Lockney Christian College (6): Two Brief Presidencies

At the end of the school year in the spring of 1911, James L. German resigned as president of Lockney Christian College. From that time on, the school witnessed a period of uncertainty and rapid turnover in leadership until it permanently closed its doors seven years later.[1]

German's successor was one J. C. Estes, a graduate of the Nashville Bible School. The Estes administration, which lasted two years, seems to have had its problems. The school did not issue a catalog for the 1911-1912 session, and by 1912 not one member of the faculty who served under President German remained at the school.[2]

In the late summer of 1913, the Firm Foundation informed its readers that 27-year-old T. W. Croom had agreed to become Lockney's next president. Croom was quoted as saying that he intended "to build up a great institution in this place for the training of those energetic young men and women who will have so much to do in shaping the future of the west." The same announcement stated that Lockney, now a town of 1200, had "no saloons and kindred evils so common in our larger cities."[3]

One of the more interesting events in the story of Lockney dates from the new president's brief tenure. Not long after Croom began his work at the school, G. H. P. Showalter, one of the former presidents of the school and now the editor of the Firm Foundation, published a favorable review of a book by W. F. Lemmons titled The Evils of Socialism. In reply to Showalter's review, seventeen men from Lockney wrote in asserting that Lemmons's book contained false statements and that it twisted the Scriptures. In response to their challenge, they asserted, the editor ought to "put up or shut up."

Not one to back down, Showalter responded in the Firm Foundation dated March 17, 1914, calling the men the "Socialists of Lockney."[4] It seems that in the early twentieth century, the sentiments of leftist politics had not all faded away in West Texas. As late as 1914, the Socialist Labor Party in Texas fielded a candidate for governor. At that time, the party outranked the Republicans in Texas. Second only to the mighty Democrats, the Socialists were the next largest political party in the state.[5]

Notes

[1] Robert M. Platt, "History of Lockney Christian College," 1960, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Research Center, Canyon, TX, 32.

[2] Ibid., 33.

[3] Ibid., 34.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Handbook of Texas Online, Alwyn Barr, "SOCIALIST PARTY," accessed February 21, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/was01.