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Tattnall Square Baptist Church

By Saleena Hinton, Elizabeth Layman, Beth Manley, and James Pekelnicky

Synopsis of Rev. Thomas Holmes's autobiography Ashes for Breakfast

In the 1960s, Tattnall Square Baptist Church was a typical white southern Baptist church that happened to be on the campus of a Baptist university. It adhered to Baptist theology southern civil religion, and man of its members saw no contradiction between Christianity and segregation. But the church would become a flashpoint in the movement for civil rights in Macon.

Tattnall Square Baptist Church got its humble start on September 6, 1891. The Church was constituted at Mercer University, where it had been meeting for eight years. The first pastor of the church was Rev. E. W. Warren. The Church grew, and by October of 1893 Tattnallhad a “total membership of 197 with 195 in the Sunday School” (2). The church expanded in membership, added an impressive organ, and by 1916 it had nearly seven hundred members. In the 1950s, the church added an educational building to accommodate its still growing congregation of Mercer students and Macon residents.

The Civil Rights Movement would significantly reshape Tattnall Square Baptist Church. Before the Movement started, there was no need to talk about reformation, and allowing blacks to worship, and other social stigmas of the time. The Movement pitted differing minds against each other. Segregation had been the norm for more than a hundred years, and one can infer that the prospects of such a profound change into an integrated society troubled people greatly, but yet some people viewed this change as a necessary one.

Sam Oni and Tattnall Square Baptist Church
Sam Oni was Mercer’s first black student. He was a Baptist missionary convert from Ghana, and Mercer alumnus Harris Mobley recommended him for admission to Mercer. His admission caused some controversy, but it opened the way for Mercer’s voluntary integration. Mercer students did not actively oppose Sam Oni’s presence, but he was not embraced by the community either. His biggest surprise, however, was that he was denied membership in the Baptist church on campus. On his first night at Mercer, he heard a knock at the door and opened it to find pastor Clifton Forester of Tattnall Square Baptist Church (Patterson). The pastor told Sam that he would not be welcomed at the church and that he should find somewhere else to attend church (Morris).

Mercer as a whole seemed to be making progress with race relations, but it was clear that the church was not following this same idea (Redding). The pastor from Vineville Baptist, however, invited Oni and Don Baxter, his roommate, to his church, and that is where they attended (Patterson). He joined the church and became the first African American to become a member of a Southern Baptist church in Georgia (Ellerton jan. 11). He was barely voted in, but it was a much more welcome reception than he received at Tattnall Square Baptist Church (Morris).

On September 25, 1966 Sam Oni challenged the prohibition on black members at Tattnall Square. When he tried to enter the church, he was stopped by two deacons and was not allowed to enter. Mercer Police escorted him away from the church, but the church did not press any charges against him (Faculty/Staff). The following week, he returned to the church and was once again turned away. This time when he was denied entrance he went to the steps of the church and preached a small sermon in front of the video cameras that were there. This was a small act, but it still had a huge impact (Patterson). This proved to be an ironic situation as Oni was turned away from worshipping in a church with people of the same denomination that had converted him to Christianity (Dotson).

Being denied access to the church was hurtful for Oni, especially because it was the church whose missionaries had converted him. He had tried to keep an open mind at Mercer, but he was forced into an environment where segregation was a way of life (Ellerton jan. 11). For Oni, this was a sharp contrast to the understanding relationship between the white missionaries and black people in Africa. When Oni came to Mercer “he encountered four different cultures: one white, one black, one African, and one segregation” (Richardson). Even though he knew that racism would exist in America, he never knew the extent to which people would show hatred towards one another. It did not seem right to Oni that the same people that led him to his belief in Jesus could turn him away. Even though he came to Mercer hoping to show the love of God, he ended up having more of an impact than expected (Morris). He became a reverse missionary by challenging the people in America to rethink how they were acting (Dotson).

Tattnall Square Baptist Church and the Civil Rights Movement
This incident prompted Reverend Thomas J. Holmes, the pastor of Tattnall Square Baptist Church, to break his silence about the racial frustration he was experiencing. Dr. Holmes was completely averse to the actions of the members of his church. He felt that a Christian must be accepting of everyone, as it says in the Bible. His beliefs, though, were radical at the time. Holmes was criticized and ridiculed, even though he had a very reputable status as a pastor within the Macon community. The controversy began in June of 1966. Two African-American students who attended a summer program at Mercer University came to a Sunday morning service. Prior to their visit, a temporary policy had been instated allowing African-Americans to worship at the church if they wished to do so. It seemed as if this policy had been put in place with the idea that no African-American would ever actually wish to worship at their church. But on June 26, two students came to the door of Tattnall Square and were seated without incident. Two days later the deacons of the church called a meeting to discuss the incident, but no actual decision was made. Two weeks later at the next Sunday morning service, the board of deacons presented a no-seating Holmespolicy, which effectively banned black people from entering the church. The congregation voted 286 to 109 in favor of the policy. After the decision was made, the deacons then met and voted to 12 to 9 to request the resignation of Dr. Holmes, Jack Jones, and Doug Johnson. Mr. Jones was the instructor of Music at Mercer, but also was the Minister of Music for Tattnall Square Baptist Church. Mr. Johnson was a graduate of Mercer University and acted as the Associate Pastor and Minister of Students. The sequence of events was unstoppable. One decision made by the pastor to open the door of his church to all who wish to worship the same God did nothing but gain him disproval by his own congregation.

