langston—who had done some remarkably skilled canvases in earlier years—painted the entire exterior of the building. Other men of the parish planted shrubs, mowed the lawn, and beautified the premises. The women and young people applied wax polish to all the pews and woodwork and brought cut flowers to give a festive tone to the interior. On September 28, 1948, the people of Hope gathered for the first service in their new house of worship. Amid much excitement and jubilant celebration, this was the service of dedication. The event featured a guest speaker, Dr. George Beto, president of a Lutheran college in Austin, Texas. Pastors of neighboring Lutheran parishes participated in the festival liturgy. And of course, Hope’s new ten-member choir sang, and, by the way, really sang very well. Because I had sung with some larger choral organizations during

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my preministerial days, and had twice before directed small choral ensembles, I had taken it upon myself to organize a choir for Hope. One might say it was probably Oklahoma’s first interracial choral group, since my wife and I sang along. I recall our original organizational meeting. I told them of my preference for singing Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorales. However, I was very willing to let them have a choice in what we’d be singing in the celebrative service. A few in the group seemed highly offended and complained that white people always seemed to imply that they could sing only spirituals and songs that stemmed from their black heritage. “Don’t they think we’re capable of singing music by classical composers?” one of them asked. And the others nodded their support for her comment. It was decided. We would sing Bach chorales and a few short compositions of Brahms. And this we did on this Dedication Day. An interracial audience exceeding one hundred was present for the event, and at the reception that followed several visitors commented on their sensing the noticeably high measure of self-esteem the members of Hope were feeling this day.

The “Minority” People

The young seminarian with parents and sisters.

Esther and Karl—Seminary Days.

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Hope Church/parsonage/one-room school, Muskogee, 1945.

Front view of Hope Church, 1945.

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Hope Lutheran Church youth group goes picnicking, Spring 1945.

Worshipers on a Sunday morning, Hope Lutheran Church, 1947.

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Hope Lutheran congregation’s new home, a former army chapel.

Dedication service, Hope Lutheran Church, October 3, 1948. Pastor Martin Studtmann is at far left; Pastor Clarence Knippa is at far right in white. Attendance is 175.

The “Minority” People

Esther, Karl, Peter, Stephen. Muskogee, 1951.

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Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Tulsa. Esther Lutze with the first Sunday School “student body” in the portable chapel, 1953.

Pastor Karl Lutze and guest speaker Dr. Clemonce Sabourin of Harlem.

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Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. Left: Timothy Hall, education unit, dedicated in 1958. Right: original chapel.

Holy Communion celebrated at Prince of Peace, Spring 1959. Eugene Howell, Clydia McCain, Virgil Naumann, Mrs. McConnell, Esther Lutze, Velma Crawford, William Crawford, Isabella Richardson, Chester Terrell, Thomas Clay, and Margaret Baden Hansel.

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Lutze family, 1959. Peter and Dad with Steve; Mark and Tom with their Mom.

Worship gathering, final day of summer youth school, Prince of Peace Church, June 1959.

Chapter Five

. . . with Heels Dug In

M

y crosstown colleague Martin Studtmann filled me in, as best he could, whenever I experienced gaps in my understanding customs and practices unique to Oklahoma. He was quick to inform me that Oklahoma was a dry state, but that bootlegging was common here. He told me also that technically I could, by applying for a special permit, obtain communion wine for church purposes from some place in Kansas. However, he added, pursuing that process wouldn’t be necessary because Mr. Croisant had been supplying both the Hope and First Lutheran congregations with Eucharistic wine that he himself made from grapes raised in his orchards. I had some momentary misgivings about using illegal wine for churchly purposes, but Martin’s sage counsel led me to view Mr. Croissant’s role as that of bringing a deeply personal offering for holy use. I was to learn that the whole issue of liquor control had a huge question mark stamped on it. In my mail I often received postcards listing several types and brands of alcoholic beverages and corresponding purchase prices. Below these, in hard-to-miss bold print, the sender’s telephone number (but not his name!) appeared, and the brief comment, “free and immediate delivery.” My friend Carl Flick explained to me, “It’s a strange and humorous alliance. The bootleggers like the idea of having booze to sell without charging for taxes. The preachers want to stamp out all use and sale of liquor. So they both—the church folk, unwittingly, and the bootleggers, with shrewdness—become partners in bringing 77

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pressure on the legislators to keep laws on the books that would prohibit sales of alcoholic beverages in the state.” Most people with whom I had contact expressed a sort of dismay— shrugging their shoulders at what appeared to them a hopeless situation. However, Muskogee’s district attorney, a man named Edmondson, viewed the matter with a righteous anger. Not sure that he could trust any of the existing law-enforcement personnel, he secretly deputized a staff of his own. In a flurry of raids, they made arrests and exposed the operations. The kingpin bootlegger turned out to be Sheriff Eddie Briggs. Briggs had been receiving payoff money from the alcohol traffickers. He was subsequently tried in court, fined heavily, and given a prison sentence as well. For many an Oklahoman, this proved a gratifying and maturing moment in this young state’s development and history. Briggs, however, was not without sympathizers who preferred the “good old days.” When the former sheriff had completed his days of incarceration, he found employment driving a delivery truck. He also found he still had friends, and decided to run for sheriff again. Although he was not elected, he had garnered enough votes to demonstrate that there was still a significant number of Muskogeeans who longed for the earlier years, with all the accompanying graft and dishonesty. One of Manual Training High School’s teachers, Mrs. Blanche Guillory, became a member of Hope Church. Her husband, Milton, did not become Lutheran, but he became a very good friend. We’d often go fishing together, and those occasions provided us with much opportunity for conversation. While Milton had prepared himself for a teaching career, he did shifts as an orderly at Veterans Hospital, and studied for a law degree in night classes as well as during summer sessions. When I met him, he held a teaching position on the far west side of the state in Lawton. He would commute back to Muskogee whenever possible—a round trip of almost eight hours. He was into his late thirties when he passed his bar examinations. This would not be a lucrative career. The several other African American attorneys in town didn’t really feel that there was need for one more. There were already too few potential clients for the number of lawyers

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on hand. Furthermore, low salaries and wages in Muskogee’s African American community limited the size of the fees that attorneys could charge for service. And yet some folks preferred engaging a white lawyer, convinced that they might find themselves more favorably represented in court. Such thinking was not altogether unwarranted. One of Mr. Guillory’s more seasoned colleagues had told him that one way he’d have a far better chance in defending a client would be to “enter the courtroom Uncle-Tom-like”—not appearing competent, lest the judge resent him as “uppity.” “Just tell the judge you haven’t had much experience in this kind of case, and ask his advice on how best to proceed, playing up to him as though he were the wise, white fatherly type.” Then somewhat bristling, the elder colleague said, “Well, I’m just not going to do that.” The man refused to compromise his integrity. “And,” Mr. Guillory said, “if that’s the way I’d have to practice law, I wouldn’t want to be that kind of lawyer either!” Years later—and this was after I had moved from Muskogee and begun my years of ministry in Tulsa—Attorney Guillory stood at my door. I was happily surprised and invited him in. I presumed he had come over to Tulsa for some business matter and had decided to drop by. No, he informed me, he had carved out the morning specifically to see me. We sipped coffee together, and then he explained his coming. He and I had often been together and though he had never worshipped with us at Hope Church, he had been giving much thought to my sevenyear presence in Muskogee. He wanted now to express his appreciation. Then he presented me with a Longines watch. He said that, since his childhood, he’d always heard about the elegance of Longines, and now he wanted me to have this. Then he said something I shall never forget: “I want you to know that you are the first white man I have ever met with his right hand extended to shake mine, who wasn’t holding a receipt book in his left hand!” It was a humbling moment for me—and a stinging assessment of this fine man’s lifelong experience as an African American. My own experience with the judiciary system during my Muskogee days occurred when an attorney asked me to appear as a character witness on behalf of a youngster accused of theft of a tool. I was reluc-

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tant because I hardly knew the boy, but the attorney pleaded, “I honestly believe this boy is innocent, and if no one stands up for him, he’s going to be found guilty.” The first witness, a white man, owned the truck from which the tool in question had been stolen. He had looked away for a short while, and, returning, noticed the tool was missing. This young boy had been the only one standing close by, so he obviously had to have been the culprit who’d stolen it. On the stand, the thoroughly frightened little fellow insisted he had not even seen the tool, let alone stolen it. I took the stand. I acknowledged that I didn’t know the accused well, but he had attended a few sessions of our summer vacation Bible school. In that setting I had found him cooperative and well behaved, and I had no reason to doubt his honesty. At that point the judge, who was, of course, white, chose to address me. “You say this boy attended your church. What church is that?” I told him and explained that he was not a member of the church but a student who had enrolled in our ten-day summer Bible school. The judge asked me, “Does your church teach the Ten Commandments?” I told him that we taught them and many other items that are a part of the Christian faith. He pursued his line of questioning. “Do you teach ‘Thou shalt not steal’?” I realized the case was already decided. Were I to answer, “No, our contacts were so brief that we didn’t work through all the doctrines of our faith,” he could have said, “Well, we’ll send him to a place where they’ll teach him about that commandment.” And if I had said, “Yes, we taught him that,” the judge’s response would have been “Well, we’re going to send him to a place where he’ll have to learn it.” Some months later at a political rally in our African American community, this same judge came to the microphone and said to the audience, “You folks all know I’ve been a judge for some time and I’ve always been fair to you people.” Then he told how much he liked being a judge and how he really wouldn’t want to go back to working day after day as a lawyer. And comparing himself to a contented calf, he said, “I’ve been sucking a sweet tit, and I sure don’t want to let go!”

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Having thus somewhat stunned his audience, he closed his remarks, urging the people to cast their votes for him. On Election Day they didn’t. From the very beginning of my Muskogee days I found the two local papers very helpful. Perhaps because the weekly Oklahoma Independent with its limited circulation was somewhat understaffed (I’m not sure that Editor Simmons wasn’t the entire staff!), almost every article about Hope Church I submitted was printed verbatim. The people at the Phoenix, Muskogee’s white daily, were courteous, friendly, and helpful when I first brought in articles for its religion page. However, editor Tams Bixby had much to say to me after he learned that Hope Church’s members were African Americans. It was almost as if I had deceived him. He hadn’t expected the article submitted by a white clergyman to be about a congregation of nonwhites. He made it clear that I obviously did not understand anything about the culture and customs of the South. In articles I submitted I would refer to members of the parish as Mr. or Mrs. He seemed altogether surprised—and resentful—that I had. He pointed out that a photo of “some truly famous Negro—like the great contralto, Marian Anderson” might appear in the Phoenix, but never on the front page. He then told me that this town didn’t need people to come in from the North and try to change ways that longtime Oklahomans had established and cherished. I listened to his lecturing until I was no longer able to restrain my response. “Mr. Bixby, I presume you’ve been here all your life. I don’t know if you’ve ever wanted to go somewhere else and simply have not found it possible to leave. I left my home to come to Muskogee, Oklahoma, to do all I can to contribute to this community and serve especially people whose lives have been marked by struggle with the scourge of racial subordination. I have received several calls—invitations from churches in other places. I have had opportunities to leave, but I have chosen to stay here and do what I can to enrich this community. So I intend to continue to serve as best and faithfully as I can.” And on that note our visit ended rather abruptly.

. . .

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During this period, the national news media were bringing us reports on stirrings of change on the country’s racial scene. Thurgood Marshall of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People became a name familiar to people everywhere who hoped that racial segregation at long last would be challenged and abolished. This young champion of justice, who himself was later to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was thorough in his preparation of a case that would most effectively confront the highest court with the opportunity to rule on the issue. Apparently the NAACP was exploring various facets of the racial issue in order to determine which would best lend itself as a door into a new day of racial equality. No big issue was made of it, but it seemed well known in the black community that arrangements had been made to include for consideration an incident designed for Muskogee as a possible test case. It was a weekday morning. The small buses that served the different corners of Muskogee had already had their heavier hours of carrying passengers to their various workplaces. The least likely line to have any passengers at this midmorning hour was the one running out past our parsonage near Twenty-Fourth Street and Arline. As it was told me, one lone African American passenger, apparently by prearrangement, in cooperation with the NAACP, boarded the bus and sat in the front seat. The driver insisted that the passenger move to the rear of the otherwise empty bus. A police officer was present, who then without fuss or fanfare arrested the “offender,” who apparently was fined. And that ended the matter quickly and quietly. However, that something like this could and did happen in their community generated guardedly optimistic talk about the issue. A few years later, in 1954, Mr. Marshall and his staff developed the case of Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. They probably decided that issue would better serve the NAACP’s purpose of challenging the deeply seated practices of segregation enforced by southern laws. Muskogee came that close to having national recognition in the civil rights movement.

Chapter Six

The Transition

D

uring my seven-year pastorate in Muskogee, Hope Church had hardly become a large congregation, but its growth was gratifying and surprising to the larger Lutheran community in Oklahoma. In its first eight years, prior to my coming, through the devoted efforts of Pastors Moose, Saar, and Wedig, Hope counted sixteen on its membership roll. Now, seven years later, we numbered eighty-five. Nobody really had expected that kind of growth spurt. A group of church leaders from five Lutheran congregations in Tulsa had been meeting regularly to plan for the most effective ways of ministering in their city. They invited me to address one of their meetings, asking me to report on Hope Church’s experience in Muskogee. As the evening drew to its close, we were standing about, chatting and indulging in the familiar Lutheran menu of cookies, cake, and coffee. One of the men asked that I elaborate on the matter of the racial climate in Oklahoma—how this issue factored into the effectiveness of Hope’s ministry. I told of a few of our experiences. As I closed my remarks, I gently chided my friendly hosts, pointing out that Tulsa had three times as many African American citizens as Muskogee, yet with five Lutheran congregations serving their city, none had experienced even as a visitor—let alone received into membership—a single African American. That very week one of the group, Mr. Charles Irsch, called to tell me that some of those who’d been on hand for my presentation had 83

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decided to ask me to explore the possibility of replicating some of Hope’s experiences in Tulsa. I agreed to help them assess the situation. African American friends in Muskogee gave me helpful suggestions, naming persons I should visit to “learn the scene” of North Tulsa. My first visit was with attorney B. Franklin.* His story was particularly informative. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the father of the noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin would be teaching me about Tulsa’s history. Attorney Franklin was a white-haired gentleman, up in years, and he spoke with both calmness and excitement as he vividly described his personal experiences of 1921, when he hid for safety in a concrete culvert and witnessed shooting and burning during an assault that devastated much of the North Tulsa community. Huge Mack trucks rumbled down Archer Street carrying away the dead—they’d stopped counting after their number reached beyond one hundred, he told me. And he described the days that followed, how many of the white citizenry were eager to erase the shame of the event that all seemed to have blown out of control after a white woman claimed improprieties by a black passenger in a downtown elevator. This had resulted in a police confrontation, subsequent rumors, and ultimately a deadly clash, with people from smaller outskirt communities participating in the deadly outburst. Mr. Franklin told how leaders in North Tulsa subsequently gathered to regroup. Some of the black citizenry, sprinkled across the outlying area where they had been clustered in small numbers, now moved into North Tulsa in concern for their own safety. More and more, North Tulsa became self-confined—and self-sustaining, having its own merchants and houses of business. My visit with Principal Henry Whitlow in his beautiful, spanking new Booker T. Washington High School was no less instructive. Determined to do the very best job he could in his role, he told how he was altogether aware that his school had been built in this far-north-side newly developed housing area as a last-ditch stand to stem the tide of school desegregation which already gave hints of being inevitable. * Until very recently I had assumed the initial “B” stood for Benjamin—it fit him because of the dignity and warm-humored wisdom I saw in him—so much like the Benjamin Franklin of history. I have since learned his full name: Buck Colbert Franklin.

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Mr. J. T. A. West, who had once been a high school teacher, now was the administrator of Moton Hospital, located on Pine Street at the foot of Greenwood Avenue. He noted, “This institution is vital to the community because it’s the only hospital where our Negro doctors can practice.” In 1952, Dr. Charles Bate (who lived only two blocks from where Prince of Peace Church would later be built) had been inducted into the Tulsa County Medical Society. Until then all its members had been white. However, as he told me on one of his frequent “drop-in visits” at my church study, there was clear implication that his membership was limited to professional matters and did not extend to social privileges. Dr. Bate had deep appreciation for some of the white doctors who would come over to Moton and share in surgical practice with him and his colleague, Dr. W. Norvell Coots. Dr. Bate recalled for me the situation that obtained at the time. Though he himself had been doing limited practice in smaller Mercy Hospital, doctors of North Tulsa were not permitted to practice at Hillcrest and St. John’s, Tulsa’s major hospitals, even on the patients they themselves had referred there. Those patients were kept in segregated space and were attended by the white medical staff. Dr. Bate was particularly laudatory of the association he had enjoyed with Dr. Frank Flack, who had served as chief surgeon for the Sinclair Companies, and he had appreciative words for some of Tulsa’s other medical doctors, who proved collegially helpful and had expressed their embarrassment at the racially discriminating patterns and policies under which they served. Mr. West told, too, how professionals and merchants of the community were ineligible for membership in the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. So these people organized their own Greenwood chapter. These members had become the power brokers of North Tulsa. One of its prominent members was Tollie Harris. His pharmacy was down the street from Moton at Lansing Street across from Dunbar Elementary School. I asked him how he thought the community would feel about the introduction of a Lutheran church to North Tulsa. His response was courteous, but direct. “We have plenty of churches in North Tulsa right now, but it’s true, there is only one north of Pine Street, and that’s the little Episcopal Church, St. Thomas, just three blocks west of Booker T—a pretty stone church with small membership. So I guess

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you could say there’s room for more churches there. But if a new church moves in there that is going to cost this community and takes out more than it gives, I’d say it’s not welcome. But if they’d come in as a service to the community, then I’d say it would be welcome.” My conversation with the Reverend Ben Hill took me a bit by surprise. He immediately told me what devoted respect he had for the great reformer, Martin Luther. He had been reading his works and found much that he had written helpful to him in his ministry. He especially liked Luther’s affirmation of the Christian laity, in contrast to an emphasis on the primacy of the institutional church and its clergy-dominated style. “Any community should benefit from that kind of focus. Our community could use that kind of spirit too,” he said. My visits with other leaders—attorneys Waldo Jones, Primus Wade, and Amos Hall, merchants Latimer, Mann, and Peasley, and a few others—provided me with sufficient, but cautious, encouragement to return with a report to the group of Tulsa Lutherans. The data I’d gathered indicated that the planning of a new Lutheran church in North Tulsa might be appropriate, if these conditions were observed: 1. the new church should not be begun as a “missionary effort,” or simply a way of making as many North Tulsans become Lutherans as possible; it should be an occasion for sharing the Lutheran heritage with these neighbors; 2. real estate–wise, the church ought to be a credit to the community, aesthetically attractive as well as architecturally sound; 3. it should not impose a financial burden to the already established neighborhood, as if to say, “Here’s a new church for you— now you pay for it;” 4. North Tulsans did not invite this church to come in; justification for this venture must be the church’s determination to share and to serve.

