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Book Explores Civil Rights Hero and Baptist Minister William Penn Davis


Texas State University professor and author Oren Renick. The 1966 MC graduate wrote a book "Smoke Over Mississippi,'' about his mentor and friend Rev. William Penn Davis. It details the work by the Mississippi Baptist Convention leader to promote racial healing following the burning of black churches in his state during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s.

A white Mississippi Baptist pastor who promoted racial healing during the South’s Civil Rights struggles, the Rev. William Penn Davis is profiled in a new book.

A 1929 Mississippi College graduate, Davis was among religious leaders refusing to remain silent after dozens of black churches were torched in his home state. In 1964, he founded the Committee of Concern. It was an interracial organization of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who battled intolerance and worked to rebuild over 40 black churches.

His story is told by author Oren Renick, a 1966 Mississippi College graduate. Davis, his mentor and friend, he said, was a “prophet of light in a troubled land.” He vividly remembers Davis speaking to MC students on the Clinton campus in 1964.

Published in October 2015 by Insight Press of Covington, Louisiana, “Smoke Over Mississippi” focuses on a determined preacher who endured beatings, but maintained the courage to fight racism. The 1963 firebombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four girls captured national attention. Black churches went up in smoke as well in cities like Meridian, Mississippi in 1964.

After three Civil Rights workers were murdered during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the Committee of Concern formed in the chapel of the Mississippi Baptist building in Jackson. The group later became the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference with Davis serving as director from 1973 through 1985. The MRLC is experiencing a rebirth today in the capital city.

A former World War II soldier who fought in the Pacific theater, Davis returned to Mississippi to continue working as a pastor. His personal mission statement remained powerful - “I am my brother’s brother.” His words emboldened him to preach racial reconciliation. He served as a liaison to whites and blacks as president of the Mississippi Baptist Seminary in 1959. He later rose up leadership ranks of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.

A Texas State University professor, Renick recounted this “unsung hero” of the Civil Rights era before a biracial audience of 70 guests at the Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

“Rev. Davis was a man of peace and a man of good will,” Renick told the group that included former Gov. William Winter and former Secretary of State Dick Molpus. “What he did boggled my mind. He helped me along the journey.”

When asked what Davis would think of racial progress achieved in Mississippi in recent years, the author spoke with certainty about the late Baptist leader. “He would feel much has been done, but there’s much unfinished business.”

In 1989, Davis died in Jackson at age 85. He left behind a lasting legacy as a humanitarian.

After Renick’s mid-June lecture, Charles Holmes, a Tougaloo College professor, recalled meeting Dr. Davis many years ago. Devoting a book to this extraordinary Mississippian, he said, was quite a deserving tribute.

In 1965, Davis addressed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as a racial reconciliation champion. “A new sunrise of interfaith and biracial good will stands at the gate of the morning in Mississippi to bind up the broken hearted,” Davis told the federal agency. “Tyranny must go.”

The book highlights many notable observations from the pastor’s personal diaries.

A graduate of Forest Hill High in Jackson in 1962, Renick told his Mississippi audience his own life experienced a sudden transformation. A self-described “racist” until he was 19 years old, his heart abruptly changed, he said, under the influence of Mississippi College instructors. People like political science professor, the late Billy Hicks, “helped change my life.”

By his early 20s, Oren Renick featured the life of Rev. Davis for his master’s thesis at Mississippi College. Dr. Renick later received his law degree at the MC School of Law in Jackson.

Presently, Oren and his wife, Judy, a 1966 MC graduate and Aberdeen native, live in San Marcos, Texas. The couple met as MC student debaters.

A Texas State professor of health administration, Dr. Renick earned his master’s in public health from Tulane and a master’s in theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

His insightful book will be utilized by students in Christian Studies classes this fall at MC’s Provine Chapel at his Baptist-affiliated alma mater.