Rev. Earl Stallings, 89; Won King’s Praise for Opening Doors to Blacks

The Rev. Earl Stallings, a white clergyman who was praised by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” has died. He was 89.

Stallings, the former pastor of First Baptist Church of Birmingham, Ala., died Feb. 23 at a retirement home in Lakeland, Fla., the Associated Baptist Press reported on its website.

Stallings was part of the so-called reconciliation committee, a group of eight prominent Birmingham clergy -- including a rabbi, Catholic, Methodist and Episcopal bishops and a Presbyterian minister -- that called King’s efforts to integrate Birmingham, soon after the election of a new white mayor, “unwise and untimely.”

In a 1963 public statement, the group asked King and other civil rights leaders to relent on mass demonstrations because they believed the actions would be counterproductive to the greater goal of integration. “When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the court and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets,” they wrote.

King issued a strong denunciation of the reconciliation committee’s position while in Birmingham jail after being arrested following their public statement.

Stallings angered many members of his white congregation after King’s arrest by opening his doors to black worshipers, including civil rights leader Andrew Young.

That brought one of the few positive remarks from King in his letter about white attitudes in Birmingham.

“I commend you, Rev. Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis,” King wrote.

Most of the rest of the letter, however, is highly critical of the positions taken by white moderates in the civil rights struggle.

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed [and] almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negroes’ great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the ... Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Tensions surrounding Stallings’ decision to admit black worshipers brought criticism from conservatives favoring segregation and liberals in favor of integration.

Stallings left the Birmingham church in 1965 and became pastor of First Baptist Church of Marietta, Ga. After 11 years in that post, he worked for the Arizona Baptist Convention creating adult ministries.

Born in Durham, N.C., Stallings graduated from Carson-Newman College and earned a master’s degree in theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is survived by a son and two grandchildren.