The committee, to whom I was to report, received my assessment with excitement, and asked if I would explore possibilities of finding property for building a new church. I discovered a corner lot only a block from Peoria Avenue, a main

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thoroughfare connecting Tulsa’s far north and far south sides. The site was nestled among relatively new houses, attractive, with neatly landscaped yards. Most of the residents were home owners, young couples with an abundance of youngsters. And its location was only three blocks from the new high school. The corner seemed ideal for our purposes. However, to put a church on this site, in an area designated exclusively for residential construction, would require rezoning. Obviously, there would be no need for me to report on the desirability of locating a church here if it were not feasible. So I undertook a systematic visit of the nearby residents, going door to door, asking them to sign a document stating their willingness to have the zoning restrictions waived so that a church might be built there on Young Street and Quaker. The very idea of expecting people living here to agree to participate in this endeavor seemed a bit preposterous. Here at their door was a total stranger, a white man at that, asking them to do him a favor as he tried to persuade them that a church—Lutheran, a denomination with which probably none of them had ever had any previous experience— would be an asset in their neighborhood. Not one of these people was quick to put a signature to this document, and each of my stops required a rather lengthy visit. Often our conversation would become an interview—almost an interrogation. They would want to know about me and my history, about Lutheranism, about my motives, about how this church, if begun, might look and function. Their questions were insightful, incisive, and direct—never rude, but always very serious. There was one person whose name I was particularly eager to have appear on the very top of my list of signatures approving the erection of our proposed church. This lady’s property lay immediately adjacent to the south side of the property we were seeking to have rezoned. I must admit that I had somewhat braced myself, prepared to face up to a tirade of uncompromising arguments opposing our plans. I rang the doorbell and an older lady came to the door. She smiled and with a soft voice invited me into her home, offering me some lemonade. Such a courteous and kind welcome I had hardly anticipated. She was eager to hear of our plans and proved to be a gracious listener. She told how often she had wished that that corner property would be purchased by

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someone who would care for it to enhance the neighborhood rather than remain unattended and overgrown. And then, for what must have been more than half an hour, with open Bible on her lap, she told me of the spiritual insights she had received as a member of the Christian Science Church. It seems she favored our bringing a church next door, but, though she didn’t put it into words, I gathered that she had no intention of ever attending any of the worship services or programs of this new church, should it ever materialize. And she signed. The neighbor across the street to the north was busy, but nonetheless he was willing to hear my case. A rather large man, he was sitting atop a long table with yards and yards of fabric lying across his lap and on his right side and his left. All the while we talked, he continued working—marking measurements with his chalk, deftly moving his scissors into the material. From time to time he’d grasp the needle that hung from the thread he held in his pursed lips, either to take a swift stitch or to exchange a few words with me. He seemed somewhat disinterested in whether or not the church would be Lutheran—or Roman Catholic, for that matter. It was only when I assured him that this would be neither a shabbily constructed building nor one that might be a raucously noisy place that he acquiesced. He swung his feet over the side of the table and signed. He did indicate rather clearly that he had no intention whatever of coming to the church, if ever one was built there. I apologized for interrupting his work and he almost cheerily reminded me that he hadn’t stopped working during our conversation, and as I left he even wished me well with the program. These first two visits went so very well that I just knew some other house where I’d be stopping would resist our plans and take exception to our building a church in their neighborhood. It was altogether gratifying, then, that in every instance, people I approached were willing to go along with the idea. A few even expressed enthusiasm about the venture. In some instances I enjoyed a distinct advantage when I found that these people knew people I knew in Muskogee, and this served me well as we found we had mutual acquaintances there. In each case I left not only with a signature but also with the expressed good wishes of these new friends that our project might succeed. When I spoke with municipal personnel about the matter, they in-

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formed me that a public hearing would not be required since the neighbors had formally agreed to the change. Once more I was ready to meet with leaders who had authorized my study of the situation. Pastors and laity of the Tulsa parishes were on hand and welcomed my report with enthusiasm. Their smiling faces sobered, however, when one in the group pointed out that pursuing this venture would cost more than the five congregations could possibly underwrite, and more than the treasury of the Oklahoma District could supply. One of the men raised his hand and said, “When Pastor Lutze first brought this whole matter to our attention, he asked us to realize that bringing our church to North Tulsa was to be more than merely setting up a new Lutheran church for people there. He said this should really be an opportunity for all of our churches to share the message and the faith which has been our Lutheran heritage. Why then don’t we invite all the Lutheran congregations of our Oklahoma District to join with us in this sharing?” In the brainstorming that followed, many scenarios surfaced. After much discussion and interchange of ideas, a consensus seemed to emerge, suggesting how enlisting support for this venture might be achieved. “Why not have Pastor Lutze visit each of the sixty-five congregations in our Oklahoma District to gather an offering designated for purchase of the property for our new church?” My immediate response: “I simply don’t care to go about as a fundraiser.” Then after giving the matter a bit more thought, I observed, “You know, one of the real reasons lying behind all we’ve been exploring and learning and planning is that for years now most of us in our predominantly white family of Lutherans here in Oklahoma have not taken any significant steps to address the issues of racial division, which we all really—though tacitly—have tolerated as acceptable. I would be willing to make such visits to talk about the Christian’s responsibilities in the area of human relations. I think that kind of discussion is necessary in all our congregations, and if at the end of an evening they would wish to leave a gift for our Tulsa venture, they might do so. I’d much prefer working with people’s hearts rather than their wallets.”

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They understood my position and agreed to authorize my touring the state on such a mission. For the next three months I was traveling the state, going from parish to parish, telling about my experiences in Muskogee and confronting people with the inconsistency of a church remaining exclusive in the face of the clear Christian mandate as articulated by the Apostle Paul, who pleaded with his own parishioners: Christ’s death was for everyone . . . The person who is connected with Christ becomes a new person; . . . The old ways are replaced by new ways. . . There was a day we measured others by human standards . . . No more! “Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed us. That is the way in which we truly glorify God.”*

Though some of the congregations I visited were in cities, many more were located in rural communities. The variances in weather, the condition of the crops, the status of wheat prices on the market, and other agricultural concerns were items high on the lists of subjects for lively discussion for these people. Racial issues were fairly distant from their immediate interests. This called for bringing them into a different sphere of thinking, in order to engage them in thoughtful, meaningful discussion. One evening I was in Newkirk, in the northern area of the state, near Ponca City. As I began my presentation, I mentioned that one of the ushers who greeted me had introduced himself to me as “Mr. Kelly.” I observed that in so many Lutheran congregations I had found most of the people I met had names revealing a German background in their genealogy. I continued, “You people have already displayed a readiness to discard exclusive practices as you have welcomed people of Irish heritage.” They seemed to appreciate my commending them. I proceeded to show how, although people of color may not live near them, that same spirit of acceptance can mark their overall attitude to people who might well be strangers to them and their experience. As I was leaving at the close of the session, the usher handed me the * II Corinthians 5:15–17; Romans 15:7.

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envelopes containing the generous gifts people had contributed, and, shaking my hand and thanking me, he informed me that his name was very Germanically spelled “K-a-e-h-l-e.” He smiled graciously. I blushed profusely. During all the years of this young district’s history not many Oklahoma Lutheran congregations had been directly confronted with the racial issue. Now, however, I received a phone call from Harold Brockhoff, at that time pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Ardmore. He had received a phone call from a young woman who had moved into the town and was interested in affiliating with the Trinity congregation. She had been a member of a Lutheran congregation in Detroit. She identified herself as African American. Pastor Brockhoff was pleased and welcomed her. She, however, raised her concern: would the members of Trinity welcome her? She asked that he submit to the members her request to join. My friend Brockhoff asked whether I would be willing to attend the meeting as a resource person, should need for my help seem useful. So I was present the night of the meeting. This was an assembly of the voting members. Because Trinity was a small parish, the two dozen or so present constituted far more than a required quorum. After the pastor’s opening prayer, the congregation’s president—a young, congenial person, probably in his early thirties— stated the purpose of the meeting as seeking the response of the parish to this woman’s application for membership. Pastor Brockhoff made an initial comment, stating that ordinarily when a Lutheran moved to town and requested membership, the pastor would accept the person without having a special meeting. It was customary that the person would later be introduced in a regular worship service and welcomed by the congregation. He said he would have done so in this instance also, but it was the applicant who requested assurance that she would be welcome. The chairman then invited comments from the congregants. No one volunteered for a minute or two. Then one man raised his arm and rose to speak. He was outspoken in his opposition to receiving any people of color into membership. This, he said, was contrary to the ways of the community. He had children, and he feared racial intermingling would follow. He was sure the community would turn against the church. He

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said he and his family would withdraw their membership and the church would fall apart, because there were other members who would also leave. One could sense a restlessness among the group. The man remained standing, and after a moment, the chair responded, “Alvin, can you give us the names of any people you know would leave?” Caught somewhat off-guard by the question, he replied, “Well, no— but I know there are some who will!” Then, addressing the other members, the chairman asked, “Would any of you leave, if a Negro joined our church? If so, raise your hand.” None did. Then in a calm voice he said, “Alvin, the day that this church refuses any Negro membership, my family and I will leave. And I think my Lord Jesus will already have walked out.” One in the audience offered the motion to accept the applicant. The dissident walked out, and the motion passed unanimously. Pastor Brockhoff called a short time later to tell me that the word of the congregation’s actions had gotten around. A young woman, a librarian in town, heard and called to see if it was true that Trinity was accepting Negroes into membership. When he said her information was correct, the woman said this was exactly the kind of church she had been looking for ever since she had moved to Ardmore. And she subsequently became a member. While some whites—Lutherans too—staunchly resisted any ideas of changing patterns and policies of segregation, it was becoming increasingly clear that more and more people realized the wrongness of the status quo. Members of the Oklahoma District found the results of my visits around the state gratifying, both financially and in the noticeable enthusiasm of the people who, through their generous giving, experienced a sense of ownership in the Tulsa venture. Official endorsement followed. The land was purchased and the district committed itself to the entire concept—establishing this church was to be a sharing with the community and an enriching, enhancing contribution to the North Tulsa scene. They too felt it would not reflect well on the Lutheran Church were we to come into this neighborhood, with its neat houses and impressive new high school, and erect a new

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building that was not equally attractive. Furthermore, I pleaded, the new structure ought be entirely financed before we opened its doors. It would be of ill grace, were we to come into this community—uninvited as we were—to be saying in effect, “Here we are, you lucky people, and here’s a new church for you—now you pay for it!” The Oklahoma District Board of Directors concurred and agreed to proceed, assuming full responsibility for underwriting the construction. Two officers of the board, Tulsa pastors Clarence Knippa of Grace Congregation and Walmar Frank of Good Shepherd, played vital roles in nursing the project to its completion. They were instrumental in engaging a distinguished architect to design the new building, one who had spent a full year in preparation for his profession, studying European church structures. When they took me to meet Donald McCormick, I was immediately impressed by the size and the competence of his staff. I could see from drawings hanging on the walls that he had designed far larger projects than the one we were proposing. When we explained the history and the concept we had in mind, we could tell he was intrigued by the possibilities. He immediately began to articulate some of the ideas arising in his mind. “The building should look like a church—not like some of the structures that are being built today that look more like commercial houses than a place of worship. I can picture this charming, small, English countryside church. We’d build it of stone and clinker brick to give a rough-hewn texture, painted white, set back on a green lawn with space for additional structure, should expansion become necessary.” We could see that he was becoming excited about taking on the project. His comments pleased all of us. The two board members, authorized to close this kind of deal, seemed about ready to sign the necessary papers. Before we would proceed, we raised another concern. If the entire original concept was to be honored, we would want as many craftsmen and workers who would be involved in the actual construction to be from the community we were entering. An expenditure of so much money ought not to flow right back into the white community’s wallets. The integrity of the project called for the church to make a contribution to the economic benefit of North Tulsa. Mr. McCormick not only understood our thoughts on the matter but

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also agreed on the rightness of such provisions. He acknowledged that this offered a problem. This was 1950, and the various unions had not yet made room in their systems for African American plumbers, electricians, and similar craftsmen to hold membership. None of the construction companies had any wish to jeopardize progress on their projects by hiring nonunion subcontractors. The very thought of pickets carrying protest signs around their building sites was a scene they would desperately wish to avoid. He indicated, however, that he was often in a position to recommend contractors for various large jobs, and because our particular situation was unique, he felt sure he could accommodate our concern. He asked me to identify subcontractors who might wish to participate in the project and to invite them to submit bids. With counsel from members of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, I approached several North Tulsans, whose bids were later accepted. As construction got under way, the activity on the premises piqued the interest of neighbors and others passing near the site. They could see the trucks of Scoggins Electric Company and the Wilson Plumbers on hand—these were their people having a role in erecting this new church. Meanwhile, in a little portable building that served as a temporary chapel, we held our first worship services. I recall bringing two Muskogee members, Mrs. Dorthy Hamilton and her sister-in-law, Willa Mae Hamilton, to play the little portable army field organ and to teach Sunday school. Our first service in these temporary quarters was hardly one that would conjure up great feelings of optimism for the days to come. Our only attendant was little Elaine Hackman, from a block away up Quaker Street. Though this was hardly an auspicious beginning, the district was fully supportive of what I was doing and furnished me with two short-term assistants, Ervin Oermann, a Pennsylvanian (he later became pastor for the deaf in Oklahoma and Texas), and Kansan Karl Thiele. Both were young, white, vigorous seminarians who relieved me at a time when I was stretched between my duties at Hope Church, my

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traveling the state to win support for the Tulsa venture, and my need to be on the scene to help supervise the developments there until such time when a new pastor would be assigned to the new Tulsa church and I would once more return to full-time ministry at Hope Lutheran Church in Muskogee. Serving in this kind of setting was new to these young men, and the Tulsa/Muskogee ministry proved a great learning arena for them too, especially as they developed programs for the children in these places. Probably little did more to win the confidence and appreciation of people both in Muskogee and in Tulsa than did the care we were able to show for the young ones there. The Muskogee church’s effectiveness and growth devolved from a strong program to serve neighborhood children (more than 150 participating). Recognizing this, the district also subsidized seminarian field workers to assist in these youth programs for two successive summers of 1950 and 1951—first Karl Thiele, and then Otto H. Kretzmann. They were of great help—delightful and energetic partners in ministry. Once the cement floor of the new church in Tulsa had been poured and the brick and stone walls began to rise, it was time to lay the cornerstone. Although Lutherans from the other side of the city were present for the occasion, a small crowd of people from the neighborhood was on hand as well. The Oklahoma Eagle had given the announcement of the event ample space in the previous week’s issue. Ms. Carrie Pearson Nealey had brought with her an octet she had selected from her Booker T. Washington Chorus. They sang, and the Reverend Ben Hill, pastor of Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church, delivered a brief address, welcoming and affirming our coming to this community to share our faith and lives with the people here. As a sort of sop thrown to the African American communities, it had for a long time been a “generous” concession by white leaders in the South to allow naming of schools, libraries, parks, and other public segregated institutions after blacks who had made their mark in this country. So Tulsa had its Booker T. Washington High School, George Washington Carver Junior High, and Ralph Bunche Elementary School.