Response from the Macon community was mixed, but the majority of publicized opinion supported Reverend Holmes and his associated pastors’ resignations. The Macon Telegraph ran an article describing the Macon Ministerial Association’s support for Tattnall’s Decision. According to the article, the Association has kept silent during the battle of racial dispute in Macon’s churches. But the entire group of men who make up this Association voted unanimously to support the resolution of Tattnall Square Baptist Church. However, the Association has “spoke words of encouragement and support to the three men discharged from their positions as pastor, assistant pastor, and minister of music” (Macon Telegraph, Oct. 8, 1966). Today, this decision seems as if it is an abomination of the church itself. How could a group of ministers, from different areas of the city and different denominations all vote in support of the decision of Tattnall Square’s congregation? Most white people in the city of Macon saw this as a good decision, the right decision. The races were supposed to be kept separate for a reason, and the churches were to be the last places to be segregated.

Those opposed to the church’s decision were silent, except for a few anonymous actions. One Sunday, on October 2, 1966, the first members of the congregation to enter the church found a sign painted on a sheet stating, “Jesus love the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” (Holmes 109). The sign was placed over the church bulletin board but was taken down before the services began. The saying was also found written on the blackboards in the church’s educational building. The worshippers who did not see the sign or the words on the blackboards, however, found their Sunday Sermon to be out of the ordinary. During the middle of the service, a phone call was received threatening a bomb inside the church. Quickly afterwards the police were called in to search the building as the congregation quietly exited. The phone call came as Sam Oni attempted to enter the church’s service. But after the building was searched thoroughly, no bomb was found and about half the congregation filed back into the church to hear the rest of the sermon (Holmes 108).

But this did not matter. Reverend Holmes’s accomplishments, his duties to his congregation, his constant willingness to serve the Lord, none of it made a difference when it came to the actions of his congregation. The number of the votes was all that mattered. The board of Deacons made the recommendation to ask for his resignation, and the congregation voted 259 to 189 in favor of it. Holmes and his assistant pastors made a statement for the Macon Telegraph disclaiming their resignation. In a joint statement, they said “We can only feel sorrow at this action of the Tattnall Square Baptist Church in discharging us from our positions- not sorrow for ourselves, but sorrow that a church with such a distinguished history of Christian opportunity for the future has allowed itself to be shattered over the issue of the seating of all persons who desire to worship in our sanctuary” (Macon Telegraph, Sept. 26, 1966). Holmes added to the comment for the article that “I have committed the unpardonable sin of a Southern minister preaching integration in a Southern town.” His final rebuttal came from the book he wrote, Ashes for Breakfast. He never preached again, but he retired to a life dedicated to the morals and ideals of civil rights he felt passionately about.

The congregation continued to attend Tattnall Square, except for a few families who were in support of Reverend Holmes’ decision. One particular family, the family of Mr. Spencer B. King, Jr., left the church. In a letter he wrote in response to an article written in the April-May-June 1967 issue of Baptist Men’s Journal, he stated that his family “began the new year by joining a church in the community in which we live. It is a church with an “open door policy” in relation to the racial question.” Other families moved to different churches that supported the open door policy. There was some discussion about forming a new church of their own, but as King said in his letter, “I felt then and I feel now, positively, that the solution to the problem does not lie in organizing a new church in the Tattnall Square community. I believe much more can be accomplished by those of us who do not take the traditional attitude toward race if we will make our influence felt in existing churches where influence is needed” (King, Spencer). It seemed that the most beneficial thing they could do was to build a foundation of African-American acceptance in a church as a whole, and to influence as many people as they could.

But there were quite a few members who felt it necessary to start their own new congregation. According to an article from the Macon Telegraph, about 150 former members of Tattnall Square Baptist Church began to meet in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The group, who is in favor of the open-door policy, was denied occupation of every other church facility in Macon. The only church who would support their meeting to worship was St. Paul’s. For activities during the week, the group met for Wednesday night prayer at the Young Women’s Christian Association, where approximately 130 people signed the roll. The new worshippers of both white and African-Americans were now calling themselves The Christian Fellowship. Gary Hinebaugh, a member of this new eclectic congregation, said that “We have a wonderful group of people that would start a new church if we had a meeting place” (Macon Telegraph). As for the pastor of this church, Rev. Holmes had preached a few sermons, but refused to take over the operation.

In May of 1974, the lease purchased by Tattnall Square Baptist church ran out. The land that the church was located on was owned by Mercer University, who had leased the land to the church many years before. But the University, who had lost support of the church after their decision to ask Rev. Holmes to resign, chose not to renew the lease. In turn, Tattnall Square Baptist Church had no choice but to relocate to another building. The church sold their buildings to the school for $100,000. After denying African-American Mercer students in their doors, the church had lost respect for all of those within the Mercer community. In the churches original charter, it was stated that its purpose was to provide for the spiritual needs of the students of Mercer University.

Works Cited