Despite many obstacles, Robert Gilbert offered “no excuses” when he found himself at the forefront of enacting racial integration and advancing civil rights in Waco. His efforts left an indelible mark on the city and Baylor University.

He was born on December 27, 1941, the fourth child of the Rev. B. F. Gilbert and his wife, Fannie Mae. The Gilbert household prized faith in God, education, and community service. Attending Waco’s segregated schools, Gilbert wanted to be a lawyer advancing the rights of African Americans. After graduating from A. J. Moore High School in 1960, he enrolled at Paul Quinn College. Following several years of study at Paul Quinn, Gilbert and his teachers realized a future legal career required he obtain a degree from Baylor University, which had only recently—in November 1963—voted to integrate.

Administrative and legal decisions do not generate immediate cultural change, a reality that confronted Gilbert as he began his studies at Baylor in summer 1965. The alienation and animosity he felt as a child growing up near the campus continued to form a large part of his experience as a student. He experienced isolation from his classmates, and while some faculty treated him with dignity, others proved overtly racist. Gilbert majored in history, which he enjoyed, but he soon acknowledged that a legal career was increasingly unlikely. For most of his adolescence, Gilbert resisted pastoral ministry, but soon the call to preach became too acute to ignore. In addition, doctors advised him that his poor health could not handle the stresses of practicing law.

Since the age of fourteen, Gilbert suffered from various types of arthritis that left him in constant pain and with impaired mobility. In his teens, it proved manageable with only an occasional flare-up. However, in July 1963, his condition deteriorated rapidly. Gilbert recovered and returned to college, though he now required a cane for support. Later on, joint deterioration led to numerous surgeries and eventually put him in a wheelchair. The visible specter of his arthritis plagued Gilbert for his entire life, but it also became the source of his testimony and vocation. Grappling with his arthritis proved God’s way of grabbing hold of Gilbert, calling him to a life of ministry and teaching, as well as instilling in him the faith and endurance required to overcome all impediments that lay ahead.

Gilbert’s faith-filled perseverance equipped him to break barriers and gave him an unquenchable thirst for justice. On June 2, 1967, Robert Gilbert became the first African American student to graduate from Baylor. By virtue of alphabetical order, Gilbert preceded his classmate Barbara Walker, who that day became Baylor’s first female African American graduate. After his graduation, Gilbert continued pioneering as the first black teacher at the all-white Tennyson Middle School. Another first included his summer role as assistant director of Baylor’s Upward Bound program to help train low-income students for college. Gilbert carried on all this work while also actively engaging in pastoral ministry.

To enrich his ministry, Gilbert returned to Baylor in 1970 to pursue a graduate degree in religion. However, another devastating turn in his health in 1971 left him unable to finish his studies, but not to pastor. He succeeded his father into the pulpits of Baptist churches in Bremond and Chilton, before in 1978, beginning a more than decade-long ministry at Waco’s Carver Park Missionary Baptist Church. Under his leadership, the congregation grew exponentially. Gilbert’s dynamic sermons and visible witness attracted people to him and to the gospel. His life held the power to convict and inspire, not only the people in his congregations, but all Wacoans as well.

The 1970s saw Gilbert take up his trailblazing mantel and use his status in the community to advocate for civil rights. Upset about the glacial pace of integration in Waco schools after the 1954 Brown decision, Gilbert served as the plaintiff in the NAACP case against the Waco Independent School District. His suit, combined with a similar case from Waco’s Hispanic community, became the 1973 Arvizu v. Waco ISD decision mandating the integration of several racially identifiable schools in Waco. In 1976, he was elected the first black member of Waco’s school board. Outside of education, Gilbert helmed the Association for Selective Career Opportunities that aimed to advance the hiring of minorities in fields where they were underrepresented. His experiences at the forefront of integration made him a catalyst for creating opportunities for other African Americans in Waco.

