Richmond, Va., May 4—Preaching before a vast audience in the city auditorium this evening, with “Shall We Fiddle While Rome Burns?” as his topic, the Rev. Dr. Carter Ashton Jenkins Jr., pastor of Calvary Baptist church, and son of a Baptist minister of Clayton, N.C., declared that if the citizens of Richmond and the law enforcing bodies are not able to make of Richmond a very different city from the present cesspool of vice the next thing in order is the Ku Klux Klan.
Dr. Jenkins recently launched a campaign against blind tigers and other forms of vice, visiting many dens of iniquity disguised as a “rube” from the slushes of Hanover, and gathering evidence against them.
Churchmen Frightened
“Within the past two weeks,” he said, “I have had no difficulty locating 47 places in which hundreds of citizens are buying liquor at their will daily. During my campaign, the police department has rendered me every possible assistance, supplying a squad of plainclothes men to aid me in the work. With the assistance of the police, a number of bootleggers have been located and arrested. Yesterday, a bootlegger was arrested in the morning, and after being bailed, was found later in the day plying his trade as before.”
A tour of the blind tigers, he said, had disclosed that fully 90 per cent of people encountered in them are church members.
“There are two few preachers in Richmond who are willing to make an open, clean-cut fight on moral issues,” he went on. “Their member can live any sort of low life and seldom is any discipline exercised in their churches. The preachers are very busy raising money, organizing their churches, vying with each other as to who has the largest Sunday schools and the membership with the most perfect harmony while they are playing their fiddles, Rome is burning to the ground and Richmond is on her way to hell.
“Hundreds of citizens have expressed to me their appreciation of the work I am doing, but to this hour only one preacher has expressed any concern in any way. and why is it that these preachers are so numb? Because they know that if they took the position that I do, their churches would be smashed in twain and their salaries discontinued. But I had rather do my duty and warn my fellow men, and if necessary beg my daily bread, than to be an ecclesiastical coward.
Preachers Criticize Him
“In my fight for righteousness in Richmond, my greatest critics have been preachers. In my investigations I have already run across several Baptist deacons who are patronizing these hell holes, and one or two prominent church members who are renting places that are being used for this illegal business.”
In company with the police, Dr. Jenkins made a special effort last night to catch a certain Baptist deacon bootlegging liquor, but the deacon smelled a rat, as it were, and eluded the trap set for him. This man operates a small store, Dr. Jenkins explained, but it is generally known that his principal business is selling liquor, the store being used as a blind for this traffic.
From the front page of the Whiteville News-Reporter, May 8, 1924
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