by S. Smith
However, she said that she was terribly afraid that her father was going to be assassinated by one of the crazy Baptists. I assured her that nothing like that would happen. Yes, they were fanatical. Yes they were threatening. Yes, they were occasionally violent, but they would never kill anyone. It was one of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill! Surely they would not go against what they were commanded not to do! They couldn’t be that cruel, could they?
But that didn’t seem to be the case at all. One day in November of 1897, J. W. Harris was supposedly awaiting a streetcar at the corner of 4th Street and Austin outside the Old Corner Drug Store. He was on his way home from work. His brother worked directly across the street and could see his older brother at the store. It seemed too convenient that the two brothers were within sight of each other as the Judge drove up, which he did daily. The Judge had his son with him in his buggy, diagonally across the intersection from the Drug Store.
Initially the Judge didn’t see J. W. Harris standing at the corner. However, his son noticed him and pointed him out to the Judge. The Judge then looked straight across to J. W. and caught his eye. The Judge, never one to back away from a fight, got out of the buggy and walked diagonally across the intersection to where J. W. Harris was standing. The Judge did not have his gun pulled. Suddenly and without provocation J. W. Harris pulled his pistol and shot.
The shot went wide to the right of the Judge, who by this time was in the middle of the intersection. Unfortunately for the older Harris brother, his pistol jammed so he couldn’t get off a second shot. At that point, the younger Harris brother was on the sidewalk in front of his office. The younger Harris brother pulled his pistol and shot at the Judge and hit him. You can say that Providence wasn’t involved but I would beg to differ. The bullet struck one of the Judge’s metal buttons on his shirt, ricocheted, and landed in the Judge’s bum arm. If the bullet had either missed the button and landed in the Judge’s torso or if that ricocheted bullet had landed in the Judge’s good arm, things would have turned out quite differently. They didn’t, which was too bad for the Harris brothers.
The Judge, who was battle tested from the Civil War, calmly crossed the intersection. J. W. was still fumbling with his pistol. The Judge fired a shot that mortally wounded him on the sidewalk of the Old Corner Drug Store. He then slowly turned around, shot across the street and wounded the younger brother on the southeast side of Austin Avenue. The Judge methodically walked up to the wounded younger Harris, who was still fumbling with his gun, shot him point blank in the face, and killed him. The older brother died later that day.
The Judge was promptly arrested and was taken into custody. He was put on trial. He was acquitted of any crime by a jury of his very scared peers and by a scared prosecutor. I’m not one to probe into another man’s thoughts, but if I was on that jury, I would have been shaking in my boots to find this man guilty. The Judge always had a way of getting back at people who had done him wrong.
Anyway, the two Harris brothers died. They were buried in the same grave in Oakwood cemetery, very similarly to how the Kivett brothers were buried just six months earlier. Many folks in town thought that the Harris brothers were gunning for the Judge. They seemed intent on killing him to settle the dispute before the Judge had a chance to do them in. It was rumored that someone told the Harris brothers if they killed the Judge, they would easily win acquittal. They could claim that the Judge had been threatening them and he had.
The Judge had to have his bum arm amputated after the ricocheted bullet landed in it. I don’t think anyone ever crossed the Judge after that fight. By the way, the Judge filed for re-election shortly after the fight and of course won. Would you ever vote against him, especially if you thought the Judge might find out that you voted against him?
The Kivett/Lambdin gun fight and the Harris/Gerald gun fight had some eerie commonalities. They both had two brothers gunning for a single man, and they both had the single man killing both the aggressor brothers. The brothers were both interred in a single grave and the man that they were gunning for survived with only wounds. Afterward, I realized the strong correlation between the two gun fights. I wish that I could have recognized the Kivett/Lambdin fight as a sign of things to come of the Harris/Gerald fight. I would immediately have warned the Harris brothers not to do it. I never wanted anyone to get hurt or worse yet, to get killed. I wish I had been more alert.
Chapter 6
THOSE CRAZY BAPTISTS
There is a famous quote by Montesquieu, “No kingdom has ever had so many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.” This was certainly true of the Baptists in Texas. Whenever an enemy common to all Baptists could not be found, the state’s largest Protestant denomination inevitably turned upon itself.
It seemed as though the Baptists’ passion for internal bickering was almost as strong as their passion for preaching. They would generally use all means available to get their way and their place in the hierarchy of power within the Baptist ranks. Back in the day, Waco was on the road to become the Mecca of the denomination. At least that’s the way the Brothers Carroll wanted it.
But before I go into this whole mess, let me just say that these crazy Baptists, even with all their faults, have done a world of good for the people of Texas and even for the nation. Their handiwork can clearly be seen today with all the institutions they created and funded, including the many educational facilities and Baylor University, all of the Baylor Medical Centers, Southwestern Seminary, and the numerous churches. Let’s just say that their zeal to build their power base sometimes got in the way of good common sense. However, no one can say that they didn’t have strong leaders back then. Sometimes I believe they were just a bit too strong for the Baptists’ own good.