When he died on November 11, 1992, Robert Gilbert left a rich legacy of ministry and activism. In the last years of his life, through pain and numerous health struggles, he maintained his pastoral ministry, while also advocating for Waco and Baylor to diversify hiring. Today Gilbert’s communities honor his impact. For example, the Waco NAACP awards scholarships to high school graduates named for the Gilbert family. Captured by his 1988 autobiography title, No Excuses Accepted, Gilbert believed everyone was capable of achieving their goals, no matter the impediments. Grounded in faith and in pursuit of justice, he testified to that belief with his life, calling others to do the same.

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Founded in 1951, the Word label helped spark the multimillion-dollar genre of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM). And it was sportscaster and ministry student Jarrell McCracken who gave it a voice.

McCracken was working in radio to finance his graduate education when someone approached him and asked that he use his broadcasting expertise to reach youth by combining ministry and sports. Overcoming his initial reluctance, McCracken warmed to the idea and recorded “The Game of Life”—a fictionalized football match between good and evil—using his resources at KWTX. His play-by-play of the supernatural clash for radio station WORD proved a hit with area youth groups. Each spin of the record brought McCracken requests to purchase copies of it. The only problem was he didn’t have any. So McCracken pulled together the funds to finance the pressing of one hundred copies. Through their popularity the young man sensed a market for sacred records. He started Word Records in Waco to meet that demand.

Initially, McCracken ran Word out of his apartment, bringing his friends Henry Sorelle and Ted Snider in to help him run the company. During the 1950s few labels produced religious music, and Word found ways to edge out the competition. In its early years it signed artists like Frank Boggs, got into production and distribution, and used record-of-the-month clubs to disperse music. Outside of religious records, Word sold sheet music, Christian literature, and educational resources. The label soon outgrew McCracken’s apartment and, after brief stints at other locations, moved in 1960 to its longtime headquarters at 4800 West Waco Drive.

The year before its move, Word hired Kurt Kaiser as its Director of Artists and Repertoire. Trained in piano and composition at Northwestern University, Kaiser’s ear and desire for outreach diversified Word’s offerings, charting a new trajectory for Christian music. Kaiser signed gospel juggernaut George Beverly Shea in 1975, and also worked with Ralph Carmichael to write a folk musical for youth titled Tell It Like It Is. Cooperating with secular musicians who wanted to produce sacred music also provided Word an opportunity to expand its audience. In the 1960s and 70s, it acquired the smaller Canaan and Myrrh labels. Its publicity and distribution operations grew as well. As it entered the 1980s, Word’s multimedia approach continued at the forefront of CCM as the genre developed.

For the first thirty years of the company, Word immersed itself in the Waco community. When McCracken first started Word, Waco businessmen provided the young entrepreneur with capital and connections. Word later returned the community’s gesture, offering college scholarships to local high school graduates and providing jobs to many Baylor students. The label drew musicians such as Ken Medema to perform in Waco, in addition to sponsoring many community events featuring the Christian arts. Word held a reputation in town as a respectable company that felt like a family. It invested in cultivating the support of Wacoans, many of whom endorsed its mission. Word’s business and community commitments reaped dividends.

The label grew exponentially alongside CCM. In 1974, ABC purchased the company, eventually moving it near Fort Worth. Leaving Waco meant that Word sacrificed some of its communal feel. The transition also led to Jarrell McCracken departing the company in 1986. By the 1990s Word was in Nashville and the label housed popular artists like Sandi Patti and Amy Grant. Still one of the leading producers of Christian music today, the label retains its initial ministerial goal. Word went out from Waco and aided in the development of Christian music. Its impact still reverberates in the city and Christian music industry.

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During the 1950s and 1960s, Rev. Marvin C. Griffin strove to bring the Christian gospel to bear upon the civil rights struggle in Waco. As minister of New Hope Baptist Church from 1951 to 1969, Reverend Griffin preached a message of spiritual vitality and social action, advocating for racial equality during a period of heightened tensions among Waco’s white, black, and Hispanic communities. Griffin’s unswerving emphasis on racial justice and reconciliation established him as a respected leader throughout Central Texas.