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Coincidentally, those names also immediately identified each of those institutions as established for the use of people in the minority community. I had earlier realized that many churches established in black neighborhoods (in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Springfield, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana, to name a few) were named St. Philip, the New Testament missionary who is remembered for converting and baptizing a man of color, an Ethiopian (literal translation: a person of charred skin). I was adamantly averse to any suggestion that the new church in Tulsa be given a name with such connotation. I was eager that this church be understood to honor the Lord of the Church who had once made the statement that God’s place of worship should be a house of prayer for all people. I started looking for a name that would distinguish it from other churches. I wanted to avoid any implication that this was an exclusively black church. Page by page I ran my finger down the long lists of names entered in the directories of Lutheran congregations. Though there are dozens that have been so named since, at that time there was no Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace. So that’s the name we gave it. Day by day, the new building was beginning to take shape. As Architect McCormick had envisioned it from the very first, it truly looked like a church. And it made its own architectural statement: “We are here for you, desiring to serve, enrich, and enhance this community in the spirit and style of Jesus the Christ, Who ‘came not to be served, but to serve.’” The officials of the district already in the early weeks of 1952 had applied to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, requesting a spring graduate to serve as full-time pastor at Prince of Peace. The seminary agreed and assigned a young man from Wisconsin, Alfred Scholz, for the post. Board members were excited about the new church, and they surely had invested a great expenditure in this venture. However, there was as yet not one person who had become a member of Prince of Peace. As the days hurried by, board members registered a bit of uneasiness. They, of course, had not met this young seminarian, nor did they know anything about his experiences or skills, except that the seminary faculty had certified him as capable of being a Lutheran clergyman. I had fulfilled my assignment to get things started in Tulsa and felt a

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bit relieved now to be able to settle in and resume my work in Muskogee. However, a communication from the Oklahoma district’s board changed all that quickly and abruptly. The gist of their message: the board was reminding me that although I had been serving as pastor of Hope Church in Muskogee, I was in reality an employee of the district: originally called to be “a missionary-at-large of the Oklahoma District”; they felt that no one had a better grasp of the situation in Tulsa than I and that I had already come to be known by North Tulsans and identified by them as having a part in the development of the new church; and since the program at the Muskogee church seemed well organized and flourishing, and better suited for a newly graduated seminarian who would be beginning his ministry, they were assigning me to take on the role of founding pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace in Tulsa, effective August 1, 1952. The seminary graduate would become pastor of Hope, Muskogee. Our family was to vacate the Muskogee parsonage by August 1 so that it would be ready for occupancy on the arrival of my successor and his family. We were to move into a house that the board had already rented for us in a newly developed residential area about a mile and a half east of the new church. September 28 was set for the dedication of Prince of Peace. All the pews in the little church were filled. The dividing curtains in the rear were spread wide and folding chairs put in place to accommodate the more than one hundred people who had come. A few of the members of Hope had driven in from Muskogee to be on hand for the event, but most of those present were members of the five other Tulsa churches, eager to demonstrate their support of this new ministry. A handful of North Tulsa neighbors had dropped in to get a closer look at the interior of the church whose exterior they had watched develop in the preceding months. And of course the only members of the young parish, Esther and I and our sons, Tom, Steve, and Peter, were there too. It was a delightful and gratifying gathering. As we surely expected, however, on the following Sunday fewer than a dozen worshippers were present. We realized that although North Tulsans were courteous in their welcoming of us, people would hardly be flocking to our doors.

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I had not been aware that any churches in North Tulsa were scheduling special services on Thanksgiving Day. We decided to fill the gap and be the only church to offer a Thanksgiving service. We mailed out personal invitations to people I had met and to parents of children who had taken part in some of our Sunday school and youth programs. We also announced the event in the Oklahoma Eagle. I had hoped that perhaps some church-going people might welcome the opportunity to worship with us on this special day, particularly if their own church sponsored no such service. Thanksgiving morning as we left the house I discovered one of our tires had gone flat overnight. A friendly neighbor came to my rescue. He drove us to the church. When we arrived, five minutes before the service was to begin—I could hardly believe my eyes. Cars were parked on both sides of the two streets that met at our corner. Fortunately our one usher, Mr. Raymond Jackson, had arrived early and had set up folding chairs. Every space in our rows of pews was occupied. Neighbors and North Tulsa leaders had come—and they had come not just to “look us over,” but to participate with us in worship. We were not overwhelmed by any illusion that all these people would join our church the next week or that they would be regular in attendance. What we had witnessed was a demonstration of acceptance and encouragement. We were made to feel we belonged. A year and a half later, the March 23, 1954, issue of the Oklahoma Eagle carried a long article describing the coming of the Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace to Tulsa. The story noted that by this time twelve adults had become members of the church and Sunday attendance was “in the sixties.” We were experiencing growth, we were experiencing change. In the months preceding, when no adults had yet joined the church, Esther was in her first days of recovery from thyroid cancer surgery. I was in desperate need of a Sunday school teacher who could attend to the young ones while I would be presenting a course for adults who had begun to be present on Sunday mornings. I mentioned this in passing when I was with the other Tulsa ministers. Pastor Frank said, “Right now at Good Shepherd we have a full staff and Alberta Henkel who had been our Sunday School superintendent is just returning from post-

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surgery convalescence and I am looking for a slot for her to fill. She would be excellent.” I contacted Mrs. Henkel, and she agreed to serve. She would continue attending Good Shepherd with her husband, Lloyd, at eight each Sunday morning, and would be able to be at Prince of Peace on time to teach Sunday school and remain for the worship service. She did that the next Sunday—and for the next twenty years! Prince of Peace was fully welcomed into the circle of Tulsa Lutheran congregations, though it was the smallest in the group. As in many cities, during the six weeks of the Lenten season, pastors would “exchange pulpits” in their Wednesday evening services. The laity got to know the different clergymen. On one such evening I was the guest pastor at Good Shepherd. I had been at the church on many occasions and had come to know many of the members. This particular night at the close of service, as was customary, I was greeting people at the door. A young man whom I assumed was a visitor introduced himself, “I’m Virgil Naumann.” I asked him to stay till I had shaken hands with all the worshippers so we could visit a bit longer. He explained that he was from Kalispell, Montana. Upon completing his doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, he had just accepted a position as research physicist for the Jersey Oil Research laboratories. Yes, he was a Lutheran. No, he had not yet joined any church since coming to Tulsa. No, he’d not yet heard of Prince of Peace Church. Yes, he would like to visit sometime. The very next Sunday he came to our church. Dr. Naumann is modest, self-effacing, unobtrusive, and a bit shy. So he left rather quickly after church to catch his bus to the center of town where he lived. Buses ran less frequently on Sundays, so by the time my family and I were on our way from church and passed the bus stop, Esther asked, “Isn’t that Dr. Naumann standing there?” Indeed it was, so I stopped the car to offer him a ride to his home. He was grateful, and he had hardly seated himself when Esther asked if he would like to have dinner with us. He agreed to that too. Next Sunday he was in church again. And the next Sunday. And Sunday after Sunday

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thereafter. And often he returned as a guest at our table as well. He became an officer of the congregation, taught an adult Bible class, and was an active worker in the church. Virgil’s presence every Sunday along with Mrs. Henkel and Esther and our four boys—plus an occasional white visiting family—indicated the genuine intention of our ministry to be identified by our faith and not by ethnic or racial modifiers. We were eager for people to understand that not all Lutheran clergy were white. In its first years Prince of Peace twice conducted “Open House services” on five consecutive evenings, inviting people of the community to become acquainted with us and with the programs we offered. For these week-long events we invited as guest preachers Dr. Clemonce Sabourin, a Lutheran pastor whose church was in New York’s Harlem, and Pastor Henry Sorrell of Houston, both African American ministers.

Chapter Seven

The Supreme Court Speaks

S

ince the year 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court almost regularly arrives at its decisions by narrow five-to-four votes. It may seem strange to us that fifty years ago on such an emotionally charged issue as segregation in public schools, the Court could have delivered a unanimous decision. And back on May 17, 1954, ever so many Americans were no less surprised when those men robed in black announced their verdict: schools in Kansas were no longer to allow segregated education practices. The implication was clear: such practices would not be tolerated in any of the states. The concept of separate but equal was declared invalid. Furthermore, the desegregating process was to be undertaken “with all deliberate speed.” Months and months earlier, the news media had indicated that the matter was already under consideration. When I heard the news of the Court decision, I recalled that back in my Muskogee days, teachers and administrators in the black community had been discussing the implications of the issue. Ms. Minnie McQueen, Ms. Margaret Phillips, and Ms. Ethella Session had been chatting with me in my study one evening. All of them were members of Hope Church, and all of them held teaching positions in small schools in nearby African American rural communities. They were facing up to the realities they’d confront when desegregation of schools would occur. They agreed that such a change was inevitable. The unknown facet of the scenario was when it would occur. 101

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Ms. McQueen was sure that the small rural schools would close and their pupils would likely be bused to consolidated, already existing white schools with larger and better facilities. “And,” she added, “You know they won’t be hiring us to go along, and they aren’t about to be firing any of the white teachers. This is going to be the end of our teaching careers.” Ms. Phillips said, “I know you’re right, but isn’t breaking down the walls of segregation something we all have hoped for through the years? Isn’t this what we have always wanted for our children?” Ms. Session chimed in, “You’re right, and we should be happy about that. But you know how the South is. There are white people who are going to resist this and put it off as long as possible. So since all of us are past fifty, we’ll probably be teaching for a good while yet.” And I remember Ms. McQueen responding, “Well, I want to keep teaching as long as I can, but I also want these children to have the very best education as soon as possible.” I had met some of the faculty members at Manual Training High School, in Muskogee, in my frequent visits to events there. They taught me much about the hurdles confronting African Americans who had been trying to make their mark in a professional world dominated so overwhelmingly by whites. Science teacher Charles Adams would tell me of the difficulty of inspiring bright students because entrance into any college or university other than Langston seemed so far out of reach. Choral director Berniece Jones lamented how her choirs weren’t given opportunity to perform with those of the larger white schools and in larger auditoriums. Coach Walter Cox was pleased his teams could hold their own when playing Oklahoma City’s Douglass and Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington. However, he wished his boys might compete against some of the larger white high schools, before larger crowds of spectators. Some of his better players might then be discovered by some northern colleges and subsequently be offered athletic scholarships. As I learned more and more about Manual Training High, I could understand the kind of thinking that underlay its development. The curriculum was intended to be realistically practical, envisioning the school to be basically a trade school. Those who designed it probably

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felt it unlikely that many graduates would be going on to college—either because of cost or underpreparedness for college-level study. Although Manual’s curriculum offered some courses that might be helpful to students intending to pursue a college education after their high school days, most courses were intended to be of a practical, vocational nature, as the name of the school implied. Male students could focus on leather work and shoe repair, barbering, and auto mechanics, and the young women could study cosmetology. All this implied that each year, out of a class of about one hundred students, some thirty-five or more would be prepared to work in hairdressing; at least twenty could be barbers; as many as fifteen could become cobblers; maybe ten or so could go into auto repair. It dawned on me then that in a five-year period, these programs would turn out more barbers, shoe repairers, beauticians, and auto mechanics than this minority community of eight thousand could possibly need—or even adequately support. I remember visiting with Manual Training’s Principal Kirkpatrick one time. It was the day before graduation ceremonies. With a heavy sigh he told me, “The seniors will all be there tomorrow, decked out in their caps and gowns, marching in while the piano plays ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ And the commencement speaker will tell them to hold their heads high as they step out to be leaders in a world filled with possibilities. He will tell them of role models that walk before them, heroes of our race. Then they’ll mount the platform to receive their diplomas and their families will applaud. Then in the days and weeks that follow, when the excitement has died down, they will explore the career options available to them. “Many of these young men and women will find local business establishments are not ready to hire them. And they’ll also discover they’ve not received the kind of education required by potential employers elsewhere. Instead of being a passport to opportunity, the diploma has become a symbol of frustration. And some of the brightest and best of these will move on to other places, and our own community will be deprived of some of its finest, potentially steady citizens and significant leaders. And some will stay on, disillusioned and discouraged, and try to make the best of things here.” He sounded discouraged this day. However, Mr. Kirkpatrick with his

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staff of dedicated teachers spent long hours with their charges, encouraging them to apply themselves in their studies, cultivating their aspirations for meaningful futures that would match their potential. The concept of a manual training high school may initially indeed have assumed that the future of black graduates held little promise for them. With pride, however, Mr. Kirkpatrick and his staff valiantly carried out their assignments within this formal curricular framework. With courage and persistence they manifested both the good judgment and willingness to cultivate higher hopes and ambitions for the students entrusted to them. These role models were following in the dignity of their own mentors who in earlier years had always urged them to have the highest goals for themselves so that when, ultimately, opportunities for achievement would present themselves, they would be prepared to meet the challenges. While through the years African Americans everywhere had been subjected to degrading and discouraging policies and practices that subordinated them, there were enough stalwart souls among them who refused to lower the torch of hope. All the while, they kept repeating to the young coming up behind that eventually the shackles of segregation surely would drop. They should be ready to grasp the opportunity. Mr. M. Simmons, editor of Muskogee’s black news weekly, in maintaining its neighborly, small-town style, engaged John Cooper as social reporter. Cooper would, of course, cover marriages and similar events. But more, his columns would apprise his readers of the whereabouts of young people who had gone on to college. He would share news about others who had left Muskogee and were pursuing different careers elsewhere. He too was helping people to realize there were more possibilities for their futures beyond the boundaries of their local community. Years later I learned that a significant number of Manual Training graduates moved into roles their own parents would never have dreamed of. These graduates’ achievements have vindicated the patience and persistent urgings of such role models. I recognized the names of many of these. One of the Brewster twins, Xenona (daughter of one of the city’s pastors), found her way to fame in Atlanta by becoming the first black tele-

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vision personality in the Southeast as a staff member of the Turner Broadcasting System. Of course I had known Floyd Henderson who had come to Hope Church and went on to become head librarian for the U.S. Forest Services Library (North Central Experimental Station, Twin Cities). He also served as head librarian for Central Data and was appointed to the twelve-member board of directors of the Special Librarians Association (a global organization with two thousand–plus members in eightythree countries). Kenneth Tollett, son of Muskogee dentist K. E. Tollett, Sr., after serving as dean of Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, joined the faculty of Howard University’s School of Law in Washington, D.C. Several Manual Training graduates have distinguished themselves in the field of education; on April 25, 2004, Dr. Adam Herbert was inaugurated as president of Indiana University (over thirty-eight thousand students), and Norma Kimble Tucker has become a college president in California. Dr. Laforrest Garner was one of the first African American orthodontists. He serves as president of the research component of the American Association of Orthodontists and also teaches on the faculty of Indiana University’s School of Dentistry and still engages part time in orthodontistry. Several of Manual Training’s graduates went on to reach officer status in military service. Frederick Johnson remained in Muskogee and after serving as principal of Franklin Elementary School (originally a school for white pupils) was promoted to higher positions in the integrated Muskogee Public School System. McIra Corbin, who as a little fellow attended our Sunday School and Vacation Bible School classes, impressively had been named to be vice mayor of Muskogee. McIra’s sister, Shirley Corbin Gray, has just completed thirty-one years in Texas with the Dallas police force and has attained the position of assistant chief of police. The May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision was received with both disbelief and great joy in the North Tulsa community. On the following

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day I phoned friends in Muskogee to learn how people had responded there. One of Hope’s members told me about a young lad who lived on Muskogee’s near north side. He was on his usual route walking to his day at Dunbar Elementary School. As he passed by a white school, Franklin Elementary, he paused to watch some of his white friends on the school playground. One of them called to him and with only the chain-link fence between them, he asked, “Haven’t you heard the Supreme Court said you can come to our school now?” Apparently the white pupil took him into his classroom with him when the bell rang. The teacher registered surprise at seeing an African American child in her room, and his young white champion explained to the befuddled teacher that everything was OK because “the Supreme Court said so.” The teacher, my friend reported, went to the principal’s office, who returned with the teacher to the classroom to see it all for himself. The principal then apparently called the superintendent’s office, where, after delays, he is supposed to have informed the child that he should run along to Dunbar School until such time as official arrangements would be announced. So while de jure desegregation had been pronounced one day, de facto desegregation had been achieved the very next day—with speed; and on that same day, frustrated, quite deliberately. My Muskogee friends may have sounded skeptical when they predicted a long delay before the Supreme Court decision would go into effect. They were realists. One could have expected the white populace—especially in the South—to be upset with the Court’s ruling. However, when such leaders as Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi, George Wallace of Alabama, and Orval Faubus of Arkansas raised their defiant voices against the decision, they exacerbated their constituents’ angry rumblings of resistance. President Dwight Eisenhower reprimanded them and insisted that what the high court had decided was now the law and should be thus respected and obeyed. People who had applauded the Court’s decision—and in many instances felt it was long overdue—had wished that their president had

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added to his statement words to the effect that this law ought be respected because it was to bring fairness and justice to our country’s children. He did not. Changes came about slowly as case after case made its way through the courts across the land. Ten years later, Malcolm X would harangue crowds of his followers to adopt his assessment of the situation. Scoffing at those who had high expectations for the decision’s effectiveness, he would lament that there had been only 10 percent compliance with the ruling, and at that rate it would be only 90 more years before all children would benefit from it—and in some instances more than two generations of children would be deprived of what had legally been declared theirs back in 1954. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod had no record of trailblazing leadership in matters of social or political consequence. Quite parochially, its leaders and congregations regarded with fervor and diligence its treasured legacy of a clearly formulated doctrine and Seelsorgen or pastoral care of “the flock.” One didn’t expect to hear from its pulpits comments on the wars, the labor movement, or other significant stirrings in the secular world in which these Lutherans found themselves. Worldly ways, personal piety, faith, grace, the Scriptures, and eternal life were themes emphasized in its teachings and preachings. This corner of Lutheranism developed its own educational system, establishing parochial elementary schools across the country, second in number only to the Roman Catholic schools. And at the level of higher education, the church body steered away from professional academics. Concentrating instead on its preparatory schools, colleges, and seminaries, the church chose to educate students to become pastors and teachers in order to assure its own identity and preservation. An issue of such momentous importance as the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision, calling for an end to segregation in this country’s public schools, could hardly go unnoticed by a church body that had invested so much of its energies and resources in education. At least one would so think. However, as usual, not much was to be heard from this church body on the matter.