Back in the late 1800s, many towns were just getting started and so there was something of a rivalry between them. They would often compete with each other to bring new businesses and institutions to their town so that they could sustain growth in their population. The city of Waco was vying for relevancy, as were the cities of Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth. The merger between Baylor University and Waco University in 1886 seemed to cement Waco’s importance as a Baptist town. Back then it had several important churches. The First Baptist Church was pastored by Big Brother Carroll on the West side of town. The East Baptist Church, which as the name implies, was on the East side of town, was pastored by G. W. Truett, who went on to fame as the beloved pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. There was also the New Hope Baptist Church, started as an outreach program from the First Baptist Church for the colored folks in town.
East Waco was really a bedroom community and a suburb of Waco at that time. East Waco had Paul Quinn College, a university founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Their goal was to educate the largely illiterate colored population around the town. East Waco also had the East Terrace mansion of Mr. Mann, or “The Man,” as I jokingly called him back then. His business supplied the bricks for the Suspension bridge. But other than that it was generally a bedroom community for folks working on the west side of town. One dreadful thing about East Waco was that it was physically lower than West Waco. When the Brazos River flooded, which it did frequently before the Lake Whitney dam was built, it would always flood East Waco before West Waco. East Waco usually flooded once every four or five years, to the point where the water was waist deep on Elm Street.
I remember a flood once that went down Elm Street, past Dallas Street, all the way to Spring Street. It was an amazing flood that almost filled the toll booth, with water coming heavily into my home. Mr. and Mrs. Mann owned a cow named Bessie that they dearly loved and treated like a pet. Every time a flood would hit East Waco, they led Bessie up the circular stairway of their mansion to save her from drowning as their lower story could end up in six feet of water. It was quite a site to see the prim and proper Mrs. Mann hauling that cow up the stairs, but she saved it from drowning several times. The cow must have provided some really sweet milk for the famil
y.
The colored folks living in shanties on the East side of the river watched their homes repeatedly wash down the river. Back then the colored folks were completely self-sufficient and resilient. They were such a proud people and didn’t depend on anyone or anybody except other colored folks in the community. They would just collect materials that washed up on shore and rebuild again.
There was one old colored Baptist man named Briscoe who loved to fish and loved to sing. He lived in the same shanty house for thirty years. He was not about to leave his home since he had weathered many floods before. One year, everyone tried to get him out, as this was not just an ordinary flood, but he refused to go. He even threatened violence if anyone forced him to leave. As the flood waters rose, old man Briscoe, as they used to call him, just kept climbing higher and higher in his house and getting louder and louder with his singing. At first he was standing on a stool, then a chair, then a table. He finally ended up on the roof of the house, holding onto his fishing pole and a bucket for any fish he collected. By the time he was up on the roof, he was bellowing such that the entire town could hear him.
The white folks would laugh at him and say, “There goes that crazy Briscoe again, howling and bellowing like an ole mule.” The colored folks would mostly just try to talk him out of staying at his house, afraid that he might get stuck and drown. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was just going to stay put and ride this thing out like he had done over and over again. Maybe he would even collect a bucket of fish in the process.
He would sing, constantly. His songs were mostly religious and mostly about the water, songs such as Shall We Gather at the River, Michael Row your Boat Ashore, Wade in the Water, and Down to the River to Pray. I think it was his way of dealing with the dire situation he was in. Occasionally he’d pull up his line and check his bait or pull in a fish, but only between verses of hymns. At some point his line snagged on something and he could no longer fish. That didn’t stop him from singing. He patiently waited idly on his roof for the waters to recede and went through his entire repertoire of songs.
After a while the waters did recede, and he was able to climb down enough to determine what his line was caught on. He waded outside of his drenched house, reached down to where his hook was caught, and pulled up a metal box. The box had ten rolls of $100 bills. On the box were the letters IMB. This was more money than Old Man Briscoe had ever made in his lifetime. He started hooping and singing for joy. When other folks came around to see what he was yelling about he calmly said, “Oh, it’s nothing, I just wanted to thank the good Lord for saving my life.” Apparently Mr. Mann, upstream from Old Man Briscoe, had a stash of cash hidden at his mansion. His cash box had washed downstream and landed in Old Man Briscoe’s home during the flood.
Briscoe was as honest as the summer day is long. He tried to find the rightful owner of the money. He immediately buried the tin box in a secret place for safe keeping. Then he went around town asking folks if they had lost anything valuable. Several people claimed that they had, but they couldn’t describe what it was. They didn’t know what the initials on the box were, so Old Man Briscoe knew they were lying. Finally he asked Mr. Mann the same question. Mr. Mann calmly described it perfectly, and knew the letters on the box. Old Man Briscoe said that he’d found it and would deliver it back to him.
Mr. Mann looked at him and responded, “You keep it my friend. You didn’t have to go around town to try to find the owner, but you did. You fished it out of the river fair and square, so as far as I’m concerned, that money is yours.”
Old Man Briscoe thanked him and said that he’d been fishing all of his life and that was the biggest catch of his life. He asked Mr. Mann what the initials on the box were, and Mr. Mann told him that IMB stood for “Number One Money Box.” He said that he had several so this was just one of many. With the money from that box, Old Man Briscoe gave his tithe to the New Hope Baptist Church and built a modest but dry place on higher ground right next to the river.
