`A Voice Crying in the Wilderness`: Joseph Martin Dawson`s Quest for Social Justice

By Bill Pitts

Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part telling of the influence of J.M. Dawson in advancing a Christian social ethic among Baptists in the South.

The Church and Racism as combatted by J.M. Dawson (1879-   )

Throughout much of his lifetime, Texas pastor J.M. Dawson regularly encountered other races, especially African Americans and Hispanics (Negroes and Mexicans in the parlance of Dawson’s era). In 1953, Dawson briefly addressed the problem of racism in America in a systematic fashion in a chapter in his book, America’s Way in Church, State and Society. This book was published the year before the landmark Supreme Court decision which overturned the earlier “separate but equal” court decision, thereby altering the legal landscape for race relations in the United States. Dawson expressed his opinion on race as occasions arose during his ministry. However, his personal experience 37 years earlier of witnessing an act of racial hatred ignited his indignation.  

Very early in his Waco ministry, Dawson encountered a horrific instance of racial violence. He reported to James Dunn, “I saw a Negro burned to death by a mob—it was later proven that he was innocent. Five thousand people followed the mob downtown, piled up the wood, and then burned him to death.” Dawson told Dunn that the incident “had much to do with his subsequent attitudes.” The event was the infamous lynching of Jesse Washington in front of city hall in 1916. Dawson reported that since he was accustomed to exercising pulpit freedom as pastor at First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, he condemned the violent killing of the Negro from the pulpit, even though he knew that nearly all of the church members were members of the Klan. In fact, church members had only recently invited Dawson to join the Klan, but he had declined and now had denounced the organization. 

He reports that he swore on the altar of God that he would henceforth fight lynching. The week following the lynching, he wrote a strong resolution condemning the incident, which was adopted by the Waco Pastors’ Association, although not signed by all of the ministers. John W. Storey wrote, “In 1922, an election year in which the Klan was especially active and in which violence again flared in Waco, Dawson forthrightly rebuked the mobs. His courage elicited praise from James B. Cranfill, the editor of the Baptist Standard.” Cranfill, who also held the Klan in contempt, said, “Our Baptist preachers are not acting; they are silent when they should speak.”  He continued, saying, “The only one I knew of manly enough to address such issues from the pulpit was J.M. Dawson.”  

Lynching was one of the worst expressions of sustained racism in American history. It was conducted by mob violence and employed to generate fear and to keep Negroes in subjection. Lynching was designed to subvert Emancipation and Civil War Era constitutional amendments protecting Negroes. The height of the lynching era occurred from 1890 to 1920, with 1892 being the worst year. Ida Wells, black activist, spent her life speaking and writing to expose this horrendous practice. Dawson does not indicate that he ever had to return to the issue of lynching. He does indicate that support for the Klan waned in the churches.

For 30 years, Dawson served on the Board of Bishop College in Marshall, a Texas school founded by Northern Baptists to train Negro students. He was a firm believer in the value and importance of education. He wrote “The Great Cause of Christian Education among Negroes in Texas,” indicating the ways Negro churches had advanced Negro life. But he also pointed out that the American churches did not have enough moral influence to prevent the Civil War; they were part of the problem of division. He contended that politicians also played the race card for votes, and public education was full of inequities. At one point, he noted, South Carolina provided $50 per year to educate a white child, but only $2.50 for a Negro child.

Dawson was a gadfly. At the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, held in Atlanta in 1919, he delivered an exceptionally inflammatory speech holding Southern Baptists responsible for moral neglect. He announced that there were 12 million Negroes in the nation and the majority were in the South and were Baptists. He declared:

They constitute our natural, scriptural, logical, and most practical missionary opportunity. If we are apathetic toward our Christian obligation to these Negroes, we are condemned of mankind and of God. Has not the time come when Southern Baptists should undertake more seriously to assist this patient but potential race to a Christian solution of their problem?

Eight years later, Dawson deeply inflamed Baptist passions again by publishing “Baptist Illiteracy in the South”. Here he argued that the major responsibility for illiteracy in the South rests with the Baptists. Dunn wrote that Dawson presented the argument so tellingly that the resulting furor lasted for weeks. John D. Freeman, editor of the Tennessee Baptist newspaper, wrote several articles lamenting Dawson’s charge: “Just why he should ever have done it! He has betrayed the masses of Southern Baptists.” Southern Baptist Convention President E.Y. Mullins responded with criticism, but did not refute the facts. Dawson thought the responses of his critics “completely ignored the Negroes, most of whom were Baptists.” He concluded, “For the education of colored people Southern Baptists appeared to care little.” Dawson did not let up. Years later he wrote that Southern Baptists had failed to reform their region and had failed to help fellow black Baptists in their region.

