Perseverance

One spring night in 1921 the angry torches of 10,000 white mobsters set fire to Tulsa's Negro district. The flames roared through the tinderbox houses, completely destroyed the new $92,000 Mount Zion Baptist Church (Negro). It had taken Mount Zion's 600 members seven years to finance and build their first church. All that remained were charred walls and a $50,000 mortgage.

There was an out: the congregation could go into bankruptcy, default on the debt and start over. But they decided to pay. First, money was raised for a brick, dirt-floored, basement; it would be the foundation of a new church building, and could serve as a meeting place meanwhile. Then the congregation settled down to collecting the $50,000. It took 21 years--until Nov. 23, 1942. Pulpit-filling (236 Ibs.) Rev. J. H. Dotson promptly started a building fund, installed three small boxes near the door for contributions.

The plan worked well. Last week the first buff bricks of a new Mount Zion Baptist Church were laid. By June all the brick work will be finished, and the congregation will move from the basement into an auditorium seating 856. After that, bit by bit, still paying as they go, Mount Zion's members will complete their $150,000 building, a monument to patient perseverance--and a quietly Christian rebuke to racial intolerance.

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