Inevitably, standing close to the center of power involved Graham in the struggles that occupy power’s attention. In September, just as the New York crusade was drawing to a close, schools were about to open and dozens of southern cities and towns were in turmoil as citizens tried to deal with a series of federal court orders designed to end school desegregation. In Graham’s hometown of Charlotte, fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts, a black minister’s daughter, was driven away by a barrage of sticks and rocks when she tried to enter previously all-white Harding High School. Her plight moved Billy to write her a stiffly awkward letter of encouragement. “Dear Miss Counts,” he wrote, “Democracy demands that you hold fast and carry on. The world of tomorrow is looking for leaders and you have been chosen. Those cowardly whites against you will never prosper because they are un-American and unfit to lead. Be of good faith. God is not dead. He will see you through. This is your one great chance to prove to Russia that democracy still prevails. Billy Graham, D.D.” It was not Charlotte, however, that drew Graham’s primary attention. In what some regarded as a self-conscious strategic test of resistance to federal demands, the focus of the civil rights crisis shifted from the Deep South to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus (who had attended a crusade service in the Garden earlier in the summer) provoked a showdown in the confrontation created by the federal government’s determination to enforce the Supreme Court’s school-desegregation order and the stubborn refusal of southern states to obey it. The mayor, the school board, and a substantial proportion of Little Rock’s ministers declared themselves in favor of obeying a federal judge’s explicit directive to delay integration of the city’s schools no longer, but on the pretext that he feared an outbreak of violence if blacks sought to enter the all-white Central High School, Faubus deployed 270 members of the Arkansas National Guard to stop them. On the first day of school, no blacks appeared, but a white crowd raucously shouted its defiance of the court order. On the second day, when nine black students tried to enter, the troops turned them away, to the delight of a jeering crowd. President Eisenhower counseled restraint on all sides and informed Faubus that the federal government would not pay the Guard’s expenses and salary, since it was acting on behalf of the state of Arkansas, not the United States. In an obvious grandstanding effort, Faubus sent the President a wire accusing the FBI of tapping the phone lines to the executive mansion (a charge FBI director J. Edgar Hoover emphatically denied) and urging Ike to stop “unwarranted interference by Federal agents.” Eisenhower countered with his own wire, putting Faubus on notice that he intended to “uphold the Federal Constitution by every legal means.” The President’s press secretary, James Hagerty, told reporters that Eisenhower was firmly against the use of federal troops but left a bit of maneuvering room by acknowledging that the Commander in Chief had not anticipated a situation in which state troops would be used to bar children from attending school. To that, Faubus boasted, ambiguously but ominously, that Arkansas could defend itself, adding that at least half the southern states had vowed to help. In an attempt to break the impasse, Faubus flew to Newport, Rhode Island, where Eisenhower was vacationing, for a highly publicized meeting. The governor asked for a one-year cooling-off period; the President gave him until the following Monday to pull the troops out and allow the black students, who had already missed two weeks of classes, to enter Central High. Faubus withdrew the Guard as ordered and dispatched fifty Arkansas state troopers to help protect any black students who tried to enter the school. Hate groups flooded Little Rock with racist literature, the segregationist White Citizens’ Council announced it planned to hold anti-integration rallies, and pulpits rang with calls for calm and patience. When the nine students approached the school on Monday morning, September 23, a violent mob forced them to withdraw. Black and white newsmen, often lumped with Communists and the NAACP as outside agitators determined to stir up trouble, were attacked and twenty-four demonstrators were arrested.
