Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South - Steven P. Miller Politics and Culture in Modern America

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Graham phrased this logic differently: “We have found that if you say nothing about it and just allow the colored people to sit wherever they like, therewill [sic] be no difficulties and no problems.”97 In the comparatively moderate Upper South during the immediate post-Brown years, though, actions did not necessarily speak louder than words. There, the line separating leadership through unannounced policies from a kind of moral quietism was thin indeed. In those cities, Graham would have exerted greater influence had he declared his position more openly and, by doing so, encouraged a public response from religious and civic leaders.

      Politics at the Altar

      As Graham grew more active on the race issue, he began to assume authority not just as a renowned evangelist but also as a southerner with particular knowledge about the region's populace, black and white. However, he was not yet the regional leader he would become later in the 1950s and into the following decade. His most significant southern relationships remained largely private in nature and often did not reflect his emerging views on race. What they did often indicate was the periodic disconnect between Graham as racial commentator and Graham as political intimate.

      Many times throughout his career Graham admitted a deep interest in, and attraction to, the world of politics. Were it not for his calling to the ministry, he declared in 1950, he might have chosen a career in public ser-vice.98 In practice, the evangelist never kept these vocations as far apart as his membership in the SBC, a denomination long friendly to the Establishment Clause, might have suggested. Graham evinced an almost magnetic attraction to political power. He placed a high value on access to elected officials and was willing to wield his growing ministerial credentials toward that end. Besides the sheer thrill of such access—a far from negligible factor for a product of a modest North Carolina farm and an obscure Florida Bible college—Graham possessed a desire (common to neo-evangelicals) to reestablish the cultural credentials of conservative Protestantism. He also aspired without shame to enhance the profile of his own evangelism. Graham was deeply convinced of the reciprocity between public faith and revivalism—between the piety of elected leaders and the size of crusade crowds. This conviction led him routinely to propose such Christian-friendly policies as national days of prayer. For his preferred politicians, he went a step further and offered strategic advice.

      The coolness of President Harry Truman toward Graham is usually remembered as the one exception to the evangelist's close comfort with the White House. Yet their relationship also revealed how, from an early date, the evangelist combined assertiveness with attempts at diplomacy when approaching political leaders. In 1950, Truman consented to a brief meeting with Graham and several evangelistic associates. Immediately afterward, the young ministers proceeded to recount the details to eager White House journalists, going so far as to stage a reenactment of their closing prayer with Truman.99 In doing so, they violated the custom of respecting the confidentiality of White House meetings. The breach perturbed Truman, who declined further communication with Graham during the remainder of his term.100 Seemingly unaware of the flap, Graham followed up the meeting with a letter to the president. Besides urging him to call for a “national day of repentance and prayer,” Graham touted his possible value as a confidant. “I believe I talk to more people face to face than any living man,” wrote the evangelist. “I know something of the mood, thinking, and trends in American thought…. If at any time I can be of service to you personally or to our country, please do not hesitate to call. Also, I follow political trends carefully and would be delighted at any time to advise you on my findings among the people.”101 While Graham's inflated tone revealed his political innocence, his tactlessness did entail an effort, however bungled, to push a politician's button. Graham's self-evaluation was in the process of being fulfilled. After Truman left office, the evangelist no longer needed to pitch his services.

      As Graham grew in national stature, he befriended a wide range of political movers and shakers from both parties. His early connections, though, ran deepest among southern Democrats, including Tennessee governor Frank Clement, Mississippi senator John Stennis, South Carolina representative Mendel Rivers, Virginia senator A. Willis Robertson, and Alabama representative Frank Boykin. “I had more friends in the Democratic Party than I did in the Republican Party,” Graham recalled; “being a southerner, I knew most of them.”102 The process leading to Graham's 1950 meeting with Truman began with a request from Representative Joseph Bryson of South Carolina.103 Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, a Texan, permitted Graham to hold the final service of his 1952 Washington, D.C., crusade on the steps of the Capi-tol.104 That crusade strengthened Graham ties with southern politicos, including Boykin, who threw several of his famous House Dining Room lunches for Graham during the 1950s.105

      Graham's political friends in the South ran the ideological gamut from pious moderates to staunch segregationists. Stennis clearly fell into the latter camp, as did two other friends, South Carolinians Strom Thurmond and James Byrnes. The benefits of associating with a popular figure like Graham easily overrode the complicating factor of his emerging support for desegrega-tion.106 The evangelist's self-described electoral philosophy actually paralleled that of the many ambivalent southern Democrats who grew increasingly comfortable with the thought of voting for Republican presidential candidates: “Though a registered Democrat (a sort of birthright in the part of the South where I came from), I always voted for the man and not the party.”107

      During the early 1950s, Graham's links with politicians who would soon stoke the political flames of massive resistance were tighter than his relationships with southern moderates. These connections were prominently on display during his 1950 crusade in Columbia, South Carolina, where the Graham team first employed the term “crusade” (rather than “campaign”).108 In addition to staying in Governor Strom Thurmond's mansion, Graham inspired an outbreak of civil religion in the state capital. Thurmond, less than two years removed from his presidential run as a segregationist Dixiecrat and more than a decade away from his trend-setting switch to the Republican Party, officially declared the last day of the crusade “South Carolina Revival Day” and signed a proclamation calling the event the “greatest religious gathering ever held in South Carolina—if not the South.” Thurmond and his bitter political rival, U.S. Senator Olin Johnson, posed around a Bible with Graham. In Columbia, the evangelist addressed the state general assembly and befriended conservative Time magazine publisher Henry Luce, an encounter one scholar has described as “an important event in the marriage of southern fundamentalism and northern anticommunism.” While in South Carolina, Graham found time to spend a weekend at the Spartanburg home of James Byrnes, a former secretary of state under President Truman who soon carried the segregationist banner as Thurmond's gubernatorial succes-sor.109 At a time when Graham rarely spoke about race in public, he evinced little desire to step on the toes of the southern political establishment.

      During the year of the Columbia crusade, in fact, Graham received overtures about potentially joining that establishment. Several Democratic Party officials from North Carolina approached him about challenging the state's sitting senator, former University of North Carolina president Frank Porter Graham, a childhood neighbor and friend of the evangelist's father. Byrnes surely had a hand in the offer.110 Even though the evangelist did not seriously consider entering the race, the incident offers insight into his perceived political usefulness. His suitors saw him as an alternative to the sitting senator, a prominent and well-respected southern liberal who held racial and others views purportedly out of step with the region.111 (Senator Graham would go on to lose a primary runoff that featured overt race-baiting.) One year later, in 1951, Louisville lawyer James T. Robertson (who, not coincidentally, represented evangelist Mordecai Ham) wrote to David Lawrence, the conservative editor of U.S. News and World Report, proposing the evangelist's service on behalf of an ideologically parallel cause: an effort to nominate conservative Republican Walter Judd for the presidency, with Byrnes as his running mate.112 Graham did not join that unlikely cause, although either he or an associate was undoubtedly aware of the offer. Later, the right-wing, anti-Semitic magazine American Mercury, published by Graham supporter Russell Maguire, suggested the evangelist as an ideal presidential nominee; the magazine's other recommendations included Strom Thurmond and Mississippi senator James O. Eastland.113 In 1957, an Eisenhower-supporting Democrat from

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