Henry Buchanan

The Shellman Story: Hanging the Preacher Henry Buchanan

THE SHELLMAN STORY is the story of a Pastor and his Church locked in battle over the racial issue in the early fifties of the twentieth century because the Supreme Court had said black children could go to school with white children in Shellman Georgia, and the Pastor of the Shellman Baptist Church said it was the right thing to do. But the people of that little Church in that little town said they would not allow their Pastor to say such a thing because it was contradictory to their hallowed traditions. The Pastor insisted on preaching this new teaching, so they fired him, after the hanging in effigy did not convince him that he was wrong about what he believed was right. But there was a Remnant of the Church who stood by their Pastor and the Remnant is the true Glory of the Church. Here in THE SHELLMAN STORY Henry Buchanan has told how it all happened fifty years ago. But because it seemed so strange to the people who heard him and saw it all happen in Shellman Georgia, Buchanan has included some tales from his boyhood which show how the boy who grew up in a racially stratified home and community became the man would challenge the Southern Tradition of his own people, and be hanged in effigy for it, and in the end be fired by the Church he served as God's spokesman in a time of great crisis and turmoil because he believed he was Right.