Pressed for a comment, Billy Graham recommended that the white citizens of Little Rock submit to the court order: “It is the duty of every Christian, when it does not violate his relationship to God, to obey the law. I would urge them to do so in this case.” These words differed little from his earlier justification for having accepted segregated seating in his southern crusades and hardly constituted a ringing denunciation of discrimination. Graham also followed his practice of absolving most southerners of blame for the worst of the problems. The turmoil in Little Rock, he theorized, had been instigated by outsiders and was “giving the Communists one of their greatest [propaganda] weapons in years.” (In fact, Communist newspapers were paying close attention. Pravda clucked that Little Rock was showing the true face of “free America,” and a headline in the Italian Communist paper Unita, trumpeted, “SHAME OF ARKANSAS ENVELOPS AMERICA.”). Newspapers were not alone in their interest in Graham’s views on the Little Rock situation. With George Champion as intermediary, former Health, Education, and Welfare secretary Oveta Culp Hobby suggested that Graham consider a special nationwide broadcast on the need for peaceful integration. Billy also discussed the problem during a half-hour visit with Richard Nixon but would not reveal the substance of their conversation. Undoubtedly, Graham would have preferred to be out of the eye of this particular storm. If he said nothing or made excuses for southern racists, he risked losing the support of black Evangelicals and drawing the fire of white Christians committed to racial justice. If he spoke or acted in opposition to those resisting integration, he risked alienating a wide segment of his audience and support. But when the President, who had used him as a sounding board on racial questions for some time, called to tell him he was thinking of sending troops into Little Rock, Graham told him, “Mr. President, I think that is the only thing you can do. It is out of hand, and the time has come to stop it.” About an hour later, Nixon called to get a second reading on Graham’s inclination. Graham gave him the same answer he had given Eisenhower. That afternoon, a thousand troops of the 101st Airborne Division, together with additional members of the National Guard, rolled into Little Rock.
Graham revealed that he had been in touch with several Little Rock ministers and offered to visit the city if it appeared he could make some useful contribution. Some clergymen urged him to come to Little Rock, but Fundamentalists, who tended to be unsympathetic to both his racial views and his alleged doctrinal laxity, opposed any such visit on the grounds that it would just stir up more trouble. He chose to stay away, noting that he had “no intention of going there without an invitation.” This response may have been a model of thoughtful courtesy, and it surely reflected Graham’s distaste for conflict, but it hardly exemplified the stance of the biblical prophets, whose passion for justice sometimes took them into settings where their presence was not entirely welcome. Graham’s quite genuine but restrained support of the movement toward integration inevitably left many dissatisfied. Racists saw him as the critic and opponent that indeed he was. Those pushing hardest against the barriers to equality labeled him an equivocator and compromiser, always ready to step back from risking his popularity on a bold and courageous stand. And southern governors and other politicians, whatever their deepest feelings about integration, found it difficult to accept his siding with the federal government in the most notable challenge to the autonomy of the southern states since the Civil War. The disaffection of such a large segment of his constituency troubled him deeply, but he seems not to have doubted that the President had made the right decision, and for the right reasons. In a letter to Eisenhower a few weeks later, he gushed, “Just a note to say that you are about the most remarkable man in history. I think your going to church [Thanksgiving] morning sent a sigh of relief throughout the entire world. It also indicated to millions that your faith was in God.”
During the following two years, Graham’s growing reputation as an integrationist created both conflict and opportunity to set a positive example. He met each in the cautious, measured fashion that irritated
his critics but kept him out of trouble. In the fall of 1958, he planned a rally on the lawn of the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia, where he had held his first major southern crusade. Governor George Bell Timmerman, a hard-shell segregationist, opposed the rally on the grounds that allowing Graham to speak on state property would be tantamount to an official endorsement of racial mixing, the very sort of thing that had caused all the trouble in Little Rock. “While most Columbians were enjoying their sleep,” Timmerman solemnly reported, “I took this problem to my God in prayer and concluded that I should speak out in protest.” Despite this claim of divine warrant, some churchmen, including the pastor of the city’s largest Southern Baptist congregation, felt Graham should come to show the rest of the country that not all southerners shared the governor’s racist views. Rather than challenge Timmerman’s stand on segregation, however, Graham asserted that the purpose of his proposed visit to Columbia was to proclaim the gospel, not to promote integration. “I am certain,” he ventured, that “no citizen would object to people being won to Christ on the Capitol grounds.” This did not mollify the governor, who observed that having an evangelist speak on the statehouse lawn would violate the historic principle of the separation of Church and State—a principle South Carolinians had