In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

10 Marshall Keeble’s Grandsons Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. —Psalm 127:4–5 Marshall Keeble’s extraordinary talents and captivating personality not only gave birth to a host of spiritual sons who preached throughout the South, but they in turn sired spiritual grandsons who carried forward the pure Gospel across the land. Keeble molded the lives of scores of young men who matriculated at the Nashville Christian Institute, a K–12 school for black youth. Significantly, while most of Keeble’s grandsons readily imbibed his theologically rigid doctrine of exclusivism, as children of a different era they uniformly rejected his social and racial accommodationism. By this Keeble’s grandsons distinguished themselves from his sons, a contrast that emerged even in their time of training. A culture of racism coupled with the attendant economic difficulties it imposed made it difficult to establish stable educational institutions for African Americans in the South. In 1920, when the white superintendent of the Southern Practical Institute in Nashville,Tennessee, a school for blacks, required that black students enter the building through the back door, the black leader G. P. Bowser protested the practice and the white trustees summarily closed the school. African American leaders in Churches of Christ soon surfaced plans to create a “Nashville Christian Institute” to educate young blacks. Samuel Robert Cassius, a black minister who had earlier attempted to build such a school in Oklahoma, served as financial representative for this dream institution.1 Black leaders in Churches of Christ wanted to lift up their people, but they lacked sufficient financial power, so not until 1939 when white benefactors stepped forward did the Nashville Christian Institute (NCI) materialize. 156 / chapter 10 Shortly after the establishment of the Nashville school, Marshall Keeble assumed the role of president. He continued his primary work as a traveling evangelist, but also took on fundraising and recruiting responsibilities for the NCI, showcasing students who displayed impressive biblical knowledge and exceptional speaking ability before white and black audiences in the South. Keeble and these spiritual grandsons crisscrossed southern states, preaching, soliciting support, and gathering funds for the new school. Although “Keeble and his boys” collected the gifts, the white-dominated board controlled both the money and the curriculum.2 The launching of the Nashville Christian Institute stirred a degree of controversy, however, as some white residents in Nashville refused to give the school a cordial welcome. Resistance arose largely due to the school’s proposed location as white members of the nearby Twelfth Avenue Church of Christ feared that their congregation “would be crippled in a short time because of the loss of much of our present membership and the hostility of the public to the Church of Christ (white or colored) if this Negro school were established.” In spite of these objections the school opened in 1939, and by 1944 A. M. Burton, as chairman of the board of directors, announced that the board had accumulated $60,000 to buy a “more suitable building.” They also wanted to purchase a thousand-acre tract of land in nearby Sumner County to “promote an agricultural project along with the Bible-school work, but the white citizens near that community protested its location, held mass-meetings, and gave it much unfavorable publicity.” The recalcitrance of these whites forced the board to settle for placing the institution in northwest Nashville in “an old discarded city school.”3 That same year Burton suggested that a two-week Bible training course also be offered periodically for working African American preachers. In the inaugural short course, forty black preachers from six southern states gathered on the NCI campus to receive instruction from white leaders such as B. C. Goodpasture, A. C. Pullias, J. Roy Vaughan, S. H. Hall, H. Leo Boles, and others. In addition to these men who taught biblical study courses, Burton specifically singled out Mrs. Lambert Campbell, who “taught public speaking, and she is as near perfect as any teacher can be. Sister Campbell (white) gives her services to the school.” In appreciation for her work, the NCI board offered Mrs. Campbell a one-hundred-dollar gift, but she re- marshall keeble’s grandsons / 157 fused, asking that it be given “back to the school to start a fund for those to draw on who are not able to pay their way...

Share