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At this time Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, himself a former professor in one of these colleges (and in later years was to become the widely known speaker on the International Lutheran Hour broadcasts) held the position of director of public relations for the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Hoffmann realized that a significant number of LCMS churches in the southern states operated elementary schools and in the context of their communities were, in fact, also segregated. Furthermore, many members of southern churches that had no school of their own had enrolled their children in public schools that until now had been segregated. Rather than issue some pronouncement or pontificate on the matter through the press, Hoffmann, with wisdom and shrewdness, arranged for a meeting of officers of all the church’s regional judicatories that served southern states. Together these leaders would examine and discuss the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling for churchsponsored education. It was essential that all the LCMS district presidents and their staffs (directors of missions, church extension, and education) be present. The meeting would be held in Kansas City, and Hoffmann selected various invitees to present essays to the group for discussing how the decision impinged upon the planning and work of the church. My crosstown colleague, Bud Frank, who was director of missions for the Oklahoma District at the time, called me when his invitation arrived. I remember his call vividly. “Karl, Oz Hoffmann has asked me to do an essay on the implications of the Supreme Court decision as churches in the South develop strategies for growth in their communities. This assignment should really have gone to you, because you have been more immediately involved in racial issues than I and you would make a much more helpful presentation than I. But, since you’re not one of the invitees, he probably would not accept my suggestion that he call on you. So I have an idea. “I’m asking you to save that date and prepare the paper I’ve been assigned. Meanwhile, I’m going to accept his assignment. Then, a week before the event, when it will be too late for him to find someone else, I’ll call and tell him something has come up to prevent my attending but that I’ve asked you to prepare a presentation, and I’m sending you as my substitute.”

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The day arrived soon enough, and the audience was gratifyingly receptive to my presentation. Having carefully planned and set in motion this important forum, Hoffmann did little more than sit back unobtrusively to watch it unfold. The spirited sessions generated a constructive mutual commitment to be supportive of the government’s attempt to right a long-embedded wrong in America’s life. I recall particularly an essay by Dr. Martin Koehneke, the director of education for the Texas District (who, years later, would become the president of Concordia Teachers College— now Concordia University—in River Forest, Illinois). He observed that the segregated pattern of education in southern schools had long penalized children of color and that the Court’s decision was not only courageous but right. “If church people are serious about caring for little children and supporting government when it administers justice, they must not do anything that would hinder the implementation of the Court’s ruling,” he insisted. Then he informed us that several Texas congregations which operated schools found it necessary to request subsidy from the Texas District to maintain their schools. Koehneke said the district was prepared to deny continued subsidies to any congregation that would accept transfers of white children to their schools in an attempt to circumvent and frustrate the intent of the law of the land. The meeting set a constructive course for the assembled administrators and served to generate a strong mutuality of commitment to that course. There were a few voices that indicated hesitancy. Some who heard the Supreme Court’s admonition that it expected implementation “with all deliberate speed” chose to emphasize deliberate rather than speed. As the day-long session came to its end, the vice president of the Texas District, Roland Wiederaenders, rose, commenting on his own experience as pastor of a large San Antonio congregation. He urged cautious response to the Court decision, pointing out that his people for so many years had lived in a section of the country in which segregation was a way of life. Then, as if to secure his position, he drew from his pocket a little clipping he had brought with him. He read the short paragraph in which a professor from Alcorn College in Arkansas had spoken out against the Court’s ruling, calling their decision a mistake.

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After Wiederaenders had read the article, he pointed out, “And he was a Negro!” No one in the group commented. They were obviously not impressed. We had looked forward to the participation of the Synod’s president, Dr. John Behnken, in the day’s discussion and were really disappointed, particularly when we learned why he hadn’t arrived until near the very end of our session. When he did finally join us, the person presiding invited him to speak. Dr. Behnken apologized for his tardiness and explained he had spent most of the day conversing with the president of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church, a church body smaller than LCMS and significantly more conservative. He broadly hinted that his earlier meeting had not proved very productive and in a side remark smiled as he told how appropriate it was that during that session one of his staff had slipped him a card which read, “Don’t confuse me with the facts—I’ve already made up my mind!” He continued by expressing his personal uneasiness about the Supreme Court decision, stating that many fine southern folk would be disturbed by all this. He was convinced, he said, that such changes as this couldn’t be effected overnight. He recalled his days of serving as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Houston. He felt sure many of his former members down there would be upset, because they had lived in this segregated setting all their lives. He wanted us to be considerate of them. Then, possibly realizing that he may have sounded more concerned about advantaged whites than schoolchildren of color, on whose behalf the Court had declared its position, he added, “Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Negroes. I love the Negro.” Then he told how when, in earlier years, he had presided at a convention of the Texas District, he had “invited one of our Negro Lutheran pastors to come to the platform and introduced him and shook hands with him.” Then he added, “He is my brother, but does that mean that I must fraternize with him?” The audience sat in stunned silence. This was a revered leader of our church who had said this. None of us wanted to be disrespectful.

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I slowly raised my hand, and he acknowledged my bid to respond. “Dr. Behnken, no one expects you to be in close company with any person who is rude in his behavior, crude and abusive in his language, unclean in bodily care, or unsanitary in his eating habits. And that’s because of what that person has done to himself. But if the only reason you don’t care to be near or associate with a person is the color of his skin, you must take that matter up with God who made each of us the color we are.” The silver-haired churchman made no response. I had meant no disrespect and I really did not feel good at all, having said what I did, but I felt compelled to speak out and could not desist from saying it. Once the session ended, others in the group came to thank me for saying what they insisted simply had to be said.

Chapter Eight

Identifying New Allies

A

s vital a role as the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision played in the changing of the country’s racial scene, the desegregation movement already had been gaining momentum before that date. People everywhere became increasingly aware of the contributions African Americans were making to society. Outstanding athletes, gifted artists, talented performers, brilliant scholars, articulate writers, and strong community leaders were emerging, invalidating long-held stereotypes. Increasingly, without fanfare, America was being readied for change. Many in Oklahoma could hardly believe that the Lutherans— with their reputation as a parochial, conservative group—should be involved in a venture that would connect them with the North Tulsa community. After all, as late as the 1940s some Lutheran congregations in Oklahoma were still scheduling worship services in the German language as well as in English.* In Tulsa, churches of other protestant denominations had celebrated “Brotherhood Sunday” from time to time, and had made other gestures of goodwill toward North Tulsa churches. However, as one African American pastor observed, “We take our choirs over there * In the November 1999 Oklahoma District Diamond Anniversary, editor Harold W. Kamman mentions (page 9, column 1, bottom) a Lutheran convention held in Lahoma, Oklahoma, in 1927, when it was reported that 52 percent of all services conducted in Oklahoma were in the English language. At that time fifty-eight Lutheran congregations and “preaching stations” were in operation.

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and say a word or two and, when it’s over, we ride back to North Tulsa, sitting in the back of the bus. And on Monday morning everything’s back to where it was before.” White church leaders of other denominations in Tulsa watched closely what was happening at Prince of Peace. Several of them not only expressed admiration for what we were doing and how we were doing it, but also offered us encouragement. Ms. Beth Macklin, who served with the Tulsa Council of Churches, was particularly supportive. In her work with the Tulsa Tribune she would frequently include articles about Prince of Peace. Dr. Lemuel Fenn, pastor of prestigious First Methodist Church in downtown Tulsa, invited me to address members of his congregation one evening to talk about racial issues in the city. He wanted me to tell what I thought churches might do in a constructive way to respond. The rabbi of a temple on the south side also invited me to speak with some of his members. A human relations conference at Tulsa University included me on its program. One could see that openness to examining and discussing racial issues was developing. In many ways it became evident that people were not just anticipating change—it was already happening. I felt particularly encouraged on the first Sunday in October 1956, the day of the formal dedication of the Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace. That morning each of my Tulsa colleagues in ministry, Pastors Clarence Knippa (of Grace Church), Walmar Frank (Good Shepherd), Charles Birner (Our Savior), and Harold Brockhoff (Christ the Redeemer) had announced the event from their pulpits. More than naming place and time of the celebration, however, each of them explained that the new church was not to be regarded as a “Negro mission” but as a sister congregation, and a sharing of the Lutheran heritage with the people of the North Tulsa community. Then they made this important statement: “Furthermore, to demonstrate our genuineness in this sharing, we have assured Pastor Lutze that as he invites neighbors to attend Lutheran services, they would be as welcome at any other of our Lutheran churches as they would be at Prince of Peace.” It is surely possible that some in those congregations may have arched an eyebrow as they heard the words, but the pastors all reported that no one expressed any objection. The statement had been made: Prince of

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Peace was not a segregated church, nor an excuse for other Lutheran churches to prevent people of minority groups from joining their congregations. I was able to tell people visiting our church—or whom I would visit—what these pastors had said to their congregations, and this gave my invitation to them a ring of genuineness. As time went on, the other Lutheran congregations in Tulsa would invite members of Prince of Peace to attend events they were sponsoring. Since the clergy of North Tulsa did not participate in the all-white Tulsa Ministerial Association, I applied for membership in the North Tulsa Ministerial Association. I was accepted with a warm welcome. Back in the mid-forties, while I was serving in Muskogee, I discovered that the YMCA there admitted students of the local Bacone Indian School in its programs. African Americans, however, were excluded. In a meeting of Muskogee’s black community leaders, to which I had been invited, we explored the possibility of developing a branch of the YMCA so that the African American youth might have the benefits of the Y’s program. I was asked to serve on that new branch’s committee of management. This was my first experience of being asked to have a role in a black community enterprise. I was the only white person on this committee and I experienced a great feeling of acceptance, of being included. I was impressed with the YMCA and its programs. So, when I arrived in Tulsa, one of the first persons I met was Ralph Brady, director of North Tulsa’s Hutcherson Branch YMCA. He welcomed me and urged me to attend meetings of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce held regularly in his YMCA building. And there I met Mr. Ed Goodwin, Sr., publisher and editor of the Oklahoma Eagle, North Tulsa’s weekly paper. He was both curious and cordial. After I’d told him a bit about myself and Prince of Peace, he invited me to make use of the columns of the Eagle to announce church events and other items of interest. Regularly he’d print any articles I would submit, so he proved a strong ally in helping us inform his readers about Prince of Peace and its program in the community. I don’t recall that he himself ever visited our church, but from time to time Mrs.

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Goodwin would worship with us, and she would comment how much she appreciated our ministry. I rather think she put in a good word with her husband on our behalf. It was clear that there were people who were willing to stand at our side in this adventure. Their friendship was both gratifying and cheering. And all this was already happening two years and more before the Supreme Court pronounced its decision.

Chapter Nine

Catalyst for Change

A

fter Ralph Brady’s sudden and far too early death, Franklin Thomas accepted the post as director of the Hutcherson YMCA. He caught the significance of the Brady pattern of inviting civic groups to hold their meetings at his quarters. This arrangement had proved ideal, because of Hutcherson’s central location in North Tulsa. Then too, the guest organizations did not become beholden to any single church which otherwise might have been asked to serve as regular host for their meetings. Besides, people got to know and appreciate the branch Y and became actively involved in its support. Capitalizing on the concept, Thomas introduced as part of its program a “YMCA Hungry Club.” These lunch-hour meetings were held monthly on weekdays, open to all who wished to attend. The style of the sessions was a sort of town hall forum, featuring special panels or individual speakers who would discuss issues of current interest. If almost any sort of important meeting were taking place in North Tulsa, one might ask, “When?” or “What time?” but one would assume the Hutcherson Y to be the site of the meeting. I was eager to meet as many people of the community as possible. So during a membership drive for the Hutcherson YMCA, I enrolled. I attended as many meetings there as possible and, indeed, this is where I found new friends among many of the North Tulsa leaders. One particular day, after I had attended a meeting of the Tulsa chapter of the NAACP, one of the officers approached me, asking 116

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me to join. I did, and shortly thereafter was named cochairman of its Committee on Community Coordination. After also attending several sessions of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, I was approached by several members of the chamber. They told me they had recommended me for acceptance on that group’s membership roster. I joined, and not much later I was appointed to its Committee on Public Relations. I was surprised and grateful for the confidence such acceptance demonstrated. I welcomed the opportunity to participate in these organizations’ efforts to enrich this community and to make constructive contributions to the lives of the people who lived there. I wanted to honor that trust, so when the chamber launched a campaign to enlarge its ranks, I approached several local merchants, inviting them to become members. Quite unexpectedly, the owner of a small soft ice cream stand on the edge of the community contacted me, telling me that he appreciated the amount of business that was coming his way from North Tulsans. He wondered whether he might not demonstrate this by joining and supporting the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. I told him I would bring his application to the group’s next meeting, which would be held that Thursday noon. When I introduced the matter, one of the members asked, “Isn’t he white?” The room buzzed with comments. Some said they knew him and that he seemed like a decent sort of person and was courteous to his customers. Mr. J. T. A. West leaned forward and stated quite emphatically, “I don’t have anything against this white man. However, all these years the chamber downtown excluded us from their activities, and we’ve developed our own organization. I don’t think we should have any white people coming in here to have a voice in what we are planning and doing!” From the other side of the table one of the other members responded, “Well, we have one white member already—Pastor Lutze.” Mr. West fired back, “Shoo! He’s one of us, and that makes a difference.” And the group declined to accept the candidate. When I had first arrived in Oklahoma seven and a half years earlier, I had not known much about the NAACP. I had a warm feeling

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about the organization, however. How could anybody be opposed to an association whose cause was the “advancement of colored people”? As I learned more about the association’s work through reading and in the meetings I attended, I began to understand and appreciate the organization’s confrontational style. I would suppose most whites—especially white southerners—resented the NAACP, and wrote them off as troublemakers. I was finding them to be troubleshooters. Here were people who would go to the trouble of exposing the trouble—to show how mean, demeaning, degrading, and very wrong segregation truly was. There was much wrong in Oklahoma, much wrong in Tulsa. The segregated education system itself discriminated against African American children—in its treatment of teachers, provision of facilities, equipment, and materials, and in its curriculum too. And of course, white children were deprived of healthy association with children of color, and in their very classroom and playground setting they learned that racial segregation was both normal and acceptable. Although I had had lengthy conversations with Attorney Franklin, I had never met his daughter, Mrs. Waldo Jones, who taught at Dunbar Elementary School. She called my office one day and, in telling her story, revealed the sort of kind, sensitive, and caring qualities that surely contributed to her being a valuable member of Dunbar’s faculty. She told me how each day a white mother would personally bring to school her little son Calvin, a pupil in her class, and at day’s end return for him. The woman obviously was of German roots, she told me. Her first name was Isabella, surely German enough, but her married name was Richardson, obviously quite un-German. Mrs. Jones told how she often found Mrs. Richardson to have been weeping. She seemed both lonesome and sad. Mrs. Jones had difficulty communicating with Mrs. Richardson, and had wondered, since I was Lutheran, whether I spoke German, and, if I did, would I visit her. I was reluctant to tout my meager knowledge of German, but of course I would visit her. When she came to the door I bade her a hearty, “Guten Morgen, Frau Richardson!” Her facial response? She glowed as if I had given her a

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Christmas present. With an excited politeness she welcomed me, “Komm herein, bitte!” When I confessed my limitation in speaking her mother tongue, we negotiated terms of communication. I would do my best to fumble along in German, and she would struggle to do her best with the English she wanted so much to learn. And there was much she wanted to share. She had met a young soldier from North Tulsa. He was serving with the U.S. occupation troops and was stationed near her home in Germany. They grew very fond of each other, yet when their conversation touched the subject of marriage, he would try to explain the segregating ways of his home community. She thought he was portraying a situation that couldn’t possibly be as bad as he claimed. She feared that he just didn’t love her enough. She finally persuaded him that she could endure anything were they to marry. And they did. Her husband had been a member of St. Monica Roman Catholic Church in North Tulsa. Though she had been a Lutheran, she wanted so much for their marriage to be strong, so she decided to join his church. The priest, recognizing her loneliness as a sole white person attending mass, and, no doubt, wishing to make her feel more comfortable in her new setting, suggested she worship elsewhere in a church where the parishioners were white. What the priest had intended as helpful counsel she regarded as a rebuff. What would her joining a white church mean for their son and his racial identity? I invited her to attend Prince of Peace. The welcome she experienced from our members was so wholehearted and genuine that she chose to join us and became actively involved in the congregation’s life. I remember her telling us that, for the first time since her arrival in the States, she really felt at home. But hers was not an easy path. It was almost as though our church community had become an oasis for her. In one instance she told of her experience in downtown Tulsa where she had been shopping. Little Calvin was walking at her side, holding her hand. Suddenly a pedestrian who saw them came close, spouted crude words at her, and spat in her face. She was in tears as she spoke and conceded, “I never believed all that my husband had told me about the South could be true, but he was right.”

. . .

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This was 1955, and this was Tulsa. In Tulsa, the harm inflicted by segregation manifested itself in a particularly severe and most noticeable way in the area of employment. Downtown department stores employed some blacks in menial positions, such as janitorial jobs, but not as office personnel or clerks. White restaurants might employ dishwashers of color, but rarely in hosting or serving positions. And in city or county government offices, African American employees also were primarily assigned to menial tasks. I don’t recall ever seeing a membership roster of NAACP’s Tulsa chapter, but I have no doubt that all the members of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce belonged. Discussions at chamber meetings often concerned themselves with issues of racial discrimination, and it was in one such meeting that someone at the table said, “What we need here in Tulsa is the Urban League!” I had heard of the Urban League before, but I really knew nothing about it. Apparently a few of the others present needed enlightenment on the subject as well, so the ensuing conversation explained how this national organization had branch operations in major cities across the country. Its conference-table style significantly differed from the confrontational approach of the NAACP, yet the two organizations complemented each other, the one confronting the offending practice, the other sitting down with leaders of both parties in order to negotiate ways of dealing with the particular issues before them. The enthusiasm for the idea of bringing the Urban League to Tulsa was apparent. As the saying goes, “The more they thought of it, the more they thought of it.” The motion was made, seconded, and passed, calling for a committee to pursue the matter and authorizing this group to proceed with initial steps for establishing a Tulsa Urban League. The committee contacted Dr. Lester Granger in the league’s New York offices. While expressing gratification over the possibilities, Dr. Granger laid out the necessary items that would qualify us for acceptance as a chapter: 1. We would have to have twenty-one members who would constitute a board of directors, representing different categories of careers.

