Missionary Evelyn Holiday and Her Connection to F.F. Bosworth

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Author, F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind "Christ the Healer"
Copyright (c) 2019

#FFBosworth
#ChristTheHealer

Evelyn (Lynn) Holiday
(1924 - 2019)

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Reminder: "F.F. Bosworth History" is now on Twitter. Follow @bosworth_fred

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Because of the ministry of F.F. Bosworth, a little girl found Christ and grew up to become an influential missionary in Vietnam.

Evelyn (Lynn) Holiday (1924 -- 2019) was only 12 in 1936 when she came to Christ through Bosworth's ministry, according to her obituary published in the July/August 2019 issue of Alliance Life. The details of what transpired the day of her conversion are not presented in her obit. However, highlights of some of her achievements are provided in the brief overview of her life.

Like Bosworth, Holiday was a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). She studied at the Missionary Training Institute, which is now Nyack College in N.Y. She earned a registered nurse degree at Columbia Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa. It was that training, presumably, that enabled her to later merge medicine and prayer in her ministry.

Holiday served as a C&MA missionary in Dalat, Vietnam, which is located in southern Vietnam's Central Highlands region. Dalat, a resort town, is known as the "City of Eternal Spring." In 1968, it played a role in the famous battle known as the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.

During her time in Dalat, Holiday reportedly created a clinic that she operated for the local tribespeople. In addition to providing thousands of vaccines, it is said that she delivered more than 800 babies. Her ministry, however, came with a risk. According to Alliance Life,  she "was shot at and nearly captured by the Vietcong before she was evacuated from the country."

Holiday was one of 34 people rescued. A newspaper reported:

Thirty-four missionaries were rescued from their hilltop mission in the resort town if Dalat by U.S. forces a short time before it was over in by the Vietcong, U.S. officials said Sunday.

The missionaries, including 14 women, 11 men and 9 children, were pinned down inside the mission compound in Dalat, 135 miles northeast of Saigon, when the Vietcong attacked late Friday night. The attack on the mission, which is operated by the Christian Missionary Alliance and Overseas Crusade group coincided with another guerrilla attack on the Alluance's mission in Ban Me Thuot, 45 miles to the north, in which six missionaries were killed, one was wounded and two abducted. (State News of East Lansing, Mich. Monday, Feb. 5, 1968, p. 9)

Holiday died on Jan. 12, 2019 in Carlisle, Pa. She was 94. Her story is a reminder of how important it is for us to share the gospel with children. As Christ so beautifully stated, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14, KJV).

Bosworth understood that admonition.


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Note: My book, F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind "Christ the Healer," can be purchased here with a 25% discount. Use the discount code: bosworth25.

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Want to know more

about F.F. Bosworth?

Follow the Bosworth Matters blog!

Start here:

ffbosworth.strikingly.com

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For more information:
Visit the F.F. Bosworth page here. Questions about the research and commentary on F.F. Bosworth may be directed to Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D., via email at doctorbarnes3@gmail.com or roscoebarnes3@yahoo.com. For updates on F.F. Bosworth history, simply follow this blog or @bosworth_fred and @Roscoebarnes3 on Twitter. #ChristTheHealer #BosworthMention #BosworthMatters

City of Woodville approves 'Key to the City' for Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Chairman, Anne Moody History Project
Copyright (c) 2019

#AnneMoody
#ComingOfAgeinMississippi
#JoanTrumpauer

It's official! 

Mayor Keshia Stewart Ford will present the "Key to the City" to civil rights pioneer Joan Trumpauer Mulholland on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) in Woodville, Miss. The mayor and the Woodville Board of Aldermen approved our request for the honor at their regular meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. I attended the meeting with members of the Anne Moody History Project (AMHP), which included LaVern Taylor, Ruby Dixon, and Michelle Childres. We're all excited about this event. As one friend said, "This will be EPIC!" Thank you, Mayor Ford!

#AnneMoody #ComingOfAgeinMississippi #JoanTrumpauer #CivilRights #Mississippi #PublicHistory #BlackHistory #WomensHistory #Tougaloo #HBCU

Wilkinson honors staff for hard work and special achievements

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Chaplain, Wilkinson County Correctional Facility
Copyright (c) 2019

Human Resources Assistant Frances Griffin was named the 2019 Support Services Employee of the Year for WCCF and Region IV. She is pictured here with Deputy Warden of Programs George Castro.

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Wilkinson honors staff for hard work

and special achievements

WOODVILLE, Miss. – MTC/Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) recently honored several employees and a longtime volunteer for their work and dedicated service.

Those honored for 2019 included Human Resources Assistant Frances Griffin, who was named Support Services Employee of the Year for WCCF and Region IV. Captain Mary Groom received recognition as the Correctional Officer of the Year for WCCF, and Volunteer Chaplain John Henry received recognition as the Community Supporter of the Year for Region IV. Chaplain Roscoe Barnes III was honored as Programs Employee of the year for WCCF.

Deputy Warden of Programs George Castro said he was elated to recognize the staff and their commitment to providing professional services to those incarcerated and to the facility’s staff.

