by Billy Graham
“I think you may have something wrong with your leg,” said the young doctor. “Let me examine it.”
He sat me down on a chair and gave my leg a thorough exam.
“Who’s your doctor?” he asked.
“Dr. Rollie Dickson of the Mayo Clinic.”
“Call him right away.”
T.W. was with me and made the call. My doctor talked first with the medical student, asking him to lift my leg in all directions. Then my doctor asked to speak with me. “I don’t want you to leave that chair,” he said. “I want you to be taken back by stretcher to your quarters, and we’ll send a hospital plane for you. We think you have thrombophlebitis.”
My son Ned was with me also, and when the plane from Minnesota arrived, he and T.W. and the medical student, Victor Wahby, boarded with me. As it turned out, I had met his family during our meetings in Egypt, where his father was a leader in the Presbyterian Church. When we arrived in Rochester, it was so cold—twenty degrees below zero—that the pilot took the plane inside the hangar before letting us out.
We were met by Dr. Dickson and cardiologist Dr. Schirger, who rushed me to the hospital and determined that I did indeed have thrombophlebitis, a blood clot in the deepest vein, close to the bone. If it had broken free, it could have gone immediately to the brain.
With his successful diagnosis, the student doctor from Egypt so impressed the staff at the Mayo Clinic that they later accepted his application for advanced study.
AREAS OF CONFLICT
“A great social revolution is going on in the United States today,” I said, introducing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the audience in Madison Square Garden one night during the 1957 New York Crusade.
With the benefit of four decades of hindsight, we know how far-reaching that revolution would prove to be, but at the time we could not see the future and few realized just how radically the civil rights movement would eventually change the face of America. Nor is it easy for later generations to realize what the racial situation was in much of the United States before the precedent-setting 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools.
I cannot point to any single event or intellectual crisis that changed my mind on racial equality. Growing up in the rural South, I had adopted the attitudes of that region without much reflection, though as I have said, aside from my father, I admired no one as much as Reese Brown, the black foreman on our dairy farm. As a boy, I also loved reading the Tarzan adventure books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, although even at the time it bothered me that white people were consistently portrayed in them as superior to blacks. At Wheaton College, I made friends with black students, and I recall vividly one of them coming to my room one day and talking with deep conviction about America’s need for racial justice. Most influential, however, was my study of the Bible, leading me eventually to the conclusion that not only was racial inequality wrong but Chris-tians especially should demonstrate love toward all peoples.
In 1953, during our Crusade in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I went into the building as the people were beginning to gather one night and personally tore down the ropes separating the white from the black sections—ropes that had been mandated according to the custom in those days by the local committee. My action caused the head usher to resign in anger right on the spot (and raised some other hackles), but I did not back down.
Civil rights were very much in the forefront in America during the 1960s and early 1970s. As the issue unfolded, I sometimes found myself under fire from both sides, extreme conservatives castigating me for doing too much and extreme liberals blaming me for not doing enough. In reality, both groups tended to stand aloof from our evangelistic Crusades, but those people who actively supported us understood very well our commitment to doing what we could through our evangelism to end the blight of racism.
Early on, Dr. King and I spoke about his method of using nonviolent demonstrations to bring an end to racial segregation. He urged me to keep on doing what I was doing—preaching the Gospel to integrated audiences and supporting his goals by example—and not to join him in the streets. “You stay in the stadiums, Billy,” he said, “because you will have far more impact on the white establishment there than you would if you marched in the streets. Besides that, you have a constituency that will listen to you, especially among white people, who may not listen so much to me. But if a leader gets too far out in front of his people, they will lose sight of him and not follow him any longer.” I followed his advice.
Few events galvanized the whole issue of civil rights or caused such strong feelings on both sides as did the 1965 Selma March and the violence that followed in its wake. Shortly afterward, in April, President Johnson suggested that I go to Alabama as a gesture of peace and goodwill, and in April we held several rallies around the state, including one at Tuskegee Institute.
During the long summer of 1965, America seemed on the brink of chaos. Immediately after the riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, I toured the area with Dr. E. V. Hill, a respected black pastor in Watts (who later became a member of the BGEA board) and other community leaders. No doubt extremists on both sides exploited the situation for their own goals, but I was sickened by the violence and the widespread destruction we saw on every hand. There were no easy answers, I knew, but Dr. Hill and I both agreed that any solution that omitted the need for spiritual renewal could bring only temporary relief. Hatred and racism are fundamentally moral and spiritual problems.
Ireland
Much of my time during the 1960s and early 1970s was spent overseas. Two trips in particular brought us to nations torn by chronic strife and division.
The first was our visit to Ireland in 1972. Long a hotbed of religious and political conflict between Protestants and Catholics, Northern Ireland was a virtual war zone as a result of bombings and armed attacks by the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
After careful investigation by Walter Smyth (who had spent some of his boyhood years in Belfast) and others, we responded to an invitation from a broad-based group of Protestant pastors to make a private visit to Northern Ireland. No Crusade meetings would be possible, for security reasons (although I did preach in one church), but we felt that an expression of goodwill toward both sides might do something to defuse the dangerous situation.