Our committee assured him we could meet that requirement.

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2. Besides the chapter president, ten members were to be African American, ten were to be white. Problem: the Lutheran pastor of Prince of Peace Church was the only white person involved to date. 3. The program would have the support of the local unit of the United Way. Problem: the United Way did not even know about our effort, and we had no track record to warrant its support. 4. We had to assure the National Urban League that we could finance the program.

The committee had brought no defined commitment of financial support with them, but their own enthusiasm and willingness to find such support won the goodwill of Dr. Granger. After meeting with his own board and administrative officers in New York, Granger announced that since we were so far from meeting basic requirements for acceptance, there could be no establishing of a Tulsa Urban League at this time. However, he and his colleagues decided to grant us temporary status as an “Urban League Project.” Provisions of the agreement were these: 1. the National Urban League would provide a director who would

a) install an Urban League program in Tulsa; b) help North Tulsans meet the requirements to achieve full Urban League status; 2. the North Tulsa petitioners would be given one year to meet all the conditions necessary for qualifying as a local Urban League.

Chapter Ten

The City Becomes Involved

T

he Urban League held true to its promise and sent Marion M. Taylor to serve as executive director of the Tulsa Urban League Project. A tall gentleman in his forties, Taylor arrived in Tulsa on April 8, 1953. He had previously served on the staff of Omaha’s Urban League with Dr. Whitney Young, who later became Dr. Granger’s successor, directing the National Urban League as its executive. Although born in Ennis, Texas, Taylor claimed roots in Oklahoma. His grandfather was a Cherokee Indian and had lived in Oklahoma’s Cherokee Strip. Taylor, a graduate of Wilberforce University, had also studied sociology at Western Reserve Graduate School and industrial relations at Creighton University. He subsequently received his master’s degree in psychology from Omaha University. Marion Taylor possessed a great many attributes that served him well in his new assignment. He was reserved, but not shy; somewhat soft-spoken, but always quite ready to talk about the League, its work, and the needs it addressed. He was unmarried and therefore was able to devote most of his waking hours to the work he’d come to do. Very professional, he was friendly but did not invest much time or energy in cultivating in-depth personal friendships. He immersed himself in the life of the community, learning its history, studying its needs, cultivating the confidence and involvement of North Tulsa leaders. Though he himself had once served as a Presbyterian elder, he would regularly visit the many churches in Tulsa, often addressing the congregants, eliciting their participation 122

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in league activities. His involvement in community concerns included membership on the Citizens Committee for Community Conservation; Neighborhood Analysis Subcommittee; Committee on Aging; Council of Social Agencies; American Social Hygiene Association; Health Division of Tulsa Council of Social Agencies; and the President’s and Mayor’s Committee on Handicapped Employment, among others. He clearly demonstrated his earnestness to be a part of Tulsa. At the very top of Taylor’s “to do” list was the matter of getting the Urban League Project to meet the requirements for attaining league status. In his persistent efforts to gain participation of white Tulsans—and their financial support—Marion Taylor won the attention and confidence of a small group of respected leaders in the city, and in June 1954 the Oklahoma Eagle announced the election of new members to the Urban League Project’s board—all of these new members were white, though not thus designated in the article: William Broadhurst, independent oil dealer; C. C. Callicoat, labor leader, AFL; P. W. Howell, professor of economics, Tulsa University; Mrs. Mabel Lynch, homemaker; John P. Melone, judge; A. H. Mitchell, director, Carter Oil Company; A. W. Mitchell, labor leader, CIO; N. L. Rosenthal, rabbi, Temple Israel; and Mrs. Helen Spore, civic leader and homemaker. The article also reported the announcement of newly elected officers by committee chairman Dr. William Perry: Judge John P. Melone, president; Dr. Lloyd H. Williams, first vice president; Julius Livingston, second vice president; Karl E. Lutze, pastor, secretary; Mrs. Mabel Lynch, assistant secretary; Dr. W. Norvel Coots, a North Tulsa physician, treasurer. The Oklahoma Eagle article continued: “In accepting the office of president, Judge Melone stated that he had given up several organizations in order to have considerable time to devote to the principles of better living and working conditions for Negroes. He said he was taking his new office seriously and he called for the unstinted support of all members of the board.” Getting the young program on its feet would necessitate expenditures. Setting up an office, acquiring equipment, engaging necessary office help, and a long list of minor costs called for financial resources for

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the launching process. We had hoped for support from the Community Chest, but that organization could not justify awarding funds to any new group that appeared at its door, unless the group had established itself and could present a track record of its performance. Up until this time the Prince Hall Masons (an African American fraternal order) and the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, along with contributions by individuals, underwrote such costs. However, as the time drew near for the project to be considered for membership as a Community Chest agency, an indebtedness of three thousand dollars had mounted. Solvency was required by the Community Chest. So on the last two Sundays of May 1954, North Tulsa churches gathered offerings on behalf of the Urban League Project. The results were gratifying, and on June 5, 1954, the Community Chest of Tulsa formally accepted the Tulsa Urban League as a member agency. That recognition would of course win for the project league status in the National Urban League structure. It was an occasion for celebration, and the first full-board session was a festive dinner meeting at the downtown YMCA. The moment for merriment was deserved, but there was work to do. In modest, small quarters, and with only meager office equipment, Taylor, together with his bright and efficient full-time administrative assistant, Lena Bennett, proved more than an adequate match for the challenge. With enthusiasm and skill they pushed the program ahead, full speed. Douglas Aircraft was one of the major employers in Tulsa during the midcentury days, employing thousands of workers; fewer than one hundred of them were African American. An editorial in the Oklahoma Eagle ( January 29, 1955) noted that at Douglas, “year after year they keep their program throttled down so that no matter how large the quota, the ratio at Douglas is always no more than 1% Negro, [and that only] in the unskilled category.” Tulsa itself boasted a population of some 250,000 in 1954 with an estimated 25,000—or 10 percent—of these being African American. Douglas Aircraft was prospering on the strength of huge contracts with the federal government. Because federal purchases were made with taxpayers’ payments, it was hardly justifiable for firms receiving

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such monies to exclude some of those taxpayers from employment simply because of race. Yet there were industries that did just that. In order to put a halt to such practices, President Eisenhower had assigned to his vice president, Richard Nixon, the task of implementing the order that all commercial enterprises from which the U.S. government was purchasing goods and/or services were to observe fair employment practice. In its installations elsewhere, Douglas seemed to have been in compliance with this order. It surely did not seem to be complying in Tulsa. This governmental structure, bearing the authority of the president of the United States, provided Tulsa’s NAACP chapter with an instrument with which to confront the Tulsa division of Douglas Aircraft. While Tulsa’s NAACP would be banging on Douglas’s front door, threatening to call Washington to the scene, the Urban League would be in a position to come to the back door, inviting Douglas heads to sit down to negotiate a solution. In the early days of January 1955 the Tulsa NAACP did in fact register a complaint with the President’s Committee on Government Contracts. Back in July 1953, shortly after Marion Taylor’s arrival in Tulsa, he had already submitted a letter to Douglas officials, proposing a “Seven Point Program” for increasing employment opportunities for African Americans. The response was cordial; the seven points were being “given serious consideration; . . . every effort would be made to cooperate,” the Oklahoma Eagle (February 1955) reported. Because of the Korean War, an overall setback in Douglas’s operations brought all hiring there to a standstill. The league heard nothing more than silence on the matter. That lull in hiring ended for Douglas in the fall of 1954. In February of 1955 the Urban League’s board voted to resubmit the proposal to Douglas. The Seven Points: 1. an increase in the number of Negroes [employed] on the basis of the number of available Negro workers; 2. the employment of Negro women workers as plant workers— both in skilled and unskilled jobs; 3. the utilization of Negro applicants who are in the technical, professional, and journeyman skilled brackets;

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4. the employment of Negro women who can qualify as clerical workers, such as stenographers, clerk-typists, office clerks, office machine operators, and office messengers; 5. employment of one or more [Negro] security officers also referred to as plant policemen; 6. the employment and assignment of qualified Negroes of both sexes in learner group jobs; 7. opportunities for Negroes to participate in adult training programs . . . conducted under the sponsorship of the Douglas plant and the Tulsa school administration.

The Oklahoma Eagle’s reporter, E. L. Madison, had done some probing in the matter and in a February 10 article he listed the names of eleven African Americans, “trained in their respective fields, who at one time or another were turned down or ignored by Douglas.” An article in the following week’s Eagle reported on a meeting of Douglas officers with members of the Urban League’s board, held at Douglas Aircraft facilities. The agenda called for discussion of the Seven Point Proposal. The chief executive officer of Tulsa’s Douglas operations, Mr. Woodhead, was not present for the session. Mr. H. P. McGinnis, director of public relations, and Mr. S. J. Ogilvie, director of industrial relations and personnel, represented Douglas. Marion Taylor, board officers Melone and Williams, and board members Callicoat, Father Statham of Catholic Charities, and I were present on behalf of the league. The two officers who met with us were both hospitable and cordial. They claimed to be opposed to racial discrimination and expressed their indignation at the very idea of anyone accusing them of practices unfair to hiring or upgrading of minorities. When we asked about the number of African Americans Douglas employed, they pleaded a sort of innocence, insisting that they simply had no way of knowing, since Douglas did not ask persons to name their race on employment applications forms. Yet these men tried to assure us that they were open to employ any applicant who would have the skills to fill a particular job. We cited positions named in ads that had appeared in the newspapers inviting job applicants for posts such as office clerks and secre-

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taries, and we named African American applicants who had such skills and had not been hired. We inquired why the few black employees who had been working in menial work were not given opportunity for special training for upgraded posts as were white employees of similar job levels. Their answers were evasive and their posture defensive. Insisting on their earnestness in complying with much that we had requested in the Seven Point Proposal, they brought the meeting to a close, promising to look into the issues we had raised. I had been appointed to chair the Industrial Relations Committee of the league, so it was not altogether surprising when, a few weeks later, I received a call from Mr. Ogilvie. He seemed almost elated that he could inform me that some changes had been made and that in just the past two weeks thirteen minority applicants had been hired and an additional twenty or more very likely would be added to the working staff in the next few weeks. These would be enrolled in a special training program in the plant to prepare them for new positions. I expressed gratification upon hearing the news. I could not resist, however, asking how he arrived at such a numerical count when earlier they had insisted there was no way of determining how many blacks were on Douglas’s payroll, since the employment forms did not call for indicating applicants’ race. He chose not to pursue the issue and we ended our conversation on a cordial note. North Tulsans were pleased with every report of progress in the work of Marion Taylor and the league. Many white Tulsans, however, were a bit wary as they learned about what was occurring. I recall a particular meeting when one of our white board members burst out, quite indignantly, that he had been willing to serve because he wanted to lend his support to efforts to bring decent housing to minorities, but he was disturbed to learn that the Urban League had also been pressing to eliminate separate seating at symphony concerts downtown. He sternly objected to the idea and insisted he did not want “Negroes sitting in the same section” with his wife. We still had a long way to go. However, we persuaded the management of the prestigious Mayo Hotel to serve the First Annual Report Dinner of the Tulsa Urban

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League. Judge James P. Melone presided at the gathering. The Urban League’s national executive director, Dr. Lester B. Granger, was speaker for the evening. The Oklahoma Eagle’s coverage of the event in its December 1, 1955, issue described the occasion as “the first such meeting to be held in the Mayo.” The article stated, “Speaking to an overflow crowd, . . . Dr. Granger said that Tulsa citizens, like all loyal Americans, are acting to correct wrongs not because of race, but because ‘we feel it is the right thing to do in the secret recesses of our hearts.’” The speaker told how he, as a field representative for the league, had first visited Tulsa in 1936. At that time “Tulsa was not in a receptive mood for Urban League work, with the stains of the riot still in the minds and hearts of citizens [though fifteen years by then had passed]. Today,” he continued, “we find the city exercising its spiritual muscles.” In the course of the meeting, Marion Taylor announced that by this time the Tulsa Urban League had “reached an enrollment of nine hundred members, both whites and Negroes.” The majority of these were North Tulsans. Disappointingly, the white community’s commercial and business leaders of the city—its powerful decision-makers—were far more reluctant to accept and support the league and its agenda. By this time Judge Melone had withdrawn from the presidency and the board had named me president. As we were strategizing for the months ahead, it was Marion Taylor who proposed a brilliant move. He told how, at the national level, the Urban League had won the respect of the Rockefeller brothers. Young Winthrop Rockefeller had been participating in the Urban League’s program for almost twenty years and recently had been speaking at various Urban League events around the country. Perhaps he might be persuaded to address our second annual meeting. Aside from a bit of notoriety that attended his name because of a well-publicized divorce that endowed a fortune in alimony on his former wife, I knew little about the man. Taylor elaborated on his suggestion. As a young fellow and heir to the Rockefeller millions, Winthrop had proven himself a bit of a maverick. His start had resembled the sort of storybook beginnings of affluent Eastern society. However, after attending one of the Ivy League universities for three years, Winthrop chose another course. Instead of fitting into a comfortably secure position in

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the family’s oil operations he enlisted in the army, where he rose from the rank of private to colonel and won both a Bronze Star with clusters and the Purple Heart, when the troopship on which he was serving was struck by a kamikaze mission. Later he headed for the Southwest and was employed as a “roughneck” in the oil fields, where he learned firsthand about hard work and the “common man.” Since those earlier days he had moved to Arkansas, where he raised cattle on a ranch he had purchased. By now Governor Orval Faubus had appointed him chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, so he was well known in industrial circles across the country. Encouraged by National Urban League Director Lester Granger, Winthrop Rockefeller agreed to accept our invitation to address our meeting. The event was to be held at the downtown Tulsa Hotel. We sensed a swell of interest, once the word was out that we had secured him as speaker. Officers of the oil companies located in Tulsa, as well as heads of the oil-related industries and financial institutions in our city, were quick to make their reservations to attend the event. Of course, many who came to the dinner meeting were there not so much to learn of the progress of the Urban League but to hear—and, many hoped, to meet—this celebrity person. In the weeks preceding the annual meeting, I received several phone calls—from people I hadn’t known—asking me to arrange for a special audience with Mr. Rockefeller. One of these callers confided that he had developed a gadget that would revolutionize the oil world, but he needed financial undergirding to launch his enterprise. Several sought to discuss investment opportunities they wanted to offer our visitor. Many of those present for the evening event—and it was a large crowd—had come with their own agendas and expectations. Whatever these may have been, they were treated instead to a thoughtful, stirring message by our special guest. They listened with riveted attention. Urging industrial leaders to introspection in the matter of hiring practices, Mr. Rockefeller became quite specific in pointing to the racial issue. He especially noted the “need for pioneering to gain employment opportunities for Negroes in industry. He made special reference to the oil industry in Tulsa in which few Negroes are employed” (Oklahoma Eagle, January 24, 1957).

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“The question of hiring Negroes,” he said, “is not only a moral factor but an economic factor as well.” Citing industry’s pressing need for manpower, he continued, “It is simply a matter of good business to employ Negroes.” The man’s presence among us and the sincerity and forthrightness of his presentation were moving. People who had long resisted, or at least had been timid about, taking a stand favoring fair and equal employment opportunities for African Americans were seen by their peers to be joining in the standing ovation, applauding the speaker and his message. The Urban League had become noticed as a respected asset to the community. In the weeks that followed, some of the doors that previously had been closed to Mr. Taylor’s visits were opened, and an increasing number of firms were making jobs accessible to North Tulsans. Bit by bit, signs of awakening appeared in Tulsa. The unfairness of segregation became more and more apparent, and changes were taking place. When I first arrived in Tulsa I had been told that although the Tulsa police had assigned a black officer to the Greenwood area, he was not authorized to arrest any white person, whatever the crime. He was to detain such a person until a white officer would arrive whose discretion it was to deal with the apprehended person. Now, with well-trained black officers added to the force, North Tulsans could begin to have a new respect for the police department. One Prince of Peace member, Leon Johnson, had become an officer. More and more the city was discovering the advantages to be found in lowering the segregation bars. Another member of our church, Alonzo Batson, after graduating from Langston University, had left with his wife, Mary, for the Philippines, where they participated in setting up a school of agriculture. They had returned to Tulsa—she, a teacher; he, relieving his ailing father in operating a fish and poultry market. The City Health Department had repeatedly found it necessary to seek new personnel to inspect food establishments in North Tulsa. The problem was that many of these businesses were small and operated at a very low profit margin. They therefore found themselves unable to purchase new equipment to meet health and sanitation requirements. When the inspectors found a situation below standards, they would

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threaten to shut down that site. The response was hostile. These merchants depended on their businesses for survival, and the inspectors, fearing retaliation, would resign. Mr. Batson was offered the job, and he accepted the challenge. With patience and understanding he would work with these owners and help them—in smaller, affordable steps—to bring their facilities into compliance with good sanitary practices. And these businessmen began to regard him as an ally and friend. The city officials were so impressed with Mr. Batson’s work that they named him head of that operation for the entire city of Tulsa. But not all in Tulsa was beautiful.

