Bro. Lawrence Brooks Hays, 33˚, was among the most prominent Freemasons in twentieth century Arkansas. As a religious, civic, and political leader, Hays was one of the very few laymen to serve as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was also among the state’s most influential members of the United States Congress after World War II. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1943 to 1959 representing Central Arkansas. While Hays typically referred to himself as a politician, his wife thought the label that best described him was Arkansas Social Worker.
Brooks Hays was born on August 9, 1898, in the riverport town of London (now adjacent to Lake Maumelle) in Pope County, at the base of the Ozark Plateau. His parents, Steele and Sallie Butler Hays, were schoolteachers. His father later became a prominent attorney-at-law. When Brooks was a child, the Hays moved a few miles downriver to the rapidly growing railroad town of Russellville. The Hays’ Russellville home was just off the town square so, Brooks’ early life mostly consisted of attending the local Baptist Church, going to public school, and watching his father try cases in the Pope County Courthouse and participate in local Democratic Party politics. Indeed, the Southern Baptist Church, the Democratic Party, and public education were the three institutions to which Hays held lifelong allegiance and devotion. Hays attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville from 1915 to 1919.
He pledged Sigma Chi Fraternity and joined many other campus organizations. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts. On an evening stroll across the grounds in front of Old Main during college, Hays met the love of his life, Marion Prather. They married on February 2, 1922. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The summer after his junior year in college, Hays was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and received military training at Camp Pike in Pulaski County but, was discharged after the Great War’s 1918 armistice.
Returning home after graduation, Hays successfully petitioned Russellville Lodge No. 274, F.& A.M. of Arkansas. Hays was initiated an Entered Apprentice on January 29, 1920, passed to the degree of Fellowcraft on March 11, 1920, and raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason on April 10, 1920. He remained in good standing until the end of his life. That fall, Hays moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. at night while working full time for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, graduating in 1922.
Hays returned to Arkansas and passed the Bar Exam, joining his father’s law practice. In 1925, Hays secured an appointment as assistant state attorney general and moved downriver to the state capital of Little Rock. Thereafter, Hays became a prominent civic leader in the Little Rock community, joining the Lion’s Club and the Urban League, where he held officer positions in both organizations.
That year, he continued his masonic journey in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, Mother Council of the World. In the Valley of Little Rock’s annual Spring Reunion, on May 11, 1925, Hays received the 4˚-14˚ Ineffable Degrees in the Acacia Lodge of Perfection. The next day on May 12, 1925, in Excelsior Chapter of Rose Croix, he received the 15˚-18˚ historical and religious degrees. On the following day, May 13, 1925, he received the philosophical and chivalric degrees, 19˚-30˚, in Godfrey de St. Omer Council of Kadosh. That evening, in Arkansas Consistory, Hays received the 31˚ and 32˚ ceremonial and official degrees.
During the Great Depression, Hays became a leading layman of the Southern Baptist Church. In downtown Little Rock’s Second Baptist Church, on Scott Street just across the street from the Albert Pike Memorial Temple, he led a Sunday School that became famous as the “Brooks Hays Class,” attracting hundreds of Protestant men from congregations across Arkansas. On Sunday mornings after Scottish Rite Reunions, many of Hays’ Masonic brethren that stayed at the Albert Pike Hotel trotted down Scott Street to join Hays’ class and attend services at Second Baptist. Hays was ultimately elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention for consecutive terms in 1957 and 1958, at the time the largest Protestant denomination in America. Today, Second Baptist Church of Little Rock annually bestows the Brooks Hays Award to an Arkansas citizen who best exemplifies his life and work.
Hays began his electoral political career when he ran for and lost two consecutive close races for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1928 and 1930, then tantamount to victory in the general election. Hays unsuccessfully tried to become Arkansas’ youngest governor, a record currently held by Governor William Jefferson Clinton (Order of DeMolay: Master Councilor, Chevalier, & Legion of Honor), who first served at age 32 in 1979. In 1932, Hays became a Democratic National Committeeman, then a prestigious statewide elected position. In 1933, Hays sought a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Fifth Congressional District in a special election after the appointment of U.S. Representative and Bro. Hiram Heartsill Ragon (Franklin Lodge No. 9, F.&A.M. of Arkansas) of Clarksville to the Federal Judiciary. Winning a plurality of votes in the runoff election, Hays’ victory was stolen after skullduggery committed in Yell County ensured the victory of his opponent, Bro. David D. Terry (Western Star Lodge No. 2, F.& A.M. of Arkansas). After Hays lost a legal protest in Federal Court, U.S. President and Bro. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32˚ (Holland Lodge No. 8, F.& A.M. of New York; A.A.S.R., Valley of Albany, N.M.J.) appointed Hays as legal counsel to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s New Deal program known as Farm Security. In this capacity, Hays often represented impoverished sharecroppers in the Delta and worked in other labor and welfare issues.
In 1942, Hays was finally elected to the U.S. Congress, representing Central Arkansas. His first notable work was an inspection tour of Allied-held territory in Europe after the successful Normandy landings on D-Day in 1944. In the U.S. Congress, Hays quickly became a leading Democratic legislator. He co-sponsored the G.I. Bill of Rights and was also the House sponsor for the International Exchange Program created by Democratic U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright. Hays also served as a initial delegate to the United Nations and became a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
For his faithful service to the Scottish Rite, Hays was invested a Knight Commander Court of Honor. He was elected to the K.C.C.H. at the Valley of Little Rock on October 16, 1945. He was bestowed his prestigious red cap at a ceremony at the Albert Pike Memorial Temple on October 26, 1945.
