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> 2004
> May/June
The New York Experiment
When Billy Graham called me to be his first African-American evangelist, I was honored—and totally unprepared for the backlash that followed.
Howard O. Jones with Edward Gilbreath
 1 of 5
I was sitting on the platform at Madison Square Garden before 18,000 New Yorkers who had come to hear Billy Graham preach. Seated with me on the stage were a dozen other pastors and civic leaders. We were all people of faith—Christians who loved the Lord. However, one thing set me apart from the other men on the platform: I am black.
There's a mixed blessing to being the first African American to realize some key achievement in the United States. It is an honor to overcome a barrier that has long kept blacks on an unequal footing with whites. But, along with the outer triumph, there is an inner ache—an angst—of having to live with the often unfriendly fallout of going where no black man has ever gone before. It's feeling that you're a living experiment, a human lab test. It's the pressure of knowing that your every word and action has the potential to make or break the hopes of millions of others who will come after you.
I was acutely aware of this pressure on that summer day in 1957. I had agreed to become the first African-American associate on Billy Graham's team of evangelists, but I had not taken a hard look at the racial ramifications of my decision. I had a call from God to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That was my priority. Soon, though, I was forced to look at the matter through the American social prism of black and white.
Back in 1957 we were just three years removed from the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that opened the doors for racial integration in the U.S., and we were still a few years away from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s rise to national prominence. It was a different world.
Today when African-American actors like Denzel Washington or Halle Berry win Academy Awards, people of all races celebrate it. Back then, when a figure like Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier in Major League baseball, he received death threats from fans and dirty looks from members of his own team.
I didn't receive death threats, but I was the recipient of plenty of dirty looks. And when news hit the street that Billy was thinking of bringing me on board, he received an alarming number of disparaging letters: "You should not have a Negro on your team," came the warnings. "You're going to ruin your ministry by adding minorities." "We may have no choice but to end our support."
For better or worse, the church has typically followed the lead of secular society when it comes to our attitudes about race. Today racial reconciliation has become an evangelical buzzword. Organizations like Promise Keepers proclaim its importance. Christian books, magazines, and musical artists denounce racism and celebrate ethnic diversity in the church. When Billy approached me to join him in New York, it was more or less understood that white Christians worshiped with white Christians and black Christians worshiped with black Christians. Our evangelical churches seemed to believe that heaven, too, would be "separate but equal." We recited the Apostle's Creed and prayed "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," but then proceeded to bow at the altar of Jim Crow.
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