Dr. Kerr rejects Tulsa's 'Inter-Racial Committee' racialist insistence upon recognition of "White Supremacy" by Greenwood Pastors:

 In the Sunday after the Race War Dr. Kerr scored the continuing unchristian refusal by the other white (downtown) Ministers of Tulsa to work with the Black Ministers of Greenwood whom he knew personally as friends, "There has not been enough co-operation between the good Whites and the good Negroes. Years ago the Negro Ministers co-operated with the White Ministers, but little by little they [the latter] dropped out. We white folks must return to co-operation with the good element in the other race."  

 Before the 1921 Tulsa Race War Dr. Kerr had repeatedly attempted to bring all the Greenwood Pastors whom he knew into the local Tulsa Ministerial Alliance.  However, Tulsa's other white downtown ministers refused to accept the Greenwood Ministers.   Dr. Kerr was terribly embarrassed when he had to explain to friends pastoring the Greenwood Churches  that Tulsa's other [white] 'men of the cloth', claiming a common gospel and Confession of Reformed Christianity, refused to be brothers with them, particularly when the Greenwood Pastors asked Dr. Kerr, 'What about what Jesus says?'    

From the top of the Courthouse steps Dr. Charles W. Kerr had, in fact, spotted a number of Tulsa other white ministers (in civilian clothing) from Tulsa's socially prominent downtown churches amongst the lynch mob  ...  who were doing nothing to stop this attempted lynching  ...  who later stormed down to the Police Station with the dispersed lynch mob  ... and, in fact, were among those specially commissioned as the 'Emergency Police Deputies' who burnt down Greenwood and murdered Black people.  Christianity   …   Tulsa-style….  

In the aftermath of the Tulsa Race War a group of white ministers and civic leaders organised an Inter-Racial Committee to work out Tulsa's burning racial problems.    Because Dr. Kerr was the only Pastor in Tulsa who had established personal links with the Greenwood Pastors, he was asked to join and to bring the Greenwood Pastors along with him.  Although the Inter-Racial Committee had many excellent goals such as ending lynching and assisting Blacks with their problems, the Tulsa's other downtown white ministers insisted that the Greenwood Pastors would have to recognise White Supremacy in government and social relationships and accept Oklahoma's existing apartheid 'colour-bar' legislation as the basis for any inter-racial cooperation.  

Dr. Kerr refused because he could not possibly ask the Greenwood Pastors to join the Inter-Racial Committee as second-class ministers under such insulting terms which would cause them to lose credibility with their own flocks.  Dr. Kerr counter-proposed founding this Committee on the basis of a mutual recognition of a shared brotherhood-in-Christ, Who alone could overcome the terrible racial division in Tulsa and to set a good example for all of Tulsa to overcome the City's pervasive racial hatred.   

When Dr. Kerr asked these prominent Tulsa ministers to biblically justify their insistence upon white supremacy, they cited Noah's curse upon Ham.  To which Dr. Kerr replied,  'I did not study curses in the seminary.  I did study the power and authority of Jesus Christ as the Son of God:  One drop of the Blood of Jesus shed for our sins is sufficient to wipe out all the curses in the world.   The Greenwood Pastors are as much baptised Christians as are we:   They are also under the Blood of Jesus.   As St. Paul wrote to Philemon, the former slave Onesimus was to be treated willingly as a brother and as a partner in Jesus' gospel. We can do no less in Tulsa than what St. Paul advised Philemon.'   

Tulsa's other white clergy rejected Dr. Kerr's  proposal to join in brotherhood with the Greenwood Pastors:  

They refused Dr. Kerr's counter-proposal because they saw 'inter-racial cooperation' solely in terms of arms-length negotiations on the basis of acceptance of White Supremacy by the Greenwood population as permanent second class citizens.   

At this point Dr. Kerr withdrew from Tulsa's Inter-Racial Committee as he could not possibly ask his friends among the Greenwood Ministry to join under such degrading conditions.  Because the Greenwood Pastors did not trust Tulsa's other white ministers,  they refused to join the Inter-Racial Committee without Dr. Kerr's presence as a guarantee of fairness.  Tulsa's Inter-Racial  Committee  quickly  fell apart....  

Later, in that very summer of 1921 Tulsa's other white ministers of the prominent downtown churches were recruited into the Ku Klux Klan by 'Kleagles', as Klan recruiting agents were known.  Before the end of that summer many of these other white mainline  ministers lead their own congregations into the Klan.   

These other prominent Tulsa white ministers became Klan chaplains known, appropriately enough, as 'Kludds'.   

Wearing Klan hoods, Tulsa's  entire  white  clergy  --   save  Dr. Kerr,  the  Rabbi,  and  the  few  foreign-born Roman  clergy  --   as a man enrolled in the new Ku Klux Klan and joined with their Klan brothers  in  burning  Jesus' Cross in seething  racial and religious  hatred  of  anyone 'different'  from  their  poor white-origin  selves:  Tulsa 'Christianity'….  

Following the summer of 1921 religious inter-racial cooperation became all but impossible in Tulsa due to the attitude of Tulsa's other prominent downtown (mainline) pastors whose feelings towards Black people were evidenced by their membership in the Ku Klux Klan as 'Kludds' .  

In private Dr. Kerr met with friends amongst the Greenwood Pastorate in shared prayer about Tulsa's mass rejection of Jesus' gospel teachings:   

Taking literally  Jesus' command to pray for one's enemies, these Black ministers and Dr. Kerr prayed together for the conversion of Tulsans away from the all-consuming racial hatred of the Ku Klux Klan who nightly burned Jesus' Cross on the hills around Tulsa.