c. 1999 Religion News Service

ABILENE, TEXAS _ As a younger man, the doors of Abilene Christian University were”flat shut”to Atlanta judge Andrew J. Hairston.

But the doors once closed because Hairston is African-American opened wide to the chief judge of the City Court of Atlanta during a historic conference on race relations among members of the 1.8-million-member Churches of Christ. Among the most significant outcomes of the late October meeting: a pledge from Abilene Christian to officially apologize for its past discrimination in admissions.

Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, is one of more than 10 institutions of higher learning affiliated with Churches of Christ.

A silent span of 31 years separates the Abilene event from the last national church gathering to discuss race. That meeting was in Atlanta in June 1968. Andrew Hairston was there, too.

Minister then, as now, of the Simpson Church of Christ in Atlanta, Hairston was one of two keynote speakers to kick off the two-day meeting in Abilene. It was attended by 38 ministers and lay people, including prominent African-American church leaders and white school officials.

The treatment of Hairston by the Texas school contrasted sharply with the experience of Don Williams, the other keynoter. Williams, chairman of the Trammell Crow Company, a Dallas-based commercial real estate company, is a 1963 graduate of the school.

Hairston could not even get into the university because its admissions policy excluded blacks at the time. In 1955, he got a B.A. from Southwestern Christian College, a historically black institution of the Churches of Christ, in Terrell, Texas. Abilene Christian did not admit African-Americans to all of its programs until 1965.

Williams, a white Abilene Christian trustee, addressed other tensions in the church’s educational community, describing relations between Southwestern Christian and Abilene Christian as a”porcupine dance.” Hairston spoke frankly about the pain of racial discrimination in the Churches of Christ. Though he had listened devotedly to the church’s nationally broadcast”Herald of Truth”programs earlier in his career, Hairston knew his voice would not be heard on the show at that time. The speakers were white. Whatever his skills or reputation as a preacher, he was black.

Speaking after the meeting, Abilene Christian’s President Royce Money listed”more collaborative work”between the two Texas Churches of Christ schools among several outcomes of the conference. Money, who is white, also said that he would be working on a”public apology”for the university’s prior policy toward the admission of African-Americans.

Participants in the conference said the meeting served as a bridge between black and white groups that they hope will serve as a basis for future discussion. Most of the sessions were held behind closed doors because they had been promised opportunities to speak with total frankness.

Joe Thurgood, an African-American church elder from Santa Fe, N.M., said that the meetings had deepened relationships.”Relationship is what we don’t have,”he said, referring to the black and white churches in the movement.

Darrell Wesley, an African-American minister in Groton, Conn., said he was deeply touched by the”humble attitudes”of the participants.

Hairston believes that the Abilene meeting marked progress from the 1968 Atlanta meeting because it resulted in plans for a formal apology and the creation of a committee to continue the discussion. Those actions, he said, gave him greater expectations about the future of race relations in the fellowship of churches.”Not just a ray, but a light of hope,”he said.

DEA END PARKS