This Is a Complete Transcript of the Oral History Interview with Lemuel Simpson Tucker (CN 366, T1) for the Billy Graham Center Archives
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This is a complete transcript of the oral history interview with Lemuel Simpson Tucker (CN 366, T1) for the Billy Graham Center Archives. No spoken words that were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case [unclear] was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as “ah” or “um” are usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English. Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker. Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence. ( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker. [ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber. This transcript was created by Christian Sawyer and Jeffrey Dennison and was completed in May 2003. Please note: This oral history interview expresses the personal memories and opinions of the interviewee and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Billy Graham Center Archives or Wheaton College. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 366, T1 Transcript - Page 2 Collection 366, Tape 1. Oral history interview with Lemuel Simpson Tucker by Paul Ericksen on June 18, 1987. ERICKSEN: This is an oral history interview with Lemuel Simpson Tucker by Paul Ericksen for the Missionary Sources collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place at the Voice of Calvary offices in Jackson, Mississippi on Thursday, June 18, 1987 at 3:15 P.M. [pauses] I=d like to start, Lem, by just finding out a little bit about your background. Can you tell me when and where you were born? TUCKER: February 17, 1952, Norfolk Community Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. I was the second child of my parents, who were schoolteachers. And there are just two in our family, two children in our family. And I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia all the same years in basically the same house. I graduated from high school having lived in the same house and then I went to the college of William and Mary which is just right up the road, fifty miles from my house. And then from there, [unclear] Philly [?], came to grow in Christ, graduated in >74 and then went to seminary [Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia] for three years in >77 and met John Perkins and then came back...came to Jackson, Mississippi at that point. ERICKSEN: Could you describe the religious environment of your home when you were growing up? TUCKER: I guess traditionally Christian or religious. That...there was certainly a place for religion and church, and my parents followed that dutifully. One of the problems you have, I think, in the black community is have...of having a lot of people who may be Christian, but very untaught. And I contrast that a lot of times with they also may be religious and unsaved. But I think that in my home that it was more Christian and untaught. It=s still almost the same risk factor. So I grew up and remember my parents taking me to church all the time and saying [person talks loudly in background], AWe want you to go so that as you grow up and get older that you=ll have a real habit of going to church.” And so even when I went away to college, I saw that my need to go to church was still there even though I always relish getting away from the church finally. But then I still had a habit of going, and so.... Then when I went to college, the pursuit of a good church to go to on Sunday morning is what the Lord used to lead me to the right church where I really was under some good teaching that thus helped me understand how to match my...what were some of my inclinations with a Biblical perspective which was trying to grapple with some of the deep problems of society, then understanding that there was indeed a Biblical response that could be made to that. And that was news to me. ERICKSEN: Is that what you...when you say...you refer to your implica...or your inclinations? TUCKER: Inclinations. Yeah, I think a conscious and semi-conscious thought of my whole life has been: Why is there racism? Why is there poverty? Is there something that I need to be doing about this? Yeah, do you go out and get a government job and solve the problem? Or is the way the government is trying to do it just one solution of which there are many? [Voice in background] But now at a position to see that it=s only the way the church can do it and does do it is the real...only solution to a...the problems that we see facing our society. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 366, T1 Transcript - Page 3 ERICKSEN: What kind of church was it that all...that this happened in? TUCKER: Well, you mean in college? It was more not...I guess not so much what kind as much as the circumstances surrounding it. It was...the kind of church it was, it was an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But what actually happened was that the minister who came to start the church had just gotten in the year before from seminary, so he had basically nothing to do. So he took me and one or two other guys under his wing and just really spent time discipling us. And it gave me some real tools for looking at the Bible, but also a real hunger for the deeper things of God. It=s that...that was I guess more the significance of the church than what kind of church. I mean it was an Evangelical church. That...that was important. ERICKSEN: What kind of experience of racism had you had as you were growing up? TUCKER: The, I guess, more blanket kind [of racism] you see every day as you put two and two together like watching television, wondering, AWhy there are no black people on television because, after all, those were all American kids, all American situations there? Why there are no white people that live in my community? Why was it that every time it seemed like I was looking at where black people were it was so poor and not like all the nice things that I ever saw in the white community?” I can remember things told me by my parents in their rearing that were racial. I can remember in my younger days with my mother really going...right in the final days of going to back of the bus sometimes riding the bus. Just being told many times, AWell, we can=t go there.” Like a library or something. AWe can=t go there because I heard that somebody...a black person was.... I heard that a colored man got killed trying to go to that place.” And then just growing up, being on my own some, it=d be times where in public there=d be an affront maybe physical, maybe just verbally. Being told I wasn=t welcome in a church or.... I remember one time I had a best friend, you know, who was...who was a white guy who was engaged to a white girl who had a sister. That one time my best friend who happened to have his fiancée with him and her sister said, ALet=s go out and get something to eat.” So it looked like a double date. And that time I guess it was truck drivers that started throwing stuff at us in the restaurant trying to provoke a fight. And so we decided to just leave and then they jumped in the car and followed us, and then just through the Lord=s Prayer or however, they just stopped...just decided to stop following us, but they were chasing us at first. And so it=d be a few other things, but those would be just particular incidences. I...I...I suppose there might be some incidences in my own mind of just how the exclusion of black history and how, in my own reading of that, really seeing that the record of history has been very deliberately miswritten (Is that a word?), inappropriately, inadequately written. And so those would be things and more that have impacted me to say, AThere=s a problem in this world.” ERICKSEN: How did you respond inside to those kinds of things? TUCKER: A variety of ways.... Hold on one second. I can.... [Recording is stopped and restarted] I...I was looking at your head, Paul, and I saw behind it a book that...a copy of a book I=ve been looking for, but it=s called The Five Negro Presidents. It=s a little, teeny book that=s written by J.A. Rogers, a fascinating black scholar who was doing most of his research at the turn of the century, but has basically been ignored because the stuff he says is so heavy, but it=s so scholarly that you can=t argue with it.