As the Civil Rights Movement emerged in the postwar period, Hays articulated the political ideology known as “Southern Moderation.” In 1948, he introduced the ill-fated Arkansas Plan as a legislative package designed to find a compromise to the increasingly heated civil rights debates that threatened to divide the Democratic Party. The plan sought to provide basic guarantees to alleviate discrimination in voting and prosecute lynch mobs. The plan, however, did not challenge segregation. He also served on the platform committees at the 1952 and 1956 Democratic National Conventions, co-authoring weak and ineffective civil rights planks. Hays’s efforts to find a solution to the controversy satisfied neither civil rights activists nor intransigent segregationists. He voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first of its kind since Reconstruction. He formally denounced the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which required the desegregation of public schools, when he signed the 1956 Southern Manifesto. He later admitted that his endorsement was a mistake. Hays’ book A Southern Moderate Speaks (1959) argued that the improvement of southern race relations would best be achieved through Christian churches. Nonetheless, leaders in the Civil Rights Movement believed that his methods only prolonged Jim Crow. Hays, however, was instrumental in breaking down racial and denominational barriers in southern religious life. He helped initiate steps toward desegregation of the Southern Baptist Church. He later served as a missionary to the Zulu in South Africa during Apartheid. Internationally renowned as “Mr. Baptist,” Hays became the first Southern Baptist leader to hold audience with the pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council (circa 1962-1965). At this first formal meeting between these historically antagonistic denominations, Pope John XXIII cordially welcomed the prominent Baptist Freemason Hays with the quip, “I’m a Baptist too!”
The crucible of Hays’ political career was the Little Rock Central High School Desegregation Crisis of 1957-1958. On September 25, 1957, the entire world’s attention focused upon Arkansas’ capital city, as television images broadcast the searing images of the Little Rock Nine being denied entrance into Central High School. In response, Hays arranged the conference between Republican U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Arkansas Democratic Governor Orval Faubus at Newport, Rhode Island. The meeting ultimately failed, however, after Faubus reneged on his personal promise to Ike and Hays to use the Arkansas National Guard to keep the peace and allow the Little Rock Nine to matriculate at the school. Hays’ efforts to mediate between State and Federal officials proved detrimental to his career. In his 1958 re-election bid, Hays was defeated by the Little Rock ophthalmologist Dale Alford, a militant segregationist running as an independent, in a ten-day write-in campaign in the general election. Alford used legally questionable stickers attached to ballots, as well as other irregularities, to achieve this major upset.
Because of his failed efforts to both find a peaceable solution and save the Little Rock Public School System, Hays received numerous late-night telephone death threats directed toward both he and his family. He and his wife were snubbed by polite Little Rock society. Lifelong friends refused to shake his hand, be seen in public alongside him, or quickly crossed the street to avoid speaking with him. Amidst this climate of hysteria, the Scottish Rite honored Hays for his dedicated leadership of his community, his religion, and his Masonry. Hays was bestowed with the white cap of a 33˚, Inspector General Honorary. Ill. Bro. Hays was elected to the 33˚ and last degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry on October 22, 1957. He received his white cap at a ceremony at the Albert Pike Memorial Temple on December 7, 1957. When Hays returned to work in Washington, D.C. for his last session of Congress, his name was signed into the vaunted book at the House of the Temple on January 8, 1958.
After his congressional defeat, Hays accepted a series of presidential appointments, first to the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority under Eisenhower, then as Undersecretary of State for Congressional Affairs and Special Assistant to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bro. Lyndon Johnson (E.A., Johnson City Lodge No. 561, A.F. & A.M. of Texas). Hays tried a comeback in 1966, unsuccessfully running a third time for Arkansas governor. In 1968, Hays joined Wake Forest University to direct the newly established Ecumenical Institute, designed to facilitate Christian dialogue between Protestants and Catholics. The North Carolina Democratic Party then recruited Hays for an uphill congressional race in 1972, where he lost handily but maintained the party’s presence in the increasingly Republican district. He continued an active public life as a writer and lecturer. Hays also founded the Former Members of Congress, a powerful lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C. In March 1975, Hays was awarded his 50-year certificate in recognition for his dedication to Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Hays died on October 12, 1981, with services held in both Washington D.C. and Little Rock, and then was buried in Russellville’s Oakland Cemetery.
For additional information:
Baker, James T. Brooks Hays. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1989.
Brooks Hays Papers, 1915–1978. Special Collections. University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Day, John Kyle. “Bargain and Corruption, Arkansas Style: The Theft of the 1933 Special Congressional Election.” Central Arkansas Historical Review 2 (Spring 1999): 1-11.
____________. “The Fall of a Southern Moderate: Congressman Brooks Hays and the Election of 1958.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 59 (Autumn 2000): 241–264.
Hays, Brooks. A Hotbed of Tranquility: My Life in Five Worlds. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
________. A Southern Moderate Speaks. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.
________. Politics is My Parish. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
________. This World: A Christian’s Workshop. Nashville: Broadman, 1958.
John Kyle Day, 32˚, KSA, Valley of Little Rock. The author would like to offer special thanks to Bro. David Miles, Secretary of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, F. & A.M. of Arkansas, and Ms. Larissa Watkins, Librarian for the House of the Temple, Supreme Council, 33˚, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A., in Washington, D.C. for their assistance in researching the masonic records of the Arkansas brethren mentioned in this article.
Photograph courtesy University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Mullins Library, Special Collections.
コメント