Test for Carter in His Backyard

Jimmy Carter's first real post-election test has come in, of all places, his home town of Plains. There, at his country-plain, white Baptist church--a setting all the more dramatic because of its small scale--he had to resolve a controversy that threatened to tarnish his Presidency before it began. The issue: whether blacks would be permitted to join the church. After a membership meeting last Sunday, equality--and Jimmy--emerged as winners; the congregation voted to end race restrictions.

The church-membership drama erupted unexpectedly in the closing days of the campaign. The week before the election, a flamboyant black minister, the Rev. Clennon King, 60, decided to test church policy. Apparently after hearing that Carter said he presumed blacks were eligible for membership, King informed the church that he would apply on Sunday, Oct. 31. He also told the press. Come Sunday, he traveled the 30 miles from his home town of Albany, Ga. (pop. 80,000), only to find the church door locked, services suspended, and the minister, the Rev. Bruce Edwards, awaiting him outside. As the TV cameras rolled, Edwards told King that the church deacons had decided to uphold a 1965 resolution prohibiting "Negroes and civil rights agitators" from joining the church. Edwards himself had spoken out against the anti-black policy. (Carter left the board of deacons when he became Governor.)

Pro-Carter blacks charged that the episode was a campaign ploy. There was no evidence of that, though Ford's campaign committee sent telegrams about the incident to 400 black clergymen. But King has a reputation for antics. When he ran for the Albany city council, he distributed a poster showing him sticking out his tongue and waving his fingers near his ears. The caption: "You've tried everything else. Now try a crazy nigger." His brother C.B. King, an attorney, assured a Carter rally that Clennon was "emotionally and mentally disturbed."

No Heaven. Carter was scarcely hurt by the affair at the polls. But on the Sunday after the election, King reappeared. He entered the church Sunday-school class without interference. After making a few rejoinders to the deacon who was instructing the group, King was accosted by a churchgoer with a CARTER FOR PRESIDENT button who declared: "There are people who say 'I'm not sure I want to go to heaven because there are niggers up there, and that won't be no heaven.' " About 15 minutes after entering, King was escorted out of the building. With the door again closed to him, King proceeded to deliver his own sermon on the church steps.

Whatever King's motives, his stunt rapidly became a politically and emotionally charged issue. Tensions rose among the Plainsmen--and between them and reporters and other outsiders who flocked to the town to observe the events at Jimmy Carter's church. One deacon complained to a reporter: "We don't feel like swapping a church for a President. You have made our Sunday into a spectacle." Another deacon, Carter's cousin Hugh, a state senator, told reporters: "We are trying to work out a solution that will keep our church and our community from disintegrating."

No one could feel the tension more directly than the President-elect. He had fought segregation within the congregation, but he was reluctant to quit the church in which he had worshiped all his life. Just before the election, he insisted: "I can't resign from the human race because there's discrimination, and I don't intend to resign from my own church because there's discrimination." But Georgia Congressman Andrew Young, Carter's closest black adviser, said that if Clennon King were not attempting to integrate the church, "I would have to try."

On Sunday, while hundreds of reporters and tourists huddled in the cold ram outside, the church membership wrestled with the issue behind closed doors. After two hours and 45 minutes, Carter came out smiling. The church had voted, 120-66, to end discrimination; a committee would be set up to judge the "sincerity" of anyone wishing to join. Carter, who said he was proud of his church, played down his own role. Said he: "I was just one of the members." Clennon King exulted that the decision "vindicates the people of Plains." He added that he would be back next Sunday to test the new policy.

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