The Shellman Story

About the Book

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.

About the Author

When Henry Buchanan was a little white boy growing up on a one mule, red dirt farm near Macon, Georgia he was taught white people and black people are very different and those differences must keep them apart. But God called him to preach - God had some help from Uncle Seeb-and Henry became Pastor of the Baptist Church in Shellraan, Georgia. He said and wrote and did some things the white people of that little town could not accept because he had challenged the Southern Tradition. So the people of the Church fired him, and he and his wife MarthaLee who taught the second grade in the all white Shellman School had to leave town and seek another life in another place.

But he had written down everything he said and all the events that led up to his firing, and he remembered all the people, those who fought him and those who stood with him in the eight months long battle. So we now have this little book which tells the story just as it happened.

THE SHELLMAN STORY is Henry Buchanans twentieth published book - the first was AND THE GOAT CRIED, but it tells of events that antedate all the others. The author now lives alone in Calloway County near the little town of Murray, Kentucky. But not entirely alone. Spirit, the little white dog, and Max the big yellow cat live with him, unaware that he is a controversial figure in the world where other people live.