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The SBC’s 1941 resolution on race relations is worth note. First, although there was no call to take down the structures of Jim Crow segregation, there was a call to continue to work in “parallel lines” with African Americans. It encouraged the convention to maintain good relations with African Americans. Second, it noted the uptick in the number of victims of mob violence and emphasized the necessity for law and order and the suppression of mob violence.³¹

The SBC’s acceptance – even promotion – of African American racial stigma, of African American inferiority, was a dominant current in SBC public pronouncements throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Even after the 1954 Brown decision, however, it continued in its path of denial of Christian brotherhood to African Americans (see Box 3.6).

Box 3.6

The author has organized the discussion around key historical periods. The section covering the Jim Crow era is coming to an end; the second, post the 1954 Brown decision, now starts. The theme is that, right up to 1965, there is continuing evasion of any calls for real structural change in the organization of society that protects racism and white supremacy.