Florida College
and race relations
A
little history:
1. The original campus now occupied by
Florida College was built in the 1920s as a gambling resort for rich
tycoons (including Al
Capone) from the north to vacation in Florida. It was built in beautiful
Spanish and art deco style on the banks of a swampy river, the mosquitoes
were kept in check by bats housed in large
bat-houses, which are now in disrepair. During
Prohibition and
then the
Great
Depression of the 1930s the gambling resort fell on hard times. It was
sold to the Baptist Bible Institute where a young Billy Graham attended.
2. In 1946 when the noninstrumental Churches of Christ were splitting
over whether churches could contribute to parachurch ministries (orphan
homes, missionary societies and evangelistic radio programs), it became
evident that all of the colleges associated with the a capella movement were
going to go with the majority wing. Many feared this would lead to the
Churches of Christ becoming just one more denomination instead of the One
True Church. So a board of directors was formed who
bought the campus, naming it
Florida Christian
College, and dedicating it to the children of those who believed it was
wrong for churches to contribute to parachurch institutions (thus they
called themselves "noninstitutional"). The board of directors decided they
would never accept donations from a congregation, only from individuals.
3. An
Annual Lectureship was established during Homecoming Week. It is
considered an honor to be invited to present a lecture, so Florida Christian
College began to play a central role in the
noninstitutional Churches of
Christ or "churches of Christ" (with a small 'c') as most eventually
preferred to be called.
4. In the 1960s controversy arose over the use of the designation
"Christian", since the term "Christian" is only used as a noun in the New
Testament, never as an adjective. Thus the two year school became known
simply as Florida College. (The board had also established a 1st through
12th grade school as well.)
5. The cash-strapped school went through turbulent times in the early
1970s having long bowed to a significant donor's request that no non-whites
be admitted to the college. An exception was made for basketball
scholarships, ninety percent of which were African-American males who were
totally unfamiliar with Churches of Christ (and who were very disappointed
when they found out there were no African-American women on campus).
Unfortunately Florida College was not the first or second choice for
African-American athletes, so Florida College usually ended up with
African-American basketball players who had poor grades. The white students
seldom if ever associated with the African-American athletes.
6. A female student from Africa protested the policy and it was changed to
admit non-white Americans to Florida College in the early 1970s, one of the
last colleges in the United States to admit African-American students, along
with Bob Jones
University. Since then less than one percent of Florida College students
have been
African-American, not including the athletes.
7. By the late 1970s there was a significant morale problem among
students on campus. A dean resigned due to sexual involvement with a
student. The student body seemed to be dominated by kids from the deep south
who had a social etiquette foreign to students from the mid-west and far
west.
The two annual banquets reminiscent of debutante
cotillions, and
Sadie Hawkins Day
left some students baffled. A significant portion of students had been sent to Florida College by their parents as a sort
of reform school, in hopes that their kids would straighten out. As a result
an estimated ten percent of the students were spending time in the woods smoking
marijuana, marijuana artwork finding its way into the yearbook. In response
the college board voted to eliminate athletic scholarships, and refused to
admit about two dozen students the next year who were known to not fit in.
Student morale lifted.
8. In 1996 Florida College became a four year school with a student body
around 450. (Currently there is controversy over the teaching of
Creation at Florida College, as well as
controversy over the teaching of Divorce and Remarriage. The noninstitutional churches of Christ have been in existence since about 1960
and are due for a division, according to some predictors, the house-church
movement being one such division.)
The Bigger Picture
The Restoration Movement, from the start, was concerned with the work,
worship and organization of the local congregation--not social issues. The
only social issues were personal holiness issues (part of the
Holiness Movement
started by John and Charles
Wesley in the Church of England). The Holiness Movement was continued in
the United States by the formation of the Methodist Church and the
Pentecostal Movement. Thus a 1970s rule on the Florida College campus was:
No holding hands. But no rule existed against racial discrimination.
Social issues were left to religious movements such as the
Quakers who actively participated in the
Underground Railroad to fight the abuses of slavery, and who also helped
to reform
the penal system. The
Shakers formed communal
farms where the homeless could come and work in a communal setting. The
Salvation Army worked to
stamp out alcohol abuse and to feed the poor. When the Quakers were
calling for the abolition of slavery,
Thomas and Alexander Campbell also opposed slavery (1830-1860). Having
owned a few slaves, they educated them and gradually freed them. They spoke
out and wrote against slavery, especially the abuses of slavery. But the
Restoration Movement split in 1864 between the north and the south, the
north becoming the
Christian Church, and the south becoming the Churches of Christ.
Outside the Restoration Movement the
Southern
Baptist Church was established after the Civil War in part because they
did not want to be a part of the northern Baptists (American
Baptist Churches) who opposed slavery and supported integration. As
Churches of Christ in the 1950s joined the social movement to help the poor,
there was still a significant group that saw it as a compromise of the
long-standing anti-hierarchy and anti-denominational-structure stance, thus
the split between the majority and the noninstitutional wings.
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