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demanded that God put an end to the growing communist threat on American college campuses—
folk music seemed to have something to do with it, but Hargis kind of lost the thread on that part.
He finished by thanking God for his guest tonight, the hero of Anzio and the Chosin Reservoir,
General Edwin A. Walker.
Walker appeared not in uniform but in a khaki suit that closely resembled one. The creases in his
pants looked sharp enough to shave with. His stony face reminded me of the cowboy actor Randolph
Scott. He shook Hargis’s hand and they talked about communism, which was rife not just on the
college campuses, but in the halls of Congress and the scientific community as well. They touched on
fluoridation. Then they schmoozed about Cuba, which Walker called “the cancer of the Caribbean.”
I could see why Walker had failed so badly in his run for the Texas governorship the year before. At
the front of a high school class he would have put the kids to sleep even in period one, when they were
freshest. But Hargis moved him along smoothly, interjecting “Praise Jesus!” and “God’s witness,
brother!” whenever things got a little sticky. They discussed an upcoming barnstorm crusade through
the South called Operation Midnight Ride, and then Hargis invited Walker to clear the air
concerning “certain scurrilous charges of segregationism that have surfaced in the New York press and
elsewhere.”
Walker finally forgot he was on television and came to life. “You know that’s nothing but a
truckload of commie propaganda.”
“I know it!” Hargis exclaimed. “And God wants you to tell it, brother.”
“I spent my life in the U.S. Army, and I’ll be a soldier in my heart until the day I die.” (If Lee had
his way, that would be in roughly three months.) “As a soldier, I always did my duty. When President
Eisenhower ordered me to Little Rock during the civil disturbances of 1957—this had to do with the
forced integration of Central High School, as you know—I did my duty. But Billy, I am also a soldier
of God—”
“A Christian soldier! Praise Jesus!”
“—and as a Christian, I know that forced integration is just flat-out wrong. It’s Constitutionwrong,
states rights–wrong, and Bible-wrong.”
“Tell it,” Hargis said, and wiped a tear from his cheek. Or maybe it was sweat that had oozed
through his makeup.
“Do I hate the Negro race? Those who say that—and those who worked to drive me from the
military service I loved—are liars and communists. You know better, the men I served with know
better, and God knows better.” He leaned forward in the guest’s chair. “Do you think the Negro
teachers in Alabama and Arkansas and Louisiana and the great state of Texas want integration? They
do not. They see it as a slap in the face to their own skills and hard work. Do you think that Negro
students want to go to school with whites naturally better equipped for readin, writin, and rithmetic?
Do you think real Americans want the sort of race mongrelization that will result from this sort of
mingling?”
“Of course they don’t! Praaaiiise Jesus!”
I thought about the sign I’d seen in North Carolina, the one pointing to a path bordered with
poison ivy. COLORED, it had said. Walker didn’t deserve killing, but he could certainly do with a brisk
shaking. I’d give anyone a big old praise Jesus on that one.
My attention had wandered, but something Walker was now saying brought it back in a hurry.
“It was God, not General Edwin Walker, who ordained the Negro position in His world when He
gave them a different skin color and a different set of talents. More athletic talents. What does the
Bible tell us about this difference, and why the Negro race has been cursed to so much pain and
travail? We only have to look at the ninth chapter of Genesis, Billy.”
“Praise God for His Holy Word.”