We went to Northern Ireland only days after finishing a Cru-sade in Birmingham, Alabama. The progress in racial harmony we saw there between our 1965 rallies and this Crusade seven years later encouraged us to believe that even in difficult places with long histories of conflict, love and goodwill have the power to overcome the barriers of the past.
We arrived in Belfast on a Saturday night, and the next morning I joined our friend, Graham Lacey, a British businessman, and Arthur Blessitt, an American evangelist who was carrying a large cross through the streets of Great Britain and Ireland as a demonstration of Christ’s love and concern. We went for a walk along Falls Road and Shankill Road, often seen as dividing lines between the warring factions. We had no security guards or police with us. The newspapers had displayed my picture prominently, so people knew who I was.
“How will I know if they’re going to accept us?” I asked Arthur.
“Well, if they don’t, you’ll get a bullet in the back!”
His answer was hardly reassuring, but we prayed and committed the time to the Lord. Along the way, we stopped to talk with individuals about Christ and His love, and to pray. In the Catholic Falls Road area, we came upon a public house with an open door. When we looked in, the Sunday morning drinkers recognized me from the newspapers and television and invited us in.
I told them who we were and why we had come into the Catholic district, to tell them how much God loved them. Some of them laughed at me; others whispered noisily to their neighbors at the tables; but still others, who probably should have been in church at that very moment instead of in the pub, seemed to take the words of Jesus Christ to heart. When I finished, they sent us on our way wit
h applause and a good wish for our safety.
Not too much further down the road, we encountered a roadblock manned by the British. We did not see the soldiers, but we saw their steely rifles poking through the sandbags.
Shortly afterward, we heard a mighty explosion. We could not see its flash, but we certainly felt its impact. People poured out into the streets and ran in the direction of the noise. We joined the crowd and soon came upon the dreadful sight: bodies and pieces of bodies blown apart by a bomb. Three of the dead were apparently known terrorists handling the bomb, but certainly others were innocent bystanders.
We tried to bring some measure of comfort to the chaotic scene. Several of the people recognized me. I was not wearing clerical garb, of course, but they insisted on calling me “Father,” begging me to give the last rites to the dead and the dying. It was not a time for theological distinctions: I knelt by each one and prayed for them. One woman said I was the first Protestant clergyman she had met. Many thanked us for coming.
At that moment the soldiers arrived, and one of them advised us to leave the scene as quickly as possible. More trouble was sure to develop. So we turned around and retraced our steps without further incident—without a bullet in the back—but with a profound sense of sadness at what had occurred.
During the next few days, we met with a wide variety of people, including the governor, the Lord Grey of Naunton. In a meeting sponsored by both the Catholic and Protestant chaplains, students at Queen’s University listened attentively as I spoke about the power of Christ to change lives and fill hearts with love. Jim Douglas, our journalist friend from Scotland, said later that from his experience of British student behavior, he fully expected the crowd to break into catcalls and jeers at any moment; but the students could not have been more attentive.
Especially memorable was a private meeting with Cardinal Conway, the Roman Catholic primate, at the Archbishop’s palace in Armagh. Protestant leaders had also been invited, and they confirmed what I had heard from others: that in spite of the division between Protestants and Catholics, the complex troubles in Ireland were not basically religious but rather were historical and political in nature.
Afterward we went by train to Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. We were overwhelmed by the warmth of our reception: 2,000 invited guests came to an evening meeting at the Royal Dublin Concert Hall, and Chief Justice O’Dalaigh presided at a breakfast for 450 the next morning. At one meeting, the emcee—a Catholic priest—told how he had come to Christ through reading my book Peace with God. Another meeting—this one at Milltown Park, the headquarters of the Jesuit order in Ireland, brought together clergy from all denominations.
Of special interest was a secret meeting I had with the leader of the Official Wing of the IRA. The police advised against it, but I decided to go through with it anyway. Walter Smyth and I were taken out the back door of our hotel and bundled into a car driven by two men with beards. Shortly afterward, we switched cars and were driven to a house in a working-class section of the city. Although not evident from the outside, the building had originally consisted of four or five adjacent row houses in which the interior had been gutted and rebuilt to form a large and comfortable home. The IRA leader we met there talked for almost an hour about the history of the conflict in Ireland. Then we had tea, and I spoke about what Christ had done for me and how I believed He could bring healing to the people of Northern Ireland if they would turn humbly to Him.
South Africa
The next year, 1973, we went to South Africa. I had been invited there several times before—the first time being in my Youth for Christ days—but I had always refused to go; that country’s strict apartheid policy meant that our audiences would have to be segregated.
In the early 1970s, our friend Michael Cassidy, the founder of African Enterprise, detected some slight changes in his nation’s policy and began to pursue the possibility of a congress on evangelism patterned after the 1966 Berlin Congress. He eventually was able to gain permission for a fully integrated conference embracing all races and virtually all Protestant denominations in South Africa, and I was invited by the organizing committee to speak twice at the event.
