was one what loved God!” Everybody laughed.
“And then remember when Sally Perkins asked you if you smoked, Brother Bob?”
“I do, indeed. I admitted that I did, and she asked me how much, and I told her I had cut down to three cigarettes a day,” Bob said.
“And then, Sally said, ‘Well, every little bit helps, Preacher!” Cornelia recounted. “You know Sally and her husband Steve raise fifty acres of tobacco, don’t you, Nora?”
Aunt Nora continued her line of questioning. “So how in the world did you get from New Haven to North Wilkesboro?”
“I took a detour in Raleigh at University Baptist. Actually, they fired me. J. B. heard about it and offered his family’s guest house. That was ten years ago. I’m a terrible mooch!”
“So what did you do to get fired?” Aunt Nora asked, rather impetuously.
Cornelia intervened. “Let me tell this story, Brother Bob, from a layman’s perspective.” Brother Bob nodded, amused.
“Well, Nora, you know that Brother Glenn dropped dead in the pulpit in 1965? That was just after Brother Bob moved back here. J. B. convinced Brother Bob to preach for us while we was searchin’ for a preacher. We all loved his preachin’ so much that the pulpit committee decided we had the preacher we wanted. So after a couple of months, that’s when we met with Brother Bob and told him we wanted him to be our pastor.”
“What did he say Grandma?” Ham hadn’t heard this story before.
“Well, he was very reluctant. He had a bad experience in Raleigh. Got involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and the monied folk at the church warn’t altogether happy about it. They liked havin’ a preacher with a fancy degree, but they warn’t so happy when he turned activist.”
“Can’t really blame them, can you?” Thom Jeff interjected.
Cornelia ignored Thom Jeff’s remarks.
“Well, we told Brother Bob we didn’t have a whole lot Civil Rights stuff goin’ on in North Wilkesboro. Then he says, if I agree to be your pastor, I have a couple of conditions. Course that didn’t settle too well with Charlie Snow, chairman of the committee. ‘What kind of conditions, Brother Bob?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘first off, I won’t take any salary. I just took a teaching job over at the college and don’t need any more income than that. So my compensation could be living in the parsonage and having my utilities paid.’ Charlie looked around at us and winked and said, ‘I reckon we can live with that. What else?’ Brother Bob continued, ‘I’d like for us to have joint worship services once a month with Second Baptist Church in Wilkesboro.’ ‘Do you mean on a Sunday evening?’ Charlie asked. ‘No, I mean on a Sunday morning,’ Brother Bob said. ‘Where would we meet?’ somebody asked. ‘There one month and here the next.’ ‘What would we do about the offerin’ on those days?’ ‘Split it, I reckon. Remember I’m not taking a salary,’ Bob said. Mabel asked, ‘What if one of those “co—, I mean black folk want to join our church?’ Bob said, ‘What if they do? That wouldn’t be the purpose of the joint services. The purpose would be to get to know each other better. If a black wanted to join the church we’d cross that bridge when we come to it, just like they’d have to do the same if one of our members wanted to join their church.’ Somebody said, ‘Not sure we’re ready to have coloreds join our church, Brother Bob.’ So, the committee looked around at each other, but this time we warn’t smiling. After a little while, Charlie said. ‘We probably ought to take that up at the next business meetin’ if it’s okay with you.’ ‘Sure. I expect that’d be the right thing to do,’ Bob said and stood up. The meeting was over. Well, what do you know, two weeks later, we met in business session, and voted to call Brother Bob as pastor. He began on the first Sunday in January, 1966.” Cornelia paused.
“You have a wonderful memory, Mama,” Aunt Nora said. She turned to Brother Bob and said, “When did the two churches merge?”
“Well,” Brother Bob began, “that sorta evolved over time. The two congregations enjoyed worshipping together from the beginning. After a year we went to two services a month and after a couple of years, the two congregations simply decided to merge. It just seemed to make sense. Brother Willie and I served as co-pastors, and we took turns in the pulpit and alternated locations.”
“Brother Willie was a little too long-winded for my tastes,” Grandpa Dubya remarked.
“And Brother Bob was a little too liberal for mine,” Thom Jeff chimed in.
Nina shot him a dirty look, but Brother Bob said, “I’m sure you weren’t the only one in that category, Thom Jeff!”
“I was a little surprised that the most difficult transitions in the merger came in the area of food, though I guess in hindsight I shouldn’t have been. Blacks and whites weren’t accustomed to eating together, so dinner on the grounds was a challenging event in those first couple of years. Coaxing members to mingle with each other and share food was difficult. It helped, Nora, that both whites and blacks were marvelous cooks, like your Mama and sister-in-law.” Cornelia and Nina simultaneously blushed and looked down. “So that anxiety soon melted away like butter on Cornelia’s hot biscuits.
“We met more resistance when we asked the congregation to share the holy food of communion. From the beginning, Brother Willie and I agreed that the church should observe communion every Sunday. Perhaps it would have been less of a big deal if we had used unleavened chiclets and individual plastic cups for the grape juice, but we used real wine and served communion by intinction.”
“Oh that’s where you dip the bread into the wine?” Aunt Nora asked. “We do that at Pullen, too.”
Bob nodded and continued, “It was a bit messy, and to old timers it was tantamount to drinking after each other, a taboo more than a century in the making and not easy to break.”
“It warn’t just tant’mount, it was exactly like drinkin’ after each other,” Thom Jeff interjected. Nina meant to kick him under the table, but hit Ham instead. Ham grunted. Oblivious, Thom Jeff said, “Ham, could you pass the mashed ‘taters?”
“But after a few months, only a few diehards refused to come forward for communion.”
“Me bein’ one of them,” Thom Jeff said, spooning a second helping of mashed potatoes on his plate.
“Like Thom Jeff, not everyone, was happy with these changes. That was no surprise. What was surprising was who the majority of these folk were. A large contingent of faculty and staff from Stearns and Marshall College started attending Little Rock when I started preaching. They liked the idea of attending an integrated church. Turned out, many of them didn’t care for the practice that an integrated church entailed. They could tolerate worshipping together once a month, but they really didn’t like ‘black church music’ and they didn’t like the fact that when Brother Willie preached, it was often for forty-five minutes and often on themes of racial and social justice that made them more than a little uncomfortable. And if the truth were known, they didn’t like sharing food around a table, whether picnic tables or the Lord’s Table, with members of Second Baptist Church. Despite their head knowledge about racial equality, their hearts—conditioned by generations of prejudice—were not fully open to those who were not like them. So when the two churches merged into one, many of the educated, middle class white members quietly migrated back to First Baptist Church, Wilkesboro. That left the rednecks, the blue collars, and a few professionals, like the Brookshire twins, who had been in Little Rock Church all their lives