Chapter Eleven

Population Spillover and Neighborhood Change

I

t hadn’t been difficult to find the appropriate spot for building the Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace. However, finding a parsonage nearby to house the new pastor and his family was far from easy. There simply were no houses available for rent in the immediate neighborhood. There was another factor to consider. The area of Tulsa where African Americans lived was rather clearly marked by railroad tracks and warehouses. These served as virtual boundary lines, confining the residents to this area. This, incidentally, made it possible for businesses to plead fairness when blacks applied for employment. Even if application forms did not require the applicant’s race, one look at the address would reveal that information. Tulsa was a segregated city. Outside those established dividers, lots and housing were accessible only to whites. It seemed altogether inappropriate for a white pastor (for whom housing was readily available elsewhere) to be taking up residence in an area close to our church where property was precious and its availability limited. This section of the city was simply not large enough to contain a growing population. It became increasingly clear to us that the burgeoning community already was bulging to the bursting point. We wanted to live as near the church as possible, however, so we were determined to check out the options. A visit to the City Planning offices proved highly rewarding. While the popular notion in Tulsa maintained that such a “spill132

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over will never happen in our city,” the professionals in the city planning offices had been studying the matter and shared their findings with us. They told us it was inevitable that the first crumbling of the housing barriers would occur in the Reservoir Hill area, in the neighborhood of John Burroughs Elementary School. The normal procedure in establishing Lutheran churches at that time called for congregations to provide residences for the pastors. Since no congregation was as yet organized in our situation, the district accepted responsibility for this matter. The district’s board of directors authorized the construction of a new house. I was invited to participate in selecting a site. We selected a location a bit more than half a mile from the church. The plot was on a narrow boulevard whose median was a small, steep bank, so that descending traffic rode about five feet above the road which was on our side of the divider. The house would be built halfway up the hill where West Zion Street made a sharp left hairpin turn leading to the crest of Reservoir Hill. When the builders left and we could at long last move in, we found our new home was large, attractive, convenient, well equipped, comfortable, and very, very livable. Esther loved it. The boys and I did too. The lay of the land was such that no houses were closer than two hundred feet from ours. Trees, berry bushes, and other shrubs surrounded us, with a steep hill dropping behind our backyard to Apache Street, half a block below. We had no really close neighbors. Folks who lived nearby would wave as they passed, but the narrowness of our lane discouraged their dropping in because lack of curbside parking space would cause them to hesitate to use our driveway. To get to know our neighbors we would go for walks. We found people we passed along the way to be warm and friendly. When we introduced ourselves to them and told them of my role with the church, they accepted the information rather matter-of-factly and seemed neither disturbed nor surprised—almost indifferent, yet cordial. East of Cincinnati Avenue (a main traffic artery that lay at the foot of Reservoir Hill) there was a rather large section of modest homes, rows and rows of them. We often drove down its streets en route to our church. On one particular occasion, as we were passing through the area, our sons commented on the white cards that appeared in many of the windows of these houses. The signs simply identified the occupants

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as “supporters of The White Citizens Council.” And my sons asked, “What’s the ‘White Citizens Council?’” At the time I didn’t really know. Not many days later I came across a flyer at our neighborhood shopping center, inviting the public to a meeting at Burroughs School. The “catch line” on the sheet suggested that people of our area who did not want the value of their property to plummet should surely want to attend this important meeting. The White Citizens Council was sponsoring the event and providing the speakers. I decided to attend. Aside from talking about an impending black invasion of the neighborhood, the speakers regaled the audience with an array of items, apprising us of the communist infiltration among those who were pressing for desegregation of the races, the contamination of the superior white race by interracial marriage, the threat blacks posed to our white daughters, and similar bigoted claims. They cited the NAACP and the Urban League as fronts for the communist encroachment. There were probably fifty or sixty people in attendance, and they seemed to be surprised at the tone of the session. For the most part, the audience seemed to be reacting negatively to this kind of racist harangue. As the meeting continued, I sensed a restlessness among those present, and some started to leave before the program came to an end. I had not yet met the Reverend Ora Compton, pastor of St. Luke’s Methodist congregation. His church was located close to Burroughs School. I felt this would be an appropriate moment to discuss all this with a community leader. His welcome was cordial, and I was gratified to learn of his response to the arrival of the White Citizens Council in the community. Although all the members of his congregation were white, his distaste for this intrusion by this organization was obvious. He was eager to collaborate in arranging a meeting to counter their fearmongering. Together we planned a sort of town hall meeting where the concerns of people could be expressed, misinformation exposed, and accurate data provided. People attended, but not in great numbers. A few very vocal members of the White Citizens Council, however, were present and proved disruptive. The session was disorderly, and people left confused and disappointed. However, a small number had spoken with honesty and courage about the need for cool-headedness and thoughtful response.

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After the somewhat disastrous meeting, we sat with those few positive voices to develop a more constructive strategy. We agreed that, rather than holding public meetings which could easily degenerate into bedlam, we might find it useful to have smaller cottage meetings in homes. And this we did. A couple would invite three or four other couples in the neighborhood to their home and over cookies and coffee they would invite comments that allowed people to discuss the arrival of people of color in our neighborhood. I recall, in one of these sessions in a rather spacious home on Reservoir Hill, a man who a few years earlier had moved to Tulsa from Birmingham, Alabama, telling of his discomfort with the situation. In the same room another couple who had lived on Long Island told of the deep and meaningful friendships they had enjoyed when attending a nonsegregated elementary school as adolescents. All the participants sitting there listened to their stories with calm and respect. One man in the group had an important position with one of the major oil companies. He had been transferred to a post in Texas and his house had been up for sale for several months already, but there had been no buyers. His neighbors had pleaded with him, “Don’t sell your house to a Negro, because we do not want the value of our home to drop.” He said he wanted to respect them—they’d been good neighbors. But by now he had purchased a new house in Texas. He was commuting back and forth on weekends while his wife stayed in Tulsa trying to sell the house. Ultimately the costs to him, both financially and in the strain on their family ties, were probably exceeding any supposed costs those same neighbors might experience were an African American to buy his house. Our host then asked if any of us present knew of any neighbors of color who had already moved in. After comparing their own bits of information, the group agreed that within an eight-block area they had heard of three such new occupants. None of us, however, had yet met any of them, nor knew anything about them—like size of their families, occupation, background, and such. One of the women mused, “I suppose all of us who moved here originally came here because of the nice homes, the green lawns, and the huge, lovely trees, and the birds. Well, when a Negro family moves in, the paint doesn’t suddenly start peeling off the houses or the shingles

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fall from the roofs, and the grass doesn’t turn brown and the flowers wilt and the birds all fly away. We don’t have to move out!” In another such session, one of the men observed that everyone is so eager to know so much about any black person who might want to move here. “No one asked me what kind of position I held, or how many different kinds of jobs I’ve had, whether I’d gone to college, whether I had been married before, or anything else that’s personal. They wanted to know whether we had enough money to pay for the house. My personal life is nobody else’s business.” Because in those early meetings some expressed anxiety about the number of “for sale” signs that were appearing in our area, we did a rather thorough spot survey in Brookside, an all-white neighborhood on the far southeast side of the city to determine housing trends in a somewhat parallel situation. We found that in this area, with approximately the same number of houses in the same number of blocks, there was almost the same number of houses being offered for sale. Housing mobility seemed to be present in other communities of Tulsa as well. Similar thoughts and expressions surfaced in other meetings we held, and a consensus emerged. We were going to insist on people’s right to move into our neighborhood, that people had a right to leave and sell to anyone able to buy, and that we had the right to stay right where we were. Not everyone joined our group, but we had identified a few clearthinking folk, though perhaps they were not willing to be leaders or strong voices. However, they proved to be supportive and encouraging and were willing to quash fear-prompting rumors. We were pleased to note that White Citizens Council placards began to disappear from many of the windows. It was not much later that one of the small homes at the foot of the hill was purchased by a black couple. What we had so earnestly hoped to prevent had happened. During the night some men, driven by hate and endeavoring to terrify the new residents, burned a cross on their lawn. Only a short time later, another new resident stepped out his door one morning and found human feces smeared over the front of his house.

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And then, what was most to be feared: only blocks away, another new resident’s home was blasted by a bomb. A pamphlet published by the American Jewish Committee in April 1957 reported that the desegregation of Oklahoma schools resulted in two hundred well-qualified Negro teachers losing their jobs, because though black students were integrated into previously white classrooms, black teachers were not integrated into the faculties of white schools. This became noticeable at John Burroughs Elementary School in the fall of 1956. As the first minority children enrolled—there were only seven of them—the principal, the faculty, the staff, and the Parent Teachers Association were quite underprepared for coping with the problems arising from the new situation. Some parents of white pupils became anxious. How would this impact upon them and their children? Up to that point, all the participants in our small meetings had been white. Carol Sherman was one of these. Carol lived two blocks from us on Apache Avenue. Recognized for her willingness to support openness in our community, she was asked by the Burroughs PTA president to accept appointment to its board. She was puzzled by the invitation, because the organization and its officers had resisted the idea of Negro parents being involved in the PTA. Carol already had a crowded agenda, and besides, she had six children in her home, five of whom were adolescents. Reluctantly she agreed to serve. She learned firsthand what an uphill task it would be to effect integration in the schools. As February arrived, some of the parents were offended that black boys would be sending Valentines to their little white daughters. So, to calm the waters, the decision was made to eliminate exchange of little Valentine messages at the school. More painful to her was telling the story of a child who arrived at school a bit tardily. The teacher sent her to the cloakroom “to hang up her wraps . . . She came back from the cloakroom twenty minutes later and she still had her coat on. This child had never heard the term ‘wraps’ before, and it never occurred to the teacher to tell her to take her coat off.” Ms. Sherman lamented, “This is the sort of thing that the teachers were complaining about, and they were not only complaining to the parents, but they were agitated enough so that their irritability was spilling over into the classroom and was causing a great deal of tension.”

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The cottage meetings continued and developed into a formal movement called Neighbors Unlimited. Time and again at the meetings people would bring reports of disturbing conversations they’d had with neighbors regarding the changing of our neighborhood. We determinedly set out to check on these bits of information. We learned that such reports in many cases contained ingredients of fact, but more often they had been garnished with wild imaginings and fears. And even more often they proved to be altogether unfounded rumors. Prompted by our discussions and experiences, we established four committees: one to deal with matters concerning the school; a second to concern itself with real estate—buying, selling, staying; a third, focusing primarily on communication, to inform the community; and a fourth to promote interracial conversation and understanding. The offices of Tulsa Public Schools were hardly ready to cope with this new but inevitable situation. Other major cities of the South had been faced with this issue, but no really effective model of prudent planning for integration had emerged from their experiences. An Oklahoma law accorded any minority pupil in a given school the right to transfer to another school. The board of education and the superintendent of schools were obliged to observe that order. Parents who objected to integrated classrooms watched closely for the day that black enrolment would exceed 50 percent, so that they would be able to transfer their children to an all-white school. At first that seemed a long time off. However, a new scheme surfaced. White parents found they could have their children transferred to all-white schools if they could persuade their family doctor to submit a letter complaining that their child had become emotionally disturbed by being in an interracial situation. These came to be called “five dollar transfers,” and were clearly a ruse for resisting desegregation of the schools. An increasing number of black children enrolled at Burroughs, and more and more white pupils were withdrawn and transferred. By April of 1959, African American children made up almost 31 percent of the school’s total enrollment. As the 1959–1960 school year was about to begin, that number exceeded 50 percent. As that occurred, the board of education announced through the Tulsa World that those wishing to

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transfer out of the school should do so at once. This was almost tantamount to an invitation to leave. And from that time on, John Burroughs became more and more a “Negro School.” The National Council of Christians and Jews and its director in Oklahoma City, Don Sullivan, learned of our efforts and offered helpful suggestions to us as our venture further evolved. Many months later, the NCCJ commended Neighbors Unlimited for both its resourcefulness and effectiveness and bestowed an award recognizing its achievements. Those who had participated in Neighbors Unlimited were surely gratified to be noticed and thus honored, but we were very much aware of how much had not been accomplished, how much remained to be done, and how many more people had never overcome old prejudices and attitudes. In the midst of all the restlessness that marked the climate of our neighborhood, people had their lives to live. In addition to all the hours we spent carrying out our various tasks for Neighbors Unlimited, we had the responsibilities of our occupations and households to which to return. Months earlier I had agreed to spend an evening as a guest of a small group at Grace Lutheran Church. My topic was to be “The White Citizens Council Evaluated.” Five members of Prince of Peace agreed to accompany me. It was a pleasant evening. The people of Grace were a warm and hospitable group and accorded all of our members a genuine welcome. I went around the circle of chairs greeting all the people one by one. I had known most of them. There were two couples there, however, whom I had never met before. Midway through my presentation, we paused for cookies and coffee. Two of our Prince of Peace members went to the kitchen to offer their help to the hosts of the evening. They brought out their trays of cookies to the people as they stood about. The four strangers stood off to themselves, and when our Prince of Peace members offered them food, they turned aside. However, when some of the ladies from Grace came by to bring refills on coffee and a second chance for cookies, the visitors accepted their offerings and thanked them. We resumed the session with discussion, and the circle asked many questions and contributed comments in what resulted in a lively, grati-

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fying discussion. But the visitors did not enter the conversation at all and hurried out when we adjourned. Pastor Knippa and I were the very last to leave. We were still chatting when we came to the hedge at the end of the walk to the street. Suddenly the strangers stepped from behind the shrubbery. They’d been there waiting for us. Identifying themselves as members of the White Citizens Council, they directed their remarks at me, branding me as un-American and accusing me of using the church to promote the cause of communism. For a while I responded to their charges. One of the men said, “We don’t like you and what you’re doing. And, don’t forget, we know exactly where you live!” I told them I remembered their names they had given earlier in the evening when we met them, and I said, “If anything happens to me I will have told others that you threatened me.” This talk was proving counterproductive, so I assumed the lead in the conversation and changed the subject. I asked whether they were Christians. Somewhat surprised, they quickly declared that they were. Then I asked, “Which church do you attend?” They didn’t answer. After a rather awkward silence, one of the women spoke up and in a soft voice admitted, “We haven’t been to church anywhere for a couple of months now.” I said, “I’m really glad you said that. I appreciate your honesty. I think that means that the way you have been thinking and talking and acting, you realize, can hardly be pleasing to your Lord, Jesus. You really don’t feel you can come into the presence of God, as long as you walk another path.” I then told them there was hope for them, if they would recognize how their hearts were filled with hate, and if they were to begin to regard all people for whom Christ had lived and died as sisters and brothers, whom they were to care for in love. With nothing to say, they slipped off into the night in silence and drove away in their car. I never heard from them again.

Chapter Twelve

Oklahoma, My Teacher

O

klahoma had been the stage for some dramatic changes in the fifteen years since my arrival there in January of 1945. During that period, in white churches across the nation, North as well as South, subordination of nonwhites still prevailed. People perhaps had become more guarded in the way they spoke, yet an abundance of subordinating persisted, observable in people’s attitudes, behavior, and action—or inaction. In every Christian denomination, all over the country, Sunday mornings might in rare instances see an African American custodian around church premises. But one would not expect to see that person sitting among the worshippers. And if a congregation was seeking a new pastor, finding an African American on the roster of candidates would have been unthinkable. Even theological seminaries that might have enrolled a minority student would have anticipated that person serving a black community upon graduation. Lutheran churches were no exception. Sunday school materials were prepared with white folk in mind. Illustrations would feature white children and their white parents. But there were stirrings. In St. Louis, a white pastor who served St. Philip’s Lutheran Church, “the largest Negro Lutheran congregation in America,” learned much from his parishioners about the problems minority people faced while living in a “white world.” His experiences prompted Dr. Andrew Schulze to write a book, My Neighbor of Another Color (1941), and with the help of his wife, Margaret, he convened 141

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Race Relations Institutes, first in St. Louis and later in Chicago. He was regarded with suspicion and resentment by many and called an “agitator.” With great courage he persisted, and with gracious humor, he would remind people of a certain pool described in the Scriptures as a place occasionally visited by an angel. After the angel would stir the waters, the first to bathe in the pool would experience healing. Andrew would respond to his critics, “It is that kind of angelic stirring of the waters we want to be doing—to bring healing!” Though unpopular and resisted in many circles, Dr. Schulze was noticed and admired for his insights and courage by Dr. Otto Paul Kretzmann, president of Valparaiso University. In 1954 Dr. Kretzmann invited Schulze to bring his young organization to his campus. Named the Lutheran Human Relations Association of America, the movement became better known as LHRAA, counting on its roster a small but strongly committed number of Lutherans—lay and clergy—from every part of the country. Recalling the definition of prophet as “one who calls the people of God back from their idols,” many people came to regard LHRAA as being a highly respected prophetic voice in the larger Lutheran community. Similar stirrings were occurring in other denominations. The following year ESCRU—the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity—was born. And more appeared on the scene: NCCIJ, the National Catholic Council Interracial Justice; BARB, Baptist Anti-Racial Bias; PIC, Presbyterian Interracial Council; and more. I joined LHRAA, became actively involved, and was elected a member of its board of directors. As the work of the association expanded and more demands were made upon Dr. Schulze, the board considered his proposal that another person be added to the staff. When the board met and came to this item on its agenda, the discussion about the new position was spirited—and then, strangely and suddenly, tapered off to a full stall. In a somewhat awkward move, Board Chairman Clemonce Sabourin, pastor of Mt. Zion Lutheran Church in New York’s Harlem, asked me to leave the room. Only a few moments later Vice President John Strietelmeier stepped out into the hall where I was, and he asked me to return with him to the meeting. In my short absence the board had voted me field secretary of the association.