On March 13, the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism convened in the coastal resort city of Durban for ten days. All 700 of us, regardless of race, stayed in the same hotel; some said it was the largest interracial meeting held to that date in South Africa.
At first I planned to speak only at the congress, but to almost everyone’s surprise, Cassidy was able to secure permission for a fully integrated evangelistic rally. I will never forget Saturday afternoon, March 17, when 45,000 people of all races—half the people nonwhite—jammed King’s Park Rugby Stadium and spilled over most of the playing field. Some of the committee members were almost overcome with joy by the sight of white ushers escorting nonwhites to their seats.
“Christianity is not a white man’s religion,” I stated, “and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black. Christ belongs to all people!” I went on to proclaim Christ as the only answer to the deepest needs of the human heart. At the Invitation, 3,300 people completely filled the only open space in front of the platform; additional hundreds could not be reached by counselors. Local papers said it was the largest multiracial crowd of any type in South Africa’s history. The main Durban newspaper the next day carried the headline “APARTHEID DOOMED,” summarizing my statement at the press conference.
Durban’s record was broken slightly over a week later in Jo-hannesburg, on Sunday, March 25. Some 60,000 filled Wanderers Stadium—the previous stadium record was less than 40,000— and again blanketed much of the playing field. Many came from dozens of the segregated townships around Johannesburg, including Sharpeville and Soweto. The music, including a Zulu quartet, reflected the diversity of the crowd. The entire service was carried live throughout the nation over government radio, in English and Afrikaans. (Television did not exist then in that country.) At the end of the service, more than 4,000 came forward to indicate their commitment to Christ. While we were in Johannesburg, professional golfer Gary Player went out of his way to welcome us to a multiracial reception at his home.
I left South Africa convinced that apartheid was un-Christian and unworkable. At the same time, I knew that South Africa’s problems would not be solved instantly, any more than those in Northern Ireland or the United States. People sometimes assume that an evangelistic Crusade is somehow a failure if the problems in a city or nation are not suddenly solved, but complex and long-standing problems are seldom solved overnight. Nevertheless, a start had been made, and for that we thanked God.
TELEVISION
If the 1960s and early 1970s were years of upheaval in society, they also brought changes and expansion in the outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Chief among these changes was the growth in our use of the media.
Radio, books, and films have all had an important part in extending our ministry, but by far the most significant in the long term has been television. More than one critic has pointed out the limitations and pitfalls of television. No doubt television also has been used to promote lifestyles and points of view that are opposed to what the Bible teaches. At times, in fact, I have wondered if we have not reached the state described by the prophet Jeremiah: “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush” (Jeremiah 6:15).
All of that, however, does not rule out television as an incredibly powerful vehicle for shaping character and influencing people, for good or for evil. Like most technologies, television in itself is morally neutral; it is what we do with it, or fail to do with it, that makes the difference.
Our first systematic efforts in television were initiated in 1951. Cliff, Bev, and I used the studios of KTTV in Los Angeles to produce a half-hour program in a format called Kinescope, which we then placed on as many stations as we could. Television was still in its infancy, however, and af
ter a few years we discontinued the broadcasts, mainly because of the time involved in making a weekly program—particularly with our London meetings approaching.
Our first telecast to a whole nation took place in 1955 in Great Britain, when the BBC carried our Good Friday message from Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall throughout Britain. As I noted in an earlier chapter, we first telecast live in the United States from New York, during the Madison Square Garden Crusade in 1957.
Following the New York meetings, we continued to obtain television time wherever possible for live broadcasts from Crusades in the United States. Color television was in its infancy, but we were not far behind; we began to cover the televised Crusades in color. Two years later, in 1959, we telecast the Crusade from Melbourne, Australia, back to the United States. Because Australia did not yet have color television, we had to import a huge amount of equipment from a Toronto company in order to handle the color. Our telecasts were the first TV programs ever produced in color in Australia.
Because a Crusade meeting usually runs for two hours and a telecast for one, by 1964 we realized that it was better to tape and edit programs for later release rather than to continue broadcasting live. Cliff became adept at building in musical and other features that would appeal to viewers. Soon we expanded our television outreach to as many stations as possible, not restricting ourselves to one network but purchasing prime time whenever it was available. Our recent pattern has been to go on television four times a year for two or three nights during prime time. We still purchase time in each market on whatever channels are available to us.
In light of television’s high cost, I have been grateful we have not attempted a weekly program. Because we generate programs only intermittently, we do not require our own TV production facilities or staff. Instead, we contract with other people to oversee production and editing, using the finest technology to achieve the highest quality possible. It has been a pleasure to work with some of these people for many years. Among them is Danny Franks—internationally respected for his work with numerous major television productions—who oversees the lighting for our Crusades and television. Since 1985 we have also included closed-captioned capabilities for our hearing-impaired viewers.