The future minister was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1923 and, after several years in Oklahoma, spent his later childhood and adolescence in Dallas, Texas. Like many African American families in their community, the Griffin family suffered the effects of race-based inequality. The scarcity of Depression-era jobs for black men meant that Griffin’s mother supported the family on wages from her job as housekeeper in a white home. The young Griffin, however, felt called to become a preacher and exhibited academic promise at an early age.

After high school, Griffin entered Bishop College—at that time the only Texas institution offering a degree in religion to African American students. There he met Lois King, whom he married in 1944 and with whom he would serve churches and communities throughout Texas for over six decades. After graduating from Bishop in 1943, Griffin earned a bachelor of divinity in theology from the famed Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin’s emphasis on the social implications of the Christian message shaped Griffin’s approach to civil rights in the years to come. Griffin graduated from Oberlin in 1947 and soon took a position as director of city missions for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board in Dallas, Texas. There, the young graduate worked with people in need from white and black neighborhoods alike. In this way, Griffin’s diverse childhood, educational, and professional experiences allowed him to cultivate relationships across racial and economic lines.

In 1951, Waco’s New Hope Baptist Church invited Griffin to fill in as interim pastor when its own minister, Dr. Joseph Newton Jenkins, fell ill. This temporary position became permanent when Jenkins passed away, and the twenty-seven-year-old seminary graduate found himself the pastor of one of Waco’s oldest and most prominent African American churches. The young minister took to the position quickly, however, pioneering a radio ministry and citywide transportation system to the church on Sunday. All the while, Griffin devoted himself to theological study; in 1955 he became the first African American to receive a master of religious education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Griffin also brought a renewed emphasis on the social resonances of the Christian gospel, preaching the importance of advocating for justice in the wake of pervasive racial discrimination. In Waco, the new pastor entered an environment in which white hostility was prevalent and in which local blacks were hesitant to confront racial divides for fear that their jobs, social standing, and physical safety might be jeopardized.

Their fears were not unfounded. When initial efforts to integrate Waco schools following the Brown v. Board of Education decision were stymied by public backlash, it appeared that the desegregation project had reached a standstill. White leaders took no initiative toward implementing the federal ruling, and area blacks balked at taking any serious form of action. For the remainder of the decade, little progress was made in the dismantling of legalized segregation.

Thanks to leaders such as Marvin Griffin, the tide began to turn during the 1960s, bringing about an integration that proved far more peaceful—albeit far more gradual—than many cities in the South. As the nationwide struggle for civil rights grew more visible and more tumultuous, Waco minorities became increasingly vocal in their calls for desegregation and equal access to employment. Leading white Chamber of Commerce members—dubbed “The Committee of Fifty”—were anxious to avoid the protests, sit-ins, and violence plaguing much of the South. When the committee expressed the desire to cooperate with Waco’s black community leaders in desegregating the city at long last, Marvin Griffin set to work forming a council comprised of seven prominent African American men and women. With Griffin as its chairman, the council sought input from all corners of Waco’s black population to formulate a list of the most pressing racial issues to be remedied. These included public accommodations, the use of recreational facilities, access to jobs, and representation on boards and commissions.

The Committee of Fifty proved open to cooperation. It and Griffin’s council were careful, however, to keep their deliberations secret, lest they arouse anger from the white community. Thus, in 1961, they privately crafted a plan for the gradual and quiet desegregation of Waco businesses, cooperating with journalists to ensure that the press would refrain from reporting on the committee’s existence and the instances of desegregation that followed. Facility by facility, the group worked with business owners and the designated African American citizens—often Griffin and the members of his council—who would patronize each establishment. By means of enforcement, several members of the committee threatened to fire employees who did not carry out the new policy of desegregation. By 1963, popular Waco eating establishments, hospitals, and department stores had desegregated in this manner. Additionally, Baylor president Abner McCall—a member of the Committee of Fifty—began to take steps in the desegregation of Baylor University, which was finally desegregated in 1964.