We now [in 1946] face up to the fact that here in the South, Baptists reaching close to six million may be called somewhat predominant, at least in numbers; and yet, it is authentically charged that here is the poorest housing to be found in the nation, the people are poorest fed, the poorest clothed, incomes are the lowest, illiteracy is the highest, the death rate is the highest, prejudices are the worst, and economic exploitation of the helpless is the most serious.

At mid-century Dawson noted that the National Council of Churches had established a good record on race and the church. Dawson corresponded with the National Council of Churches about Negro presence in Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) churches. Although several SBC churches had made provision to accept Negroes, he calculated that the actual percentage of Negro members in white churches was only about half of one percent (8000 Negroes).

By 1950, the SBC began to change institutional policy, admitting Negroes to Baptist colleges and universities—at Wayland Baptist College (now University) and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1951. Dawson observed, “The Negroes have advanced, but they have suffered. The church needs to do more. Dawson called for action; citing the parable of the Good Samaritan, Dawson said that Jesus reveals “how defective is a religion that fails to show its love to God by means of service to man.”  He boldly affirmed that Christians must respect other races.

As high schools were being integrated, following the example of Little Rock in 1957, the Texas Legislature proposed a bill to close the schools if federal troops were sent to enforce integration. Dawson courageously testified before the Texas Senate Committee, stating that the bill was based on an un-Christian theme of white supremacy. Despite his age, he was heckled mercilessly, but he nevertheless advanced his purpose: The bill failed.

Dawson also welcomed ministry to Mexicans. The women of First Baptist Church, Waco, established a mission for Mexicans in 1909; in 1918, the mission became a church. FBC secured a site and constructed a building for the congregation downtown at 4th and Jefferson Streets. Dawson thought that working with Mexicans was a practical necessity in Texas. They had established themselves in Texas and the Southwest. Moreover, the clear mandate of scripture for the church is to practice brotherhood. Dawson said that to fail to treat Mexicans justly is to lose moral influence abroad. Failure at this point would undermine foreign missions in Latin America. This was always a concern for mission-minded Baptists, but never a powerful enough incentive to displace systemic American racism. In his final book, Dawson praised the work of Mexican American, Jose Antonio Navarro: Co-Creator of Texas (1969).

Dawson observed that racial hatred was one of the effects of war. He noted how this practice had occurred with the Mexican/American relations in the Mexican American War, with the Germans in World War I, and with the Japanese in World War II. During World War I, a Baylor professor of German descent, Dean J.L. Kesler, was harassed to the point of resigning despite efforts of some to defend him. During World War II, Japanese were unjustly confined in relocation camps. Only later did the nation admit the injustice of this action. However, the effects of war went far beyond exacerbating racial tensions, and Dawson also turned his attention to reducing the sentiment of militarism in America.

Reflections on ethics leads inevitably to one’s anthropology or understanding of the nature of humans who are called on constantly to make ethical decisions. In a baccalaureate sermon delivered at the University of Texas in 1926, Dawson affirmed that Christianity may be “characterized as a religion of personality.” For him, the starting point for Christian actions was “the assertion of man’s freedom.” Freedom, in turn, “implies the responsibility without which moral order must topple.” Further, he declared, that belief in freedom “implies democracy and the rights of individual men.” These convictions regarding the dignity, freedom, and worth of every individual formed the theological foundation for his social outlook.

— Dr. Bill Pitts is emeritus professor of religion, Baylor University Joseph Martin Dawson, “Religion, Democracy and Racial Minorities,” in America’s Way in Church, State, and Society (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 129-144.

References:

James Dunn interview with J.M. Dawson, cited in Dunn, “The Ethical Thought of Joseph Dawson,” (Th.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1966),  12. Some of Dawson’s account has been challenged by more recent research, but not the acts of lynching and burning.

 Ibid.

This horrific event which was commemorated in the city in 2016 is the subject of several recent books and was referenced in the 2018 Oscar-winning film, Black Klansman. See Patrick Bernstein, The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NCAAP (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2005).

