nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

320 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
except for what has been preserved in the files of the Foreign Mission Board
and bits gathered from a few other sources; current information and reports
from home mission fields are fragmentary in an intermittent missionary
journal published jointly with the Foreign Mission Board. The richest source
of direct knowledge of how missions operated, where and through whom, in
those critical, history-making 30 years proved to be the contemporary Baptist
newspapers, chiefly The Religious Herald, Christian Index, Biblical Record
and the several publications that emerged into the Western Recorder.
Gathering history piecemeal thus was much like working on a patchwork
quilt, but through the months of 1945 many gaps were filled and a pattern
of connected history began to appear.
Five weeks in February and March were spent in the library of Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary and four more weeks in the minutes of the
Board in November and December, while months of patient piecing together
of the historical records found finally reconstructed the records lost and the
story of the first half century took shape in satisfactory completeness, during
this year.
Much work has also been done on the second fifty years, so much that we
have hopes of having the MS complete by the end of 1946, which will be
within the schedule of three years first laid out by the writer.
To many friends we owe much for help along the difficult way, especially
to Dr. Leo T. Crismon, Librarian of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
whose intimate knowledge of the source material in both the Seminary
Library and the increasingly valuable library of the Southern Baptist Historical
Society made possible many a short cut in research. To the quick and efficient
interest of my friends of the years, Dr. and Mrs. John D. Freeman is due thanks
for finding a place to stay in crowded Louisville when all other means had failed.
More especially still do I owe gratitude to the loyal fellow workers of
Home Mission Board office who found a place for work in comfort under unbelievably
crowded office conditions. Their helpful interest made days of
tedious work delightful and fruitful. The continuing interest of Mr. B. M.
Callaway, the historically-minded member of the Home Mission Board, gave
reassuring support in times of discouragement; the generosity of Mrs. C. V.
Hickerson of Richmond, Virginia, gave access to a considerable store of items
of rare interest; while to many others much gratitude is owed for helpfulness
and courtesies along the way.
2. The Future. One cannot live in the past. The weeks of delving into
long forgotten records were weeks full of swiftly moving events that made
vivid history for 1945 and laid strange and somewhat terrifying foundations
for a troubled future. Dr. Lawrence and the leaders of the Home Mission
Board realize that our present day is cast within a world revolution bringing
terrific new challenges to the Christian forces of America. They are facing
these problems with rare courage and faith, developing old mission fields and
entering new ones. Some of these new ventures are direct answers to the
challenge of world conditions.
In the mission study department during 1945 one of the most critical needs
of this troubled time was faced and courageously met in the production of a
series of study books on Christian attitudes toward the urgent problems of
racial tension.
Planned originally as a study of all racial minorities in the South, only one
book of the original plans was completed, the adult book, OF ONE, written by
Dr. T. B. Maston, Professor of Christian Sociology in Southwestern Theological
Seminary.
Late in the year, when all the manuscripts should have been ready for the
press, a decision was made to abandon the original plans for the young people's
books of this series on racial minorities and substitute for the primary
and junior books, MSS already completed in the Negro Series,—which had
been authorized in 1939 but suspended before the series was completed and
rescinded by action of the Board in the Annual Meeting of 1943.
The Primary book of this series had been completed; as the other four
were nearly so. The author of the Junior book had continued to work on her
MS, and it had been used as a basis for workshop teaching during the spring
and summer of 1945 by both white and Negro leaders.