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I was caught totally off guard. I told the board I was honored by their decision, but I could not even begin to respond. I would surely want time to contemplate what was involved in coming to a decision. I needed to discuss the options with my wife, my parishioners back in Tulsa, and my colleagues in ministry. It has long been the custom in my denomination that a pastor, upon receiving a “call” to leave for another assignment, presents the document to a formal meeting of the congregation so that the members may contribute to the deliberation, although the ultimate decision lies with the pastor. During the seven years of my pastorate in Tulsa I had received seven other “calls”—to Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and San Francisco, to name a few—and in each case I declined the offer because it seemed clear to me that so much more remained to be done in my present situation in Tulsa before I could even give thought to leaving. The formal invitation arrived by mail, supplying detailed information to help me in my deliberations. One item to consider involved finances. LHRAA was young, and had a rather feeble financial base. Since LHRAA could not cover my salary entirely, Valparaiso University would pay half; in return, I would be expected to teach half-time in the university’s theology department. This called for launching me into a role in which I had had virtually no experience. Yet the theology department members indicated their confidence that I could perform the tasks required. Esther and I had thoroughly discussed as many scenarios as possible as to how things might play out, were we to stay—or were we to leave. On the evening of our meeting with the members of Prince of Peace, as we drove to the church, we agreed that we would be declining the invitation to leave. There had been so many factors that were overwhelmingly persuasive for staying: the loyalty of our members, the wonderful friendships that were ours, the gratifying growth of the church, our warm acceptance in the community, the support of our colleagues in ministry, the happiness of our boys, and more. To be sure, the challenges that lay in the proffered position were immense and exciting, but the reasons for staying simply outweighed those for leaving. The little chapel was crowded. No one seemed to be missing. I spoke a prayer. I then read the formal document and, then, the

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accompanying letter that both explained the scope of the position and also gave reasons why the position was being opened for me. I then invited comments and/or questions. No hands were raised. People did not even whisper to one another. The mood was somber. The quiet was almost eerie—I’ve seen cheerier funeral homes. At length one of our elders (if one can rightly name a twenty-twoyear-old gentleman an “elder”), Chester Terrell, rose and broke the silence. “Pastor Lutze, no one here wants to say so, but it looks like this is one call you’re going to have to accept.” I glanced at Esther. She appeared as startled as I. People shifted in their seats and seemed to mumble a bit. Chester cleared his throat and continued. “You know, we love you and Mrs. Lutze and the boys and we don’t want you to leave.” He was obviously having difficulty gaining composure, but he went on. “And we deeply love the Lutheran Church. But we know there are a lot of Lutheran congregations and a lot of Lutheran people who haven’t yet learned to love everyone and to treat everyone as God’s children, and we think you can help them to grow up.” People started nodding their heads in agreement as he spoke and softly added their sounds of endorsement. And when he sat down, one after another stood to contribute a personal testimony, relating some unpleasant experience: unwelcomed at some church visited while traveling; being snubbed or made to feel unwanted at a gathering of Lutherans; or in some other way humiliated or hurt. As we left the church that night, there was ever so much embracing, and ever so many tears. But the message was clear. And often after our leaving, Esther and I would concur: we always felt more sent than called. It was an awesome experience to arrive on Valparaiso’s campus. The breathtaking cathedral-like Chapel of the Resurrection could have enveloped fifteen or more structures the size of the little Lutheran Church of the Prince of Peace we had left behind in Oklahoma. I felt hardly ready to match the academic caliber of the splendid scholars who were to be my colleagues. It seemed I was altogether underprepared, but those very colleagues recognized that my fifteen years in Oklahoma had been a unique classroom for me, different from

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the traditional halls of learning, but no less enriching in preparing me for my role with the university. With their encouragement I came to realize that by God’s grace I had done much studying of people, listening to their stories, and learning from them. Early on, after my arrival in Oklahoma, I had been intrigued by the fascinating stories of people I was meeting, and I found myself benefiting immeasurably from just listening. The people there and their stories and my own experiences of those days had been my teachers. What they had taught me, I could never forget. I had never been so intimately involved with people who were eighty years old or more, some of whom had never learned to read or write. Some remembered grandparents and great-grandparents who had been slaves. And yet these determined people had survived severe poverty and incredible hardships and had done so with unbelievable courage and strength. They were in their own right heroic people; readily dismissed by many, they had yet become my teachers. And there were the younger ones too who had so much to teach me. I learned from Mrs. Guillory the pain a parent experienced when confronting racial subordination. Her eyes were moist as she had told how her little Judy was to have her first ride on a city bus. In great excitement she climbed up on the seat behind the driver while her mother deposited the fare. She quickly took the child’s hand and led her to the rear of the bus. Judy protested—she wanted to sit near the driver. Mrs. Guillory explained, “We aren’t allowed to sit up there.” When Judy challenged that explanation, the mother simply had to respond that that was the way it was. Minutes later, a white passenger, shabbily clothed and very, very drunk, boarded and sat behind the driver. Judy was terribly troubled to learn that skin color had been the determining factor in his having the preferred seat. I remember the breathless high school student who came to my door one evening to tell me his chilling story. It was about a friend who worked with him as a bellhop at Muskogee’s Severs Hotel after school hours and on weekends. A white woman who had checked in had rung for services and ordered a cocktail. When he came to the door she insisted he enter and keep her company while she finished her beverage. As they were talking, the woman’s white male companion entered the room. Caught off guard, she screamed, “He tried to rape me!” The terrified

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young student ran out of the room and out of the hotel. He was now in hiding. I remember one of our Tulsa members telling me of his traveling through the South. After purchasing gas, he’d asked the proprietor for his little son’s use of the restroom. The request was denied. Meanwhile, the child’s urgent need could not be postponed, and a little pool formed next to his shoe. Men standing around roared in laughter. The father, feeling for his child, in tenderness picked him up and left in bitter anger. In retrospect he told me, “I thank God I had no gun in my car, or I’m afraid I would have gone right back in there and killed that man!” And there were white people whose words taught me much—people who hated racial subordination but felt helpless to do anything about it; others who were steeped in cultural ways that perpetuated segregation and defensively attempted to justify the status quo; and still others who seemed totally oblivious of what was happening on the racial scene—in the country, in our state, in the community. And I learned from all of these too. There were more stories than I can remember. The people who told them were my teachers. I listened. And I learned. And among the many things I learned was that I was to keep on listening—and learning. There was much more for me to learn. My listening stood me in good stead as I arrived in Valparaiso to be teamed with Dr. Andrew Schulze, who became my mentor. He was wise, experienced, and—although he was also well informed on the legal and social aspects of human relations—he was deeply motivated by his strong Christian faith, and drew on theological roots for his life and his work. He proved particularly helpful to me because I had found the Lutheran churches with which I had been associated—and especially the clergy—in Oklahoma to be so very supportive of my ministry and so very open to deal with issues of race in Oklahoma. In sharp contrast, I was to discover that such attitudes were not generally in place elsewhere in the country—even among some of the clergy, in the North as well as the South. Andrew in his long years of ministry had become especially acquainted with and experienced in the kind of racial subordination that

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characterized the policies and patterns of the churches that called themselves Lutheran. However, already some thirty years earlier, Lutherans had indicated their concern about excluding people of color in their ministerings. The style of their efforts fit themselves into the segregated patterns of the secular world. Claiming to have “the welfare of the Negro at heart,” an organization of Lutheran church bodies had established a Missionary Board. This board sought to “share the Gospel with Negroes,” with programs and structures that almost resembled the patterns of “foreign missions.” Salaries of white clergy serving in these programs were hardly generous, yet these workers received twice the amount paid their black counterparts. In one particular case an African American pastor’s wife had taken a job. When the administrators (all white, of course) learned this, they reduced the salary of her husband accordingly. This Missionary Board administered a seminary and college established to prepare young African American Lutherans to be pastors and teachers in black parishes.* Curriculum preparation for these schools was of lower standards, assuming, obviously, that these students did not have the capacity to handle the kind of education required of white seminarians. And this also implied that none of these schools’ graduates would qualify for positions in traditionally white parishes. For years this system had been operative, unchallenged. Furthermore, the facilities in these schools came nowhere near resembling institutions preparing white students for ministries in Lutheran parishes. There were countless instances that indicated the Lutheran churches were adapting to the segregating patterns that were justified as being “separate but equal.” Separate they were, but hardly equal. Luther, the great reformer for whom our church was named, had stressed for his followers “the priesthood of all believers” as a distinguishing teaching to cherish. In practice, however, people of my particular branch of Lutheranism proved reluctant to hear what others who * The Alabama Lutheran Academy in Selma, Alabama, with elementary and high school courses, also served as a “feeder school” to Immanuel Lutheran College and Seminary in Greensboro, North Carolina, preparing students for teaching and clergy careers. The Greensboro school has been discontinued. The Selma school has been upgraded and is now known as Concordia University–Selma.

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were not of our carefully articulated faith had to say. Although church conferences and conventions might allow representatives of the local government or another church body to “bring greetings,” they were not invited to do any “teaching” of the assembly. Andrew Schulze and O. P. Kretzmann were not straitjacketed by such tradition. They were great proponents of listening and learning. Early on, LHRAA became best known for cosponsoring with the university the annual Valparaiso University Institute on Human Relations. Speakers for these convenings included such famous church voices as Episcopalian attorney William Stringfellow, Southern Baptist editor and author Will Campbell, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference James McBride Dabbs, noted historian John Hope Franklin, National Urban League executive director Lester Granger, Drew Theological Seminary professor George Kelsey, and a long list of others.* People from a wide range of careers and interests would attend these institutes—pastors of inner-city parishes, pastors serving in changing neighborhoods, church officials, academics and blue-collar workers, professionals and homemakers, and laity and clergy of other denominations as well. All came to listen and to learn. And after the formal sessions, enrollees would stay up late into the night hours, telling their own experiences, spilling their frustrations, sharing their insights, and raising their questions—and then listening to others in these smaller groups. And learning. And all would receive encouragement for their return to their own places. Dr. Schulze had organized a few more than a dozen chapters of LHRAA in major cities. My assignment as field secretary was to add more such chapters to that roster. In the years that followed, we were able to establish a total of fifty-six chapters across the country, as well as seven LHRAA Regional Councils. In each instance I would be a listener—hearing the stories that had prompted the interest and commitment of the small nucleus with whom we’d begin such groups. And they too were eager to listen. I had many stories to tell them from my experiences in Oklahoma. Exchanging * LHRAA published Proceedings of the Institute each year, and together with its quarterly news sheet The Vanguard provided some of the few pieces on racial issues published by Lutherans through the years 1949 through 1975.

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these in a new commonality, we would draw on our shared spiritual insights and commitments. Together we would explore possible strategies to help awaken and enlist others in their home communities to tear down the walls of hatred, suspicion, and fear separating folks of differing cultural or racial backgrounds. My personal observations, my experiences, and the people with whom I had lived and worked in Oklahoma had awakened in me new insights and perspectives. Those fifteen years had prepared me far better for what I would be doing than all the years preceding. One of my new responsibilities at Valparaiso called for my teaching undergraduate courses in theology. This would be an altogether new experience for me. My department chairman, Dr. Robert Bertram, was particularly helpful in describing my role: “We have the challenge of helping students grasp what people through the ages have discovered and have been thinking about God, in order that the young men and women who are our students might discover what significance all this has for their own thinking and their own daily living. We who teach present what we share in the light of our Christian tradition and experience.” Classroom sessions, essay assignments, journal entries, and opendoor office hours provided opportunities to learn what was going on in the minds of these students as they revealed more and more about themselves, their histories, their perspectives and opinions. My students came from every part of the country—some from large metropolitan centers, some from small towns, and some from rural settings. Many came from homes with deeply rooted Lutheran commitment. Some were Roman Catholic, and there was a smattering of other denominational loyalties, and some with no—or very little—experience with any church at all. And occasionally there would be a few representatives of other ethnic or racial minority groups. Often enough in lectures, discussions, and conversations I would find myself drawing on my experiences in Oklahoma, and I could frequently discern attitudes and rationalizing that I had encountered in those earlier years. What I had experienced then added dimensions to my involvement in this new situation I had entered. One class I taught for several years at the university was titled “The

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Church and Race.” Early in the term I gave my students an assignment to spend a Saturday morning in nearby Chicago, attending meetings conducted weekly by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. (in earlier years, Operation Breadbasket, and later, Operation PUSH). In those sessions, my students (most of them white) would hear the voices of African Americans talking uninhibitedly about their bitter experiences as well as their aspirations. Probably even more important, the students found themselves in a minority situation, getting a glimpse of what minority students must experience when they arrive as members of a largely white student body at Valparaiso University. Admittedly, the experience would be short-term. It was gratifying, however, to find students confronting their own stereotypes and prejudices in a much more arresting way beyond merely talking about them. In filling both positions—on campus and in the wider community— I found that, rather than tearing myself apart in different pursuits or missions, the two roles richly complemented each other. Depth studies in the Scriptures, required for my academic responsibilities, fortified my understanding and commitments to resist and, I hoped, eradicate the subordinating patterns and practices that marked—and marred— the human relations scene. For years our country’s churches and their leaders had attempted to justify segregation and even slavery itself by distorting, misreading, and misapplying biblical material. One aspect of my LHRAA work called for confronting church leaders and church members who either held to or championed such positions or who passively submitted to them. They had thus become supporters of the subordinating status quo. To confront them with Scriptural and not merely sociological considerations proved helpful in opening conversations—and minds—and in dislodging longtime prejudices. People in different parts of the country who had been valiantly taking a stance of welcome and inclusion in their all-white churches would ask for our presence to address local groups or pastoral conferences. These stalwart individuals and small groups often felt that their lonely voices had been tuned out by people who knew their stand and didn’t want to hear it again. They hoped another voice “from outside” would give their position credibility, affirmation, and support. Many of

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these people who spoke out for justice and acceptance of “the neighbor of another color” showed great courage in the face of harassment, physical threats, social ostracism, and even risk of life. And African Americans who stood tall in their speaking against racial exclusion, subordination, hatred, and violence were among the constituents of our ministry, some holding membership on the association’s board, and some holding offices. These were people who depended on our support, who in our bond with them gave strength, direction, and inspiration to us for our work. In my visits with these heroes who stood tall, not only in their particular congregations but also in their neighborhoods and larger communities, I listened and learned and grew. And I found myself in the role of communicator, bringing the experiences and stories and spirit of these various sites to others elsewhere. Aside from a heavy travel schedule that found me away from office and home as many as a hundred days of the year, I also was responsible for the editing and issuing of a human relations newssheet called the Vanguard that was mailed to a largely Lutheran readership every two months. And of course I would bring what I was learning to my classroom and share all this with my teaching colleagues. More and more, I was assigned to teach courses that focused on the relationship of theology to life, particularly in the realm of social responsibility and accountability. In my hunting down texts to use in the classroom, I realized that my church body’s Concordia Publishing House had never produced any book dealing with the racial issue. I wrote to the editor, registering my complaint. He answered apologetically—and kindly—“No one has ever submitted a manuscript to us.” And then he called my hand, adding, “Would you be willing to do so?” Knowing the conservative bent of this church house, I demurred, saying, “I probably wouldn’t recognize what I’d written after all the changes you’d want.” He said, “Try us.” In between my traveling and tending to my university responsibilities, I managed to complete my writing. In mid-1966 To Mend the Broken came off the press, with no alterations made in the manuscript I had

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submitted. Slightly blushing, I recalled the admonition of the Scriptures, “Ye have not, because ye ask not!” I realized how tremendously I had benefited from direct contacts with people who were so immediately involved in situations of confronting racial bigotry and tension. So in two successive years, during Easter recesses, I arranged weeklong visits to the Deep South, inviting a few faculty colleagues and two dozen students to accompany me on a bus trip to Birmingham, Alabama. Joseph Ellwanger was pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church there. The members of the congregation were African American. He was very active in civil rights issues and happened to be a member of LHRAA’s board. He arranged for lodging for our group in members’ homes and provided meals at his church. In the mornings we painted the church and parsonage. In the evenings we would meet people of the community and attend civil rights meetings in the churches in the black community. We did door-to-door visits too, urging the residents to register to vote and supplying information on how to register. In this activity our group was stopped by the police, who asked for the name and home address of each participant. Later, cars driven by whites in a menacing way began to circle the area where we were making these visits. Our visiting group had surely read about racial tensions in the South. Now they experienced firsthand the kind of harassment and hostility which many in the South for years had lived with and had found so frightening. At the nudge of Valparaiso’s president, Dr. Kretzmann, I met with Dr. Lucius Pitts, president of Miles College in Birmingham, to design an exchange program. Miles (a participating school in the National Negro College Fund) is a smaller liberal arts college of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) church in Birmingham. At Valparaiso we would offer the course “The Church and the Racial Issue in the South.” The course we constructed for Miles would be named “The Church and the Racial Issue in the North.” The design provided for me to be in residence at Miles for one week to launch the semester, providing lectures and discussions with the Miles students on

