Pr. Robert Graetz+

Every American learns about Mrs. Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as maybe a few other instrumental figures in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, but how many individuals learn about Pr. Robert Graetz? People should know about him, too, especially Lutheran Christians.

I first met him in the fall of 1986, when I was completing my third year of seminary education as a vicar at Emanuel Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Ohio, and he was a Lutheran pastor just down Rt. 33 in Logan. As a part of that year-long experience in practical theology, my supervising pastor and I attended the monthly meetings of the local ministerium. Those meetings included a nice lunch, so I  especially looked forward to them. On a few of those occasions, I sat next to or across from Pr. Graetz. I remember him as a kind person with a gentle spirit. You could tell that he had been a minister for a long time, that he had been around the block more than twice.

Funny thing is, while I remember meeting him and having conversations with him, I do not recall him ever talking about his early ministry. That year, 1986, he was named “Alumnus of the Year” by Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, but I did not attend that ceremony, where Pr. Graetz’s early years of ministry would have surely been acknowledged and celebrated. I only learned about that period of his life when years later I read Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988). Branch refers to Pr. Graetz at several important points in that narrative.

In 1955, upon completion of his education at Trinity Seminary, Pr. Graetz was assigned to be the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Montgomery, Alabama. He, his wife, and their two young children headed south. Pr. Graetz was filling the pastoral position that Pr. Nelson Trout had recently vacated. (Pr. Trout who later became the first black Lutheran bishop in the Western Hemisphere, was surprised that a white pastor would be assigned to Trinity congregation and that he and his family would be living in the newly built parsonage in that black neighborhood.)

According to Branch, “The Graetzes discovered instantly that the social effects of the new location were severe. Previously, Montgomery whites had allowed Trinity pastors to live among them and preach to Negro Lutherans, on much the same social calculus that allowed doctors to visit a brothel in a medical emergency. Now that they were living in the brothel, however, the Graetzes forfeited their modicum of acceptability. Local whites shunned them everywhere from the laundromat to the supermarket….” (126). Some black people in the congregation also were critical of Pr. Graetz. A few even stated publicly that they did not need a white person to tell them how to practice Christianity.

Pr. Graetz did find support from another pastor in that city, one Dr. Martin L. King. “Graetz found King easily approachable, always supportive of him in his difficulties as a racially isolated newcomer and curious about the details” (Branch, 127).

Later that same year, Pr. Graetz and his wife Jeannie worked to support the Montgomery bus boycott, and he was the only active white leader in the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). He was the lone white pastor in the crucial protest meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church, shortly after Mrs. Parks had been arrested and where Dr. King delivered one of his most famous speeches that year. Indeed, Mrs. Parks, who sometimes led N.A.A.C.P. meetings at Trinity Lutheran Church, was one of Pr. Graetz’s closest friends in the black community. 

During the boycott itself, he personally drove some of his parishioners to and from their jobs, all those many months. Still later, he undertook steps to prod the city toward integrating its public parks, playgrounds, and other city properties, and he continued to be involved in the MIA.

Because of these actions, he became a target of the KKK and white supremacists. On August 25, 1955, while the Graetz family was out of town, a few sticks of dynamite exploded in their front yard, blowing out many windows up and down the street. As a part of that police investigation, some of Pr. Graetz’s personal property and letters were removed from his study, and he himself was so rudely interrogated by the investigators that his young son blurted out, “Go away, you bad policemen!” (Branch, 191). The mayor even went so far as to accuse Pr. Graetz of setting off the dynamite himself, as a publicity stunt.

In response to that bombing, Dr. King sent his first letter of protest to President Eisenhower, stating that Montgomery Negroes were living “without protection of law.” Other churches and clergy homes were also bombed in Montgomery, e.g., the church and home of Pr. Ralph Abernathy. In January 1957, the Graetz home was bombed a second time. That was the year that a photograph of Pr. Graetz, Dr. Abernathy, and Dr. King was published on the front page of the New York Times.

Pr. Graetz died this past Sunday at the age of 92. According to the NYT obituary, during those years of civil protest and conflict, he found solace in Psalm 27, which includes the verse, “Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.”

He later wrote in his memoir, “We feel God has given us the unique privilege of standing with one foot in the black community and one foot in the white. It may not be comfortable, but that is where we are. And until God tells us it is time to slow down, we intend to keep pressing ahead with our witness.”

May this servant of the Lord rest in God's peace, and may his witness continue to have a positive impact in both church and society today.

To read his full obituary, which has an interesting if brief video embedded in it, go here.