apparently not thought violated when in 1950 Governor Strom Thurmond, who had arranged for Graham to address the state legislature and public-school gatherings, proclaimed a “South Carolina Revival Rally Day” and dispatched a police escort to accompany him on a whirlwind preaching tour of the state. To Graham’s great relief, the impasse was broken and further conflict avoided when the commanding officer of Fort Jackson offered to host the rally on the army base. Billy told the press, “I certainly would not want to be a party to breaking any state laws” but refused further comment on the controversy surrounding the rally or the racial situation itself. Sixty thousand people attended the rally, described as “the first nonsegregated mass meeting in South Carolina’s history” and “the largest religious gathering ever held in the southeast.” Graham struck a gentle blow for integration when he introduced W. O. Vaught, Jr., a Baptist pastor who played a major role in restoring peace to Little Rock during the previous year’s racial turmoil, and commended him for having “stayed by his stuff.” But he also gave a prominent seat on the platform to former governor James Byrnes, an ardent foe of integration. During his sermon he commended Columbians for what he perceived to be a “warm friendship between the races,” an assessment that though perhaps accurate in some respects, ignored the clear fact that the conflict his visit had generated revealed some rather telling imperfections in that friendship. As usual, this moderate approach drew fire from both sides. John Sutherland Bonnell comforted him by writing, “The stand you took was very courageous and I believe truly Christian. Even the Christian Century had to take off its hat to you! I know that such a stand cost you a great deal in the matter of relations with some of the brethren in the South, but God will be able to use you even more effectively as the result.” Less sympathetic critics fastened on Governor Byrnes’s presence on the platform and contended that Graham should have stuck to his plan of meeting on the capitol steps, even though it might have provoked a riot.
About the same time, racists bombed the newly integrated high school in Clinton, Tennessee. Newspaper columnist Drew Pearson took the lead in raising money to rebuild the school and challenged Graham to join him. Graham not only accepted but agreed to serve on the executive committee of the Americans Against Bombs of Bigotry. He also pointedly observed that bombings of schools and churches were “symptomatic of the type of thing that brought Hitler to power. It could eventually lead to a union between forces of crime and hate groups which would lead to anarchy. . . . Every Christian should take his stand against these outrages.” In mid-December, he went to Clinton to speak at a fund-raising rally. Addressing an integrated audience of approximately 5,000 in the badly damaged school’s still-standing gymnasium, Graham called for “tolerance, forgiveness, cool heads and warm hearts,” noting that “hot heads and cool hearts never solved anything,” and declaring that “we must not even hate the depraved minds who commit acts of hatred and violence, but we must have the grace to forgive them.” He further urged that southern Christians allow neither integration nor segregation “to become our Gospel. Our Gospel must be Jesus Christ and the Cross.” When he offered the invitation at the close of his address, which Pearson described as “a fine and inspiring sermon,” no one moved for a full two minutes. Then, the dam broke and scores of people streamed forward, including, according to one account, “a white racist who had vowed to wreck the meeting.”
Graham had avoided Little Rock at the height of its troubles, but he came to the city for two large rallies in September 1959. While some still found him overly cautious in his efforts to boost integration, none doubted where his sentiments lay, as evidenced by the criticisms leveled against him by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council, which distributed thousands of leaflets attacking him for his antisegregation views and criticizing him for inviting Martin Luther King to participate in the New York crusade. More positively, Governor Faubus called on citizens not to oppose Graham, whom he commended as “a great gospel speaker,” and indicated his intention to attend at least one of the rally services. In his own show of conciliation, Graham went to the city jail to visit several men who had set off dynamite in the school-board office, the mayor’s office, and the fire chief’s car. He reported that “these men received me very cordially. We had quite a talk and I said a prayer with each of them privately. They were very humble and, I would say, repentant.” In his sermons and public statements, Graham lamented the conflict Little Rock had experienced and hinted that much of the blame for the troubles should be laid at the feet of those trying to force integration. Such intimations predictably displeased those who painted Little Rock’s preriot tranquillity in a less rosy light, but Billy’s moderate approach surely succeeded in softening some racist hearts. In a letter to Graham a week after he left Little Rock, integrationist pastor W. O. Vaught told the evangelist that “there has been universal agreement in all the churches and out across the city that your visit here was one of the finest things that ever happened in the history of Little Rock. So very many people have changed their attitude, so many people have washed their hearts of hatred and bitterness, and many made decisions who had never expected to make such decisions.” Several years later, Vaught reaffirmed his original assessment when he wrote, “The influence of this good man was a real factor in the solution of our racial problems here in Little Rock.”
