Earl Stallings

Earl Stallings (born March 20, 1916 in Durham, North Carolina; died February 23, 2006 in Lakeland, Florida) was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Birmingham from 1961 to 1965, leading the congregation through the climactic events of the Birmingham campaign during the Civil Rights Movement.

Stallings grew up in North Carolina and Tennessee. He dropped out of school at age sixteen to support his brothers and sisters after the death of their mother during the Great Depression. He returned to high school at age 21 and graduated two years later. He enrolled at Carson–Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, majoring in history. He went on to complete a master of theology at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Meanwhile, Stallings began preaching in 1940 as part-time student pastor of Buffalo Grove Baptist Church and Dumplin Creek Baptist Church in Jefferson City. In 1951 he became full-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Ocala, Florida. Ten years later he moved to Birmingham to become pastor of First Baptist.

While in Birmingham, Stallings took a lead role in efforts by local clergy to urge moderation as tensions mounted between Civil Rights activists and entrenched segregationists in Birmingham. In 1954, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court made its ruling against "separate but equal" accommodations in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas", First Baptist adopted a policy that none would be denied the right to worship.

In anticipation of the forced integration of public schools, Stallings co-authored "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense", which was published in newspapers statewide in January 1961. That document appealed to peaceful, democratic methods for addressing injustices and championed human equality and equal protection under the law. As the organized Birmingham Campaign of demonstrations became imminent, he and seven other religious leaders published another open letter, "A Call For Unity". That document addressed itself specifically to the city's black residents, entreating them to pursue negotiations locally rather than to join with "outsiders" seeking to defy law and order. It was that letter that Martin Luther King, Jr, arrested for "parading without a permit", responded to in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail", laying out his moral justification for peaceful demonstrations. King singled out Stallings to credit him for allowing black worshipers to be seated for Easter Sunday services.

In 1965 Stallings left to accept the call to lead First Baptist Church of Marietta, Georgia. He left there in 1977 to work for the Southern Baptist Convention's Home Mission Board in Arizona.

Stallings was married for 64 years to the former Ruth Langston McMahon. He died in 2006 and was survived by his son, Jim, and two grandchildren.

References

• Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Baton Rouge: LSU Press. ISBN 0807126551