Joseph Martin Dawson, A Thousand Months to Remember: An Autobiography (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 1964), 165.

John W. Storey, Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 109.

Dawson, A Thousand Months, 165.

Storey, 108.

Ibid., 109.

See J.B. Cranfill, “Christianity and the Negro,” The Baptist Standard, (June 15, 1922), 12.

For the work of Wells, see Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, ed. Alfreda M. Duster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) and Gary Dorrien, The New Abolition: W.E.B. DuBois and the Black Social Gospel (New Haven: Yale University Press), 85-123.

Dawson, “Religion, Democracy and Racial Minorities,” America’s Way in Church, State, and Society, 137. Rauschenbusch condemned lynching, but he was less engaged in speaking out for racial justice than Dawson. Part of the reason may have been location. Dawson lived and ministered where the problem was most obvious.

James Leo Garrett, Jr., “Joseph Martin Dawson: Pastor, Author, Denominational Leader, Social Activist,” Baptist History and Heritage, Vol. 14, No. 4 (October 1979), 14. 

See J.M. Dawson, “The Great Cause of Christian Education among Negroes in Texas,” Christian Education for Negroes Under Baptist Auspices (Marshall: Bishop College, 1941), 43. Also Dunn, 153.

J.M. Dawson, “Report of the Home Mission Board,” Southern Baptist Convention Annual, 1919, 78; cited in Dunn, 160.

J.M. Dawson, “Baptist Illiteracy in the South,” Plain Talk, October 1927, 440-45; here, 440.

Dunn, 160.

John D. Freeman, “Noted Texas Preacher Joins Iconoclasts,” Baptist and Reflector, October 11, 1928, 1; cited in Dunn, 161. Dawson’s indictment stung because Baptists had failed to help Negroes for generations.

Dawson,  A Thousand Months, 166. Also see “Oral Memoirs of Joseph Martin Dawson,” The Texas Collection, Baylor University:  Interview No. 3, April 2, 1971, by Rufus Spain, 65-66;  and Garrett, 14.  Dawson did not hold a grudge toward Mullins. Quite the contrary, he delivered a sermon praising Mullins the week following Mullins’ funeral, declaring that Mullins had authored one of the greatest of sermons, “The Law of Service.” J.M. Dawson, “Sermons,” Dawson Papers, Box 36, folder 11.

Dawson,  A Thousand Months, 166.

Dawson, “The Baptist Contribution in the Next Century,” Baptist Standard, May 30, 1946, 2. This was an address given over “The Baptist Hour,” May 12, Miami, Florida.

Dawson, America’s Way in Church, State, and Society, 135-36.

Ibid., 134. Dawson said he had always welcomed Negroes, but none had ever joined his church. See also Robert Moats Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues 1919-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1958), 297.

See The Dawson Papers, Box 645, for correspondence and news reports on the SBC racial issues, 1946-1953. Wayland Baptist University was the first four-year liberal arts college in the former Confederate South to integrate. See “Wayland Marks 50th Anniversary of Voluntary Integration,” Wayland Press News Release, 2001, and Baptist Press News Release, March 26, 1951: “SBC Seminaries to Enroll Negroes.”

Dawson, America’s Way in Church, State, and Society, 141-144. 

Joseph Martin Dawson, Christ and Social Change  (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 1937). 54.

Ibid., 72.

See Dunn’s account, 161-163.

Frank E. Burkhalter, A World-Visioned Church: Story of the First Baptist Church, Waco, Texas (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1946), 185, 186, 188.

Dunn, 156-158.

Ibid., 156.

Joseph Martin Dawson, Jose Antonio Navarro: Co-Creator of Texas (Waco: Baylor University Press, 1969).

Dawson, A Thousand Months, 162-163.

Joseph M. Dawson, “The Christian Emphasis on Personality,” Bacculaureate Sermon delivered at the University of Texas, June 6, 1926. The Dawson Papers, Box #18, Folder #11. The emphasis on the ultimate value of persons was common in theological reflection of the twentieth century, prominent in the thought of Christian ministers  such as Harnack who describes Jesus’ message as “God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul.” See Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity? trans. Thomas Bradley Saunders (New York: Harper Brothers, 1957), 63-70.) “Personality is for him [Harnack] the only absolute value in the world.” See Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Challenge of the Present Crisis (New York: Association Press, 1917), 36.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us