“I am so proud of you,” he said. “This honor is well deserved. We thank you for all that you do.”

The Rev. John W. Henry of Lucedale was recently named MTC's Volunteer of the Year for Region IV for 2019. In addition to Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF), Region IV includes two facilities in Mississippi and one in Florida. From left are Deputy Warden of Programs George Castro, John and his wife, Melinda Henry, and Chaplain Roscoe Barnes III.

'Discover Anne Moody' -- A New Website on the Author of 'Coming of Age in Mississippi'

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Copyright (c) 2019

#AnneMoody

I'm happy to recommend a new resource for doing research on Anne Moody. It's a fascinating website called, Discover Anne Moody, created by my friend, Shelby Driskill, who has done extensive work on the #CivilRights pioneer. Check it out!

#AnneMoody #ComingOfAgeinMississippi #DiscoverAnneMoody #CivilRights #Mississippi #TougalooCollege

Visit https://www.discoverannemoody.com/

"It was a humbling experience"

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Chaplain, Wilkinson County Correctional Facility
Copyright (c) 2019

On Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, my friends and colleagues honored me as the "Program Services Employee of the Year" for 2019 at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF). I'm pictured here with my supervisor, Deputy Warden of Programs George Castro (right). I am so grateful to WCCF for this recognition. It was a humbling experience. I serve as chaplain at WCCF, a position I've held for nearly six years.

What Jackie Robinson Had To Say About Anne Moody

His 1964 column presents a stirring message about her life and dedication to civil rights

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Chairman, Anne Moody History Project
Copyright (c) 2019

#AnneMoody
#ComingOfAgeinMississippi

This column by Jackie Robinson appeared in the Saturday,  Sept. 26, 1964 issue of the  New York Amsterdam News (page 21). It was found and recommended by Ms. Shelby Driskill.

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Although much is said about Jackie Robinson (1919 - 1972) breaking the "color barrier" when he became the first black to play in Major League Baseball, little is said or known about his work with civil rights activists like Anne Moody. Robinson was quite active in the struggle for freedom and justice, and he was a big supporter of Moody. In fact, he was the prominent person who urged her to share her story in a book. She followed his advice and wrote the classic memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968). He and Moody also traveled and worked together to raise money for a memorial to honor civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered in Mississippi.

In 1964, Robinson penned a column about Moody's life and dedication to the civil rights movement. He wrote about her courage and her sacrifice, including the fact that she could not return home because of the many threats against her life and her family. Moody was born and raised in Centreville, Miss., a small rural town in the southwest part of the state. She left Mississippi in 1964, the year she graduated from Tougaloo College. She eventually returned to her home state in 1976 to be with her dying mother. Moody spent her final years in Gloster, Miss., near her hometown. She suffered from dementia.  When she passed in 2015 at the age of 74, her sister, Adline, said she was never comfortable being back in Mississippi.

Robinson's column was published in the Sept. 26, 1964 issue of the New York Amsterdam News newspaper. It was brought to my attention by my friend and fellow Moody scholar, Shelby Driskill. She said of the column: "It's such a fascinating moment in time. His affection for her is so clear and his influence on her life so profound."

Robinson's column appears below.

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Home Plate

She Can't Go Home Again

by Jackie Robinson

"Home," someone once said, "is a place you can go to when there's nowhere else to go."

Let me tell you the story of a Mississippi girl. She is twenty-three years old. Her name is Annie and she can't go home again.

Annie is one of the displaced persons in the battle for human dignity, a fugitive who became a fugitive in the cause of freedom.

She didn't murder anyone. She didn't steal. She did nothing more immoral than to stand up in her Mississippi community and raise her voice in protest against the conditions under which she and her family and her people are forced to live. She is guilty of the crime of volunteering to work for civil rights.

In Mississippi, that is a crime. And Annie, who made the mistake of believing that the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Constitution and Civil Rights Bill apply to Mississippi, was soon made to recognize that fact.

But before she realized that the Star-Spangled Banner and Oath of Allegiance are meaningless in Mississippi, Annie protested. She protested against the fact that Government-sponsored factories offered whites jobs at sixty to seventy dollars a week -- and segregate those Negroes whom they hire. Many, many Negroes cannot get jobs in those factories. So they work for eight to ten dollars a week, interminable hours a day, caring for white peoples' home and children. Annie thought it was wrong that discrimination and segregation could be practised in a factory which, in part, owes its existence to the tax dollars of black as well as white citizens. She said so -- out loud.

Annie saw young, married couples forced to live in single houses built to accommodate one family -- as many as sixteen couples occupying such facilities because they could afford no better. She saw some of the same people fired because they had expressed the desire to vote and attempted to register to do so. She protested that too.

Early this year, Annie's uncle and three other Negroes were murdered in circumstances somewhat similar to the murders of the infamous Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner case. When their bullet-ridden bodies were gound, there was no national publicity of the kind which attended that case. Annie knows why. They were only Negroes. In Mississippi, the life of a Negro is dirt cheap. Annie knows that if Goodman and Schwerner had been Negroes as Chaney was, the country might never have known their deaths occurred.