As Graham’s reputation and influence continued to grow, he began to seek other ways of using them to enhance his ministry and Evangelicalism in general. Christianity Today had won a secure place in religious publishing, but it still addressed itself primarily to ministers. He sensed a need for a more popular magazine aimed at the lay Christian, a magazine that would be “thought-provoking, devotional and evangelistic, with a breezy, easy-to-read style.” It would also be, in a way Christianity Today could never be, an official organ of his ministry, reporting on his crusades and other activities, as well as those of his associate evangelists, and gently reminding subscribers of the ministry’s continuing financial needs. Some of his colleagues and supporters, aware of the financial and personnel problems that typically attend the launching of a new magazine, tried to dissuade him, but he was determined. During the 1958 San Francisco crusade, he developed a friendship with Sherwood Wirt, a Congregational minister who was so impressed by Graham that he jettisoned the liberal theology he had been preaching and began to proclaim a more Evangelical message. At Graham’s urging, Wirt wrote glowing accounts of the crusade for several Evangelical publications, including Christianity Today, and later expanded them into a book, Crusade at the Golden Gate. As a younger man, he had worked as a newspaper editor in Alaska and had earned a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, a combination of practical experience and academic credential t
hat Graham found irresistible. Two years later, in November 1960, with former pastor Wirt at the helm, the first issue of Decision magazine reached a remarkable 253,000 charter subscribers generated by radio, television, crusade, and direct-mail appeals. Circulation increased with every issue until five years later, Decision went into 5,000,000 homes, making it by far the most widely received religious publication in the country.
At times it must have seemed, even to Graham, that virtually any enterprise he conceived would automatically come to successful, perhaps glorious, fruition, but that was not quite the case. During the preparation for the New York crusade, the evangelist became convinced that the northeastern portion of the nation desperately needed a Christian university, “a university that would be what Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth started out to be, with a Christian philosophy of education,” a university to which soon-to-be lesser schools like Wheaton and Houghton could turn when they needed professors for their own institutions. The positive response by young people at Madison Square Garden intensified that conviction. With encouragement from Reader’s Digest owner DeWitt Wallace, former New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, Vice-President Nixon, and the active participation of southern department-store magnate Henderson Belk (who pledged major support), radio commentator Paul Harvey (who agreed to serve as chairman of the finance committee), veteran Wheaton professor and administrator Enock Dyrness, and the usual cast of Evangelical entrepreneurs—J. Howard Pew, Roger Hull, Carl Henry, Harold Ockenga, and Nelson Bell—Graham convened several meetings to explore the feasibility of establishing such an institution, preferably in New Jersey, as close to New York City as possible. A brochure entitled A Time for Decision in Higher Education: Billy Graham Presents Crusade University depicted a fifteen-building campus (complete with a football stadium) on five hundred to one thousand acres, projected a seventy-member faculty that would receive salaries above the national median, and described in general terms a liberal arts curriculum that would match its commitment to the highest possible academic standards with equal faithfulness to the Bible, “with emphasis on its absolute validity.” Keeping a customary eye for maximum public impact, the target date for opening the first phase of the institution, the undergraduate college, was set for the fall of 1963 “so as to capitalize on the World’s Fair to be held in New York in 1964.” Impressive as it was, the brochure probably contained the seeds of its failure in an open letter from Graham in which, despite his endorsement of the project, he said, “I am not an educator and have no intention of entering that field.” Graham’s decision not to play even a ceremonial role, however, seems to have doomed the project before it got off the ground, and the complete history of Crusade University is contained in a thin manila folder in the Billy Graham Archives at Wheaton College, the institution it was expected to supersede.
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