Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This May – June 1965 Classic traces back the remarkable Baylor connection behind President Lyndon B. Johnson’s honorary degree at the 1965 Commencement.
It is a story that began more than one hundred years ago — the story of Baylor University’s 1965 Commencement.
Spring Commencement, observed this year on May 28th, marked the close of Baylor’s one hundred and twentieth year of continuous operation — a fact which reaches back to the founding of the University in the historic year of 1845, the last year of the Republic of Texas.
From the opening of the first classes in the spring of 1846, Baylor University’s doors have never been closed. The rugged institution, born of faith and vision and nurtured in toil, sacrifice, courage, and devotion, has weathered many grave difficulties : “hard times,” lean years, and the decimations of four major wars.
Perhaps the Civil War, or War between the States, was the most critical of those periods. The extreme hardships of those years forced many other young educational institutions — in Texas and throughout the country — to close their doors, either temporarily or permanently.
Baylor University, then located at Independence, Texas, was among those institutions whose very existence was seriously threatened. In the first place, most of the young men who might have enrolled in the school were enrolled, instead, in the armies of their states. Furthermore, few Texas families could afford to send their daughters to college during those stressful times ; and, certainly, money for the support of colleges from either church or individual sources was so scarce that few schools were able to provide the necessary facilities or the administrative and teaching staffs for continued operation.
In spite of all these inimical factors, somehow, Baylor University managed to keep “afloat”; and leaders were Providentially provided to steer her tenuous course.
One such leader was a Southern educator, clergyman, and editor — a native of North Carolina and a graduate of the University of Alabama who had gained considerable reputation in several states, including Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, for his effective teaching, his inspirational preaching, and his forceful writing. His name was George Washington Baines. Fired with a missionary zeal and with the challenge of adventure and service, he moved his family to the new state of Texas in 1850 from Bienville, Louisiana, where he had served for several years as superintendent of schools.
This man, Baines, who served a total of thirty-two years as a Baptist minister in Texas, became — in 1855 — the editor of the first Baptist publication in the state, The Texas Baptist, and continued in that influential position until 1861. From the time of his arrival in Texas, he took great interest in the new Baptist school at Independence, promoting its interests through press and pulpit and in willing personal service, as revealed in early denominational records. His name first appeared in official Baptist records in 1850, the year of his arrival ; and thereafter, it appeared frequently, especially on committees appointed to disseminate information about the school and to seek financial aid for it. Thus, it has been observed that he functioned as one of the first “Development” officers of Baylor University. During the decade, 1850-1860, the resourceful Mr. Baines appears to have been in almost constant service to the struggling young school in one capacity or another.
In 1861, as both South and North were becoming embroiled in their fateful struggle, Baylor was having troubles of her own. A serious rift occurred in the administrative affairs of the school, culminating in the resignation of her second president, Rufus C. Burleson, who left Independence to become president of Waco University (with which, some twenty-three years later, Baylor University was merged). It was at that strategic time that Preacher and Editor Baines was prevailed upon by the Baylor Trustees to accept the responsibility of the presidency, in an effort to hold the school together through the stresses of conflict — educational, denominational, and civil.
By what must have been a superhuman effort, President Baines managed to do just that. But, obviously, it exacted a severe toll of his strength ; for in the midst of his second year, he asked to be released because of his health. His resignation was not immediately accepted, however, and the frail man continued at his post of duty for several months longer, until an acceptable replacement was found in the noted Tennessee educator, Dr. William Carey Crane.
After Baines regained his health, he returned to the ministry and was active for many years in Texas Baptist life. But for those two years (1861-1863) of stouthearted service under the most trying circumstances, the Baptist denomination, the cause of Christian education, in general, and Baylor University, in particular, owe a permanent debt of gratitude to this heroic man who, like the legendary Dutch boy, was not afraid to thrust his arm in the breach in the dyke to hold back the flood-waters of disaster.
In partial payment of that debt and in recognition of his invaluable contribution to the institution, Baylor University, on May 28, 1965, conferred on a distinguished great-grandson of this pioneer leader the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, with “all the rights, privileges, and emoluments appertaining thereunto.”
The man so honored was none other than the thirty- sixth President of the United States : Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson, was the daughter of Baines’ son, Joseph Wilson Baines.
Of more than coincidental significance was the fact that, participating in the same ceremonies, was a second great-grandson of the pioneer Baylor president — a first cousin of the distinguished honoree of the occasion and a man who, himself, has had a vital role in the life of Baylor University. This man is Huffman Baines, Jr., capable businessman and Baptist layman of Austin, Texas, and a member of Baylor’s present Board of Trustees. For the past two years, he has served as chairman of the Board’s Development Committee in its current commitment to raise five million dollars for the University’s immediate needs.
Thus, ancestral patterns were clearly discernible in the lives of both descendants of the early Baylor president in the events of Commencement Day, 1965.
And when the dramatic moment arrived for the formal investiture of the academic honor, it was, appropriately enough, at the hands of Huffman Baines, J r., (whose father was a son of Joseph Baines and a brother of President Johnson’s mother) that Lyndon Baines Johnson received the colorful doctoral hood, the symbol of the highest honor within the power of the University to bestow.
The great audience in the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum sat spellbound, as if, like the Apostle Paul, seeing they also were “compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses.” Certainly, as it watched the movements of the two tall Texans there on that spot-lighted platform, it could all but feel the indulgent gaze of the gratified progenitor (both of the two men and of the University, itself) resting in benevolent blessing upon the historic scene.