Public desegregation, however, was only the first step in a long and arduous road toward a more racially equitable society. Accordingly, Griffin remained unwavering in his advocacy for Waco’s black community even after this initial wave of desegregation. The pastor worked to secure job opportunities for Waco’s African American citizens, and he also continued to fight for the desegregation of the Waco Independent School District, which would ultimately desegregate by federal court order in the early 1970s. Griffin also continued to facilitate racial reconciliation in local churches as well, exchanging pulpits with white preachers such as Rhea Gray and holding interracial book clubs in homes to facilitate productive dialogue on issues of race. In the political sphere, Griffin worked to expand black voter registration and galvanized his congregation and others into a politically active community.

In 1969, Griffin accepted an offer to become pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin, Texas—a position in which he served until his retirement on July 31, 2011. Here the twin goals of Christian faithfulness and social action remained paramount in Griffin’s ministry. In 1998, the pastor spearheaded the creation of the East Austin Economic Development Corporation, which offered crucial services to underprivileged populations. The spiritual and social leader continued to advance in learning and education even in latter decades of his career; in 1990, Griffin received his doctor of ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Throughout his long and storied life, Griffin never wavered in his insistence that the Christian message was inseparable from the issue of racial justice and community involvement, and he continued to encourage Christian faithfulness and social activism among his congregants at Ebenezer.

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For nearly a century, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home has provided funeral care to McLennan County, priding themselves on not only offering funeral arrangements, but on serving families during times of grief.

Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey (originally Wilkirson-Hatch Funeral Home) was founded in 1925 by Dillard J. Wilkirson, his son, Jim, and his son-in-law, Roy H. Hatch. The three men settled in Waco during a time when the city was rapidly expanding, but neither the Wilkirsons nor Hatch originally set out to start a funeral home. In the early twentieth century, burials were, for most Americans, small affairs based around the family home. The concept of a remote location dedicated solely to the hosting of funerals was not yet well established, and the three founders initially used their experience in the lumber industry to make and sell coffins. Soon after moving to Waco, however, they became interested in the idea of the modern funeral home and shifted the emphasis of their business. After the owners built a new structure at the bustling intersection of Washington Avenue and Twelfth Street, their new funeral home quickly became an established part of the Waco community.

Wilkirson-Hatch adapted well to the changing midcentury business climates of both Waco and the United States. As a part of booming business in the mid-twentieth century, Wilkirson-Hatch became an incorporated business in 1957, with Roy Hatch as its first president. Under Hatch, the funeral home billed itself as a “family serving families.” Hatch took pride in tasteful, up-to-date facilities, modern vehicles, and effective administrative practices. The business also offered new services such as funeral insurance to defray costs for grieving families, as well as air service to transport deceased persons who may have passed away far from home.

In the 1950s, A. William Bailey married Roy Hatch’s daughter, Roberta, and joined the Wilkirson-Hatch family business, and eventually rose in rank to run the funeral home. In the 1970s, Bailey’s son and current company president, Hatch Bailey, felt drawn to the same line of work as his father after experiencing the comfort that the funeral home provided following the death of his grandparents. He began working part time at the home in 1979 while a student at Baylor University and began a full-time position upon graduating. Hatch Bailey became president in the 1990s, with his two brothers, Wes and Roy, serving on the board of directors. Shortly after becoming president, Bailey purchased a new location on Bosque Boulevard to better serve families in the Woodway area. Some years later, this Bosque Boulevard office became the sole location of Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey, and remains so to this day.

Throughout his tenure as president, Bailey has consistently implemented new ideas to keep the funeral home and its services poised to meet the needs of Waco families. For example, the funeral home was one of the first buildings in Waco to have stained concrete flooring, installed to amplify the noise level to avoid an unnatural quietness that might make visitors feel uncomfortable. Modern technology has also shaped the way the funeral home functions, with half of all services using pre-recorded and selected music, and live-streams of services being commonly available. Hatch Bailey’s sons have begun to participate in the operations of the funeral home, comprising the fifth generation of workers from a single extended family.

Bailey now sees his funeral home less as a business than as a ministry to grieving families. With its focus on providing comfort and familial services and a history of innovation, Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home will likely continue to provide an important array of services to the Waco community.

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