Elias Birdsall (left) and F.F. Bosworth
outside home in Dallas, Texas.
On Aug. 21, 1911, F.F. Bosworth wrote a letter about a beating he endured because of his ministry to blacks at a camp meeting near Hearne, Texas. In the letter, which he addressed to his mother, he described the assault as a “mobbing” that left him with a fractured wrist and bruises on his back. The men, all white, reportedly struck him with wooden clubs. Bosworth said his “flesh was mashed to the bone on my back down nearly to my knees.”
[A] larger mob of about 25 took me from the depot and knocked me down and pounded me with heavy hardwood clubs with all their power, cursing and declaring that I would never preach again when they were through with me. As they pounded me with these heavy clubs (made from the oar of a boat), I offered no resistance, but committed myself to God and asked him not to let the blows break my spine.
God stood wonderfully by me and no bones were broken except a slight fracture in my left wrist. When they left off pounding me with the clubs as I got up others of the mob who had no clubs knocked me down hitting me in the head with their fists. I was knocked down several times but was not for a moment unconscious, which was miracle of God’s care.
Persecution in the early years of the Pentecostal movement was common. F.F. Bosworth’s descriptive letter to his mother, a copy of which was donated to the Archives by his son Bob, is reprinted here. The two mobs which attacked him did so because he ministered at a black church camp meeting near Hearne, Texas. Bosworth founded what is now First Assembly in Dallas. Earlier he had been associated with John Alexander Dowie and Zion City, Illinois.
Note: My book, F.F. Bosworth: The Man Behind "Christ the Healer," can be purchased here with a 25% discount. Use the discount code: bosworth25.
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