East Waco wasn’t where the Baptist power was, although it did have the second largest Baptist church in town. The money, the power, and the influence was on the west side of town. Within the Baptist ranks, the First Baptist Church was the dominant church. Big Brother Carroll, as the pastor, was also the chair of the Board of Trustees for Baylor and the President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT). The BGCT was the controlling body of the Texas Baptists. The BGCT were the folks who designated where the money that was collected from the Churches was to be spent. It was and still is a powerful organization.
The Baptists needed a common enemy in order to not fight among themselves. Mr. Brann tried to oblige them, but in a way he was too late. By the time Mr. Brann arrived on the scene, the Baptists were already outfitted in full war paint and on the war path with each other.
The problem started with Samuel A. Hayden, who came to Dallas on a call to be the pastor of the Live Oak Baptist Church in Dallas. Hayden didn’t stay long at the church and decided that he was better fit to be the editor of the Texas Baptist paper, called the Texas Baptist Herald. This was a powerful newspaper that went out to all of the participating churches of the BGCT. It would detail all the main events of the Texas Baptists. It also carried sermons from the prominent Baptist preachers at the time, including Big Brother Carroll.
Things within the denomination were going splendidly until the folks trying to drive the “Waco Policy” started exerting their influence to achieve their goal. The “Waco Policy” was an unstated goal by the powerful Baptists in the Waco area to make Waco the center of the Texas Baptist universe, the Baptist Vatican, if you will. S. A. Hayden and his newspaper, being in Dallas and not in Waco, didn’t suit the folks pushing the policy. These folks, including Big Brother Carroll, decided that they would be better served with a newspaper that came out of Waco instead of Dallas. So they started the Baptist Standard newspaper. But before I get to that, let me back up a bit and tell you about Cranny.
J.B. Cranfill or Cranny, as I stated earlier, was a popular fellow. He got along with just about everyone, except Mr. Brann. He used his popularity to his advantage, quickly inserting himself into the circle of power among the Baptists in Waco. If you remember, he followed a rather circuitous path from Turnersville, to Gatesville, to Waco. He eventually ended up in Dallas as progressively bigger opportunities knocked at his door. While in Waco, he befriended Big Brother Carroll and worked his way into becoming his right-hand man. This meant taking care of all the things that Carroll didn’t have time to do.
One of the first things that Cranny was responsible for was to meet with the local churches in the area to collect mission dues. These were monies that the local churches would send to the BGCT for missionaries both local and abroad. Cranny was a big talker but his organizational skills were severely lacking. He would collect mission fees from the local churches, but wouldn’t keep good records of what he was collecting. Thus he had large gaps in his bookkeeping and neither he nor the Baptists could tell what he’d collected. His books were just a mess.
Once when defending himself in front of his peers, I overheard him say, “Brothers, I put the Mission Log Books in my buggy, rode across town, and upon my arrival they were missing from the buggy. I have no idea what happened to them. I don’t remember hitting any big bumps, but I must have for them to have disappeared like this. That’s the honest truth!”
Now I’ve no idea if Cranny did this on purpose or if it was just neglect. Whatever the cause, it didn’t sit well with some of the more cynical Baptist folks, including Hayden. Almost immediately after Cranny joined the circle of power, there was a cloud of scandal over his head. He also had some rather unscrupulous real estate dealings as he was trying to up-size his residence. It could have been just neglect, but the behavior raised plenty of questions. Cranny followed power, but trouble always seemed to follow Cranny in one way or another.
Still the real Civil War of the Baptists started when Cranny bought the Baptist Standard news
paper and started running it out of Waco. That’s when the sparks started flying.
At first, S. A. Hayden, Cranny, and Big Brother Carroll were cordial with each other and seemed to get along swimmingly. Even so, S. A. Hayden was always a bit skeptical about Cranny’s intentions with his purchase of the Baptist Standard. They even had an agreement to share Big Brother Carroll’s sermons. The Baptist Standard would publish Carroll’s Sunday morning sermon while the Texas Baptist Herald would publish his evening sermon. As you can imagine, Big Brother Carroll, being the unquestioned leader of the Texas Baptists, was quite in demand. Being able to publish his sermons was a windfall for both papers. Apparently their subscribers read these sermons religiously, if you’ll pardon my pun. But the first cannon shot across the proverbial bow occurred when Big Brother Carroll wrote S. A. Hayden a letter informing him that he could no longer publish his evening sermon in his paper.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “follow the money” to get to the root of a situation, in this case, just “follow the Waco Policy.” It will generally lead to the root of many events at that time. The “Waco Policy” folks, which means Carroll and Cranny, were likely trying to put the Texas Baptist Herald out of business. They wanted the Waco-based Baptist Standard to be the lone Baptist newspaper in the Lone Star State. This makes sense because the intent of the “Waco Policy” was to move central control of the Baptists to Waco. The Baptist Standard was struggling due to competition from the Texas Baptist Herald.