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the Scriptural resources available to Christian churches and their members for dealing with racial issues. Upon my leaving the Miles campus, the students were assigned various books to read. They were to meet each week until their spring recess with a Miles faculty member, who at that time would accompany them on their five-day stay in Indiana. There they would of course have an evening of discussion with the president of our white church-related school. They also spent time in Chicago and nearby Gary, both little more than an hour from Valparaiso. Our guests visited with a pastor of an all-white congregation, a white pastor of a black congregation, and a black pastor of an African American congregation. They visited their churches. They participated in an Operation PUSH meeting and met Dr. Jesse Jackson, Sr. They had lunch in a Black Muslim restaurant. They watched a movie about the Black Panthers. They interviewed one of the first black women to move with her five children from urban public housing to what previously had been an all-white city. After a week of such visits the Miles students returned to Alabama to write an extended essay on their experience and its relation to the semester’s readings. For their course, the Valparaiso students met with me each week to discuss assigned books. During their five-day stay in Birmingham, Valparaiso students met with a prominent black millionaire and entrepreneur, with the chaplain of the local Ku Klux Klan, with the black editor of the Birmingham World, with the police officer assigned to monitor civil right meetings in the churches, with the white president of a white church-related college, and with Dr. Pitts as a president of a black church-related college. As they had in the visit of the Miles students, the Valparaiso students each evening would meet to discuss their experiences of the day. They then were required to submit a summary paper relating their personal experiences to the semester’s readings. I found both these courses unusually helpful for me. They sharpened my focus on the issues I was dealing with both in my teaching and in my work with LHRAA. In my later years with the organization, we became increasingly aware of the struggles congregations located in changing neighborhoods were

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experiencing—as we had in Tulsa. With the generous support of Wheat Ridge Ministries, over a period of three years we conducted five regional workshops to help parishes diagnose their respective situations and lay concrete plans for meeting the challenges they faced. We invited eight congregations to participate at each location. These weeklong regional workshops in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale/Miami, and Galveston/Houston worked in the context of a changing neighborhood parish at the workshop site. This church and its neighborhood became a laboratory for scrutiny and for exploring what might be applicable “back home.” As they pursued their studies and developed their plans, they had the advantage of receiving input from the other participants attending the workshop. Subsequently, individuals and congregations requested such studies and planning workshops. Again and again I found myself dipping into the reservoir of my Oklahoma experiences to structure what I was doing. Now in my retirement, reflecting on what happened in my postOklahoma life and ministry, ever so many occasions affirm the move that took me into a far broader field of service than I could ever have imagined. Particularly gratifying to me have been the letters, the visits, and the conversations with former students or people I have reencountered— members of various groups and others with whom I had worked in interracial situations. Years after the event, one member who had attended our regional workshop in southern California hurried through the crowd at some churchly gathering to say, “When I saw you I just had to come and tell you how much that workshop has meant to us. At that time our church had a declining membership—all of us white—and we were without a pastor. Our morale was so low it was scraping bottom. Since then we have a new pastor who is Asian. Our church attendance has almost doubled and we have Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians in our membership now!” Such encouraging words are special gifts from our Lord, intended to keep us focused and involved. Often the results of our efforts to eliminate injustice, distrust, resentment, and lovelessness from the human

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scene are far from dramatic. People—even “good people,” even churches—persist in keeping alive the patterns and practices of subordinating others—in thoughts, attitude, words, and action—and inaction. Yet our small victories are testimony to the wise teaching that assures us that our Lord stands with us in our efforts and that he does not look for us to provide statistics that tally our successes. What he does require of us is that we be faithful. When he, Jesus, the epitome of championing justice, peace, and love for the neighbor, spoke his invitation, “Follow me,” he did not expect us to look behind to see whether anyone else was coming along.

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f course I hadn’t expected Oklahoma to be the same as when I had left my ministry there forty-five years ago. Nor were things anymore the same in my life. The oldest of our four sons had been a seventh grader back then and the youngest was about to become a kindergartener. That oldest one is fifty-eight years old now, and all four sons have themselves become fathers. Back then I was launching into a new career, and now I’ve been thrice retired. And by this time, Esther—who had been so much a part of my Oklahoma experience—had succumbed to a severe bout with cancer some ten years earlier. Now Gail and I had married. In my first year of teaching at Valparaiso University, she had been a student of mine and had been very close to Esther—and had even stayed with our boys when we’d be absent. Gail and I returned to Oklahoma in the spring of 2004. I drove to Muskogee’s South Sixth Street to show her the original Hope Lutheran Church. Back in my days there it already had been converted into Mr. King’s People’s Funeral Home. The five sets of railroad tracks we would bump across had all been uprooted. The once-upon-a-time church now had been rehabilitated, enlarged, and beautifully landscaped. An impressive sign communicated new ownership as the Biglow Funeral Directors. The street looked the same—but the house that had been next to the church had been torn down. And the Williams’ house was 156

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gone, and the Twines’, and the Hoopers’. And I realized how many of the friends of yesteryear were no longer living. I had wanted to visit with these folks and had looked forward to chatting together about people we had known—and about places and events. I was sure that any number of these friends of long ago could bring me up to date on what has been happening in Oklahoma since the days when I lived and worked there. But so many of them were no longer there. I stopped by to see Pastor Gerhard Bode. He was ninety now. Before retiring, Gerhard had been the pastor of First Lutheran Church, arriving shortly after I had left Muskogee to move to Tulsa. First Lutheran was then considerably older—and larger—than Hope Church. During his ten years at First, Hope had experienced the coming and going of several pastors. During the interim periods Pastor Bode would serve Hope Church—along with carrying out his “bishoping” duties as president of the Oklahoma District and caring for his own congregation. He became well acquainted with the members of Hope and had a deep and genuine regard for them, as they did for him. He told how in the late 1970s, during the observances of Holy Week, he had proposed joint services for the two congregations. Both groups agreed. The Maundy Thursday service would be held at First Lutheran and the next day’s Good Friday service at Hope. In the following year, Thursday’s worship would be at Hope and Friday’s at First. In successive years the arrangement continued, alternating the days and places. Pastor Bode commented that, as time went on, it seemed quite natural that the two congregations should merge. Members of both parishes agreed. Some members at Hope were disappointed to see their familiar worship site abandoned, since through the years it had become a center of community life. The combined group had considered finding a different location and embarking on a new building program, but the members agreed this would prove too expensive a venture. Prior to the merger, membership of both congregations had begun to dwindle, so joining the two parishes seemed wise. The official ties were made with what Pastor Bode assessed as a congenial spirit of genuine unity. Attendance now is near the eighty-five mark, and approximately more than two dozen of those at Sunday worship are African American. I recalled Pastor Theimer’s bitter experience of so many years ago, and how pleased he would be to see what had finally happened. We

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had learned from Pastor Bode that similar mergers had occurred in the Episcopal and the Roman Catholic congregations in Muskogee. Returning now to what once had been the newer Hope Lutheran Church, we found it still there, not an abandoned building, but stately, neatly landscaped and cared for. Its once white, wooden doors had been replaced by shining glass-plate doors. We found them open and walked in. The interior of the structure has been slightly altered, but essentially it still was invitingly worshipful. We walked the center aisle and heard voices from the education unit attached to the west end of the building. There we were met and warmly welcomed by Pastor Carolyn Williams, who with her husband, Lincoln, is copastor of what now is named “One in Christ Outreach Christian Center.” She and some volunteer assistants were meeting with some preschool children of the neighborhood. Pastor Williams was delighted to learn from us some of the church’s history. And we were pleased to find this fine young couple committed to the very kind of service that we originally had hoped this place would provide. There had been so many friends on the faculty of Manual Training High School with whom I had been wishing to converse upon my revisiting Oklahoma. It was sobering—and sad—to find that almost all of them were no longer living. One I had especially wanted to see again was Ms. Avalon Reece. She was still very much alive, and I found her to be the energetic, vibrant person I knew her to be so many years ago. At that time she had been one of the youngest of Muskogee’s teachers. Among her many assignments, she was also named director of Manual Training’s band. And an exceptionally fine marching band it was. The “downtown” people were aware of this, and when they were planning a parade on a particularly festive occasion they had asked Manual Training’s Principal Kirkpatrick to have his school’s band participate. Ms. Reece brought her group to the parade site downtown at Seventh Street and Broadway. Transportation was provided for the instruments, Ms. Reece commented, but the students were expected to march the near mile to the assigned spot. Dressed in their bright, freshly cleaned, purple and white uniforms, they arrived somewhat early. Ms. Reece filled the time by having her charges perform and entertain people who

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had gathered for the event. As parade time approached, a collection of riders gathered at the scene to take their place near the end of the procession. When the young band director discovered her group was to follow these horses, and that her players were expected to navigate through their droppings, her ire was aroused to the bursting point. She immediately marched her band back to the school. Next day annoyed callers phoned Principal Kirkpatrick to complain about Ms. Reece’s refusal to march. Ms. Reece stood her ground, and for subsequent events was treated with appropriate respect and consideration. This was back in 1948. The years between then and now had been marked by major shifts in the structuring of Muskogee’s schools. By 1970 there were no more black segregated schools. What had been Central High School had merged with Manual Training High and was named Muskogee High School. Avalon Reece, who early on had been filling the role of counselor at Manual Training, moved into the new system as counselor and still was holding this post until her retirement. In further recognition as a respected teacher, she was appointed to membership on the Oklahoma State Board of Regents for Higher Education and served in that capacity from 1980 to 1990. She told how a colleague of hers, Charles Adams, whom I had known in the late forties while he was yet serving on Manual Training’s faculty, had been named principal of the newly structured Muskogee High School. Ms. Reece’s sister Thelma was another teacher I had known in my Muskogee days. She had taught at Wheatley Elementary School, and she has since moved to Oklahoma City. She too became an important figure on Oklahoma’s education scene and had taught for forty-three years before retiring. She also achieved prominence as a member of Oklahoma City’s board of education and was elected president of the National Caucus of Black School Board members. The people of Oklahoma City paid tribute to her contributions in her roles as citizen and teacher by giving her name to its newest modern facility, the Thelma Reece Parks Elementary School. When I asked Ms. Reece to give me her assessment of the current race relations situation in Oklahoma, compared with how things were in the mid-forties, she paused in deep reflection.

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I told her of my impression, “So much is the same—yet everything is different.” She sighed, nodded her head, and agreed, “Everything has changed, but in so many ways nothing is different. “Employment of our people is still a major problem. True, we can go into a dress shop and try things on—which years ago didn’t happen. And here and there you will find an African American clerk or waitress, but you won’t see many. “The menial jobs here are pretty well reserved for African Americans. As I said, in years past many Muskogeeans of color moved away from here to pursue more promising careers. That’s pretty much the same. “Yet the housing situation is much improved. The editor of the Muskogee Phoenix is friendly and treats us with respect. We have three of our people on the city council and three on the local school board. “The particularly noticeable difference between then and now—we have more conveniences and more opportunities, surely more than there were fifty years ago. In many ways whites have the edge; there are advantages they have. The racial lines are still there, but more hidden, more subtle, and the contacts are more sophisticated.” When the Lutze family left Tulsa in 1959, some statisticians had named Tulsa, Shreveport, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, and Dallas the five fastest-growing cities in the country. We really hadn’t expected our leaving to reverse the trend; however, I am amazed how Tulsa has expanded and virtually swallowed up its little outlying communities. The different parts of Tulsa have been made more accessible by highspeed routes through and around the city. Undoubtedly these have proved tremendously helpful to Tulsans, but they were utterly confusing to me now as I returned forty-four years later and tried to find my way around what once was familiar territory. Revised traffic patterns as near as a block from Prince of Peace Church have called for demolition of some of the homes and other buildings. The facilities at Prince of Peace Church that had often bulged with children in my days there as pastor were no longer pushed to their limits. I was to learn that there are only about one-fifth as many children living within a six-block radius of the church as there had been when I left in 1959.

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Several of the stalwart members had died, some had become less mobile with age, and of course there were fewer children on hand for worship, so overall attendance was lower. Some newer members had been added, however, and the current pastor, Sidney Flack, told us the morale seems strong. My conversation with the financial secretary suggested that support of the congregation had never been healthier. I was eager to speak with Lena Bennett. She had joined Prince of Peace while I was serving as its pastor. Her earlier role as administrative assistant to Urban League Director Marion Taylor gave her a unique perspective for assessing changes in Tulsa’s racial scene during the years since I had left. In addition, she possesses a certain objectivity, having moved to Tulsa from another state during the 1950s. She told how, as segregation walls were crumbling, it had become increasingly evident that instances of inequities and injustices still existed and needed exposure. Though more African Americans were on the police force, they had raised charges that they were experiencing discrimination in their work. Among other complaints, they pointed to the lack of support from white officers in their pursuit of duty. She commented, “The issue still isn’t resolved.” She also observed, “The NAACP here isn’t the same organization that you remember.” The confrontational style is still there but, it seemed to her, the organization and its program are less vigorous. “Shortly after you left,” she continued, “the Congress of Racial Equality became active here, and its program effectively challenged the lagging progress of desegregating the education system here. CORE became a leading factor in challenging the status quo. The Urban League is still here, but I feel it doesn’t play the significant role it once did.” She felt it important to note that in the past many North Tulsans had been moving away from Oklahoma because of its limited career offerings. In recent years, however, major employers such as Oral Roberts University, State Farm Insurance, and others have brought many African Americans to Tulsa from other states. Since these institutions are located on the opposite side of metropolitan Tulsa, these newcomers have taken up residency closer to their work sites (an area which in my day was de facto limited to whites) and thus have not become an integral part of North Tulsa. Ms. Bennett noted that while many North Tulsans

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have formed friendships with “blacks across town,” the newcomers have no history of Tulsa in their experience. “While we have had North Tulsans serve on the City Council, we are not the strong factor in the total community picture we might wish.” She explained, “We still have some small independent business and professional enterprises in North Tulsa, but we have no really strong economic base in the area—most of the industry is gone, and there don’t seem to be clear plans for replacement.” In speaking with several teachers, I learned that, indeed, a strong love and loyalty for Langston University still is very much alive. There seems a general consensus that its day is hardly past, primarily because it came into being as a land-grant college. The land-grant concept was originated by the U.S. government to establish colleges in the various states. That very arrangement committed participating institutions to a mission of sharing. What it would learn within its classrooms and laboratories was to be offered to the people of the neighboring communities for their learning and living. Initially the framers of the plan had intended these schools primarily to do scientific studies in agriculture, so that farmers in those newly settled areas might benefit from the presence of these schools in their respective states. Alumni/ae and staff people of Langston, all of my interviewees agreed, had through the years felt less respected when compared with the larger state schools at Norman and Stillwater. As desegregation was finally emerging in Oklahoma’s overall education picture, Langston, true to its land-grant mission, more and more won the recognition it deserved as it established extension services to residents in the Tulsa area, and a bit later to Oklahoma City as well. The programs were well received, and a significant number of white students as well as students of other racial backgrounds enrolled. Subsequently, on the Tulsa scene, all three of the dominant schools, Oklahoma University (Norman), Oklahoma State (Stillwater), and Northeastern (Tahlequah) also began offering extension courses. It was agreed there was to be no duplication of courses offered. Langston and Northeastern would schedule classes for undergraduate students, while OU and OSU courses on these extension campuses would be limited to graduate studies.

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Oklahoma State with its own land-grant status became the dominant figure in what was happening and, presumably with more political leverage, seemed to many to be elbowing Langston out of the program. Vernetta Wilson (also an active member of Prince of Peace Lutheran) presently serves as Tulsa chapter president of the Langston University National Alumni Association. She explained that it had been necessary to enlist the involvement of the U.S. Department of Education to intervene. This effort has now resulted in Langston dedicating a new center this spring (2004), located in North Tulsa. Other aspects of the education situation in Tulsa have become difficult to assess. In the desegregation process, there had been a downsizing of the public school teaching staff. Considerably more African American teachers lost their jobs than did their white counterparts, as many of the black elementary schools were absorbed into previously all-white schools. Booker T. Washington High School is now completely desegregated. It has become a magnet school, offering courses only to students with highest achievement levels. This means that students with lower academic scorings are not eligible to attend a school that for some is as close as three blocks from home—even though both parents had attended there. Some dissatisfied adults suspect there is only little social interaction between white and African American students. People on the scene, however, report that racial distinctions are rare and there seems an absence of discord that might be attributed to race. It was noted, however, that only 14 percent of Booker T. Washington’s present faculty are African American. Stepping back a bit to gain an overall view, the comment, “everything’s different, but nothing has changed,” probably provides us with an assessment that is accurate—in many ways. The idealist is frustrated; hopes had been much higher. The pessimist is proven to be realist: “the baggage our history brings with it is too heavy, too complex.” “It took too long and it began too late.” “It was too fast—we weren’t ready.” All of the above?

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The state, the cities, the people—so different from fifty years ago. But one cannot escape the gnawing feeling that reluctance to change, lingering resentments, residual distrust and fear, relinquishing advantage, an accumulation of hurts and licking of wounds—and the list could be lengthened—still hamper efforts to achieve the kind of totally harmonious community all might desire. And it is likely, as is the case in a thousand communities the world over, that Oklahoma and its regions will never achieve such perfection. Yet there are remarkable instances of corners turned and hills climbed, demonstrations of creativity, ingenuity, courage, and commitment; moments of conversation and negotiation and persistent and mutual confrontation when responsible, caring people have joined to seek the total well-being of all the people. Most recently, Tulsans have faced up to the ugly chapter of the 1921 civil explosion and the ashes and death that mar the remembering of those days. No longer suggesting that it really hadn’t happened or that things weren’t really as bad as claimed, the telling of the past shame makes it possible to face tomorrow. A commitment to such a posture on the part of the community and its leaders seems imperative. Some fifty years ago, the Urban League’s Dr. Lester Granger reminded his audience, “We have heard and we ourselves have said, ‘We dare not lose sight of our tomorrow.’ I say to you this evening, ‘Tomorrow is today!’” The full promises of an ideal community that cares for all of its people have not yet been met—in Oklahoma and in countless other places. Dr. Granger’s discerning comment implies a challenge to the powerful leaders, to the littlest children, and to all the people between, and to the churches, schools, and every institution—private, public, or governmental—in our country and every community. The need for awakening persists. There’s a lot of love for the neighbor yet to be done—by all of us!