B.B. McKinney
Born Baylus Benjamin McKinney in the small Webster Parish community of Heflin on July 22, 1886, he was one of 10 children.
Educated at Mt. Lebanon Academy, Louisiana College, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminardy, Siegel-Meyers School of Music and Bush Conservatory of Music, he excelled in music.
He was music editor for Robert Henry Colman (1918-1935); taught in the School for Sacred Music at SWBTS and served as assistant director and professor of voice, harmony and composition at SWBTS (1919 to 1931).
After serving as an assistant pastor, he became music editor of the Baptist Sunday School Board and became secretary of the newly created Department of Church Music in 1941.
Under his leadership the board inaugurated an annual Church Music Week at the Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly (1940), encouraged the practice of having a secretary of music employed by each state Baptist convention (1944), developed the church music training course (1946) and began the publication of the Church Musician (1950).
He was the author of the words and music of 149 gospel hymns and songs, and he composed the music for 114 texts by other authors.
Some of his best-loved songs are “The Nail Scarred Hand” (1924), “Let Others See Jesus in You” (1924), “Satisfied with Jesus” (1926), “Speak to My Heart” (1927), “’Neath the Old Olive Trees” (1934), “Breathe on Me” (1937), and “Wherever He Leads I’ll Go” (1937).
Arthur James Barton
A distinguished Southern Baptist leader, Barton was the first pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Alexandria.
The church was formed in a theater on February 6, 1921 and had 217 charter members. During the first year 63 were received for baptism, and by year’s end, Calvary’s membership was 343.
Barton served as Calvary’s pastor until 1924. He would remain very active. He held executive positions with the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home and the Foreign Mission Board and with the Arkansas, Texas and Missouri conventions.
He served as general director of the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program commission (1926-1927) and as chairman of the Southern Baptist standing committee on temperance and its successor, the social service commission, from 1910 until 1942.
Georgia Barnette
She was born on a small farm in Virginia and worked as a church visitor for her home church in Roanoke, Va.
Later she would serve at the Tabernacle Church in Atlanta before coming to New Orleans in 1901 as a missionary employed jointly by the First Church and the Home Mission Board.
After 10 years of service as field secretary, Barnette became corresponding secretary-treasurer and served there through 1929.
She gave 25 years to WMU work in Louisiana and traveled more than 180,000 miles under difficult conditions to promote that work.
When she started there were some 200 societies that contributed only $20,000 for all mission causes.
But she helped to educate women about missions and to mobilize them to give their money and time for the cause.
By 1929, local missionary societies numbered 373 and the WMU organizations had risen to 852. Mission gifts through these organizations had skyrocketed to more than $75,000.
Six years after she left, the state missions offering was named for her. It is collected annually by Baptist churches in Louisiana and provides much of the funding for missions in the state.
Joe B. Moseley
Josiah Bee Moseley, more than anyone else, laid a solid foundation for the Louisiana Baptist Convention’s educational ministry.
He came to Louisiana to serve as educational director at Emmanuel Baptist in Alexandria. He was said to have been the first person elected to such a position in any Baptist church in the South.
Shortly afterwards he was named secretary of the Convention’ s Sunday school department, a position which he assumed on Feb. 1, 1911.
A year later he was also given responsibility for the Training Union department.
Between 1916 and 1921, Moseley held a similar post in Arkansas, but on Aug. 1, 1921, he resumed his duties in Louisiana as secretary of both the Sunday school and Training Union department, where he remained until his death in 1934.
WILLIAM HENRY KNIGHT
Born in rural Washington Parish on August 22, 1888, Knight received a degree from Louisiana College and later earned a doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
During two periods he was a member of the faculty of Southwestern Seminary. His pastorates included the Baton Rouge First Church, the First Church in El Dorado, Ark., the Tabernacle Church in Atlanta, Ga., and the Pineville First Church.
He served as Executive Secretary of the Louisiana Bapist Convention Executive Board from Jan. 1, 1941, until his death in December 1951.
During Knight’s tenure as secretary, the Convention offices were moved from Shreveport to Alexandria in 1947. An old building in Alexandria was purchased and renovated, and for the first time the Convention owned its office building.
Taking advantage of the industrial expansion then in progress and capitalizing on the economic prosperity brought about by World War II, Knight focused his attention on reducing the Convention’s indebtedness.
Through increased Cooperative Program gifts and continued promotion of the Baptist 100,000 Club, a program to assist in paying off denominational debts throughout the Southern Baptist Convention, he was able to acccomplish the paying off of the debt.
Knight also successfully pursued a resurgence of the rural churches. A department of rural evangelism was established in 1941.
Knight did not neglect the growing problems of the cities. Missionaries were appointed to serve in metropolitan areas beginning in the mid-1940s and a department for urban evangelism was established in 1949.
Knight died in Alexandria on Dec. 13, 1951, and was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Pineville.
Claybrook Cottingham
E.O. Ware was the person most influential in the founding of Louisiana College in June of 1908, but Claybrook Cottingham is credited in laying the foundation and helping it acquire academic stature.
Born in Ottoman, Va., Cottingham, a layman and a deacon, became Louisiana College’s third president.
With two degrees from Richmond College, he came to Louisiana in 1902 to teach at Mount Lebanon College. On June 10, 1910, he took over as LC’s president, where he stayed for the next 31 years.
It is written that it was “unfortunate he did not carry through his formal education, nor did he find any time for writing, but he acquired a wealth of learning through his rich administrative experience,” while serving as president.
But during his long tenure, he oversaw a 1911 fire which destroyed half of the buildings on campus. He also exerienced a period of growth and building which saw attendance nearly double (212 to 385) and a new three-story dormitory for men and Alexandria Hall, the admistration building.
His biggest accomplishment, though, was helping the college battle through the depression which threatened the institution’s very life.
– Information compiled from
Glenn E. Greene’s House Upon A Rock