William E Pannell, writing in 1968, reflecting on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 that killed Carol Denise McNair, age 11, Carole Robertson, age 14, Addie Mae Collins, age 14, and Cynthia Wesley, age 14:
I now knew that I could no longer be a standard evangelical Christian, content merely to preach a typical evangelical Gospel. This ghastly event—to be followed by so many like it—happened in the “Bible belt.” The time had come to reevaluate the Gospel in terms of its meaning and application for our times. For me, the illusion was over.
This attitude may well surprise some of my friends. But then, I must confess to disappointment when they register disappointment at my concern. “But surely,” they like to say, “you are not sympathetic to all this rioting, are you?” There seems to be a hope expressed here that at least one Negro—a friend—can be counted upon to resist this civil rights insanity, and bring some assurance that the establishment has been right all along. There was a time when some of us could do that, when some of us could understand and support the Negro whose ad appeared in a Southern newspaper declaring, “This is to inform my white friends I am not now and never have been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” But those times are over.
“But surely,” they still like to say, “you are not sympathetic to all this rioting, are you?”
Well? Are you?