Annie could tell that her turn was coming soon. She was threatened and harassed. A sister who resembles her was the constant object of surveillance and veiled threats. Right now, Annie knows that the rest of her family, back home, is still subjected to the nerve-wracking business if hate-filled looks and words, the knowledge that any one of them could be mysteriously struck down -- or could mysteriously disappear. What's worse -- from past experience -- they all know that the Government, state or federal, would do nothing about it. For all they know, law enforcement officers -- white -- could be involved in helping the murderers or assailants. It has happened before. And when it happened, people like former Attorney General Robert Kennedy have told the country the national government has no jurisdiction.

Annie can't understand that. She can't understand how they can free Klansmen who shoot down a Negro colonel. She can't understand how, despite the President's recent statement that arrests were imminent in the Meridian murders, nothing has happened. Annie understands one thing. She can't go home again. Actually, since Mississippi is her home, Annie has no home.

There are too many Annies in this land where the free and brave cannot be safe. Perhaps, some day, the American people will rise up and demand that their Government do something about it besides pass civil rights bills and mouth pretty words. Maybe!

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Want to know MORE about Anne Moody?

Visit here to see the timeline of important

events in her life history!

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For more information: 
See the Anne Moody page here. Questions about the Anne Moody History Project may be directed to Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D. via email at doctorbarnes3@gmail.com or roscoebarnes3@yahoo.com. For updates on Anne Moody history and the on-going work of this community service project, simply follow this blog or follow AMHP on Twitter (@AnneMoodyHP). #ComingOfAgeinMississippi

ON THIS DAY (August 21): F.F. Bosworth Pens Letter about His Beating

He was brutally assaulted for preaching to a black audience near Hearne, Texas

By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD

Author, F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind “Christ the Healer”

Copyright © 2019

#FFBosworth

#ChristTheHealer

#BosworthMatters

Elias Birdsall (left) and F.F. Bosworth
outside home in Dallas, Texas.

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Reminder: "F.F. Bosworth History" is now on Twitter. Follow @bosworth_fred

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On Aug. 21, 1911, F.F. Bosworth wrote a letter about a beating he endured because of his ministry to blacks at a camp meeting near Hearne, Texas. In the letter, which he addressed to his mother, he described the assault as a “mobbing” that left him with a fractured wrist and bruises on his back. The men, all white, reportedly struck him with wooden clubs. Bosworth said his “flesh was mashed to the bone on my back down nearly to my knees.”

The mob, which consisted of 25 men, had urged him and his friend to leave town. One of the men had a revolver and seemed determined to shoot Bosworth and his friend. He said they “cursed us for coming there as they said to put them on a level with the d-niggers.” While Bosworth was standing outside the depot and waiting for his train to Dallas, the men attacked him. He wrote:

[A] larger mob of about 25 took me from the depot and knocked me down and pounded me with heavy hardwood clubs with all their power, cursing and declaring that I would never preach again when they were through with me. As they pounded me with these heavy clubs (made from the oar of a boat), I offered no resistance, but committed myself to God and asked him not to let the blows break my spine.

God stood wonderfully by me and no bones were broken except a slight fracture in my left wrist. When they left off pounding me with the clubs as I got up others of the mob who had no clubs knocked me down hitting me in the head with their fists. I was knocked down several times but was not for a moment unconscious, which was miracle of God’s care.

When the beating subsided, Bosworth stood and grabbed his “heavy suitcase.” He began a nine-mile walk to Calvert, praying along the way. He said God gave him strength. During his walk, he prayed for the men who assaulted him.

Bosworth’s letter appeared in the Summer 1986 issue of A/G Heritage magazine. The magazine’s editor noted:

Persecution in the early years of the Pentecostal movement was common. F.F. Bosworth’s descriptive letter to his mother, a copy of which was donated to the Archives by his son Bob, is reprinted here. The two mobs which attacked him did so because he ministered at a black church camp meeting near Hearne, Texas. Bosworth founded what is now First Assembly in Dallas. Earlier he had been associated with John Alexander Dowie and Zion City, Illinois.

#OnThisDay #OTD #ThisDayInHistory #ThisDayInFFBosworthHistory #Pentecostal #Revival #AssembliesOfGod #HearneTexas #ChurchHistory #PublicHistory #CFNI #ORU #BosworthMention

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Note: My book, F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind "Christ the Healer," can be purchased here with a 25% discount. Use the discount code: bosworth25.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Want to know more

about F.F. Bosworth?

Follow the Bosworth Matters blog!

Start here:

ffbosworth.strikingly.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information:

Visit the F.F. Bosworth page here. Questions about the research and commentary on F.F. Bosworth may be directed to Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D., via email at doctorbarnes3@gmail.com or roscoebarnes3@yahoo.com. For updates on F.F. Bosworth history, simply follow this blog or @bosworth_fred and @Roscoebarnes3 on Twitter. #ChristTheHealer #BosworthMention #BosworthMatters